Baska Voda 1995
02. - 06. 04. 1995.
Ivan Dugandzic - APPARITIONS, VISIONS, REVELATIONS (Theological possibility and significance of these unusual manifestations)
fra Ljudevit Rupcic - "PRIVATE" REVELATION AND MEDJUGORJE"
fra Tomislav Pervan - THE HISTORICAL-THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF THE MEDJUGORJE APPARITIONS
fra Josip Marcelic - THE ROLE OF VISIONARIES (Biblical-historical )
Hans Schotte - ABOUT THE ROLE OF MASS-MEDIAS IN SPREADING OF THE MESSAGE OF MEDJUGORJE
sister Isabel Bettwy - HOW TO PREPARE PILGRIMS FOR A PILGRIMAGE TO MEDJUGORJE
Dr. Fr. Ivan Dugandzic - Franciscan priest, member of the Hercegovina Franciscan province. Born 1943 in Krehin Gradac, country Citluk, Hercegovina. After graduating in Dubrovnik in 1962, he entered the Franciscan Order. He completed theological studies in Sarajevo and Koenigstein, Germany. Ordained priest in 1969. Postgraduate study and doctorate in biblical science in Wuerzburg, Germany. Since 1990 he lives and works in Zagreb. He is professor of New Testament exegesis and biblical theology at the Catholic Theological Faculty and its institutes. He has published works in technical theological reviews. He publishes in religious newspapers in a contemporary style on various biblical themes. He has lived and worked in Medjugorje on two occasions: 1970 - 1972 and 1985 - 1988.
Dr. Fr. Ljudevit Rupcic was born in 1920 in Hardomilije, Ljubuski. In 1939 he entered the Franciscan Order in the province of Hercegovina, and in 1946, he was ordained a priest. He finished his studies in Theology in the University seminary in Zagreb. He completed a doctorate in 1958 and received the habit there. From 1958 until 1988 he lectured in New Testament exegesis on franciscan theology in Sarajevo, and also in the University seminary in Zagreb. Under the former Yugoslavian Communist regime he served two prison sentences from 1945 to 1947 and again from 1952 to 1956. For a longer period (1968 until 1981) he was a member of the theological commision aiding the Episcopal Conferences of former Yugoslavia.
He has accomplished a translation of the New Testament from it's origins into the Croation language, and his translation has had continuous re-publication. His books, studies and articles have been published in Croation, English, German and Italian, and he has lectured at various conferences and meetings throughout Europe and America.
Dr. Fr. Tomislav Pervan - born November 8, 1946 in Citluk. Ordained priest 1969. Doctorate
1976 in Theology of the New Testament. Worked as assistant novice master in the Hercegovina
Franciscan Province. Served as pastor in the parish of Medjugorje from 1982 - 1988. Named Vicar Provincial in 1990 and in 1994 was elected as Provincial of the Hercegovina Franciscan Province.
Dr. fra Josip Marcelic- is a third order Franciscan, born in 1929 in Prek, Zadar. He was ordained a priest in Split in 1953. He graduated in philosophy and received a doctorate in theology from the University of St. John Lateran in Rome. From 1971 to 1972, he lectured in dogmatic theology and Scriptural studies in Split and repeatedly filled the office of Chancellor and Vice-chancellor in same University. He is co-founder and co-producer of the circular "Water and the Spirit", a series about renewal in the Spirit (jelsa, 1984 and following) from which many translations and other publications were made.
Hans Schotte - was born in 1944. He graduated from the Diocesan evening high school in Essen. He furthered studies in theology, philosophy and pedagogy, and went on to study the pedagogy of media the university at Bonn. After a number of years working in journalism and fulfilling the obligations as director of the diocesan office in Augsburg, he was involved in journalistic activities for the International Catholic Missionary Association "MISSIO", in Munich. In 1983 his work brought him again to Augsburg as pedagogue within media and televised journalism. He produced and directed over forty documentaries for television based on experiences on his many travels through Asia, Africa and South America. His office is one of help to the pedagogical function of the Church, and in this position he has made two coverages of Medjugorje as a place of pilgrimage. At the moment Hans is working on a new film about Medjugorje.
Sister Isabel Bettwy - is both founder and director of the Association of the Mother of Mercy, an association devoted to giving honour to Mary, through prayer and formation. One activity of the association was the arranging of pilgrimages to places of Marian devotion throughout the world, the main one being Medjugorje. Sister Isabel began bringing pilrims to Medjugorje back in 1984 while fulfilling the obligations of Director of Franciscan University travel. Sister Bettwy now works as director of National pilgrimages to the center of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, MA, USA.
DECLARATION
At the international symposium in Ba{ka Voda held from April 2- 6, 1995, seventy leaders of prayer groups and centers of peace from 15 states, four visionaries and the priests who work in Medjugorje participated. After hearing the lectures, exchanging ideas and experiences and praying together, taking into consideration all the criteria: regarding the visionaries, the messages of Our Lady and the fruits of those messages in the lives of the faithful throughout the whole world, we are even more convinced that the Medjugorje apparitions are a gift of God for our times. They are an encouragement for the people of God in these times of trouble and turmoil, an impulse and direction to the Church in her search for the ways of new evangelization on the approach to the third millennium. Our Lady's message are not a new revelation, but new help for revelation to be grasped in a new way and to be incorporated in new times. In them are contained, in some sense, concrete answers to the most recent documents of Pope John Paul II.
Accordingly, we recommend to all prayer groups and centers of peace:
- That in Our Lady's messages they see a call to and direction toward the only Savior Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of salvation.
- That they always keep in their heart concern for the Church, for which Mary is Mother, model, exemplar and final goal of her journey through time.
- That they especially do everything so that through them, the local Church may experience the fruits of conversion and peace.
- That in the context of Our Lady's messages they be open to the signs of today's world and times, in order to be a sign of hope and a place of security for all men amid modern problems and uncertainties.
- That they do everything in love and understanding to overcome mutual disagreements so as altogether to serve better the great good of peace.
Dr. fra Ivan Dugandzic, OFM, 1995
Apparitions, visions, revelations
(Theological possibility and significance of these unusual manifestations)
1. EXTRAORDINARY MANIFESTATIONS IN EXTRAORDINARY TIMES
In 1973, there was a stormy discussion among theologians about the significance of Jesus' resurrection and the meaning of speech in the apparitions of the Risen One as the New Testament speaks of them. R. Pesch, a liberal Catholic biblical scholar, provoked that discussion with his assertion that talk about the resurrection is merely "the expression of the believers' recognition of Jesus' eschatological significance, his mission and authority, his legitimation in view of his death." Talk about apparitions would merely be the "legitimation" of the disciples, that is, their determination to proclaim that "significance of Jesus." His Protestant, very moderate colleague, M. Hengel, in his response particularly regrets that in present times visions are made equivalent to hallucinations and continues, "Since the rich mystical tradition of the Church has dried up, at least in our regions, theologians are then no longer in authority for these manifestations, but rather psychiatrists or drug experts. A vision is considered a pathological manifestation" (ThQ 3/1973, p. 255). It was as though it were a prophetic word for what will be shown also in the case of the apparitions in Medjugorje eight years later.
Still, the Bible speaks so often about apparitions and visions, relating God's revelation to people with these manifestations, that we can consider them to be one of its central themes. Why then are these manifestations in the Church regularly met with great caution and scepticism on the part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and clergy in general, and furthermore with the considerable indifference of theologians? One could say, in fact, that these manifestations are readily accepted only by the common faithful, admittedly sometimes too quickly and uncritically. In the veritable flood of theological literature today it is very difficult to find a solid theological work dedicated to these manifestations. If we start from the good old understanding of theology as the handmaiden of faith, then its primary task is "the penetrating of Revelation in light of reason" and "endeavouring about a living interpretation of the faith" in the practical life of the Church. Why, then, does theology have an aversion toward those manifestations, which are obviously directed toward the life of the Church?
Precisely such manifestations would have to be a real challenge for today's theology, which is very successfully dealing with individual questions and problems, but as though it is lacking a sense of the whole and the profound mystery that is hidden behind everything. Or is it perhaps the realization of the dire prophecy of A. Comte, the father of positivism, from some 150 years ago, when observing how the interest of theology shifted from the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, through Christology toward ecclesiology, he asserted that in this way the Church itself will slowly and inattentively slip into positivism. "It will no longer deal with God, but with man; it will no longer research the unresearchable truth but the positive manifestations of its own community." One of the most acute and profound theologians of our times, Hans Urs von Balthasar, seems to be indirectly acknowledging that this has already happened, when he says of today's Church that, "it has lost a good portion of its mystical features and has become a church of constant conversations, organizations, councils, congresses, synods, commissions, academies, parties, functions, structurings and restructurings, sociological experiments and statistics."
It is logical that this is also reflected in theology. Everyone who is a little bit more involved with theology knows to what measure it is today infiltrated with anthropology, sociology and psychology. These sciences can certainly enrich theological thought but they cannot replace it if it desires to be "a science about God," and not almost exclusively about man. The emphasis, namely, of theological reflection is sometimes shifted from God to man and from the reality beyond to the reality here below in such a significant measure that it is not difficult to understand why the spirit of today's times and the entire spiritual climate do not in any way favor talk about apparitions. And since such manifestations still demand their interpretation, it comes offered on non-theological grounds. Usually one wants to say that in today's world, faced with insecurity and fear regarding its future, prophetic-apocalyptic tendencies occur which then find an outlet in mass psychosis. These extra- ordinary manifestations are then made equivalent to pathological states and their interpretation is surrendered to psychology and parapsychology.
When it is a question of Mary and her apparitions, usually Jesus' unique mediation between God and man is emphasized and the impossibility of apparitions is deduced from that, because thereby, that otherwise certain truth would be brought into question. Frequently, at least in some countries, it is also about some superficial ecumenical tactics with reference to Protestants who are bothered by excessive veneration of Mary. For some theologians the reasons lie in the fear of being called conservative in times when it is fashionable for theology to deal with completely concrete problems of life, which is good, but insufficient.
Observing closely the events in the parish of Medjugorje already for a long time and trying to evaluate them theologically, and following the reaction to them by a part of the ecclesiastical public, it is difficult to avoid the impression that fundamental theological terms are often unclear and that is one of the main reasons for confusion and disorientation. Therefore, let us attempt to define these terms as clearly and precisely as possible!
2. THE CONCEPT OF APPARITION AND VISION IN THEOLOGY
It must be admitted that theology, which has to stand in service of the faith and the life of the Church, does not have an easy task in the present times. It is required for it to serve practice and that practice is often very complex. On the one hand are those who understand practice as established and stable behaviour, which does not tolerate anything new, and as dangerous a theology, which advocates anything new. On the other hand, as practice we have religious experience, whether it is related to apparitions and conditioned by them or related to different forms of charismatic movements. Here again there is a danger to declare theology lifeless and unconvincing and to reject it for the sake of that kind of experience.
It is important, however, that theology neither on the one nor the other side, permit itself to become the victim of practice, nor should it sacrifice practice. Where there is no religious experience, it must inspire it and there where it is, it must be on guard not to permit that experience to take on undesirable directions, "so that nothing correct in the new experiences is lost or extinguished, but also that anything that might be incompatible with the Christian mystery secretly imposes itself. . ." It is well known, namely, that in critical moments of the world and the church, the religious spirit strongly yearns for all the more convincing and tangible experience of the reality beyond as a comfort for the present and a promise for the future. Here theology has to distinguish the enthusiastic and unhealthy from the healthy and beneficial, that is, from that which belongs to the deposit of faith and the established courses of salvation.
What in fact does theology understand by the term apparitions and visions? In the broadest sense of the word, these are "mental experiences in which invisible realities such as God, angels, even the saints, but also created things, become accessible to the physical senses in a natural way, and all this being related to the supernatural goal of human salvation. Spatially distant events as well as past and future events also belong here." Healthy Christian tradition never called into doubt the possibility of these manifestations because it knew that by this it would call into question its image of God who was not free only at the beginning in the act of creating the world, but retains that freedom permanently in relation to his creation.
Although public Revelation terminated with the New Testament, God, who stands in partnership with the world and man, maintained for himself freedom of action in human history, admittedly, under the aspect of the essential qualification of the New Testament which is his eschatological dimension. Namely, God must respect the fact that with Jesus Christ the final or eschatological times have begun, which are characterized with the event of salvation that began with him. In this span of time from Christ's resurrection to his second coming, God cannot broaden revelation in the sense of making some new covenant as was the case in the Old Testament. He can only still execute the final promised intervention at the end of time by which He will bring to fulfilment the already begun salvation of the world. But before that, in different ways, he certainly can inspirationally influence the realization of that salvation in the present moment of history. One of those ways is his communication in image and word. Whoever would deny this, would call God's freedom into question, as well as the character of Christianity as a revealed religion. Therefore, the essence of private apparitions and revelations after Christ must be such that it substantially corresponds with this eschatological salvific reality."
The church has always related to these manifestations with caution, keeping in mind the New Testament warning about the discernment of spirits (1 Cor 12:10; 1 John 4:1; 1 Pet 5:8). It has already been said in the fore mentioned definition, that all manifestations in their intention are related to human salvation. This also implicitly contains the first criterion for their evaluation. Do they correspond to the regular courses of salvation or not? Do they give direction toward them or divert away from them? It is not difficult to establish whether such manifestations divert away from a healthy devotion to Jesus Christ, placing Mary at the centre of devotion in a way that competes with Christ. Furthermore, whether they lead believers to a sincere listening of the word of God and to a sacramental life. It is a known fact that, before the Council, both in Mariology and Marian devotion, one-sidedness and exaggeration was known exist. Along with this goes also a criterion in relation to the visionaries and their way of experiencing the visions. Namely, we must keep in mind that particular times are favourable to such manifestations, just as are times of world anxiety and crisis of faith. Therefore, the obligation of theology is to watch over these manifestations and to observe whether apparitions are "an empty echo in which man is listening only to himself or a response in which man is hearing God." In the same way, one should distinguish the intuitive recognition or the intellectual enlightenment that might occur during prayer or meditation, from actual visions. One should say that the caution mentioned is not the same thing as negligence toward these kind of manifestations, but, on the contrary, is the best service to them.
3 . MYSTICAL AND PROPHETIC VISIONS
In regard to their purpose, theology divides visions into the mystical and the prophetic. The former exclusively refer to a particular person and his personal spiritual growth as was the case with so many mystics in the Church. Naturally, it does not exclude a particular aspect of the publicity, which such visions will obtain with the possible later public veneration of these mystics, should they be elevated to the degree of being blessed or being canonized. In that sense we could also take strictly private visions as a charism in the broader sense. In contrast to this, the prophetic visions have a public character right from the beginning. They are a gift or a charism to the individual or several individuals for the benefit of the whole church. It is required of the visionary to address his milieu and the entire Church with the message received. Gemma Galgani is taken as a typical example of the former type of vision and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque of the latter.
Observed from the point of view of the visionary's experiencing, the mystical vision is always more intense and more strongly influences changing of the visionary's personal life than is the case with the prophetic vision. That is understandable also because it is persons, who have ordinarily already achieved an enviable degree of holiness, that have mystical visions, while the bearers of prophetic visions are most frequently ordinary believers chosen entirely "by accident" and, in most cases, are children not yet fully mature for deeper mystical experiences. This is why such visions do not that strongly influence the person of the visionary, who changes personally much slower in regard to the maturity and the holiness of his personal life.
Since, in the first place, one is dealing with a charism for the sake of others, the visionary always needs somebody who is better acquainted than himself with the mysteries of the spiritual life, and who will direct him. Otherwise, there is a danger of discrepancy between the role entrusted to him and the holiness of his personal life. Due to the circumstance that these visionaries most frequently are children, their visions, (though of a physical-objective character, for which reason they are ordinarily called three dimensional), in relation to the experience of mystics (which are exclusively imaginative, that is internal mental states), nevertheless, remain more on the surface and never have a quick and rapid change of the visionary as a consequence. But the significance of this vision is in the slow change of the believers for whom the message is intended. Certainly, that effect could not be achieved if also the bearers of the message would not at the same time be changed for the better. And that they are incapable of, as we said, without the help of somebody else.
4. NATURAL, PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL AND SUPERNATURAL MANIFESTATIONS
Starting from the simple fact that for God our human boundaries between the natural, parapsychological and supernatural realms do not present any kind of barrier whatsoever, and that God is acting in every good deed done by man, K. Rahner warns that the formulation "this vision originates from God" is, in fact, in itself quite indefinite and open to many meanings. Since from the viewpoint of his salvation, man can discover God's grace and inspiration for his personal salvation also in an event that can be explained in a completely natural way, "some 'vision that is able to be interpreted in a natural way,' in so far as it remains within the boundaries of Christian faith and morals, and in so far as it does not harm the mental health of the visionary, but uplifts him morally and religiously, could then be accepted as 'done by God' and as a grace, although that vision has its direct, natural foundation in psychical mechanisms . . ."
