October 22, 2019
Feast of St. John Paul II, Pope
Dear Family of Mary!
Today's feast for St. John Paul II is very important for those of us
who are responding to Our Lady's call. Pope John Paul II loved
Medjugorje! He believed that Our Lady was truly present there, and that
she had come to renew the Church. Mary TV completed a Novena in honor of
St. John Paul II today! For nine days pilgrims joined with a priest
after English Mass to pray the Angelus and the novena prayers for St.
John Paul. Mary TV filmed these prayers and they are aired throughout
the day on Mary TV's Channel!! It is a great addition to our prayers!!
Thank you, St. John Paul II for hearing our prayers and interceding for
us all!
I know that St. John Paul is happy that we can share
something beautiful today! On October 17, 2019, Marijana Vasilj Juracic
gave a talk in the St. John Paul II Hall in Medjugorje. Marijana was a
little girl when the apparitions began. She and Jelena Vasilj began
receiving inner locutions in 1982. Our Lady spoke to them for several
years, and through them, she led a prayer group for young people. It was
an extraordinary grace!
Marijana is not often in the public
eye, but she shared so very beautifully about Our Lady that we hope she
will speak more often. Our shipmate, Stephanie, transcribed this very
long talk. And I want to share the transcript with you all, as I find it
very helpful, comforting and powerful! I will share it in three parts
because of its length. You can also listen to Marijana's talk in "More
from Medjugorje" on Mary TV's home page!
Part 1.
MaryTV
More from Medjugorje
Marijana Vasilj Juracic
October 17, 2019
At the beginning, I would like to greet you all. We will say the
prayer all together for God's blessing. And then, I will share with you
the most important about my personal experience and gift I received. And
in the end, if we have time, maybe we will be able to answer one or two
questions, if there are some very interesting questions, because it's
many of you. Thank you.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Our Father....Hail Mary....Glory be .... Our Lady, Queen of Peace, Pray for us!
So, all of you probably have heard that in Medjugorje we have six
visionaries who have been seeing Our Lady since 1981. Separate from the
six of them who see Our Lady - who see her, who still see her every day -
my friend, Jelena, and I received a little different gift. It is the
gift of inner locution, which means that we were able to hear Our Lady
in our heart, but we physically never saw Our Lady with our eyes.
Everything started with Jelena in December 1982. While she was in
the classroom (she was a little girl going to the school) she heard a
voice within her, which was the voice that introduced itself to her as
the voice of guardian angel. So, this voice of her guardian angel was
speaking to Jelena, and it came for a few days, and was asking of Jelena
to be preparing in prayer for an encounter with Our Lady.
Jelena was only 10 years old at that time, and up to that point,
she really didn't even know about the gift of inner locution. So, on
December 15th, 1982, Jelena heard the voice of Our Lady for the first
time.
The first message Our Lady gave to her was an invitation to prayer.
But Our Lady did not invite only Jelena, she told her, you are welcome
to invite all others who wish to pray with you.
So, Jelena first informed her family and she told us who were going
to school with her about this experience she was having. And none of
us, especially we children who were 10 years old, could understand what
Jelena was talking to us about. This gift was unknown to us. But
regardless of that, we simply, spontaneously started to pray with Jelena
in the way that Our Lady was requesting from us.
Our Lady's desire was that every day at 3 o'clock in the afternoon
we would say the Rosary together. In the beginning, there were around 10
of us, and we prayed with Jelena every day. And eventually, with time,
more and more people were coming to join us and to pray with us.
So, three months later I was praying every day with Jelena, and I
was able to hear the voice of Our Lady. It started in March 1983. From
that day on, for a long time, for many years, nearly every single day,
both Jelena and I were able to hear the voice of Our Lady.
The hardest part for us to explain to people was the melody and the
sound of Our Lady's voice. What we can say is that this is a sort of
the inner voice that does not have the characteristics of the human
voice. It is a voice that we were never able to control. And it is a
voice that we would only hear specifically during the time of the
prayer. This is a voice that to some extent, we can compare to the voice
of our consciousness. But at the same time, this is a voice that does
not come from our thoughts, from our head, from our mind, it comes from
our heart and from our soul, and it is filling our soul and our
interior.
