Mirjana of Medjugorje "let's follow the way that Our Lady wants"

The visionary Mirjana Dragicevic-Soldo attended daily apparitions from 24 June 1981 until 25 December 1982. In the last daily apparition, Our Lady told her, after confiding in her the 10th secret, which from then on would appear to her once a year, specifically March 18. And so it has happened in past years. On the occasion of the last apparition of March 18, 2006, many thousands of pilgrims from all over the world had gathered to recite the Rosary in the Upper Room, the community of Sister Elvira. In prayer they waited for the coming of the Madonna. Mirjana came with her husband Marko and close relatives. The apparition began at 13.59 and lasted until 14.04. Our Lady gave the following message:

"Dear children! In this period of Lent I invite you to interior renunciation. The path to renunciation leads you through love, fasting, prayer and good works. Only with a perfect inner renunciation will you recognize the love of God and the signs of the time in which you live. You will witness these signs and start talking about them. That's where I want to take you. Thanks for following me. " The following day, St. Joseph's feast, we went to visit Mirjana at her home and talked to her. He granted us the following interview:

Mirjana, yesterday you attended the annual apparition. What can you tell us about the appearance of this day? I have often said it: you can see the Madonna thousands of times, but when it appears, it is as if it were the first time for me. In fact, there is always great joy, love, security and grace. This is precisely what can be seen in your eyes when I observe you during the apparition. During the apparition, Our Lady observes all the people present, each one individually. Sometimes when I look at someone, I see pain in his eyes, sometimes joy, sometimes serenity, sometimes sadness. All this makes me understand that she lives with every single person present and shares her joy, pain or suffering.

Yesterday, during the apparition, it was wonderful. I knelt and prayed with the other pilgrims present. I saw them, I listened to their prayer. When the moment of the apparition of the Madonna arrived, my feelings were so strong that I knew that this was the moment when she would come.

If Our Lady had not arrived at that moment, I would have exploded so much my emotions were strong. When the Madonna appears, everything else disappears. Then for me there are no more pilgrims, there is no longer the place where I waited for the apparition, everything becomes blue as the sky and you are more important than everything.

Our Lady wore a gray dress and a white veil, as always. And thank God it wasn't sad. Generally it is almost always sad when I appear on the 2nd of the month.

This time she was happy. I can't say she was too happy and laughed. But I thank God because in his eyes there was not that pain, that sadness or even tears. He had a maternal expression and it seemed that he wanted us to make him understand with his heart, with love and with a smile, what he wants from us. She gave me the message and I still asked her some questions about people who are in difficult life situations. She answered my questions. He blessed us all, as he always does, with His maternal blessing.

He repeated again that this is His maternal blessing, but that the greatest blessing we can receive on earth is the priestly blessing, because it is His Son who blesses us through the priest.

During the apparition you received a message. How do you interpret it?

For me personally the message is very deep.

I made it a habit, after each apparition, to recite the Rosary and reflect on every word that Our Lady said during the message and on every expression on her face. First of all, I try to understand what God wants to say to me personally, and only then do I think about what he wants to communicate to others through me.

We have no right to interpret the message, because everyone must personally reflect on it and understand what God wants to say to him. The message is addressed to all of us because God wants us all to listen to it and all to live it. In the last message, as far as I managed to grasp, the expression "inner renunciation" struck me above all. What does Our Lady want to tell us with this? I believe it is not difficult to understand and I think that internal renunciation is not necessary only in Lent, but our whole life should be an internal renunciation.

Our Lady does not ask us for anything that we cannot achieve. I believe that inner renunciation means putting the good God and Jesus first in our heart and in our family. If God and Jesus take the first place, we have everything, because we have the true peace that only they can give us.