From the theological viewpoint, there is no obstacle whatsoever for God to use the completely natural possibilities of human nature for the realization of extraordinary goals with regard to human salvation. It is difficult, actually it is impossible, to answer the question, why would God always have to make use of some extraordinary means for that which he can achieve through ordinary human capabilities and possibilities. The German philosopher, Robert Spämann, criticizes the approach of modern experimental sciences to spiritual reality because of their "homogenisation of experience," i.e. due to the attempt to classify all experiences into some kind of preconceived experimental framework. Others speak of reductionism when thinking of the same manifestations, especially in modern psychology. They use the term "psychologism" by means of which "the spiritual is reduced to the mental and that again reduces to the mechanics or hydraulics of some kind of fictional 'psychical apparatus' which is later on then adopted as real. . . The very overcoming of psychologism will enable an unobstructed observation and evaluation of the spiritual in man, and, in particular, of the religious in its sovereignty."
In opposition to the tendency to immediately assign all parapsychological manifestations to the negative realm, K. Rahner wonders why the parapsychological natural capacities of telepathy, clairvoyance, psychometry etc. in some religious person could not be directed in the same way as 'normal' capacities to objects of religious nature, and thus be an impetus for religiously relevant acts, and why would such acts not be allowed to be evaluated as 'done by God,' as 'grace?'
All these are important premises in order to be able correctly to evaluate also that vision, in the particular sense, that has its origin in a special divine intervention. That kind of vision, that is regularly accompanied by some special sign which is recognizable to all, is not, accordingly, the only whatsoever authentic vision. In light of that, a question indeed presents itself, "Why would not the ecclesiastical recognition of some vision make sense, even when it is limited only to the assertion that such a vision according to its content and its impact on the visionary and others, is only positive and, in that sense, that it "originates from God" or when it is a legitimate echo of the real mystical experience of the visionary which corresponds to the norms of faith and reason, without necessitating that the Church in both cases must presume the actual, miraculous intervention of God?"
According to that, even if in some vision there is no miraculous sign that clearly surpasses natural laws and the ordinary courses of events, but can in everything be interpreted as a natural and parapsychological manifestation, there is still not here that kind of theological reason to deny to such a vision all possibility of originating from God. As a matter of fact, the greatest mistake is made when everything as a whole without any distinctions is characterized too hastily as possible or impossible, as done by God or as the devil's delusion or a human illusion. For this reason, many theologians with Rahner in the lead ask for a particular "leniency" toward visionary experiences, and they are of the opinion that they can be accepted as inspired by God, even then when we cannot accept every detail in them. On the other hand, one should bear in mind that, even then when their authenticity is in some way already recognized by the church (particularly on the grounds of external criteria about which more will be said later), it does not mean thereby that every particular in the content is correct and that we must agree with it. There are cases when obviously individual errors were proven in the visions and prophecies of the saints. Johannes Torello lists three types of these manifestations and their causes:
1) the possibility that a real revelation should be misunderstood wrongly because of insufficient clarity. St. Joan of Arc in the dungeon heard a voice that, "A savoir will help" her and that, "through great victories she will obtain freedom," which she interpreted as her liberation from the dungeon which never happened.
2) It may happen that the receiver of a revelation does not notice some important condition, and he understands the message absolutely. St. Vincent Ferrer, on the basis of a certain revelations of his, prophesied the end of the world for the last 21 years of his life, and even performed miracles in confirmation of that prophecy.
3) One must not try to compare visions of historical events with the course of history in minute detail, because these kind of revelations aim only at the global and the essential. Different mystics disagreed about the number of nails with which Jesus was nailed to the cross, and they claimed equally to have seen it (St. Gertrude, St. Bridget, St Catherine of Sienna).
Even in an authentic vision, errors may occur in regard to the image and the message some person transmits. It is possible that visionaries unconsciously and accidentally connect their opinions, the desires, the suggestions of others, the hopes or fears of their environment, with the actual message. All of that can be conditioned by the circumstances of the environment, the times, the theological knowledge of the visionaries as well as by their temperament, which is particularly reflected on the manner of their transmitting the message received. . . K. Rahner mentions the piece of information that little Francisco in Fatima did not always hear everything that the Blessed Mother spoke to the visionaries, but he only saw the motion of her lips and it is not considered an argument against, but on the contrary, a good sign of the authenticity of the little visionaries.
Maybe it will not hurt to draw a parallel with the New Testament reports about the apparitions of the Risen Lord. The vision the women had at Jesus' grave Mark describes as "a young man. . . dressed in a white robe" (Mk 16:5). Matthew as "the angel of the Lord" (Matt 28:2), and Luke speaks of "two men in dazzling garments" (Luke 24:4). John is the closest to him when he mentions "two angels in white garments" (John 20:12). Biblical science has discovered in these places different theological intentions of the evangelists and the different traditions they used, but we wonder, has everything been said by that? Why do the witnesses of the Risen Lord not recognize Jesus immediately in him? Why is he "appearing in different forms" (Mark 16:12), once as a fellow traveller whom they cannot recognize because "their eyes were restrained" (Lk 24:16), another time as "spirit" (Luke 24:37) or again as "a gardener" (John 20:15)? The disciples see Jesus regularly, but they do not know that it is Jesus (John 21:4), until he begins to speak. And then, as soon as they recognize him, he disappears before their eyes. Accordingly, also even here on the basis of Revelation itself, it is not an exact seeing that is the most important thing, but the message and faith. The Risen One lets himself be experienced, but it is obvious that he nowhere gives himself completely up to man. All this tells us that apparitions and visions are generally a very complex manifestation, really difficult to describe, in which it is difficult to draw the line between the objective happening and the subjective experiencing of the visionaries. God, even when he reveals himself to men in the clearest manner, remains inexpressible - inefabilis. That is why, when there is a question of any kind of revelation, enough questions and ambiguity always remain. It cannot be otherwise, because the role of faith can never be replaced by any kind of knowledge. Faith played the decisive role in the miracles performed by Jesus, in the recognition of the Risen Lord, and also in the proclamation of the message of resurrection. It also played that kind of role in later visions and revelations. Naturally, one should guard against extremism and take care that we do not understand this meaning of faith in the sense that it was known to be used to reproach Christianity, "A miracle is the dearest child of faith!" Accordingly, it is not a faith that invents miracles, but it is faith as unconditional readiness to recognize and to accept the supernatural activity of God. Of course, it should be complimented also by the definite, objective signs, which that manifestation offers, and which fall under the criteria for discernment.
5. CRITERIA REGARDING THE CHURCH
There is nothing else to apply here beside the already mentioned criteria for the discernment of spirits. The evangelist John writes thus, "Beloved, do not trust every spirit, but put the spirits to a test to see if they belong to God, because many false prophets have appeared in the world. This is how you can recognize God's spirit: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, while every spirit that fails to acknowledge him does not belong to God (1 John 4:1-3; cf 5:1-4). Admittedly, this text shows a particularity of John's community in which the heresy of gnosticism denied the incarnation of Jesus, but it can still be used as a general criterion in so far as it articulates the central significance of Jesus Christ for human salvation. The place and role of Jesus Christ in the life of the faithful is also in question with Paul in Corinth but under a different aspect. "The spirit filled Corinthians do not have a problem with false doctrine, but with the demonic machinations of pagans" which is directly felt in the virtuous life of the individuals in the community. But, in both the former and the latter case, such stimuli cannot come from the Spirit of God but only from the Evil One.
In still another place the Apostles speaks about the authentication of gifts, but again under a different aspect, namely, with regard to their usefulness for the up building of the community (1 Thess 5:19-21; cf 1 Cor 14). The more that particular gifts contribute to the up building and strengthening of the Church, the more sure it is that they are the fruit of the Spirit, but, if they tear down communion, they can be only from the Evil One. Naturally, here only a real communion of faith and charity is in question, and not any kind ideology. That is why Paul can say in another place, "There may even have to be factions among you for the tried and true to stand out clearly" (1 Cor 11:19). That is nothing else but an interpretation of the words of Jesus, "Do you think I have come to establish peace on the earth? I assure you, the contrary is true; I have come for division" (Lk 12:51). In question is a complete commitment to Jesus, which some always meet with rejection.
There is one more general caution for vigilance and sobriety (1 Peter 5:8) and that is all the New Testament has to say about this delicate question. Nevertheless, though there are not many concrete words, the New Testament contains something which like a red thread runs through all of its scriptures and which present the condition for God's activity. It is that openness and readiness of acceptance in regard to the Holy Spirit that we find in Mary. That openness is founded on the readiness and availability for everything that he will give to man and demand from him.
Furthermore, the Christological dimension of salvation that has been emphasized several times, must also be the criterion here. The crucial question is, whether some particular apparition leads closer to Christ or farther away from him. Should Christ be pushed aside, no matter how much other forms of devotion be developed, one should approach that manifestation with scepticism. In other words, the closer the message is to the one of Jesus offered to us by the New Testament, the core of which is a call to conversion, the greater the possibility is for authenticity. It has already been said that revelation, which comes through private apparition, may be of just an inspirational character, in relation to what has already been contained in Revelation. Therefore, it is logical that paucity of content and brevity of message must be taken as a positive sign, especially if that message still finds a responsive chord in the people of God and brings forth fruits of conversion.
6. THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MARIAN APPARITIONS
All that has been said in general about apparitions is valid in a particular way for Marian apparitions, which are the most frequent. Pope Paul VI, speaking about veneration of Mary today, emphasized that devotions to the Virgin must "clearly show the place she holds in the church." Everything Mary is, she is because of Christ and his Church and, therefore, there is no healthy Marian devotion, which does not lead to Christ and the up building of the Church. How are we to place into this context Marian apparitions, all the more frequent in the last two centuries, and how are we to evaluate them? It is possible to consider this manifestation only in the light of the already mentioned unique role and place of Mary in the church. It is impossible to consider her separately, only for herself. With everything she is, Mary is plunged into the plan of salvation and she stands in the closest relationship with the central realities of salvation, Christ as the Redeemer, and the church as the community of the redeemed.
Mary's personal holiness and her ministry in the plan of salvation are not two things that stand together just by the concurrence of circumstances, but they represent an indivisible whole. K. Rahner expressed this as the union of the personal holiness and the apostolate that necessarily arises from that holiness, by which Mary is, "the official representation of the church in an exceptional way." This connection with the church does not cease even with the termination of her earthly life. In reality, her concern for the church of her Son is even stronger there where, as the only member of the church she is already now in her glorified body, while the others are on the way to that state and are in need of help. Sagi-Bunic says nicely that also "in the council text Mary's assumption into heavenly glory is not understood as some departure and separation, but rather as the achievement of blossoming possibilities to continue in a greater way her effective role in the history of salvation, of course, in a corresponding relatedness with Christ the Lord."
Marian apparitions certainly belong among those "blossoming possibilities" and they seem to have a special place among them. Regardless of their message, already by themselves they have theological significance. Their manifestation itself is their first message. Because, in itself it proclaims the mystery of Mary's life and shows her role in the history of salvation. But again that does not happen because of Mary but because of the church. Manifesting her glory to us, Mary reveals to us our own possibilities, which the mystery of her Son Jesus presents to us. L. Scheffczyk says, "A Marian apparition in a realistic personal way places the entire mystery of Mary before the visionary and through his mediation also before believers."
Accordingly, it is not an exaggeration to say that a Marian apparition as such, in itself, is the greatest message to the church as an encouragement on her path to eternity but also as an obligation. Since the time of the church is eschatological and since Mary is the only one who does not know those eschatological tensions between the given and yet incomplete salvation, then we should always consider her activity also in this context. It will "always have a retrospective character aiming toward the mystery of Christ, but at the same time, it will be directed also into the future toward the fulfilment. That is why her apparitions have a particular eschatological dimension and tendency toward the final completion of the times," which should not be understood in the sense of a quick completion, and especially not of one that can be precisely calculated.
As the one who once and forever tied her destiny to the destiny of her Son and through him to the community of those saved, Mary cannot stand on the side while the church, together with all creation is in the "pangs of birth" (Rom 8:22). With her motherly benevolence and love, she mediates light to the Church in the trials of this world, which in the long run come from the light of Christ. As a human being, Mary can give only that which she herself received and, for that reason, her apparitions, "in essence have a character more of a dynamic impetus to the heart and will of the faithful in order to incorporate the recognized truth of Revelation at a particular time in a new way." Therefore, her apparitions have always found a responsive chord more in the hearts of the faithful than in the reflections of theologians. In light of the logic and dynamic of salvation in the Church, it is entirely understandable that Mary is the most active member of the church, for which she is at the same time by the fullness of her holiness the prototype, the mother, and the final ideal toward which she herself aspires.
Regardless of initial confusion and misunderstandings, all Marian apparitions have had a strong influence on the life of the Church, starting from the creation of new forms of devotion through the renewal of the sacramental life and all the way to the deepening of the image of the church itself and of love for it. Because veneration of Mary is really nothing else but "a form of veneration of the mystery of the Church, which sees its model in Mary and its already now accomplished form of perfection." In its essence, "The Church is nothing else but a copy of Mary. . . , a living impression of Mary's image in the Christian community." That is why Marian apparitions cannot be just a marginal manifestation for the church, but a happening of herself and, therefore, they deserve the due attention and openness of the Church.
fra Ivan Dugandzic, OFM, 1995
Dr. Fr. Ivan Dugandzic - Franciscan priest, member of the Herzegovina Franciscan province. Born 1943 in Krehin Gradac, country Citluk, Herzegovina. After graduating in Dubrovnik in 1962, he entered the Franciscan Order. He completed theological studies in Sarajevo and Koenigstein, Germany. Ordained priest in 1969. Postgraduate study and doctorate in biblical science in Wuerzburg, Germany. Since 1990 he lives and works in Zagreb. He is professor of New Testament exegesis and biblical theology at the Catholic Theological Faculty and its institutes. He has published works in technical theological reviews. He publishes in religious newspapers in a contemporary style on various biblical themes. He has lived and worked in Medjugorje on two occasions: 1970 - 1972 and 1985 - 1988.
Dr. fra Ljudevit Rupcic, OFM, 1995
"Private" revelation and Medjugorje"
The term "private" revelations has already for a long time become customary in theology. In contrast to it is public revelation. However, public revelation would be the one given in the Bible, and private the one given apart from the Bible. Accordingly, it would be more justifiable to speak of biblical and extra-biblical revelation. Assigning a greater honour and significance to the biblical than to the other has no real reason whatsoever. Because if they are both true, if they both come from God, according to their origin they are both divine and equally valuable. Both, the one and the other, God intends for people and wants them to accept both of them. Otherwise, there would be no reason for him to speak at all. If there may be some justifiable difference between them, it can never be in the sense that one is obligatory and the other is not. They are both obligatory. For every one that has been reached by them and for the one who has attained sufficient reasons and moral security regarding their authenticity, both of them oblige equally.
Revelation contained in the Bible is called "the canon," that is, the rule of faith. The authenticity of every other revelation is in some way measured according to it. First of all, everything that might be contrary to that revelation would be unauthentic or false. Accordingly, the biblical revelation provides the guarantee of certainty, and that in a negative way, the contrary revelation is false. Moreover, the authenticity of biblical revelation is guaranteed by the church's magisterium to which the Holy Spirit is given by Christ in order to preserve that revelation faithfully and to interpret it infallibly. For the extra-biblical revelation, the magisterium does not have that authority directly, but indirectly. That means that, if it would establish that an extra-biblical revelation is contrary to the biblical, it would be certain that it is not at all authentically divine. Because, "for even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel not in accord with the one we delivered to you, let a curse be upon him!" (Gal 1:8). On the other hand, if the Church's magisterium would in any way even affirm a extra-biblical revelation, one would not be obliged just by that to accept it as authentic. If one has his own reasons, he must accept it with fide divina. But if one does not have his own reasons, he can either reject it or doubt it. In that case, a person is not obliged fide catholica.
The history of the Church witnesses that it has always had extra-biblical revelations. According to their structure and form, they are equal to biblical revelation and are regularly connected with apparitions or visions. Usually it was Jesus appearing, angels and saints. But in recent times, it is most frequently the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Locutions [auditiones] are also connected to visions. The most recent apparitions of the Blessed Virgin in La Salette, Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje confirm that. The visionaries, in addition to seeing Our Lady, also hear her messages, which usually call to conversion, prayer, especially the rosary, and penance. Thereby they all the more direct toward the renewal and flourishing of Church life rather than giving some new truth of the faith.
No one can close God's mouth. He has not finished his conversation nor his revelation to people. It goes on continuously in the Church and the world in different ways. God's speech, in a broader sense, takes the form of vision or at least no one can dispute that. Therefore, extra-biblical revelations are not only possible but actual. The Spirit of God whom Christ has sent to the Church constantly reminds it of the words of Jesus and leads it into all truth (John 16:13). He does not accomplish this just through the hierarchy, but also through charisms and their bearers because the Church is not only hierarchical but also charismatic. That is why the Holy Spirit is not bound to the hierarchy, but vice versa. He is free and breathes wherever he wills. He gives incentives to the Church and leads the Church also through charismatics. Neither the hierarchy nor charismatics can usurp to themselves the exclusive right to speak and act in the name of the Holy Spirit. Their ministries originate from the same Spirit and must be harmonized. Therefore, neither the hierarchy nor the Church must be self-satisfied and indifferent toward visions, apparitions and revelations. The hierarchy must not only not reject them, nor merely tolerate them, but it must both accept and foster them. Otherwise, it would be rejecting the Spirit himself.
