Medjugorje: "my life with Our Lady" the seer Jacov tells

My life with the Madonna: a seer (Jacov) confesses and reminds us ...

Jakov Colo says: I was ten years old when Our Lady first appeared and before then I had never thought about an apparition. We lived here in the village: he was quite poor, there was no news, we did not know of other apparitions, neither of Lourdes, nor of Fatima, nor of other places where Our Lady appeared. Then even a ten-year-old boy doesn't really think about the apparition, God, that age. He has in his head other things more important for him: being with friends, playing, not thinking about prayer. But when I saw for the first time, under the mountain, a figure of a woman inviting us to come up, in my heart I immediately felt something special. I immediately understood that my life would totally change. Then when we got on, when we saw the Madonna up close, that beauty of hers, that peace, that joy that she transmitted to you, at that moment there was nothing else for me. At that moment only She existed and in my heart there was only the desire for that apparition to be repeated again, that we could see it again.

The first time we saw it, for joy and emotion we could not say even a word; we only wept for joy and prayed that this would happen again. The same day, when we returned to our homes, the problem arose: how to tell our parents that we had seen the Madonna? They would have told us we were crazy! In fact, at the beginning their reaction was not at all beautiful. But seeing us, our behavior, (as my mom said, I was so different that I no longer wanted to go out with friends, I wanted to go to Mass, I wanted to go to pray, I wanted to go up to the mountain of apparitions), they began to believe and I can say that at that moment my life with Our Lady began. I've seen it for seventeen years. It can be said that I grew up with you, I learned everything from you, many things that I didn't know before.

When Our Lady came here she immediately invited us to her main messages which for me were completely new, for example the prayer, the three parts of the Rosary. I asked myself: why pray the three parts of the Rosary, and what is the Rosary? Why fasting? and I did not understand what it was for, what it meant to convert, why pray for peace. They were all new to me. But from the beginning I understood one thing: to accept everything that Our Lady tells us, we only need to open ourselves totally to her. Our Lady says so many times in her messages: it is enough for you to open your heart to me and to the rest I think. So I understood, I gave my life in the hands of the Madonna. I told her to guide me so that all I would do was her will, so my journey with Our Lady also began. Our Lady invited us to prayer and recommended that the Holy Rosary be returned to our families because it said that there is no greater thing that can unite the family than praying the Holy Rosary together, especially with our children. I see that many people when they come here ask me: my son does not pray, my daughter does not pray, what should we do? And I ask them: have you sometimes prayed with your children? Many say no, so we cannot expect our children to pray at the age of twenty when until then they have never seen prayer in their families, they have never seen that God exists in their families. We must be an example to our children, we must teach them, it is never too early to teach our children. At the age of 4 or 5 they must not pray with us three parts of the Rosary, but at least dedicate a time for God, to understand that God must be first in our families. (...) Why is Our Lady coming? It comes for us, for our future. She says: I want to save you all and give you one day as the most beautiful bouquet for my Son.

What we don't understand is that the Madonna comes here for us. How great is his love for us! You always say that with prayer and fasting we can do everything, even stop wars. We must understand the messages of Our Lady, but we must first understand them in our hearts. If we don't open our hearts to Our Lady, we can't do anything, we can't accept her messages. I always say that the love of Our Lady is great and in these 18 years she has shown it to us many times, always repeating the same messages for our salvation. Think of a mother who always says to her son: do this and do that, in the end he does not do it and we get hurt. Despite this, Our Lady continues to come here and to invite us again to the same messages. Just look at his love through the message he gives us on the 25th of the month, in which every time he finally says: thank you for having answered my call. How great is Our Lady when she says "thank you because we have responded to her call". Instead we are the ones who should say in every second of our lives thanks to Our Lady because she comes here, because she comes to save us, because she comes to help us. Our Lady also invites us to pray for peace because she came here as Queen of Peace and with her coming she brings us peace and God gives us her peace, we only have to decide if we want her peace. Many wondered at the beginning why Our Lady insisted so much on prayer for peace, because at that moment we had peace. But then they understood why Our Lady insisted so much, why she said with prayer and fasting you can also stop wars. Ten years after his daily invitations to prayer for peace, war broke out here. I am sure within my heart that if everyone had accepted the messages of Our Lady, many things would not have happened. Not only peace in our land but also in the whole world. All of you must be his missionaries and bring his messages. She also invites us to convert, but says that first we must convert our heart, because without the conversion of the heart we cannot reach God. And then it is logical that if we do not have God in our heart, we cannot accept even what Our Lady tells us; if we do not have peace in our hearts, we cannot pray for peace in the world. Many times I hear pilgrims say: "I am angry with my brother, I have forgiven him but it is better that he stays away from me". This is not peace, it is not forgiveness, because Our Lady brings us her love and we must show love for our neighbor and love everyone. we must first forgive everyone for peace of heart. Many when they come to Medjugorje say: maybe we will see something, maybe we will see Our Lady, the sun that turns ... But I tell everyone who comes here that the main thing, the greatest sign that God can give you, is precisely conversion. This is the greatest sign that every pilgrim can have here in Medjugorje. What can you bring from Medjugorje as a souvenir? The greatest souvenir of Medjugorje are the messages of Our Lady: you must testify, do not be ashamed. We just have to understand that we can't force anyone to believe. Each of us has the free choice to believe or not, we must testify but not only with words. You can make prayer groups in your homes, there need not be two hundred or one hundred, we can also be two or three, but the first prayer group must be our family, then we must accept the others and invite them to pray with us. Then he recounts the last apparition he had from the Madonna in Miami on 12 Sept.

(Interview of 7.12.1998, edited by Franco Silvi and Alberto Bonifacio)

Source: Echo of Medjugorje