In the message, Our Lady also says that the way to inner renunciation passes through love. What does love mean? For me it means that we must recognize Jesus in every man we meet and know, and that we must love him as such and not judge or criticize him: in fact we cannot take the things of God into our hands, because we judge men completely differently. God judges men according to love and knows what is in the heart of man, but we cannot know it. Then Our Lady speaks of fasting. You too know from the messages how important fasting for bread and water on Wednesdays and Fridays is for Our Lady. Fasting should be our life. But she understands us and tells us all that precisely through prayer we will understand what sacrifice we can offer instead of fasting. To those who have never fasted, I would recommend doing what Our Lady did with us when the apparitions began. When she appeared in Medjugorje, she didn't immediately ask us to fast on bread and water on Wednesdays and Fridays, but first she spoke to us about the meaning of fasting on Friday, and so she started fasting once a week, i.e. Friday. Only later, after some time, did he add that we had to fast on bread and water on Wednesday too.

Furthermore, in the message, Our Lady highlights prayer. What should prayer mean to us? Prayer should be our daily dialogue with God, our constant contact. How can I say I love someone who is important to me and who occupies the first place in my heart, if I never talk to him?

Prayer, therefore, should not be a burden, but simply rest of the soul and communion with a loved one.

In the end, Our Lady spoke of the good works. I believe that fasting, prayer and love lead us to good works. Our Lady has always exhorted us to these good works and wants us to show that we are Christians, to be believers, and that we share the pain and suffering of the others. We have to give something from the heart, and not what we no longer need, but just what we really need and deeply desire and love. Herein lies our greatness as Christians. And this is precisely the path that leads us to inner renunciation.

He still says that we will understand the signs of the time we live in and he also adds that we will start talking about it. What can it mean that we will talk about the signs? We Christians have somehow learned what Jesus said: your YES is a YES, and your NO is a NO. So I too now wonder what God means by means of Our Lady, when she says: will you understand the signs and start talking about it?

Perhaps an extraordinary time has come and we must testify to our faith, but not giving people advice on what they should do. Everyone is good at talking. I am thinking about the importance of speaking through our life, living the messages of Our Lady, living with God every day.

I think of the importance of raising our voice for beautiful and against bad things, to truly understand that this must be our speaking. And I think Our Lady wanted to say this when she said: that's where I want to take you.

Finally, he said: "Thanks for following me"! Normally Our Lady says: "Thanks for answering my call"! But this time he said, "Thanks for following me"! This means that we still have to pray a lot to be able to understand every word that Our Lady wanted to say to us. Our Lady did not say: "Dear Mirjana, I am giving you the message", but "Dear children". I always say that for Our Lady I am not worth more than anyone else of you, because for a Mother there is no privileged child. We are all His children, whom She chooses for different missions. The question now is how many times are we ready to follow the path of Our Lady, to whom she calls us all equally. And this is a personal responsibility.

Mirjana, you were among the first visionaries who saw the Madonna. We are celebrating 25 years of your presence. How do you see yourself, as a seer, after 25 years?

When I look back now and see that 25 years have passed, it seems to me like it was yesterday. I can't think it's been that long. In the first days of the apparitions I felt very strange and there were hundreds of questions that were not clarified. Then we lived in Sarajevo. It was the period of communism and out of fear my parents didn't talk much about faith, although we practiced it. We went to Mass every Sunday and we recited the Rosary and other prayers every evening.

When Our Lady appeared to me, I didn't know if I was alive or dead. I felt more in heaven than on earth. I was doing my routine jobs, but my thoughts were always in heaven with the dear Madonna. I asked the good Lord to make me understand if it was possible that I really saw Madon na and that I was really experiencing all this. I remember then that I thought how beautiful it would have been if my life had ended as soon as possible and I could have been with Our Lady. In fact, I wanted to live more in my world of ideas than in reality. My favorite thing was to be able to be silent and reflect. And so during the day I silently reflected on everything concerning the meeting with the Madonna. Then, with the passage of time and with the help of our dear Mother, I became familiar with all this. Our Lady helped me understand and accept everything. It also helped me to help other people, so that they too would understand. And so 25 years have passed quickly.

In these 25 years the Madonna has always remained the same and has her own project to carry out. On the 16th anniversary, Madon na said: “I have been with you for 16 years. This shows you how much God loves you. " So in these 25 years we can truly see how much God loves us, and how long His Mother sends us to help us understand and follow the right path.

For me, every meeting with the Madonna is as if it were the first time, so I can't say: "It's all normal". It is never normal, but it is a great emotion.

Source: Medjugorje, an invitation to prayer, Mary Queen of Peace n. 68