Vision and revelation belong to the prophetic charism of which the Church cannot be lacking and that, not because some new doctrine or truth would be necessary after biblical revelation, but because a new light is necessary, a better understanding of that same doctrine or truth and, especially, because a new direction and impetus for human activity is necessary.
A critical posture toward extra-biblical revelation has been expressed more or less throughout entire history. With the beginning of modern times, greater and more numerous debates on them have begun. According to them, the best sign of authenticity of extra-biblical revelation and vision is their agreement with biblical revelation. If that is affirmed, the content of extra-biblical revelation, which surpasses the capabilities of the visionaries, speak much in its favour. In that, the mental and physical health of the subject plays an important role. Personal holiness and the state of grace contribute to its authenticity even though they are not indispensable. In principle, even great moral defects are not an obstacle to the authenticity of the revelation. Moral heroism of the subject of the vision contributes positively to the authenticity of the truth. In that, attending circumstances also mean something, although accompanying errors are not necessarily considered a negative criterion. These internal criteria are accompanied by the external: miracle and approval of the Church. Involvement in some controversial question and political matter speaks against the authenticity of the vision because visions serve the kingdom of God and not curiosity and some purpose entirely of this world.
Extra-biblical revelations, in general, do not bring any new truths, but perhaps just a better recognition of the biblically revealed truths and all the more certainly the demand for a better and more urgent application of biblical revelation on a particular position of the Church or individual groups within it. In general, they want to inspire people to faith and conversion and thus, to bring them to salvation. They are rather requests and incentives than assertions. Their purpose is to direct the behaviour of people toward God. In that sense, St. Thomas of Aquinas says, "When there are no more revelations, people will be without guidance" (Summa II-II. q 174 a.6). This is the reason there have always been prophets in the Church who admittedly, did not proclaim some new doctrine, but gave direction to human activity. The same St. Thomas of Aquinas emphasizes, "Revelation is given for the benefit of the Church" (Summa II-II. q 172 a.4). It calls to a more authentic Christian life and points toward the necessity and the means that are of a higher priority. It is heaven's response to particular questions of the times and it thereby helps more than any intellectual and theological endeavours.
Since extra-biblical revelations are extraordinary and conspicuous, they usually produce more attention than the ordinary proclamation of biblical truths and Church directives and they act as "shock therapy." It is well known that the apparitions in Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje intensified devotion and they have awakened spiritual life throughout the world. They contributed a great deal to the renewal of confession and reverence for the Eucharist.
Too great an emphasis on extra-biblical revelation in place of the gospel would not be healthy or normal. Biblical revelation takes preference but extra-biblical must not be rejected, simply because it also comes from God and because with it God wants to say something to man. That is why both cases God's word is obligatory.
THE MEDJUGORJE APPARITIONS AND VISIONS
Already since June 24, 1981 until today, six visionaries in Medjugorje, Ivanka Ivankovic-Elez, Mirjana Dragicevic-Soldo, Vicka Ivankovic, Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti, Ivan Dragicevic and Jakov Colo, unanimously claim that Our Lady is appearing to them. They all still see her every day, except Ivanka and Mirjana, who still see her once a year, Ivanka on the anniversary of the apparitions and Mirjana on her birthday. Already from the very beginning of the apparitions, it was attempted in different ways to obtain approval of the authenticity of these apparitions and visions. In addition to the persistent claim of the visionaries, it was attempted, in a more or less scientific and theological way, to arrive at objective proofs of the authenticity of the apparitions. Already from the first days, the communist regime of that time, which because of ideological and atheistic motives opposed the fame about Our Lady's apparition, tried first of all through doctors in Citluk and Mostar to prove that talk about apparitions is a common childish trick and a report of sick children. When doctors established that the children were completely healthy, the communists composed a commission of twelve doctors and psychiatrists, which they simply charged to declare the children mentally ill. It is significant that, despite the pressure, member of the Commission did not do so because it was obvious that the children were healthy.
After that, numerous other unofficial and official commissions followed in succession. The tried to arrive at the truth of the apparition with a greater fairness. An exception to this were the two commissions established by the local Bishop Pavao Zanic. He did not request these commissions to study the Medjugorje phenomena, but to confirm his negative opinion which, taking into consideration the apparitions themselves, did not have any grounds whatsoever. In order to assure "the outcome" of the investigation, he appointed himself president of the commission, and charged them to think and speak what he, without any basis in the truth, thought and spoke. The others, differently from Bishop Zanic and his commissions, expertly examined the visionaries and the facts in Medjugorje. Since the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, rejected the "results" of the commissions of Bishop Zanic as incompetent and unfounded, it ordered the Yugoslav Bishops' Conference to establish its own commission to care more seriously for the apparitions of Medjugorje. Although even that commission did not investigate these apparitions more seriously, nevertheless, it behaved more responsibly toward them. At least, it did not assert that the apparitions are unauthentic, but it found a Solomonic solution and declared that it had not yet arrived at real proofs of the supernaturalness of the apparitions. That position was also accepted by the Yugoslav Bishops' Conference. Because of the ever more general conviction that the apparitions are authentic, and especially because of the exceptional spiritual gifts to the whole world in regard to the apparitions, it was, nevertheless, compelled to accept Medjugorje as a shrine and to take on itself greater care for a correct development of devotion and adequate provision for the spiritual needs of pilgrims in Medjugorje.
However, the apparitions of Medjugorje were examined the most competently and the most expertly by the international French-Italian scientific theological commission "on the extraordinary events that are taking place in Medjugorje." The assembly of seventeen renowned natural scientists, doctors, psychiatrists and theologians in their research came to a 12-point conclusion on January 14, 1986 in Paina near Milan.
- On the basis of the psychological tests, for all and each of the visionaries it is possible with certainty to exclude fraud and deception.
- On the basis of the medical examinations, tests and clinical observations etc, for all and each of the visionaries it is possible to exclude pathological hallucinations.
- On the basis of the results of previous researches for all and each of the visionaries it is possible to exclude a purely natural interpretation of these manifestations.
- On the basis of information and observations that can be documented, for all and each of the visionaries it is possible to exclude that these manifestations are of the preternatural order i.e. under demonic influence.
- On the basis of information and observations that can be documented, there is a correspondence between these manifestations and those that are usually described in mystical theology.
- On the basis of information and observations that can be documented, it is possible to speak of spiritual advances and advances in the theological and moral virtues of the visionaries, from the beginning of these manifestations until today.
- On the basis of information and observations that can be documented, it is possible to exclude teaching or behaviour of the visionaries that would be in clear contradiction to Christian faith and morals.
- On the basis of information or observations that can be documented, it is possible to speak of good spiritual fruits in people drawn into the supernatural activity of these manifestations and in people favourable to them.
- After more than four years, the tendencies and different movements that have been generated through Medjugorje, in consequence of these manifestations, influence the people of God in the Church in complete harmony with Christian doctrine and morals.
- After more than four years, it is possible to speak of permanent and objective spiritual fruits of movements generated through Medjugorje.
- It is possible to affirm that all good and spiritual undertakings of the Church, which are in complete harmony with the authentic magisterium of the Church, find support in the events in Medjugorje.
- Accordingly, one can conclude that after a deeper examination of the protagonists, facts, and their effects, not only in the local framework, but also in regard to the responsive chords of the Church in general, it is well for the Church to recognize the supernatural origin and, thereby, the purpose of the events in Medjugorje.
So far it is the most conscientious and the most complete research of the Medjugorje phenomena, and, for that very reason, it is the most positive that has yet been said about it on a scientific-theological level.
Besides that, a very serious work of examination of the visionaries was also undertaken by a French team of experts headed by Mr. Henri Joyeux. Employing the most modern equipment and expertise, it examined the internal reactions of the visionaries before, during, and after the apparitions. Likewise, the synchronization of their ocular, auditory, cardiac, and cerebral reactions. The results of that commission were very significant. They showed that the object of observation is external to the visionaries, and that any external manipulation or mutual agreement between the visionaries is excluded. The results with individual electro-encephalograms and other reactions are collected and elaborated in a special book (H. Joyeux - R. Laurentin, Etudes medicales et scientifiques sur les Apparitions de Medjugorje, Paris 1986).
The results of the last mentioned commission confirmed the conclusions of the international commission and, for their part, they proved that the apparitions, to which the visionaries testify, are a phenomenon that surpasses modern science and that all points toward some other level of happening.
In regard to the scientific examination of the Medjugorje apparitions, it is important to bear in mind that in the entire history of apparitions not a single one has ever been so broadly and strictly examined scientifically as those in Medjugorje. When the examinations in Lourdes and Fatima are compared with those in Medjugorje, then there is almost no similarity whatsoever between them. Neither have other visionaries been that strictly examined nor was it possible to examine them with such certainty and success, due to the inferior level of science and the insufficiency of technical tools at that time. Besides, it is also very significant to mention that there was only one visionary in Lourdes, Bernadette Soubirous; there were three visionaries in Fatima, and six in Medjugorje. Manipulation is easier with one visionary than with several. Likewise, a group confirmation is more valuable than an individual. The said about Bernadette herself that she was psychically of delicate health. For the visionaries in Medjugorje adequate health has been established. When to that are added the positive moral qualities, the uniformity of testimonies, there remains no significant doubt whatsoever that the apparitions, to which the visionaries in Medjugorje testify, are indeed supernatural and worthy of belief.
The content of the Medjugorje messages also confirms that. Beside the five main messages on which the visionaries agree, every month, primarily through Marija Pavlovic, Our Lady has been giving special messages intended for the whole world. Even though in volume they have grown into a library, still, in spite of that, nothing can be found in them that would in the least manner be contrary to Christian doctrine and faith. On the contrary, together with the principal messages, they compose a veritable treasury of handy and practical theology on a level, which not even 80% of today's priests would attain. It is, thereby, more significant since the visionary Marija, as well as the other visionaries, is a completely average believer who could not even attend regular instruction in catechism, much less acquire a practical-theological education. The false charges of the Bishop and some other opponents of Medjugorje that the friars wrote them, also speaks in favour of the extraordinary content of the messages. Indirectly they thereby confirm their extraordinariness.
MIRACLES
From the beginning, the Medjugorje apparitions were accompanied by many unusual phenomena, both in the sky and on the ground, especially by miraculous healings. I myself, with about a thousand pilgrims, experienced one unusual dance of the sun. That manifestation was so unusual and obvious, that everyone without exception classified it as a miracle. None of those present remained indifferent, which I myself was convinced of by questioning the others who were present. The joy, the tears, and the statements of those present strongly confirmed it. From their words, it could be seen that they understood that manifestation as a confirmation of the authenticity of the apparitions, and as an incentive to respond to the Medjugorje messages by accepting them. And that is the real purpose of miracles: to help people believe and live by faith because they stand in the service of the faith and of the salvation of people.
Regarding the luminous phenomena in Medjugorje, a professor employed in Vienna, an expert in that field, admitted to me that he studied them in Medjugorje for a week. At the end, he told me: "Science has no answer to these manifestations." Although judgment about miracles does not belong to any natural science nor to science in general, but to theology and faith, nevertheless, the judgment of science is very important because where it leaves off, faith takes over. It is very significant that many events were understood by the faithful as a real miracle. They understood their significance and, whether they experienced them for themselves or through others, they felt themselves obliged to accept the Medjugorje messages as an obligation. It is difficult to say precisely how many of these miraculous events have taken place in regards to the Medjugorje apparitions. However, it is well known that several hundred of them have been reported and attested to. Several of them have been thoroughly examined and scientifically-theologically elaborated, and there is no serious reason whatsoever to doubt their supernatural character. It suffices to mention just a few of them.
Mrs. Diana Basile, born October 5, 1940 in Platizza, Cosenza, Italy, suffered from multiple sclerosis, an otherwise incurable disease, from 1972 till May 23, 1984. In spite of the expert help of the professors and doctors at the clinic in Milan, she grew more and more sick. By her own desire she came to Medjugorje and was present during the apparition of Our Lady in a room connected to the Church and was suddenly healed. All of that happened in such a quick and thorough way that on the following day the same woman walked barefoot 12 kilometres from the hotel in Ljubuski, where she spent the night, to the apparition hill in order to thank Our Lady for the healing. Ever since then until today, she has remained well. Upon her return to Milan, the doctors were astonished by her healing and immediately established a medical commission, which was again thoroughly to examine both the previous and present condition of the healed woman. They collected 143 documents and, in the end, 25 professors, head doctors, and other doctors wrote a special book about the disease and the healing in which they stated that Diana Basile indeed did suffer from multiple sclerosis, that for many years she was unsuccessfully treated, but that now she is completely well and that this did not happen by any kind of therapy, nor by any kind of medicine. They, thereby, indicated that the cause of the healing was from a different than scientific source.
Another more significant miracle happened to Rita Klaus of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA, a teacher and mother of three children, born January 25, 1940, who for 26 years suffered from multiple sclerosis. She was also one that neither doctors nor medicine were able to help. Reading the book about Medjugorje, Is the Blessed Virgin Appearing in Medjugorje? by Laurentin-Rupcic, she decided to accept Our Lady's messages. And once while she was praying the rosary on May 23, 1984, she felt within herself some unusual warmth. After that, she felt well. And from then till today the patient is completely well and capable of doing all her domestic and school work. There is a solid medical documentation about her sickness and her futile therapy and likewise a professional certification of the doctors on her extraordinary and incomprehensible healing, which is complete and permanent.
There are still other healings pertaining to Medjugorje, which took place suddenly and thoroughly. They are more or less expertly examined. But some of them have not at all yet been analysed. It is not ruled out that among them there are some cases just as great as those already analysed. With miracles it is critical that they originate from God and that they serve the faith, but it is not important for them to be "big". It is rather people of good will and open to the truth that will recognize them rather than biased scientists and versatile critics because they often shut themselves within boundaries where a miracle "must not" and "cannot" happen.
THE JUDGMENT OF THE CHURCH ON THE MEDJUGORJE APPARITIONS
Since the Medjugorje apparitions, visions, and messages belong to extra-biblical revelation, the competence of the Church in judging their authenticity is somewhat different than in biblical revelation. The magisterium of the Church has a direct guarantee of infallibility only in regard to biblical revelation, and only an indirect guarantee in regard to extra-biblical. If, namely, the latter were contrary to the biblical, it would certainly be false. In other cases, other criteria remain, according to which one can arrive at trustworthiness of some revelation being supernatural. Those are primarily scientific conditions. What is false according to reason can neither be authentic in revelation. With regard to the serious and expert work of individual scientists, in the first place, of the international medical-theological commission and of other expert, scientific teams, it has been clearly established that in the Medjugorje apparitions there is nothing that is contrary to science. They are not contrary to reason, but are above reason. Likewise, not a single theological commission found anything in the Medjugorje apparitions that would be contrary to the faith. Even the latest commission, established by the Yugoslav Bishops' Conference, declared only that it has not yet arrived at the necessary proofs of the supernaturalness of the Medjugorje apparitions and that, therefore, it will continue with further investigation. It, thereby, acknowledged at the same time that it did not find in them anything whatsoever that would be contrary to biblical revelation and the faith. When God gives some revelation, whether biblical or extra-biblical, he always enables the people to whom it concerns to be able to recognize it and at least to have the moral certitude that this revelation is authentic. It is very important that simple people have easily recognized God's revelation in the Medjugorje phenomena and that they accepted it, not just in theory, but also in practical life. The word of Christ proves true here, "Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God" (Matt 18:3). That quality proper to a child in the first place is openness to the truth. On the other hand, those also who refuse to acknowledge the trustworthiness of the proofs of Medjugorje, nevertheless unintentionally acknowledge it. Because the findings of their position and arguments show that their proofs are from some other area of interest rather than of Medjugorje. In addition to that, the opponents of Medjugorje are, in that regard, a recognizable tiny handful of people. Their arguments consist of deceptions, lies, and ignorance of what they are nevertheless judging. In contrast to them stand millions of people, who mainly carry the proofs for the authenticity of the Medjugorje apparitions also in their personal experience of encounter with God, and on the other hand, in the obvious deficiency of the arguments against them. Here one can speak about the sensus fidelium which is commonly a locus theologicus of revelation and faith. The evident and abundant spiritual fruits of faith, conversion, prayer, and profound mass spiritual renewal have a special proving strength in favour of the Medjugorje apparitions. Even the opponents of Medjugorje cannot call this into question. They only attribute it to faith, and not to the Medjugorje apparitions. There is no doubt that they are fruits of faith. But why are these fruits unusual and why are they precisely connected to Medjugorje? Why are they not in other places and ordinary pilgrimage shrines or in cathedrals? In question is precisely that extraordinariness and the great multiplicity of the fruits of faith that must have their own reason. In this regard the opponents behave like the Jews who attributed Jesus' casting out of an evil spirit to Beelzebul and not to Jesus. When they could not deny the fact because it was obvious, they then denied its true cause.
