MARY, OUR MOTHER

OUR LADY IS INCREASINGLY SAD!

Our Lady's increasing sadness, as She continues to appear in Medjugorje, may be a poor omen.

As the world becomes more and more immersed in sin, we are coming closer to experiencing the wrath of God. Still, by our prayers and sacrifices, we can mitigate God's punishments, bring a smile to Our Lady's face, and bring peace to the world. The choice is ours.

Medjugorje

In 2006, the 25th anniversary of Our Lady's apparitions were marked in Medjugorje. The six seers, a quarter of a century ago, were just children. Today they are mature adults. Each one has established a family with children and, as they did years ago on Mount Podbrdo, all continue to assert Her messages to the world.

Six of the seers experienced the daily apparitions from June 25, 1981 until Christmas of the following year. From that day on, they see Our Lady with varied intensity and in different ways.

Significance Of Those Dates

Till now, three of them continue to see Her daily, and the other three periodically. Among the latter, is Mirjana Dragicevic Soldo, who reportedly has an apparition of Our Lady on the 2nd of each month, as well as on March 18th on Mirjana's birthday.

However, Our Lady does not do that just because it happens to be the date of her birth. Mirjana said that the symbolism of these particular apparitions, and those at the beginning of each month, will some day become very clear.

Mirjana said, "Our Lady appears to me in this way since 1987. These apparitions are more like a prayer for those who has have not yet recognized God's love. While much about the apparitions is the same, lately, much more frequently, I see Our Lady very sad. From time to time, She even has tears streaming down Her cheeks, in particular for those who still have not recognized God's love. All of us are Her children . . . the believers and the unbelievers."

Mirjana, who after these apparitions appears quite drained, said, "It is extremely painful for me each time I see Her profound sadness."

The Mysterious Parchment

All the seers know the secrets entrusted to them. However, Mirjana also has in her own possession a parchment (made of an unknown substance) on which all the secrets are inscribed. When will the secrets be revealed to the world? Except for the seers, no one else knows.

However, what is known is the name of the person who will disclose them. Mirjana has selected Father Petar Ljubicic to reveal her secrets to the world when the time comes. After fasting for seven days, Father Petar will disclose the contents of the secrets three days before each one of them is to be fulfilled . . . in other words, before the event contained in a particular secret actually occurs!

Three Visionaries Still Receive Daily Apparitions

I once read that Mirjana said that her secrets will begin to be revealed when only one Medjugorje visionary is still seeing Our Lady. Ivanka Ivankovic Elez and Jakov Colo no longer experience daily apparitions.

The three visionaries who do continue to receive daily apparitions no longer have Medjugorje as their primary residence. Ivan Dragicevic lives with his spouse in the United States, and only spends a portion of each year in Medjugorje.

Marija Pavlovic Lunetti resides with her spouse in Italy. It is from there, on the 25th of each month, that she relays Our Lady's message to the world.

Perhaps the most prominent among them is Vicka Ivankovic Mijatovic. She is now married and resides in the neighboring hamlet of Krehin Gradac.

Medjugorje & Garabandal

Until now, perhaps the most intriguing of the secrets is the third one, the one pertaining to a great and mysterious sign.

This secret refers to a sign that Our Lady will leave for the world to see, in order to confirm the authenticity of Her apparitions. The sign will be visible, permanent, and indestructible, and will be left on the hill where She first appeared 25 years ago.

Previously, in the 1960's to four children, a sign was also promised to be left at Garabandal, Spain, when in the future, "the greatest miracle of all time" will occur there.

The Answer From Our Lady

Prayer is the answer. Do you have a regular prayer schedule? If not, how then can you expect to continue to receive God's blessings. If you care about your own life and the future of your children and grand-children, you MUST pray.

Otherwise, when God's wrath comes, we are obliged to understand that it is our own fault, because we did little to stem the tide of evil that is presently permeating the entire world. the saddest thing about it, is that the remedy is so very clear!

Our Lady at Garabandal told the children that when the Warning occurs, the sins that we will see most predominantly, are our sins of omission, that is, spiritual sloth. What we will regret the most is what we did not do!

Fatima & The Five First Saturdays

Ask yourself, "What am I doing to remove the sadness from Mary's Heart?" Our Lady in Fatima gave us the formula to make Her smile and to obtain peace in the world: participate in the Five First Saturdays. However, too few people are doing it. It is not difficult, but we are often too uninformed or too slothful to make the effort.

On December 10, 1925, Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucia in the Dorothean convent at Pontevedra, Spain. She promised Her assistance at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for salvation, (read that again . . . it means no hell!) to all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, do the following things:

1) Go to Confession (within eight days)

2) Attend Mass and receive Holy Communion

3) Pray five decades of the Rosary

4) Keep Our Lady company by meditating for 15 minutes on the Rosary Mysteries.

But Most Important . . .

But, most important (and this is the omission), ALL of these four must be done with the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Many individuals forget to make this intention with each and every one of the four above requests of Our Blessed Lady, and thus, they might not fully merit the promised reward. This is especially true of daily communicants. They mean well, but they simply forget to make the intentions.

The intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a necessary stipulation of Our Lady and Our Lord, to truly fulfill the Five First Saturday requirements.

Our Lady promised that by doing this, we can bring peace to our souls and to the world. Jacinta of Fatima said, "God has entrusted the peace of the world to Our Lady."

Unfortunately, it seems that too few are fulfilling Our Lady's requests accurately. The tide of evil, like a green slime, continues to spread over all the earth. To prevent this, we need reparation.

John Haffert, in Soul Magazine, said that, "The First Saturday devotion is so important that we might well wonder if fulfillment of the basic conditions of Fatima for world peace (sanctification of daily duty) might be impossible without the practice of the First Saturday devotion.

In a book on the First Saturdays (Tequi, Paris, May 13, 1985) fr. Coveliers points out that the First Saturday devotion is a great act of love not accomplished easily.

"The time we dedicate to Mary on the First Saturdays is a 'strong' time, and difficult to accomplish perfectly just on the spur of the moment. the devotion of the First Saturdays cannot be authentic if it is not the fruit of a constant attitude of the soul pervading all the days of our life," he says.

We need to know and understand that where evil weighs down on us, we can mightily tip the other side of the scale with reparation.

We Must Take Prayer and Reparation Seriously

Mary comes to us in many places in order to save our souls. Don't we love God, Her, ourselves, and our family enough to pray and make reparation? God and Mary, and all the visionaries everywhere, tell us that this is the sure formula!

Our love is so cold. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to set our hearts on fire, and begin again to put God and His interests in first place in our lives.

Start with asking yourself this most important question: What time am I going to Mass tomorrow? and then plan your day around that blessed hour. Then watch your life and the entire world change for the better. The victory is already won by Christ, but let us be a greater part of it. Let us participate more actively in God's plan for our salvation and for peace in the world.

The efforts of even a few souls can change the world for the better. Much depends upon what YOU do . . . daily Mass, daily Rosary, and the Five First Saturdays. Many other favorite devotions are also spirit-filled and very rewarding. Think about it; change and pray.

[Reprinted with permission from '101 Times' #70, by Dr. Rosalie Ann Turton]