Father Livio on Medjugorje: a unique and unrepeatable event

In the history of the Marian apparitions of all times, those of Medjugorje represent in many respects an absolute novelty. In fact, never in the past had Our Lady appeared so long and to such a large group of boys, becoming, with her messages, a teacher of spiritual life and holiness for an entire generation. It had never happened that a parish was taken by the hand on the path of the reawakening of the faith, to the point of involving, in this exciting spiritual event, an incalculable number of faithful from all continents, including thousands of priests and dozens of bishops. Never before has the world, through the waves of the ether and the other means of social communication, felt so heartfelt, so punctual and so alive, the heavenly invitation to penance and conversion. Never by sending God his handmaid, who gave us as Mother, did he bend down with such great mercy on the wounds of humanity at the crossroads before the roads of life and death.

Someone, even among the devotees of Our Lady, has turned up his nose because of the undoubted novelty of the phenomenon constituted by Medjugorje. "Why on earth in a communist country?", One wondered at the beginning, when the bipartition of the world appeared solid and unchangeable. But when the Berlin wall collapsed and communism received eviction from Europe, including Russia, then the question alone received the most comprehensive of answers. On the other hand, didn't the Pope also speak a Slavic language like the Queen of Peace?

And why never those heartfelt tears of Mary, while already pleading on the third day of the apparitions (June 26, 1981), «Peace, peace. peace!"? Why the invitation to prayer and fasting to avoid wars? Wasn't that the time for relaxation, dialogue and disarmament? Wasn't there peace in the world, albeit based on the precarious balance of the two superpowers? Who could think that exactly ten years later, on June 26, 1991, that war in the Balkans broke out that tore Europe for a decade, threatening to lead the world towards nuclear catastrophe?

There was no shortage of those who, even within the ecclesial community, branded the Madonna with the nickname "chatter", with ill-concealed contempt for the messages that with sublime wisdom and infinite love, the Queen of Peace has not ceased to give us in the arc of twenty years. However, the booklet of messages today constitutes, for those who read it with the necessary purity and simplicity of mind, one of the highest comments on the Gospel that have ever been composed, and feeds the faith and the path of holiness of the People of God more of many books born of a theological science that is not infrequently unable to feed the heart.

Of course, appearing every day for twenty years to young people who today are mature men and women, and giving messages that are a daily teaching for an entire generation is something new and exceptional. But, isn't it true that grace surprises and that God works with sovereign freedom according to his wisdom and to meet our real needs, and not according to our pre-established schemes? Who could say, twenty years later, that the grace of Medjugorje was not of great benefit, not only for a multitude of souls, but for the Church itself?