In this entire matter, in addition to the evangelical criterion that a good tree is known by its good fruits, the position of the Pope is decisive. And it is completely clear. He has expressed it on several occasions when, asked by many bishops whether they may go on pilgrimage to Medjugorje, he not only encouraged them, but also recommended himself to their prayers in Medjugorje. On the occasion of his ad limina visit, the President of the Bishop's Conference of South Korea, Archbishop Kim, greeted Pope John Paul II with the words, "Holy Father, thanks to you, Poland was able to be freed from communism." The Pope corrected him and said, "No, not thanks to me, it is the work of the Virgin as she claims in Fatima and Medjugorje" (Catholic News, the Korean Catholic Weekly of November 11, 1990). Everything is contained in this that the Pope and the Church can at all say about the Medjugorje apparitions. From that comes forth that Our lady is in Medjugorje, and that there she announced the destruction of communism. Many more times lacking in seriousness are all the other stories, which, only for non-religious reasons, want to obscure the truth about Medjugorje and turn the world away from accepting Our Lady's evangelical messages.
fra Ljudevit Rupcic, OFM, 1995
Dr. Fr. Ljudevit Rupcic was born in 1920 in Hardomilije, Ljubuski. In 1939 he entered the Franciscan Order in the province of Herzegovina, and in 1946, he was ordained a priest. He finished his studies in Theology in the University seminary in Zagreb. He completed a doctorate in 1958 and received the habit there. From 1958 until 1988 he lectured in New Testament exegesis on Franciscan theology in Sarajevo, and also in the University seminary in Zagreb. Under the former Yugoslavian Communist regime, he served two prison sentences from 1945 to 1947 and again from 1952 to 1956. For a longer period, (1968 until 1981) he was a member of the theological commission aiding the Episcopal Conferences of former Yugoslavia. He has accomplished a translation of the New Testament from it's origins into the Croatian language, and his translation has had continuous re-publication. His books, studies and articles have been published in Croatian, English, German and Italian, and he has lectured at various conferences and meetings throughout Europe and America.
THE HISTORICAL-THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF THE MEDJUGORJE APPARITIONS
THE BEGINNINGS AND THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Someone said that the problem of the meaning of history is precisely in this, does man know and is he at all aware and is it granted to him to discover the truth about himself while that history is still ongoing. Namely, does history which offers so many signs of coincidences, so much irrationality, still reveal, in spite of everything, the necessity which brings along some sort of justification for everything that has happened in the past? Is it possible to write history from a first hand consideration and still to observe the times in which we live from a certain distance and to give it a meaning, that is, to draw from it a meaning for the future. This especially relates to Medjugorje. It has been going on among already for fourteen years. The phenomenon itself is too complex to be able to observe in all of its ramifications and its components. Nevertheless, it has its historical-theological Sitz im Leben of today's world and the church, and it has long since surpassed its narrow boundaries. Medjugorje is indelibly inscribed on the religious map of the world, particularly of the Catholic Church. During these past fourteen years many have spoken and written about its meaning and importance, about the need for it precisely in these crucial times of ours. It seems unnecessary to be an apologist for Medjugorje, a defender, because it is by itself strong enough to defend itself all alone, and to succeed in defending itself and to survive before the highest tribunal of the Church, before theology, history and the world. All that is necessary is to fathom and look under the surface and to see and observe how great is the tectonic shift that has come into our Church and the world with Medjugorje.
Clemenceau, the French politician and agnostic, on one occasion said that each war is a far too distinguished and important thing to be left only to generals and soldiers. In the same way, Medjugorje is a too many faceted reality to be able to leave it over just to commissions, to the judgment and opinion of theologians and to commissions which approach the Medjugorje phenomenon with the kind of premises we already well know. It is impossible to leave it over to a decision made at some kind of desk, to idle theologians and to those who actually never made an effort to grasp the meaning of the manifestation, the ramification of the events, and the essence of the message.
Medjugorje is hard to define. It is many faceted and along with itself involves different judgments and evaluations by many experts from different fields of thought and science. No matter what anyone personally thinks or believes about Medjugorje, we still have to admit, whether we like it or not, that in the regions of ex-Yugoslavia, and, if you like, Europe and the entire world, it is the most outstanding religious phenomenon of the last decade, actually, of the last two decades of our century and of our millennium. If it were possible for us with a huge magnet to collect all of the particles on this earthly globe, that Medjugorje has sown in countless souls and hearts, then we would experience a stunning effect, and would find out about incredible results. We would ourselves be surprised how much it is present in the consciousness and the life of believers and unbelievers. And how did it all begin?
Si licet exemplis in parvis grandibus uti, ie. if it is permitted in a small thing to use grand examples, that is, si licet parvis componere magna, if it is allowed to compare the great with the small, then I would begin with a quote from the New Testament, "What good can come from Nazareth?" as Nathaniel in wonderment asked himself and Philip (John 1:46). Nazareth was a small provincial place which in the dialect was spoken of only in bad terms, just the same as happened about Bijakovici, that is, about Medjugorje. The province, the village, the provincial people, the peasants, in quarrels, and the visionaries the same as that, were the offspring of poorly educated people. Without schooling and education, in a single moment of their personal life history, they were uprooted from their smooth running routine and began to speak with a vocabulary and language that belonged to another world and not their own. They began to speak about a manifestation from the other side and not from this side. Those little and unknown ones filled the ears of the world with a message and assertions because of which the authorities of that time trembled, and which new life and embryo they tried by every means to extinguish. It may be that Bijakovici and Medjugorje were two quarreling villages in some kind of Hercegovina, but at that moment they were written into the map of the world. There follows an expansion like in the Acts of the Apostles, "from Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (1:7). The same concentric circles are observable in the Bijakovici-Medjugorje phenomenon.
COMPARISONS WITH SALVATION HISTORY
For almost every occasion and pondering, history and Sacred Scripture can be our teacher and guide. They offer us sufficient illustrative material for our reflections in concrete situations, particularly in the context of Medjugorje and the historical turning point with reference to the collapse of communism in these past two decades of our century and millennium. Communism caved in on itself. It was unnecessary to go against it with weapons or force. Why did it happen that way? There are many reasons. In the first place, the ideologists and leaders no longer believed in their own ideas of creating a better future and a happier tomorrow on the principles of economy or a higher gross national product. Later on, it was impossible to hold the world under terror by the force of repression and the non freedom of thought, of self expression and self determination. Here I would compare the fall of communism with the fall of Jericho in the book of Joshua. Let us remember how the Israelites entered the Promised Land and the collapse of the walls of Jericho. The Bible interprets it as a direct intervention of God in the history of the chosen people. Human strength did not destroy the walls, but prayer and song, prayerful processions around the walls. That is, God himself, who molds history and gives it direction, demolished the walls. It is a sign that God himself hands the land over to his people who came from a foreign land, from the wilderness after decades of wandering through the barren mountains. Military might or power did not demolish the walls, but devout singing, day and night processions around the walls with the Ark of the Covenant. The victorious march and the triumph are condensed into that one moment, and that should be for all the future a sign to the whole nation not to trust in itself, but rather in the Lord who tears down strongholds. It was, of course, soon overshadowed by moral decay within the nation itself, by sin and failures, both individual and collective. Life in the new environment continues to be jeopardized by all sorts of attackers and usurpers. However, the internal decadence of the nation kept on giving opportunities to attackers to conquer and subdue the nation with greater ease. Let us remember what happened with Jericho and the curse that Joshua pronounced over it, "Joshua laid an oath upon them at that time, saying, 'Cursed before the LORD be the man that rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. At the cost of his first-born shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates'" (Joshua 6:26). And in I Kings (16:34) it says, "In his days Hiel of Bethel built Jericho; he laid its foundation at the cost of Abiram his first-born, and set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD, which he spoke by Joshua the son of Nun."
That tissue, woven out of fulfilment and responsibility (under the threat of obvious punishment), knitted from the command and the gift of grace, automatically imposes itself upon us when we look closely at the political processes, the turmoils and the fall of communism in our own most recent history. Perhaps to some ears or eyes it will seem inappropriate to mention here the walls of Jericho, the trumpets and the prayerful processions around the walls. For a long time now our contemporaries no longer believe in that because they are enlightened, or they consider themselves to be so, but we are witnesses of a similar process that has developed among us. However, that which happened with the election of the Polish Cardinal K. Wojtyla as Pope, and after Medjugorje, namely, the collapse of communism in 1989, has not yet been adequately explained nor does it have its historical-theological interpreter. Maybe the reason for that is that only six years separate us from the collapse of communism, but it is, undoubtedly, the most decisive and the greatest turning point in the history of the world and civilization. The Pope is certainly the initiator of that process of the fall of communism. He was the first to penetrate the so-called iron curtain, in the first place of his own Polish nation, and then he went on laying the obvious indicators for a more human and freer life. The year 1989 is a historic date before which a person can only fall on their knees, be amazed and freely say: God does not speak only with words, he is at work. One should, according to Jesus' word, clearly read the 'signs of the times'.
Here we would like to mention the example of today's Pope, the only modern recognized moral force in the whole of mankind. He is the shepherd of entire mankind. He offers his leadership because he is aware of his own mission that he has from Jesus Christ, the power that stands behind him. He is explicitly a Marian Pope because after his election he spoke like this: "I was afraid to accept this election but I accepted it in the spirit of obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ and in full confidence in our most holy Mother. . .And so today I stand before you all confessing our common faith, our hope and out confidence in Christ's Mother and the Mother of the Church." When some day the history of Europe and the modern world will be written, the history of world communism and its fall, its collapse, and caving in on itself, the present Pope will also certainly have his own unique, honorable, and historic place. Who does not poignantly remember all of those images in which were clearly seen the Pope's self-confidence, self-awareness, determination, and superiority over the contemporary, particularly the communist, leaders and 'big shots'. If there is any image that more strongly signifies the fall of communism and the Marxist idol, the complete shakiness of that system, then it is an image that went around the world and is related to the present Pope during his visit to his Polish homeland after he was elected as Peter' successor. In Poland the military dictatorship was already in power. Pope Wojtyla and the leader of the junta, General Jaruzelski, appeared on the stage before a multitude of millions. The one has behind him all the military power and force, the strength of weapons, terror, violence, the system of retaliation, godless communism. But there is one thing he does not have behind him. He does not have the people. The other one on the stage, the Pope, fragile in himself, has Jesus Christ behind him, eternity, the word and the promise of God. Force and weapons were standing against God's word and eternity. The General and the man of power, whose authority rests on clay feet, was standing against the Pope who speaks with powerful words and a conviction which only the Holy Spirit gives. He speaks without quivering, but when the General takes the paper in his hands, they are shaking, his words are fading away or are swallowed in his throat. He is afraid. His hands quiver at the Pope's words. He is dripping with cold sweat. Once upon a time the dictator Stalin queried, in fact made fun of, how many divisions does that Pope have in Rome, while Jaruzelski did not dare to ask nor even literally to pronounce how many divisions this Pope has, because he was aware of the power that this man has in his nation. He knows that the entire world is behind him, all of Poland. He knows well what a military dictatorship brings with itself, and he himself had much to be afraid of since recent world history took a totally different direction away from communism. In a single Pope there is the primordial power of the Christian faith, a faith which is alive and which is proclaimed simply and comprehensibly, without an excessive defense. It is a faith of simple testimony for which the modern world is yearning.
With the election of the present Pope and, later on with the Medjugorje apparitions and events, and finally with the fall of communism, certainly the deepest incision of all European history was made. Not only regarding the Croatian people and all the nations that were enslaved under the communist reign of terror, but also regarding the end of the cold war and the conflict between East and West. The fact that that process and truly revolutionary event was achieved without an explicit protagonist, without an explicit historical personality, without a clear program, without a strategy, and what is even more noticeable, as has never happened in the history of mankind - without bloodshed, must still be more surprising to us. Of course, abstracting from the fact of this genocidal war that is taking place on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia. The historian stands dumbfounded and stricken before these facts and is not capable of mentioning adequate reasons or causes. He must either on the one hand renounce causal connections, or else on the other hand admit and embrace the idea that we are precisely the ones who are in this historical moment faced with the direct intervention of God himself in history. It is painful to recognize that in times past we have not developed a sensibility to this within ourselves and, in particular, that we are not even grateful to God for this. It is still far away from being present in our consciousness and we have not grasped the depths and authentic meaning of these events. If God is at work, then we have no greater obligation than to refer to this event in a human and Christian way, rightly and justly, with dignity and gratefulness. If a historical miracle can exist, then what has happened is a true and magnificent miracle of our times.
Because in our understanding of miracles and wonders, we are used to observing them only when an individual experiences healing in his body in the absence of a doctor or of medicine. However, miracles are not limited only to individual destinies. Miracles exist in history. Here we should learn something from the Jews and Judaism. Namely, the Jews have considered their own entire history as an actual dialogue with their God, as a miracle in their origin, their continuation and existence. Therefore, the demolition of the Berlin wall and all other walls in the world are like a miracle. The ideological walls, that were dividing not only Europe but the whole world, no longer exist in their previous form. These walls were not demolished by armed force or violence, but with persevering prayer and the revolution of candles, the outbreak of the Spirit and spiritual expansion in the world, in so many marches for freedom that were more powerful than the barbed wire and the concrete walls. The Spirit revealed its power and strength. The trumpet of the Spirit and the cry of the spirit for freedom was manifested as being stronger than the walls and the prisons in which human freedom was languishing in exile. Although it is not permissible to gratuitously implicate God in a game, we are still left with the possibility, real and tangible, of thinking also about such an option in our reflections, because faith in God was setting the tone for these movements of the spirit and the new Jericho trumpets of freedom.
Closed and locked gates were opened. Dividing walls were demolished. The breeze of freedom began to be felt. All of these are the consoling and encouraging processes that appear in the most recent history of which also Medjugorje is a participant, actually a true contemporary and initiator. We must not lose sight of these processes. They remain our signpost and the foundation of hope. But we must also not abstract from, nor lose sight of what followed in the history of Israel after the Jericho walls were demolished. Soon the joy and rapture, the happiness and enthusiasm over the conquered city was transformed into tasteless, daily routine, and all that enthusiasm disappears amid every day worries and torments. For survival of the nation it is not enough to inhabit the same state or the same land. The oblivion of God and the social injustice, a consummate egotism or egotistical understanding of freedom, pushed the entire nation into internal decadence, moral and spiritual decay, at the end of which we again find enslavement to foreigners and enemies of the nation. The internal decay, moral as well as ethnic, leads into a renewed loss of freedom which the Book of Judges unmistakably speaks of on its every page. Freedom, such as this in the post-communist period, is always excessively demanding. Man does not get it served on a platter, and it vanishes precisely at the moment it desires to be unlimited. In other words, the decline of Marxism and communism does not automatically give birth to a free individual or state, nor to a healthy society or a healthy person. Let us remember a parable from the mouth of Jesus: In the place of one exorcized devil, the unclean spirit finds seven others worse than itself and returns to find the house well swept and clean, but empty (Matt 12:43-45). That parable of Jesus is continuously renewed and verified all throughout history. One freed from the yoke of Marxism does not automatically find a new life style nor has he thereby based his life on a new foundation. The loss of the ideology which gave the tone to all of life and, to a certain extent, carried it along, can easily turn into egoism and nihilism, and that would be the same as the return of the seven evil and worse demons. Who can deny that the relativism that is reigning everywhere, and the indifferentism to which we are exposed are not the way into nihilism, into the denial of everything positive and human?
Therefore, a crucial question is put before us: With what spiritual content are we capable of filling in the spiritual vacuum that appeared in souls and on the spiritual scene after the breakdown of Marxism, that is, of the perilous and dreadful Marxist experiment? On what spiritual foundations are we capable of building and able to work on a new future so as to be able to link not only East and West together, but also the North and the South of this Planet? While straining over the diagnosis of our contemporary situation and while giving some predictions for tomorrow's development, tasks and opportunities, it has to be developed on a world wide dimension because nowadays the destiny of one part of mankind is dependent on the totality of events among nations, and decisions made at the highest level reflect on the lowest and vice versa. In speaking of what is personal, we must think of the global and vice versa, and, the same way, in thinking of the global we must think of the personal and the individual.