What gave us certainty and what gave us confidence that this was
the voice that was coming from God, was this great, profound peace and
joy we would feel in those moments. In those moments, Jelena and I were
not in the state of ecstasy like the visionaries would be during the
time of the apparition. We were always able to be aware of people around
us, of the space around us, yet the peace we would feel in our hearts
was something different.
We can say that the messages, the main messages that Our Lady gave
us were similar to the messages of the visionaries. These are the main
messages Our Lady gave us at the beginning of the apparitions: An
invitation to Prayer, to Fasting, Conversion, Penance. Jelena and I
never received any messages or secrets like other visionaries have
received, and Our Lady never told us anything about the future of the
world.
What Our Lady wanted from us was something different from her
desire for the other visionaries. She expressed the desire that the two
of us start a prayer group that would be formed of youth living in
Medjugorje at that time. We were only 11 and 12 years old, and we were
thinking, how are we going to do that? How are we going to realize that?
But Our Lady said, please share this message with the priests in the
parish, and they will help you.
So, when we gave this message to the priests, one of the priests
responded, and he invited the rest of the youth to come and to join our
prayer group if they wished. the prayer group that we established was
the second prayer group that Our Lady asked for here in Medjugorje. A
few months before Our Lady had requested this of us, she had asked for a
prayer group from Ivan, the visionary. And she especially emphasized
also to Ivan that she wanted youth to be the members of that prayer
group.
Once, we asked Our Lady, why did she, in a special way, invite
youth to be members of the prayer group? Our Lady's response was that
she was very worried for all the youth around the world. She told us
that many young people live without God, without prayer. And many of
them are lost on their life journey. So, Our Lady wanted to give us an
example and show us the true way which we should take. First, to us who
were in this chosen parish, and then to all others who would be coming
here.
In those moments, when the message was first given, none of us
could understand, why and how the messages of Our Lady would be spread
all over the world in various prayer groups. But when the many pilgrims
who arrived in Medjugorje, heard this invitation of Our Lady to form
prayer groups similar to the one she started with us, they wanted the
same thing, and they established prayer groups all over the world.
Today, we can say that there are thousands of similar prayer groups
that are a fruit of Medjugorje, that pray all over the world. In one
message, specifically Our Lady said that she's very joyful because of
all these people who are gathering in prayer groups, who pray together,
who give their time, and she blesses them all and encourages them to
continue doing so.
When it comes to our prayer group, 60 young people responded to Our
Lady's invitation; they started to pray with us. And we had this
beautiful gift, a beautiful gift that was given to us, that the leader
of our prayer group for many years was Our Lady. Because in the messages
Our Lady was giving either to me or to Jelena, she was leading our
prayer group all the time.
But, before joining the group, each one of us who agreed to be a
member of the prayer group, was asked by Our Lady for a certain, you
could say, condition from us. She wanted each one of us to remain for
four years a member of the prayer group, to not choose in those four
years their life vocation or calling, to not get married, and to all
agree together to be prepared to do this for this long period.
When the prayer group was first established, Our Lady asked
for the prayer to be only once a week. Then she asked, prayer meetings
twice a week, then she asked for prayer meetings three times a week. Our
Lady was leading us in this prayer journey, step by step. But she also
told us that it is not just enough to be praying as part of a prayer
group. Our Lady was inviting us to our personal prayer. She was
inviting us to our everyday personal encounter with God. She was
inviting us to prayer in our families.
And here in Medjugorje, we can say that Our Lady invited us and our
families on numerous occasions to the family prayer. Our Lady says that
every family is the first and the most important prayer group. Our Lady
recommends prayer of the Rosary as the most powerful prayer for our
families. Many times, she invited families, and she would repeat this
message of praying the Rosary together on many occasions.
In one message, she said to us, "The Rosary, dear children, is the
strongest weapon in the fight, in the battle against evil and devil."
She said," with Rosaries you can even stop wars. First wars within us,
and then wars that are all over the world."
In one of the messages, Our Lady even said, "Dear children, when
you are tired, when you are lonely, when you do not see the purpose of
your life anymore, in those moments, grasp the Rosary and pray the
Rosary. Meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary." And then, Our Lady
said in one of the most recent messages here in Medjugorje to
visionaries, that we in our lives, we go through both joyful and
sorrowful mysteries, and at the end we have glorious mysteries at the
end of our lives.
Our Lady said that every person who prays first in his family as a
little prayer community, those people would be open more to be able to
pray in the prayer groups.
End of Part 1
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2019
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