DIAGNOSIS OF OUR TIMES
The code number, the characteristic of our century, might be epitomized in several points: Faith in absolute improvement, progress, the absolutizing of scientific-technical possibilities and civilization, and political messianism embodied in Nazism and later on in Marxism. Nowhere is there a mention of God, who gets replaced with earthly goals. That systematic elimination of God from the molding of history and human life is that Novum and really dangerous element this Europe and epoch of ours brought forth from its bosom. By banishing God from consciousness in contemporary literature, art, film and theater, a gloomy and dark image of man prevails. All that was once great and noble is today called into question, gets torn down from the heights and is attempted to be exposed. Morality has become hypocrisy and happiness self-deception. It is impossible to be a follower of the good and the beautiful and the only correct stand is doubt. The one who exposes others becomes the hero of the day and will reap the greatest success in publicity and in the media. Criticism of society, of politics, and of individuals has become the highest code of the media and in such a spiritual atmosphere there is hardly a place for values, faith, optimism, and a future.
Yet, today schizophrenia is present on the world stage. On the one hand, the world sees its own deceptions and, on the other hand, it is impossible to renounce the life style of living high on the hog, at the highest standard, at least in the West. That division is especially noticeable in taking a stand in the face of two facts from most recent history, namely, after the atomic reactor catastrophe in Chernobil, and the spreading of the AIDS virus. The Chernobil catastrophe clearly reveals how great the danger of atomic energy is. Everyday there are all the more advocates who are willing to renounce the benefits of splitting the atom. Yet, on the other hand, when the AIDS virus was discovered, the same kind of alarm was raised. Without doubt, far more people will be infected and die from the AIDS virus than from the Chernobil disaster. But is it possible to raise one's voice in public against the sexual behavior of our contemporaries, the fruit of which is this plague of our century? It is precisely licentiousness, immorality, and debauchery that are the main causes for the spreading of the AIDS virus. Meanwhile, what is going on? If one in the name of Christian morality, of Christ's sermon on the Mount, advocates restraint and discipline in sexual behavior, then he is written off in advance as ultramontane and obscurantist. He is sentenced to silence and failure, even if it be the Pope himself. Because, in the eyes of our contemporaries, that is an inadmissible criticism of man's freedom and behavior. Hence, the obvious schizophrenia in thought and action. Along with it comes also increasing methodical doubt in science. There is a diminishing of faith in science, progress, and technology. Scepticism and antipathy make their appearance. But can these characteristics be the solid foundations of a positive future in which something sound, intelligent and constructive should be built? Resentment and skepticism are not capable of providing a sound foundation and of overcoming ideas that can not be vanquished by mere negation or half-heartedness, but only by a greater, more positive idea, by a greater and better assent to something that gives meaning to life. Meanwhile, faith is chased into the sphere of privacy and, thereby are destroyed the foundations upon which all of Europe and its culture are built, and the moral codes and traditions woven into the European being and society are excluded. Therefore, on the one hand. faith is a private thing, and fundamental ethical convictions either disappear or are extinguished, while, at the same time, occultism, magic, and spiritism spread on all sides. All possible forms of superstition gain ever more influence amid all social classes. For that reason it is just one more proof that the trace of the Immortal, of God, is inextinguishable and indelible in man, torn apart and broken.
We are confronted with massive secularization and secularism, and exodus from the Church, especially on the part of women. Churches are left empty. Eastern forms of mediation have all the more followers. Youth are in search of something to fill them from the outside and inside, that can give sense to their life and activity. In spite of all remarks to the contrary, there are signals of a renewal of faith in souls, particularly among the youth. Youth movements can be encountered in the whole Church throughout the world. They carry in themselves enormous strength of renewed faith. They possess persuasive moral and ethical seriousness and readiness to pledge one's own life for the ideals of the Gospel. That is so noticeable in and around Medjugorje. Such movements can be a fertile yeast that can again pour new life strength and credibility into those human values that characterize our life space and civilized environment. But, the fact that all the more young people abandon the Church should not surprise us. As we have already said, the expectation of direct and unconditional salvation exists in man. People have the feeling of being unredeemed, of alienation, and the need for a sense of and fulfillment with something sublime. Therefore, we have at work, especially among youth, modern forms of gnosticism and esoteric people. Here we meet with manifold forms of religious surrogates, often with unusual mixtures of the rational and the irrational. Occultism and magic are always attractive, and then parapsychological and astral-mythological tendencies, of cabalistic and of all kinds of other provenances. In this, one is always dealing with religion that does not seek the human heart, faith and trust, but, with the aid of all kinds of rituals or psychological effects, tries to penetrate the deeper regions of a human being. One is dealing with attempts to achieve a feeling of disengagement and getting unhooked and of liberation. It is an expectancy of the help of hidden, mysterious forces that give strength against that which threatens us as people. People wish to master the technique of redemption or self-redemption and, for that reason, they reach out for non-European or archaic religious rituals of druid, Celtic, shamanistic, Indian, and like origins. Being that the contemporary spiritual scene is caught in apersonalism, just as philosophical thought is apersonal, then an impersonal, apersonal faith and piety responds to that apersonal thought just as is the case with Asiatic religions. Today it is possible to observe such a trend among Christians: the melting away of piety at the expense of personal commitment. Cosmic piety, immersion into divinity or divinities is celebrated so that one can justly talk about Asiatic divinities or divinity and the Christian God. Piety is something like immersion, evanescence, unburdening, liberation from the burden of being and existence, return to the stars, faith in horoscopes and astrology.
If anything has burdened the contemporary world stage, then it is drugs. Since man has existed, he has always used drugs in one way or another, but never to such a degree as nowadays. Why such a frenzy for drugs? It comes from man's internal needs and deficiencies, from the emptiness of his soul. A lust for drugs is just an expression of the cry of the soul for happiness, for an authentic life meaning and response. With the aid of drugs man wants to liberate himself from the prison of the body, and drugs are just a protest against the present condition and the facts that surround us. The one who is taking drugs is not at peace with the present world, but is seeking a better one, and one that can make him happier. Drugs are the fruit of disillusionment with the world which man feels to be a dungeon, and the fruit of longing for adventurism and nonconformity. They are a protest against the world as a human dungeon and a cry for a new reality. The grand journey into the wide open spaces that the use of drugs offers is just a form of deviate mysticism, deviate human instinct for eternity, infinity, life. They are an attempt to step out of one's own being and skin, of one's own prison by means of chemistry. Drugs are the visible, external attempt to anticipate the world of the future and of happiness already here on earth. That is logical because all contemporary builders of mankind and of the future are not of the conviction that they themselves will live to see that final happiness and, therefore, they decide for the reckless step with drugs. It is a totally flawed path because we know how the mystics achieved their experiences: by the path of renunciation, humility, asceticism, the small steps of the ascent of Mount Carmel or The Interior Castle, or into the depths of one's own heart. Some want to skip over that path by means of the magic key of drugs, while morality and ethics are replaced by technique and chemistry. Drugs are the pseudo-mysticism of the world, incapable of believing, and plunged into pseudo-religion, the instinct of the soul for a return to Paradise which cannot be suppressed by anything. Therefore, the contemporary scene, especially in drugs, is an alarm that uncovers all the emptiness of our society. It is the cry of man in the wilderness of this life for his own human realization which is immanent in his soul and heart already in his very creation in the image and likeness of God.
In the same or a way very similar to that, it is possible also to interpret the modern scene of terrorism and revolutionary movements. Disgust with what exists and a longing for an overthrow are just the external expressions of the internal need for a change of circumstances. However, all this rests on the wrong premise: Namely, the unconditional is sought by means of the conditional, the infinite by means of the finite, the eternal and heavenly by means of the temporal and earthly. That internal contradiction of the current scene reveals all the tragedy of the phenomenon with which we are confronted, and where the magnificent vocation of man becomes the means of a terrible lie and deception. Because the final goal is not paradise on earth, a utopia that cannot be realized, but rather the Kingdom God as a foretaste of eternity, and the Gospel as the norm of life and activity. Although, in the meantime, political messianism is in decline and the zealous terrorism, as well, that attempted to be the actualization even of the Gospel and of Jesus' revolutionary demands, even though in Jesus' words it is impossible to find a fulcrum for any form of violence, still deep wounds have remained in the modern psyche. The increase of drug consumption is just a sign of emptiness of the soul, for which nothing was left after the loss of ideological promises and deceptions. Films, television, and the media scene are overflowing with violence and hatred. Directors with all their power are trying to present world of crime where the law of might makes right.
A RESPONSE FROM FAITH
Life is not a game nor does the 'law of might makes right' rule in it. It is woven of suffering and love, of sin and grace, the devil's temptation, of trials, but also of the rejection of trials and of victory over the tempter. In Medjugorje we are confronted with an explicit call of conversion to the God of life, with a call to personal prayer as the response of human freedom to divine freedom, as the encounter of two loves. Medjugorje is the explicit affirmation of personhood and individuality in contrast to emergence into some sort of union or cosmic One as New Age, for example, wants it to be. No matter how much individuals claim that theism is disappearing, we are witnesses that faith is not being lost, that religion is not being atrophied nor is it disappearing, but it is only assuming a new and different form and, thereby, changing its internal essence. In Christianity we have a perfect synthesis of reason, will, and feelings which is not at all easy. It is too subtle and in danger of being turned this way or that way at any moment. It is always in internal tension. The same tension we shall find outside Christianity as well. Almost all religions of the world are aware that there is only one God. It is clear to polytheism also that gods are not the plural of one God, because there is no God in the plural. God is one and only. Gods, even if we call them by the same name as the God, are always powers or forces on an inferior level. But, in religions, that one God is usually lost sight of, disappears from practical life, and divinities make their appearance on the scene. That one God is not dangerous. He is goodness itself. He does evil to no one. But in religions all ritual and worship is not referred to God, but to the divinities and the powers which surround our life and with which man has to reckon. That falling away from God is chronic in the history of religions, and is present also today in our post-Christian Europe. That is why we are today being jeopardized with neo-paganism. The man who excludes God as the one and only good, as one who is far distant from him, will turn to tiny, insignficant powers, that are close by, that surround us, and thereby humiliates his very self, creates for himself artificial gods, as the atheist Freud once expressed himself. That is then, the decomposition of Christianity and of the Christian synthesis. It is the decomposition of God that leads to this disintegration and the decomposition of man. And Paul clearly expressed himself about this, "For, though we live in the world, we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ " (2 Cor 10:3-5).
In the search for a response and a real cure, we must, first of all, start with our very selves. What kind of powers do we have available and what kind of powers can we count on at this moment? What are the tasks put before us? What are the dangers that lie in ambush for all of us? First of all, we must overcome nationalism and ideological division. Communism left behind it an ideological wasteland in souls, economic decay, an excessively burdensome heritage, and with us here even a war. A common and decisive will is necessary to overcome the existing condition and to move on into the future.
First of all, we must search for common grounds. What is the foundation that is common to all of us? What is the common basis? We would say: belonging to the Western cultural milieu and at the same time the Christian basis in the foundations of our reality. Nowadays everything aims toward a state guided by law and a freedom based on law. Freedom and law are not two opposing terms, but freedom and law mutually condition each other. The legislator cannot proclaim odds and ends as law and law cannot be deduced simply from statistics. There must exist a consciousness of responsibility before history, the dignity of man, and before God. Everything must rest on foundations that the legislator cannot prescribe, but must presume. Today these presumptions are undermined quite a bit in society by the permissiveness and moral collapse of Western civilization. That is why it is necessary to look in retrospect in order to be able to analyze both the times past, and the present times in which we are living, as well as to be able to cast a forward look toward tomorrow.
In the sixties a great turning around was felt in the atmosphere. On the one hand, at the end of that decade we had a student unrest that cannot be looked at separately from the Church. They called into question the painfully achieved progress on the social and economic levels and there was a threat that all would end up in chaos and anarchy. A crisis of authority shook the foundations of the social system. This unrest came out of the post-conciliar ferment within the Church itself, but also from the revolutionary American Protestant theology. The Eucharist was celebrated on barricades in Paris in 1968 as an expression of fraternization among fighters for anarchistic liberty and as a sign of hope of the political messianism in the world that was emerging through violence and terror. This clearly indicates that in the foundations of that revolutionary movement, there is a religious, that is, pseudo-religious, characteristic. That theological implication we shall also find in the Italian and German terrorism of the seventies. It is impossible to understand Italian terrorism if it is abstracted from the crisis and turmoil of post-conciliar Italian Catholicism.
Namely, let us remember: at the end of the fifties, John XXIII announced, we would almost say, a utopian plan, the convocation of an Ecumenical Council. The council in its opening and unfolding grew into the central event of the second half of our century. It is deliberately aimed at being pastoral, as the opening up of the Church toward the world, the opening of windows and doors, but it intentionally avoided the pitfalls of previous councils, namely, it did not go in for dogmatizing or a proclamation of moral-theological or dogmatic definitions. Perhaps the defining of the dogma on Mary's Assumption into heaven was felt somewhere as a burden during the pontificate of Pius XII. Namely, the Pope wished to crown his pontificate with it, but actually he caused the opposite effect. The intelligentsia remained frustrated and the interconfessional fronts were blocked.
In contrast and in spite of the expectations of the Roman Curia, the Council had a very dynamic unfolding. It opened itself to the questions and problems of the times and epoch, to the problems of the church, the developing countries, the non-Christian religions, and the non-catholic confessions of faith. It undertook courageous steps in the direction of liturgical reform and mediated extraordinary pastoral initiatives. At the peak of the council it came to the succession of Popes. The bishops little by little had grown weary of everything. There were too many requests for changes and modifications of the Council schemes and proposals. Some could hardly be woven into the tissue of the conciliar documents that the Council published in the end. But what followed after the Council?
We would say, there was a lot of wild growth and wilderness, of misunderstanding of the conciliar decisions, a true galimatijas in many fields of life and activity. The falling away and exodus of many from the priesthood, religious life, and the Church. The pontificate of Paul VI was characterized by renewal and progress, but also by a certain restoration and restraint. Today's pontificate of John Paul II is characterized by his countless journeys and pilgrimages throughout the world. It brings along with it an opening up of the Church to the whole world, the transition from a static into a dynamic Church, and, thereby, also brings collegiality, that is, solidarity of the Pope of Rome with the whole world and with mankind. Today's Pope dialogues with all religions because, according to the Council, we find the elements and seeds of truth in each one of them. His travels throughout the world are also at the same time an adieu to the western concept of Christianity in favor of an openness to the whole world and of the integration of Latin American, Asian and Negroid culture into the Church. Also the new term pilgrimage making contributes toward that, in the foundations of which, seen from the viewpoint of the history of dogma, lies a new understanding of the Church, not as a static unit, but as a journeying people of God, accordingly, not of a Church as the institution divinely superior to the whole world, but of a Church as the people of God that is journeying toward its eschatological goal together with the rest of the whole world. Therefore, the Pope is the symbol of that pilgrimage making and all those who travel and make pilgrimage to Medjugorje can be compared to that. It is the overcoming of all boundaries and the merging of all into one union. Thereby is being fulfilled what Paul VI already formulated under the term civilization of love that John Paul II wholeheartedly accepted. That is why it is necessary to confront the omnipresent culture of death in which we are living with Jesus Christ and a vibrant Christianity, the alternative that faith in Jesus Christ offers to the contemporary life style.
THE NEW UNDERSTANDING OF FAITH: FAITH AS THE FRUIT OF EXPERIENCE
At the same time that we had student unrest on the scene at the end of the sixties, we meet with unusual manifestations in the field of religion. We could almost call it post-modernism. Youth are filled with enthusiasm for Jesus, Jesus People communes and the musical expression in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar were created. As a person Jesus is attractive. His divine attributes are stripped away. He is wrenched from the Church. Jesus yes - Church no, is the slogan on the lips of many. The council did its part regarding a greater personalism in the Church but also regarding a greater personalism in the act of faith. The image of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ was prevalent up to the Council. The idea and term People of God prevailed in the Council, while the dogmatic constitution on the Word of God, that is, about Revelation, expressly says the following in talking about faith: "The obedience of faith" (Rom 16:26; 2 Cor 10:5-6) must be given to God as he reveals himself. By faith man freely commits his entire self to God, making "the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals," and willingly assenting to the Revelation given by him. Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and "makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth." The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by his gifts, so that Revelation may be more and more profoundly understood (Dei Verbum 5).
If that is compared to what was said at Vatican Council I, then there is an essential difference. In recent times we are the witnesses of a turning around in the understanding of faith. The problem is no longer believing in dogmas, in truths of the faith, and acceptance of them in our lives, but the problem is one of religious experience. That element of experience is dominant in almost all religious questions and problems. The elements and moments of experience have become, we would almost say, the condition for someone's readiness to believe and to put one's confidence in someone, that is, one's heart (lat. credo = cor do). As if it had become an unwritten law: Give me your experience, show me your experience, and then I will believe you. That could consequently be reduced to a problem which is particularly actual today. Namely, all the way up till now the fundamental rule for the transmission of faith was the mediation of a certain deposit of faith, information of the faith, and religious contents. However, information no matter how complete, always carries with it some shortcoming. It is losing its foundation and basis particularly in the contemporary spiritual situation. There is nothing that one could or should prove to our contemporaries because they are mature and grown up. They are no longer in the state of immaturity. Even Jesus did not do his signs and miracles in order to prove something to someone, but to introduce and lead people into the mystery of his person and mission and into the mystery of confidence and faith.
That is why it is necessary, and it is being done in Medjugorje, to pass over from an instructional model of transmission of the faith to an inspirational. Namely, the Spirit of God is active in individuals, and the individual opens oneself to what the Spirit is inspiring. One might mention here the example of the theologian K. Rahner. At the end of his life, near the threshold of eternity, hecomplained about the frozen, winter season in the Church, about the cold church. By this he was probably thinking about the directions of restoration in the church itself, the frozen theological fronts, the winding down of the ecumenical movement, and the far too weak echo of the Council itself and modern theological thought in the public at large. But even under the winter snow and frost the germs of a new spring are hidden. New life is being generated and spring is gradually awakening. That is why the same Rahner could have been correct in saying that a believer, a Christian of tomorrow, and of the next century will either be a mystic or he will be no longer. By what right does a Rahner say that? Faith and prayer, that is, scientific theology and mysticism are always inseparable. There is not one without the other. The internal meaningfulness and confirmation of this statement originates from the very fact that only mystically deepened faith can give a man an inner sense in the search for his own identity, a man who carries with himself his existential fears and troubles. Are we not confronted with the syndrome of reincarnation which essentially is just the fruit of an unsuccessful search for personal identity. In such a constellation we have a mystical response, that is, a mystical epoch as a response, as the path to a personal goal. Again in this case the path is the goal itself, that is, the goal is the path.
In the center of all mysticism stands Paul's thought which neither theology nor spirituality has adequately treated, namely, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). The Christianity of tomorrow must not, nor may it remain in its own vestibule. It must penetrate to the core of its possibilities. The more that happens, the more strongly its image is changed, and the more it is directed toward its mystical form. According to that then, Christianity becomes a religion of hope, freedom and peace, and above all then of the overcoming of existential fears, since modern man is surrounded by fears, in his life energy he is bound up, incapable of accepting himself and his future, and he lives with his back turned toward his future. It is impossible to help him with initiatives that would move him to endure the challenges of the present and to turn himself toward the future with confidence and trust. Already the philosopher of existence, Karl Jaspers, said that the fear of life in the heart of modern man, that is present today in so great a measure as never before, has become man's atrocious companion. Fear is the unambiguous characteristic of modern man. It is an acid eating away at every joy of life and the will to live. Therefore, faith is the only true antithesis and antidote to such a fear because faith anchors us in the reality of God present in history, while fear takes the ground out from under our feet. Frightened man is hanging over the abyss of nothingness. Such a fear has as its fruit also the impossibility of authentic communication among people because one who is in fear, is not capable of articulating his own state and trouble to another. For the frightened man his words stick in his throat. The last word, actually the summary of Jesus' entire kerygma in John's Gospel in the farewell discourse of Jesus, says: "In the world you shall have fear, but do not be afraid. Have confidence because I have overcome the world ..." (cf John 16:33).
This modern man, the seeker of God, needs the faith of the witness, and not intellectual arguing or argumentation. He cares more about the testimony of those who have learned by experience rather than of those who learned something by heart. Faith is not transmitted so much in an intellectual manner as it is by the witnessing of those who with their life and suffering give faith a new meaning and credibility. That is obvious particularly in the former communist bloc where faith proved to be stronger than the so-called scientific socialism just by the witness and humility of the suffering in whose life the hope and promise of faith became visible. That faith is not a resignation or withdrawal, that is, retreat into irrationality before the dangers of the practical mind, but it is courage to be, boldness toward essence and being, and the prophetic call and swing toward the wide open spaces into which the total reality around us is calling. On the one hand today aversion to reason, science, and technical rationality are all the more widespread, and, therefore, it is of extreme importance to emphasize the essential logicalness of our faith so it would be a reasonable worship and sacrifice (cf Rom 12:1), a living synthesis of the whole man, and not the fruit of an irrational leap into the unknown. In itself the mystery is not irrationality, but the extreme profundity of the divine mind into which we cannot penetrate with our own finite human eyes. That is why St. John can also say: In the beginning was the Logos, that is, the creative Intelligence, the power of divine recognition that bestows meaning and is the beginning of all things. It is up to man to discover the traces of that divine Intelligence and to develop and interpret the meaning of things and of created reality in that direction.
THE PASTORAL WORK THUS FAR AND THE THERAPEUTIC ROLE OF MEDJUGORJE
The modern spiritual condition requires of the Church a reflection on its own pastoral work. If the pastoral work thus far was directed toward the disciplining of the faithful, from now on, the sense of pastoral work is the enabling of the faithful for the struggle of life because the decision for life is simultaneously the preamble of faith. Hence the need, then, for the correlation of faith and prayer. It must be clear to modern man that the foundations of faith are in prayer because prayer, understood in its internal make up, accepts the problem of God and responds to it in the full meaning of the word. Faith and prayer are the keys to a richer life, a life of understanding and acceptance, forgiveness and relatedness, security and surrender, peace and joy, something Medjugorje has demonstrated countless times. The future belongs to that kind of faith and, with everything happening there for a full fourteen years, Medjugorje tends only toward that kind of faith. That faith includes and accepts freedom as the final goal of all human strivings as well as peace as the universal focal point of all human strivings in this century, a peace not as the absence of war, but as the omnipresence of God in his own creation.
This is exactly the way Medjugorje presents itself to the world through new forms of pastoral work, personal and evangelical. Almost from day to day it inspires us to optimism and fearlessness, in spite of all the possible war and apocalyptic surroundings and trumpeting because Christianity is the faith of the Good News, the joyful message of man's call to freedom, to a life without paralyzing fear.
The modern economic scene is characterized by an increase in the logic of the market, capital, trade and gross national produce, that is, income. It brings with itself standardization and equalization, comparison not only of merchandise but also of spiritual utterance which leads to the equalization of souls and the regimentation of opinions, the cessation or loss of the personal freedom of formation. It was thought possible to transfer the American or Western European model of conducting business onto the communist, or third world. But these attempts went bankrupt for now. Eurocentrism has become something like the sordid conscience of Europe that was noticeable on the occasion of the 500th anniversary celebration of the discovery of America. In place of unity and triumph we had instead indignation and lamentation and the history of European discoveries and triumphs has become the history of its moral falls, sins and failures. That is why faith in such an atmosphere is in no way an easy path. Whoever presents it like that will be stranded on it. Faith puts challenges before us because it thinks of man in a more sublime and better way than man thinks of himself.
If we started our exposition with a biblical comparison, we could then also cast Medjugorje's effectiveness in a biblical context, although any comparison limps. The effectiveness of Medjugorje lends itself to comparison with the effectiveness and expansion of Christianity, particularly in its first centuries. The Roman empire was falling apart from the inside, cancer of the bone marrow consumed it. To heal the cancer and revive the organism it is necessary to transplant the marrow. Christianity was something similar to fresh bone marrow. It brought in a freshness, a new core and the world was revived. Christianity understood in a literal sense Jesus' command and mission: to proclaim, to spread the good news and to heal! Let us recall the closing words of Mark's Gospel and what are the signs that accompany the apostolic proclamation. Man is actually the same. Jesus proclaimed in healing and healed in proclaiming. Those two are inseparable. Jesus is teacher and preacher, healer and therapist. The apostles knew that well. It was also accepted in early centuries by missionaries who along with evangelization offered health, psychological, spiritual and physical. Modern man longs for health and salvation and, therefore, he needs a therapeutic religion, a therapeutic proclamation of faith. For what else is the word salus, Greek soteria, German heil, if not, in the first place, health, and only after that salvation? We translate that as saving, salvation, in abstract terms, while it was always a concrete intervention into the being of man in the sense of total health and healing. Every generation, all people of all times, are yearning precisely for that. Where are we to find salvation and healing? We see what is offered today in the market of ideas, in what manner man tries to be healed, how many offers from various healers and charlatans there are. The same spiritual situation was also present in early Christianity. The world is avid for health and the feeling of being saved, and Christianity is precisely in such a thicket and a vast forest of all kinds of offers of saving and salvation that it, in its uniqueness, overtook all other religions and cults. It accomplished what it promised. The victory was guaranteed even before the theoretical foundations of that victory were laid. Instead of the myth of Asclepias, we have Jesus Christ, the real healer and helper, leader and teacher. Early Christianity defined itself as the faith of healing, authentic therapy, the medicine of soul and body, and it is precisely with Christianity that systematic medicine and care of the sick began in the world. That is one of the most important and most effective fields of Christian activity. Let us recall here the closing lines of the book of Revelation where it says that there are trees of life around God's throne that bear fruit every month, twelve times a year. Their leaves serve the health of the nations and nothing deserving a curse can be found there (Rev 22:2). Medjugorje is presented that way in the contemporary Church and the world. Indeed would so many hasten to Medjugorje had countless numbers not experienced healing and salvation?!
MEDJUGORJE AND THE HISTORY OF SALVATION
The historic-theological context of Medjugorje is the history of salvation. That is neither strange nor unusual in the history of God's activity in the world and in his creation. God has never abandoned man or mankind to hopelessness. Whenever man would abandon God and trust in his own powers, which is especially visible in the Old Testament, catastrophe and destruction would regularly appear. It must be clear to Israel and thus to us today that economic or military power do not constitute us as a people, but the direct intervention of our God into our history does. He has chosen us, he has led us and is leading us. Only under the leadership of one God is it possible to preserve a pure concept of God and to mature as God's people. Man is longing for a space wherein to feel relieved, be accepted, affirmed. He longs a space where alienation disappears and where he becomes a citizen in faith and life. That is why one needs the Church of the God incarnate who, like a good host, is the God of all people. Medjugorje has offered and accomplished that from its first days.
Looking back in the history of the Church and Christianity, we will see how always at the peaks of crises there were signs for a turning point and a turn around and reorientation. Both historical and epochal. All the great reformers, renewers of the Church and society, appeared when crises were prevalent. The appearance of religious life in the Church lends itself to being interpreted precisely by the critical situations in the Church. They are a response to the crises of faith. Likewise, on the spiritual scene we have similar manifestations, that is, antidotes. After the destructive reasoning of Descartes there is the ingenious Pascal who gives new parameters to the spirit and spirituality of Europe. After Kant, Hegel, and idealistic philosophy, we have the existential philosophy of a Kierkegaard, and after the destructive, nihilistic Nietzsche, the Russian philosopher Soloviev appears as a response that God exists, after Nietzsche had announced the death of God. But no matter how strong the criticism of religion is, the miracle of theism surpasses all traps and problems. Criticism leaves in its wake emptiness, frustration and agony, and in the end every criticism speaks on behalf what it denies: If religion is denied, the denial itself becomes the symbol of the need and exigency for what is denied. Religion becomes a necessity. Explicit anti-Christianity is always salutary for Christianity because it calls attention to its problems and the neglect of what is essential. And in this is is visible the remarkable, therapeutic role of Medjugorje that has appeared at the peak of the crisis of Western thought and the communist reign of terror throughout the world.
Man's governing is serving. His freedom is connection with the necessary internal truth of things, and openness for love that makes him God like. Therefore, it is possible to place the Medjugorje events and visionaries in that category of rational foundation and witnessing. Mary, as the witness and prophet, and God, who in an elementary way intervenes in the life of individuals, take them into his service. It is a direct call, psychologically unfathomable and inexplicable, that is impossible to break away from without denying one's own self. In the same way, the message of Medjugorje is, in essence, prophetic and on prophetic message Martin Buber expressed himself this way: The prophetic spirit never thinks as a Platonic one, namely, one that possesses a universal or transtemporal conceptual truth. It rather receives message after message in totally concrete situations. And precisely for that reason its word, even after the passage of so many millennia, speaks to people in the changed and changeable life situations of the national history. That message and truth are ordinarily unpleasant and apprehensive and man becomes the mouth and medium of God. In our case, Mary and several visionaries. The relationship of the prophet to the future is not for predicting it. To prophesy means to place the community and the individual, directly or indirectly, before a choice and a decision. The future is not something offered in the palm of the hand, as something about which everything is known. On the contrary, the future depends, on what is essential, on the correctness of decision, that is, on the decision that man makes at this moment and in which at this historic kairos he participates. The prophet always puts people before an alternative. He tries to turn the steering wheel in another direction. His whole soul is in it. His words are trembling from fear and hope on account the magnitude and power of the decision. The prophet is ordinarily a great prosecutor. He does not proclaim any boring morals or ethics of behavior, rather the infallibility and eternity of God's word and law.
Modern man is confronted with terrifying possibilities of technological advance that chill his heart. Namely, genetic engineering, an intervention into the creative possibility itself, then the possibility that man by his own power bring down an apocalyptic reality upon this Planet because of an excessive arms build up. For that he needs a prophet who will with his own life tend toward and direct toward the reality beyond, the transcendent. The reality here below is immanent for man, but too straight and narrow for him. In abnegating the reality beyond, man has given himself over to exaltation of this reality below, of life, and has affirmed life at any price. Greed and the lust of life for anything and everything is reaching its peak, but at that peak there is no satisfaction, but only insatiability and disgust, the devaluation of life and the rejection of everything that he does not like or no longer likes. Therefore, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide are just symptomatic manifestations and the natural fruit of that kind of understanding of life. They are the fruit of a denial of the fundamental decision for life, namely, denial of responsibility in view of eternity and eternal hope. The lust of life ends up in disgust and in the end man becomes refuse, as modern literature testifies or as the omnipresent culture of death instead of a culture of life and love.
It is possible to deluge or falsify the profundity of the divine message and truth in man, but it will always re-surface and makes its way back into the human soul. That is why everywhere there is a repeated call for concentration, meditation, contemplation, the sacred, for contact with God himself. It is an inevitable call at a time when the (un)truth of the way of thinking, of which drugs, violence, terrorism and revolution are the externally visible forms, bases itself only on the world of facts, on what is manifested, and on restricting reason to the measurable and the quantitative, and not the qualitative and invaluable. Because for man to be man, he needs morals and ethics and in order to have ethics he needs a Creator, and faith in immortality and in God. That is why the good news of Medjugorje and Christianity is precisely in this: responsibility before God, oneself, the world and history. Medjugorje is a real challenge and call in the true meaning of the word. The goal of history is neither evolution nor progress, but conversion. If the almost complete post-Hegelian epoch was carried away with the thought of continuous ascent and progress and constant pacing toward a happier tomorrow, then today we are harvesting the bitter fruit of that process. The bible speaks of conversion, and not of evolution. Medjugorje is based precisely on that thought. All pseudo-religions, and technology and science are just exactly that, have turned against man. This is why it is terribly wrong to think of man as a being of progress and growth. As a person, he is already defined in the bible as a being pitched between Good and Evil. Neither progress nor science give him security. It rather depends on a decision for God or against him. And that is why there is so much talk about the human, which is actually being jeopardized on all sides. After unlimited faith in reason, we have entered the period of irrationalism. Therefore, in the face of today's crisis of reason it is possible to find salvation only in the return to mystery, the one that will save reason. It is not against reason, but is directed toward the meaningfulness of being and the existence of the universe, sustained by the power of the one Intelligence.
After the fall of socialism and communism and then after the frustrations produced by homo faber, homo technicus in his technical achievements, many reasons speak in favor of faith and of a conversion to the God of the Scriptures. Medjugorje in that is a visible sign, the City on the mountain top, that is, the place between the mountains. Especially today everyone has to confront oneself with the fact that it is impossible to achieve spiritual realities by material means or promises, that it is impossible to achieve meaning, happiness, peace of mind, health, the strength of conviction and life by material or economic well being or progress, but only by accepting oneself as a spiritual reality and as a given. In our contemporaries the sense of the spiritual is gradually being awakened. New visions and broad perspectives are being opened in spite of the seductive voices of a New Age. In spite of so many advances in the field of technique and technology, physics and chemistry, in spite of so many achievements in all fields of both the micro- and macrocosm, micro- and astrophysics, biology and regarding the structure of atoms and organisms, science and even modern philosophy remain helpless and without a clear position in the field of being and meaning. Already long ago the philosophers Adorno and Horkheimer spoke about self-destruction of the Enlightenment. That takes place where Enlightenment is absolutized, where calculation and prediction are valued, where transcendence and the reality beyond are denied. In other words: A society whose web and woof is agnosticism and materialism, cannot survive in the long run. Its consequences are the decay of morals and of all values. Even the philosophy of meaning, so-called logotherapy, of one Victor Frankl, which give its counsels to those who have lost every tie with religion and the church, cannot help those who are still within the Church but facing great questions. The first task is the healing of morals and the acceptance of moral values in society. It is not permissible for man to trespass limits with impunity. Man is free when he acknowledges the law of freedom as the atmosphere that defines him. On the one hand we are facing, we would almost say, pathological concern and fear for man's physical health, physical integrity, and ecology, while, on the other hand, there prevails a general insensitivity in regard to man's moral integrity. That, in fact, is a denial of man as man, a denial of the freedom and the dignity of man. Therefore, the question of revelation and God's speaking in history and the modern world is again put before us, and, in that, Medjugorje is an unavoidable milestone. Without God man remains just a little cog, a tiny piece in human history and this is why Medjugorje forces us to return to the sources of our own faith, namely, to the return to a revelation whose peak, purpose and meaning is Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and man, in whom is hidden the mystery of God himself. He is the Word in whom every treasure of wisdom and knowledge is hidden (cf Col 2:3), and as such he reveals the mystery of God himself and pierces the silence in which God seems to be wrapped.
If the spiritual scene thus far in Western liberalism and Marxist communism denied faith any right and capacity to mold society, public affairs, and a common future within mankind, today we meet a different trend on the scene. Turmoils on all sides clearly warn that religion and its subjective expression in personal faith, both on the personal and social level, is a force which neither lends itself to be uprooted or deleted from man's consciousness, nor can the world give up its role in molding mankind. Without faith it is impossible to mold the future. But all the traps of past centuries must be avoided, including any kind of usurping of faith for political goals. The primary role of faith is concern for man and in that, the Church is called to prepare in hearts a space for the God who comes, not by its own power but by the power of the Spirit, not by institution but by witnessing, not by law but by love, life and suffering, and thus help society to find its identity again. All history is just one great struggle between belief and disbelief, between Good and Evil, and today we are witnesses of the great world drama in which we must not hesitate, but, by the power of faith, hope and love, withstand the omnipotence of resignation, indifference, fatalism, and despair. To enable people to love is the imperative of the moment. Also to withstand public opinion and to do it the way Jesus did it before Pilate and as the present Pope does it before the mighty of this world. Jesus was not afraid of the cross but the modern believer fears the very thought of suffering and martyrdom. Everyone, and in particular high Church dignitaries, fears for his image, even if it were a simple stinking commentary in some daily paper that is written today and is forgotten tomorrow. One should be ready to take a risk and to dare follow the call of Jesus. Mary is teaching us that everyday in her school in Medjugorje.
INSTEAD OF A CLOSING WORD
In all of her apparitions Mary shows herself to be a caring Mother. Everyone can understand her because her option is for the little and the poor, God's favorites. She is always full of compassion. She intercedes for the little ones and gives them her own heart and voice. All who are despised and deprived of rights, those on the fringe of life and society find refuge in her. She does not appear in mansions and bishops' palaces, but on hills, in villages, in inaccessible places, and her partners are the little and insignificant, the shepherds.
It is as if she wants by that to say: The duty of evangelizing the world, the clergy, the hierarchy, bishops and priests, belongs to the little ones. These are the amazing processes in almost all apparitions. It is known often to happen that also expert theologians and scholars come to visionaries and seek advice from them in the spiritual life. The little and insignificant become evangelizers. Throughout the history of the Church adults were known to reach for weapons as means of evangelization (let us remember the inglorious pages of the evangelization of Latin America) while the little become authentic evangelizers by the power of their word, their person, and their life. In this is realized that parable of Jesus about the little ones and children as the paradigm for his kingdom. If the Church today is turning to the poor, if our Franciscan Order has made its priority option for the poor because an immense potential for evangelization exists among them, then we could freely say that precisely today it is "in" to learn from the little how to be evangelized and how to evangelize and how to proceed from the center to the periphery. Mary reveals herself as one who loves, cares about everyone, readily helps and participates in the work of redemption as the merciful Mother. Mary is the place where cries and sighs are heard, where trouble and misery are consoled, where tears are wiped away and pains are healed.
Ordinary people, the Christian laity, are not longer the object of evangelization, on whom thoughts and ideas are imposed from above, but they become the subject of evangelization which directly receives inspirations by the power of the Holy Spirit and becomes the carrier of the Good News into the world. Everyone must turn toward the needs of the world, especially of the most little ones, from the top down to the littlest in God's people. Only in that way does evangelization become authentic. Evangelization is not in the service of fortifying the hierarchy, but the birthing of new communities of the faithful. That is the effect of the Medjugorje apparitions. Everywhere living communities are being born that live in the spirit of the messages and of Mary's option for the most little, for the poor. Mary's call is directed to everyone and everyone, like Abraham, must begin their way into the unknown, into the unknown and uninvestigated regions of faith, led by God's call to freedom.
The effect of the Medjugorje apparitions is immeasurable. That which the critical mind and philosophy destroyed, what Catholic theology largely neglected, that which pastors in the Church do not dare, the Holy Spirit is trying to do through Mary's apparitions and her messages to the world. Conversion and the revival of the organism of the Church which has died out in many. Little people understand Our Lady's language and accept it. Amid hopelessness hope is revived, God is with his people. Biblical faith and biblical experiences are again becoming present and alive. Medjugorje is a rereading of the Bible. God proves himself the leader and the liberator, the strength of the future. If a theology of liberation is being proclaimed, then we have experienced it most powerfully in Medjugorje, and at the same time also, the theology of the people of God as the bearer of renewal and the accomplisher of God's plan in history.
God's work of the renewal of the world is carried forward with the help of Mary. Through her apparitions and intercession, peoples are being healed, freedom is being glimpsed and birthed. People are becoming aware of themselves and are resurrecting. Mary becomes a creative symbol for the entire people. In her apparitions she gives back to places and peoples their authentic dignity. She reveals herself as the custodian of the bequeathed inheritance and the original sign of authentic inculturation of the Gospel in peoples and cultures. She is simultaneously also the manifestation of the maternal face of our God. Where she appears, God's creative work is revealed in history. That is said in the beginning of the gospel of Luke and also in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. Where the Spirit descends on Mary, he leaves behind himself a perfectly formed image, in the first case of Jesus Christ, in the second of the Church as the perfect artistic work of our God, as the realized social utopia of which Jesus dreamed, as the space of peace, freedom and love. These are the essential existential truths by which the world lives and which are able to give the world a meaning and a future. In this again Medjugorje is an unavoidable road sign to the entire epoch on the threshold of a new millennium.
THE ROLE OF VISIONARIES
(Biblical-historical)
INTRODUCTION
While thinking about the theme assigned, the word of John comes to mind: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us -- that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." (1 Jn 1:1-3)
He is clearly speaking about seeing, and belongs among God's visionaries. The essential characteristics of a visionary are revealed in his words:
a) to see - to hear, means: to be receiving;
b) to see God's activity in Christ, in the history of salvation;
c) to testify, means: to transmit what is received.
d) to introduce into the mystery of Christ; to build up the individual and the community.
along with a) The reception from God can be realized on different levels:
-on the natural level of reception of God's messages from nature (natural revelation); ordinary supernatural reception of God's gifts on the level of the theological virtues (through faith, hope and love); extra-ordinary supernatural reception of God's manifestations in the mystical life; extra-ordinary supernatural reception of God's revelations of the charismatic type, when God reveals something to someone for the building up of God's people.
In our case we are dealing with the latter way of God's giving of gifts, when, namely, the Lord reveals something to someone so that, having been transmitted to others and to the community of the church, they may serve for its edification. John, namely, particularly plunges into the mystery of Christ and saw what others, his contemporaries, did not see!
(Perhaps it is well here just to call attention to the justified and grounded debate among theologians on the difference between a vision and an apparition. It is possible, namely, for the vision to be able to arise from our interior seeing, granted by God - vision in the strict sense. Again it can come externally and then it is an apparition, i.e. a vision in the broad sense. In our case, I think, it does not itself touch the essence of the theme, and, therefore, we will not dwell on it!)
along with b) One should be aware of and receive the salvific activity inside us, in the Church, in the world, in the history of salvation: that St. John clearly refers to Jesus Christ.
along with c) The witnessing to or the transmission of what has been received in our case becomes a reality according to the testimony of John's word, but it can be realized in various ways, about which we will speak more later.
along with d) John's testimony serves the purpose of inspiring others to faith and to lead them into the mystery of Christ. Compare also the conclusion of John's gospel which refers to that: "but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (Jn 20:31).
The example from John helps us to observe the essential elements of the visionary's role. Those roles can also be observed in biblical-historical and in ecclesiastical-historical development. Then we notice all of their complexity and range, their weaving into the human psyche, the social order and the historical interventions of God.
We shall dwell on these elements, first historical-biblical, and later through the history of the Church, in order to apply them to the present time.
THE BIBLICAL - HISTORICAL VIEW
The Old Testament: Abraham, Moses, the prophets
The Bible of the Old Testament offers us ample examples for reflection on the role of visionaries: beginning with Abraham, Moses, Samuel and numerous prophets.
The example of Moses is particularly suitable for us and rich for the observation of individual elements of that role:
- he meets God in the burning bush;
- he hears his word from the bush, from the cloud, from the sky (Ex 1-2-3);
- he begins to understand the history of Israel in a new light; he learns about the promises given to the patriarchs;
- he hears the promise of liberation;
- he should transmit it to his people; he should lead his people out of the land of slavery;
- he leads God's people out of Egypt and through the desert; through him the Lord makes a covenant with His people;
- he calls the attention of Israel to the Covenant: he inspires and encourages them; he reproves and threatens them; he comforts the people in their afflictions; he heals their wounds in the name of God.
Of the prophets we could mention Jeremiah whose history is stormy and painful, which he feels deeply and describes in his call to the prophetic ministry and in his oracles where he speaks of his own bitter experiences and his break downs in the ministry of God's message: cf. Jer 1:4-19 - Jeremiah's vocation; 20:7-18 - Jeremiah's "Oracles."
Like Moses the prophets also will:
- receive God's word; be visionaries (hence their title "roeh" - seer);
- God will reveal his mysteries to them, as friends,
- these mysteries are related to his plans of salvation,
- they should transmit them to God's people in order thereby to assist their covenant with God, their life with God: if they are sinful to convert, if righteous, to become more righteous, if in despair, to strengthen them, if in sorrow and darkness, to comfort and enlighten them. . .
The New Testament: Jesus, Mary, Elizabeth, Simon, the apostles
Although Jesus is the source and archetype of every mediation between God and men, because he is the only Mediator, still it is not advisable - in our case - to dwell especially on him. He is, namely, at the same time essentially different from all the other New and Old Testament mediators: He sees the Father face to face and reveals him to us, He is the LIGHT OF THE WORLD, and all other mediators are only a reflection of him. He is the WORD OF THE FATHER, and all the others will be only his voice or echo, like John the Baptist.
Accordingly, there is an essential difference between Jesus and the other visionaries: He is the SOURCE of light, the others are merely a reflection, a mirror; He is the WORD, while the others are only the voice, the sound system. Therefore, we will rather dwell on the other New Testament personalities, as for example:
The Virgin Mary is a visionary,
- who receives the annunciation from Archangel Gabriel and by the Spirit of God she receives the Word of God, she becomes the Mother of God:
- she immediately gets under way and is in the service of redemption:
- she transmits the action of grace of her own Son to Elizabeth and her son John;
- in the hymn Magnificat she exclaims her praise to God and announces to Elizabeth and to all of us the great works of God.
Her role of "visionary" is very simple in its sublimely great loftiness: simple, as is the role of a mother conceiving a child, serving a child, carrying it, nourishing and bringing it up, and - when the child grows up - she gives it over to others!
Mary's example, I think, is particularly important because in the history of the Church Mary very often appears to visionaries:
- as if to hasten to the Judean mountains to assist her needy cousin Elizabeth, all of us in need;
- and she carries the Savior to us because she is His Mother;
- and she reveals that in the words of her own hymn of praise: the Magnificat; in which the activity of the Savior is seen in the little ones, the poor and rejected;
- and she announces how salvation history is being fulfilled in Israel, and in the people of God in general!
Let us dwell also on John's Revelation, who reveals in visions the condition of the seven churches of Asia Minor (Rev 1-3), and watches the final battle that unfolds between God and Satan for mankind (Rev 4-20). And here are the fundamental characteristics:
- the noticing, the observation of the condition of the individual Church,
- in order to call it to conversion, to inspire it to perseverance, to comfort it, to reprove it,
- to conduct it into the fruits of redemption,
- the visionary in his visions observes the difficult battles at the end of human history,
- discovers this difficult reality, the horror sin, the power of evil; he discovers also the power of God, the works of salvation; the role of God's angels;
- the final victory of God.
We could conclude this cursory overview of the role of the prophets-visionaries in the Bible in the words of St. Paul: "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim 3:16-17).
Clearly emphasized are the roles of Scripture and of those who transmit that Scripture:
- various benefits for improvement and growth,
- growth in the works of love toward perfection.
The message of God and, consequently, the role of visionaries as well is in the service of life:
- I have set before you life and good, death and evil, therefore choose life, that you may live! (Deut 30:15,19);
- Jesus comes to give us life, and the fullness of life (John 10:10);
- for that reason John also writes his Gospel - that by believing we might have life (John 20:31);
- for that reason Jesus also sends the apostles throughout the whole world to proclaim the Good News and to baptize all nations (Matt 28:19) so that through baptism they may become the children of God and have the life of God within themselves and have a share in the kingdom of heaven (cf John 3:5).
THROUGH THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
The economy of salvation in the Old and the New Testament reaches out for God's messengers: angels, prophets, visionaries, apostles, - consequently, it is to be expected that also in the history of the Church the Lord will act in a similar manner.
Indeed, all throughout the history we see that it talks about how God in given moments reveals his will speaking through individual visionaries. . .
From more recent times we recall the visionary St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in Paray-le-Monial, Bernadette in Lourdes, and the visionaries in Fatima: Lucy, Francisco, and Jacinta, who are recognized by the Church as authentic.
With St. Mary Margaret we see how through her the Lord calls to the living of the mystery of love of his Divine Heart. The revelations given through her were not immediately accepted but they met with resistance among the clergy of the church. It was only later that the Church accepted the essential part of these messages and starting from the biblical revelation, it especially recommended the devotion to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus (cf. Pius XII Haurietis aquas de fontibus Salvatoris: You shall drink water from the fountains of the Savior). Here one nicely sees how visionaries do not add anything new to the public revelation, but they direct toward some aspect of it, which emphasis, in the given circumstances, inspires the faithful to a deeper Christian life!
With Bernadette and the Fatima visionaries we notice:
- they are illiterate children who are not in a position by their own thinking to arrive at the messages of which they speak; accordingly, they received messages from Our Lady;
- they announced them to the people,
- they transmit them also to the pastors of the church,
- they lived them in their own lives;
- in the transmitting of the Our Lady's messages they find themselves in difficulties, from people, from civil and ecclesiastical authorities,
- finally, the authenticity of their messages is noticed (from their lives, from the agreement of the messages with Sacred Scripture, but the fruits in their life, from the miraculous signs that accompany these messages.
Wishing to emphasize the role of the visionaries - which is our theme - we can point out the following:
- the reception of the messages,
- the proclamation of the messages,
- the living of the messages.
THE ROLE OF VISIONARIES IN THE "RECEPTION" OF THE MESSAGES
The philosophical principle is: Whatever is received, is received according to the manner of the receiver.
That explains clearly enough that messages are received in different ways by children and by adults, men and women, in different cultural milieus, at different periods of time (so that God proclaims the same substantial message differently to a black person than to a European; differently in the Middle Ages than in our times.) God chooses a "language" that the receiver understands: a child, an adult, a Jew, a Christian, a European, an African; a man with a medieval image of the world and of science, a man with a modern view of the world and of history.
Here it is sufficient just to point this out.
THE ROLE OF VISIONARIES IN RELATION TO THE "CONTENT" OF THE MESSAGES
By analyzing the messages that the visionaries received in Lourdes, Fatima, and elsewhere (through the history of the Church) we see:
- that they simply transmit messages that are already contained in the public revelation given to us,
- that they transmit only some certain messages which have special importance for a certain time,
- that they emphasize and underline these messages.
Since we already took St. Mary Margaret and the Fatima shepherds as an example, we will also emphasize that the former revelations emphasize the Love of God revealed in the Divine Heart of Jesus, and the latter revelations in Fatima put before us devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is interesting to notice this correlation: the love of God is revealed and offered to us in images that are available to us - in the Heart of Jesus and Mary! Both the former and the latter devotion renews our hearts and the complete Christian life.
In relation to the messages that they transmit they are, accordingly:
- an echo that re-echos to the messages of the Bible,
- the selectors of the messages that they transmit to a particular generation in its specific circumstances,
- the amplifiers of these messages, which then can resound more strongly and better be heard.
- the mission of John the Baptist can emphasize for us in a specially clear way the role of visionaries: He pointed out the Savior, and directed his own disciples to him, and said: "I must decrease and He must increase" (Jn 3:30). The visionary should recede into the shadow and the Light of God has to rise on the horizon. We can also make a comparison with the Morning Star: It announces the day - but the closer the day is, it of itself disappears and fades away in the splendor of the Sun! The Sun is main thing and Morning Star just introduces it! It is the same with visionaries!
- the visionary is in volunteer service of the gospel: "You received without paying, give without pay" Mt 10:8).
- the visionary stands in the service of transmitting gifts, and becomes a gift in oneself! (That is the role of the visionary and at the same time a criterion of authenticity: service and service free of charge! To burn like a candle - that shines and thereby disappears so that others may live!);
- the building up of the Body of Christ, the Church: "Go out to the whole world. . ." (Mt 28:19)
- through his role the visionary enters into relationship:
- with the public Revelation of God;
- with the hierarchy of the Church, which the Lord established to govern the Church;
- with the people of God,
- with the world.
(These are themes that we are only mentioning and which require a special deeper treatment, analysis and elaboration in regard to the messages that the individual visionary transmits!)
CONTENT OF THE MESSAGES
(This is neither the time nor the place to dwell in a particular way on the content itself of the messages, which is - otherwise - all too important and necessary!)
Perhaps we could present the role of the visionaries metaphorically:
- they are receivers. However, not every receiver is equally fit for the reception of all wave lengths; one should be on the same frequency; we should tune the radio dial for each station separately. It is interesting that among visionaries there are many children and that among them somehow we more frequently meet females; it must be that children are more sensitive and unburdened with their own frequencies, and they more easily accept God's frequency; and it seems that females are the more sensitive receivers, and therefore Heaven more easily establishes that link of transmission with them.
- they are microphones,
- they are also selectors,
- they also have the role of amplifiers,
- their own frequency is mixed in with the reception and transmission of the messages just as is the frequency of their own environment. Here in its own way a "vitalization" of the messages is included: namely, the messages pass through their lives and become more noticeable and more legible. We recall how in the Old Testament the Lord transmitted his messages many times through symbolic and sometimes even very painful actions (cf Ezekiel, Hosea etc.)
RELATIONSHIP OF THE VISIONARIES TO THE HIERARCHY
This is a particularly sensitive question and it is necessary to say something about it. Here one is actually dealing with the relationship between the charism and the Institution in the Church.
Vatican Council II explicitly referred to the relationship between the charismatic gifts of grace and the hierarchy and said that it is necessary to be open to all the gifts of grace of the Holy Spirit, to the ordinary and the extraordinary, and that the pastors of the Church are called not to reject these gifts, but to discern between them, to accept the good and to reject the unauthentic. (Cf LG 12)
Therefore, the question is raised on various levels about the criteria of authenticity of charisms, that is, of those who have these charisms, concretely - in our case - of the visionaries. So we shall mention some of the principal criteria for the discernment of that authenticity.
THE CRITERIA OF AUTHENTICITY
We recall, moreover, that the question of the authenticity of the visionaries-prophets was raised both in the Old and the New Testaments. There were, namely, also self-proclaimed prophets and apostles, and therefore in the Old Testament for example Moses strongly advised caution, and in the New Testament, Jesus himself speaks of false prophets and Paul in many places warns against false apostles.
Accordingly, criteria are necessary for the discernment of authentic prophets, apostles and visionaries. One should seriously take account of these criteria. We shall mention some of those that refer to the role of visionaries:
- the visionary should proclaim God and God's plans of salvation; if he does the opposite in his proclamations and does not proclaim the plans of God, but rather his own, then, of course, that visionary is not authentic.
- the visionary proclaims God's revelation in order to build up the People of God, that is, the Body of Christ, the Church; therefore, if a visionary's proclamation sows division, undermines the Temple of God, tears apart the Body of Christ, that visionary is undoubtedly not authentic;
- the activity of God's revelation should be obvious first of all in the same visionary, as St. Paul emphasizes, defending his own apostolic mission.
I would particularly mention here the principal criteria that I have adapted from the book by Dr. Heribert Muehlen New Encounter with God, (Croatian translation, Jelsa 1994, pp 205-207, 314-319):
- are the visionaries on the way of abandonment to God:
- according to faith, hope and love?
- do they lean on their own capabilities and methods or on God's strength?
- how is their love toward the Church:
- are they moved by love for the concrete Church: the people of God?
- how is their relationship toward the pastors of the Church?
- do they inspire the building up of the Body of Christ, the Church?
- are they open to the service of people?
- are they seeking their own glory and profit or the benefit of other people?
- are they disposed to cooperation?
- is their criticism, if expressed, for building up or for tearing down?
- do they imitate Jesus in their daily life?
- how do they fulfill their own duties of their state of life: in school, in the family, at work?
- do they carry within themselves the fruits of the Holy Spirit?
- do they spread peace or confusion?
- do they carry joy in their heart which also encompasses love?
- do they possess love which wants to be given away?
- how are they regarding exaggeration and negativities?
- do they exaggerate the truth and the good?
- do they stress the negative?
- do they dwell on dark sides, on interior wounds and injuries?
(This indicates the activity of Satan - who undermines people)
A REVIEW OF THE MEDJUGORJE VISIONARIES
The above mentioned data from the history of the Old and New Testaments, as well as of the history of the Church, should, of course, be applied concretely to the Medjugorje visionaries:
- one should inspect closely all the circumstances of their reception of the messages: visions (observed physiologically, psychologically, spiritually and mystically),
- the content of the messages which they transmit in the name of Our Lady (biblically, theologically, ecclesiastically, juridically, ascetical-mystically),
- the degree to which they receive the messages in their own life (personal life and communitary life), family life, their relationship toward the Church and Church authorities, concretely toward the bishop, the pope and the parish priest)
- their way of proclaiming the messages (in words, deeds and life),
- the fruits of the messages (conversion, prayer, penance, the sacraments, the rosary, confession, the Eucharist, reconciliation, Marian spirituality. . .).
Here we have only adverted to this subject.
That is the theme of a separate long and detailed researching and studying.
CONCLUSION
The role, therefore, of the visionaries in public and private revelation - is the role of mediator.
It responds to our individual and communitary structure, as well as to the historical environment and dynamic of the human race.
Of course, their role is completely subordinated to the role of mediation - which is always silent, unobtrusive, hidden - just as, metaphorically speaking, is the role of the microphone and the loud speaker in the broadcasting of the words. The less the microphone and the loud speakers are noticed, all the better do they serve their purpose. The more they impose with their screeching and deformations of the voice, the weaker they are.
The archetype for created mediators is the Virgin Mary. She in complete silence transmits the INCARNATED MESSAGE - THE WORD. She disappears in its shadow and appears again only at Calvary. It seems that precisely like that throughout history Mary appears frequently in times of crisis - again beside Jesus and bringing Jesus, repeatedly wounded, crucified - in us human beings and our hearts, so he can come alive in us, because it was Jesus Himself who from the cross entrusted all of us to her as children, and Her to us as Mother!
In a certain way Mary's visionaries participate in our "Canas," in our "Calvaries," by listening to and repeating the words that he Lord puts in their hearts: "Do whatever he says to you!" (John 2:5)
ABOUT THE ROLE OF MASS-MEDIAS IN SPREADING OF THE MESSAGE OF MEDJUGORJE
Dear Medjugorje-friends, dear co-workers in prayer- and life centers of Medjugorje,
I am sitting here in front of my computer and writing (electronically) to you my cordial greetings, while I wish to assure you of being in communion with you at your meeting. As you can imagine, I would prefer to be with you in person, to be present, to hear the conferences with their spiritual and theological dimensions. I also consider the exchange that follows important, it is always an enrichment, because thoughts and decisions about personal conversion often deepen in contact with one another, especially when people meet in the name of Jesus to understand things better. This is what I wish for you in this meeting, since I myself can participate only from the distance because of a "wrong step" which caused me to have a leg in the plaster.
Since I cannot be directly present, I was asked to write some thoughts which could be a catalyst for an exchange. I am pleased to try to give my little contribution to the meeting. It is understood that as a journalist I will consider the theme and the possibilities of our work with the great mass of the public, of our relationship with the mass-medias, with journalists and with ourselves as journalists.
The participants of the first Meeting, June 21st - June 23rd 1994 in Medjugorje expressed in the Introduction of their DECLARATION a very beautiful thought full of hope, that I can make fully my own, and wish to be further developed, and that is "that we became more aware of our responsibility for the New Evangelization". Only then follow the Resolutions that I wish to treat later. It is said that we "became more aware of our responsibility". The consciousness of our responsibility for the New Evangelization that we had already, and maybe just thanks to Medjugorje, has grown even more. This realization is already reason enough for the usefulness of last year's meeting. It corresponds to what was seen in Medjugorje: people grow in faith and in the consciousness of their personal responsibility in achieving the goal and realizing the plan of the Gospa. She has a plan and we participate in it when we grow and learn how to understand it and how to contribute to it. Growth is in general a slow process, it is not explosive, which is destructive. Growth is constructive. Growth doesn't overburden someone. It respects what is growing. We learn this also from the loving, respectful and patient way Our Lady is treating us.
Nowhere in the world has Our Lady ever spoken for such a long time and through so many messages to the people of this earth. This fact alone is so unique that it makes us wonder. The Messages have nothing spectacular nor sensational in them, as we journalists expect and as we are used to in news broadcasting. Many Messages are repetitions, deepenings of the same content, offering help to make even the smallest step in faith; they are repeated invitations finally to do and to live what Our Lady already invited us to live. She motivates us again and again to turn to her to learn how to believe, to find Jesus, to find ourselves. All this is not particularly interesting for the demands of a journalist. No wonder, because the Messages are not passing news which seem a sensation today and become "cold coffee" tomorrow, according to the proverb: "There is nothing as old as yesterday's newspaper." The Messages are not like that. They are supports and helps to grow continually and in simplicity.
It caused a sensation when the apparitions in Medjugorje lasted several days longer than in other similar places of apparitions. It was a sensation when they lasted 5 years. On the 10th anniversary it was a sensation again. Maybe the same thing will happen at the 15th anniversary, if the apparitions continue. In the meantime, Medjugorje lives a daily life which is of little interest for journalists. It is the daily life of millions of efforts to pray, to live the Gospel, to love one's neighbour, to meet Jesus in little things of daily life, by the children, the women and the men, the visionaries and the priests. I think that I am allowed to say that today, after more than 5000 days of apparitions, we still cannot say what is the plan of the Gospa and where God is leading our world. We are still not able to realize the full dimension of the apparitions of Medjugorje, many things remain a secret hidden to our understanding. This is why we can continue to grow peacefully!
Our Lady does not overburden anyone. We learn in Medjugorje that she evidently has a lot of patience with us. God could change our world in three days or in an instant, and he could make it the way he would like it to be, but what would we, human beings, have to do with that? This, "what would we have to do with that", is what we call Freedom, highly respected and venerated by God, as we can experience it in Medjugorje. This freedom must also determine our own behaviour towards those who have turned away from God, who have been wounded by others in the name of God, who perhaps feel wounded by God himself. How many people turn away from God and from the Church because of the failings of those who represent them. We all know how difficult, sometimes how impossible it is to approach such persons. How can we know about others, the reasons for their wounds, why they are the way they are, since we do not know where we are wounded ourselves, and why it is difficult for us to accept the Messages and to live them. Gospa invites those of us who hear the Messages, to make the same steps, not to get tired, to begin again and again. We have no reason to consider ourseleves as better, having a better faith, a more open heart than the rest of our society which doesn't hear, doesn't want to hear or has not yet heard the Messages. I am convinced that only the Messages themselves, and not us, can open to the people of our society the way towards God and the possibility of meeting him. As God has allowed us to feel his help through the Messages of Our Lady, so HE will himself touch every person of this earth and of our society with his love when HE wants to do so.
Does it mean that we have become useless for the New Evangelization? What is our role, if in reality everything is in the hand of God and is his responsibility, if finally he alone can find the way towards those who turned away from him? Do we still have any responsibility, and where is it concerning our work with the great mass of the public and the spreading of the Messages? What about our responsibility and our work as journalists?
In European and American countries, News broadcasts have achieved an importance
which can hardly be exaggerated. One can say that we are exposed to an immense sea of news which decides about our political, industrial and social life, and influences even our own private and personal life much more then we want to realize or to admit. Technical developments in the area of the electronic transmission of news, modern mass-medias, will in the near future make this influence total in a hardly imaginable way.
An army of journalists in the mass- medias: newspapers, TV, radio, take care of our daily information and disinformation. They reduce an immense quantity of information from all over the world into a quantity which we can support, in the form of news. This selection is necessary. It demands a sense of responsibility and represents power. News is power and an object that can be bought and sold, a thing on the market.
Those who work with news, journalists, decide in large measure what will be spoken about in a society. They create a theme out of news. What is not mentioned as news will not become a theme either. There is a opportunity but also a danger, a responsibility and a lack of responsibility.
Something can be most easily sold when it is interesting for the one who buys, when it seems unique or sensational. Nobody buys "old hats". What is normal cannot be sold, cannot be offered. This is why a simple information is often blown up into sensational dimensions, is more or less changed, made digestible, made better, modified, to be sold. The amount of news is growing, our ability to trust the truth of the news given is diminishing. People are more and more critical and sceptical, they want to check whether the news is true, whether what it says is real. We become sceptical. Not only because of the amount of information and the impression of being overburdened and of not being able to check its veracity, but mostly because of the form and formulation of the news and the credibility of its formulators. The question about the truth of news becomes the question of the credibility of its author. Aren't we more and more reserved in trusting information? Arent'we more and more sceptical about what is proposed to us as truth? But isn't it also true that we have the tendency to trust unconditionally those whom we have decided to trust?
It can be noticed that the lack of trust is growing in our society. People feel abused, disappointed and wounded because of inexact and wrong information. They are also wounded because of the choice: it means not only because of what is said but also because of what is hidden and not published. A surwey should be made about, how much people are wounded because of the primacy that is given to bad news before the good things in the world. How can a society develop positively in its consciousness of human and religious values, if positive things are not spoken about! With this background, the question of the meaning of Medjugorje and the Messages, as well as the form of their spread and publication seems important to think about.
A year ago, March 25th 1994, Gospa gave us a message which, I think, explains this problem very well: "Dear children, Today I rejoice with you and I invite you to open yourselves to me, and become an instrument in my hands for the salvation of the world. I desire, little children, that all of you who have felt the odor of holiness through these messages which I am giving you to carry, to carry it into this world, hungry for God and God's love. I thank you all for having responded in such a number and I bless you all with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call."
Yes, we are not saviours of the world! We are instruments in her hands. The world is not in our hands. The salvation of the world is in her hands. Our part is to be instruments in her hands. Does this not mark at the same time the limits of our importance? We open ourselves to her to be instruments, and not to be formed as saviours of the world
I don't find in this Message any reproach addressed to our society concerning our preference for the negative, instead of the positive. I don't find any accusation for those who are responsible for the spreading of news. Gospa speaks rather about the nostalgia of human beings for the good, about this unconscious desire for holiness, about the hunger of humanity for God and for the love of God, for all that human beings cannot give. Gospa doesn't speak about negative tendencies in human beings, she sees what is good, she sees that point in human being where there salvation can be built, where they can begin to move towards the fullness of life and their own fulfilment. An instrument cannot behave in a different way from the hand that is leading it. Could we act differently (self-righteously, arrogantly, accusingly, without love) towards those who are loved by Gospa when Gospa herself is giving an example.
At the occasion of a meeting for priests in Paderborn (Germany), Paul Zulehner, professor for pastoral theology from Vienna (Austria) spoke about different forms of evangelisation to those who have turned away from the Church. He said that we should not run behind them trying to catch them again; the faster we run behind them, the faster they run away from us. I find much truth in this: we have to control our zeal and give place to God who alone knows how and when the meeting with God should happen. Our duty is to love people, with that we have enough to do.
While I was making a film about Medjugorje in 1984, I also visited the bishop of Mostar who at that time was Pavao Zanic. In our interview he expressed his doubts and his opposition. I asked myself at that time why God, in his wisdom and his providence, before the apparitions, didn't choose a bishop who would make the apparitions in Medjugorje easier. According to human measure, this question could still be asked today. We think in a human way, and we do not understand why in his freedom God gives us our own freedom in this way. This is why we do not understand why it is the way it is, why people are the way they are. All this evidently does not play any role in God's plan of salvation. Maybe Vicka is right when she says that Gospa loves everybody in the same way, even if we do not love them. This is also a mystery which will be revealed to us in the next world.
Our task is to follow the call of Mary, of Gospa, and to let her touch us with her Messages. Why should it be different with other people, those who have no experience of Medjugorje? They also should allow Gospa to touch them. Gospa calls, and we do not need to complete her call by trying to prove that she really and truly appears in Medjugorje. Don't we trust that she can call those whom we think should be called? One sometimes has the impression that Medjugorje is a teritory where one can get hunting trophees. Isn't it possible that with such an attitude we close the way towards God for those to whom we want to transmit "our" Medjugorje? What is really interesting for our world today that hungers for God is the message that God is Love, that inspite of all human disappointments and wounds he loves every person individually and personally. What we need is the deep experience of this knowledge that is sleeping deeply in us. It doesn't seem necessary to try to make Medjugorje more interesting and more acceptable, with small sensations. There is a small chance to reach that point in the other that God himself has chosen to touch. Wouldn't it be enough to share without any exaggeration, and when we are asked, how did God touched us? Medjugorje will not become better nor more attractive if we decorate the events and the Messages with our own ideas. Medjugorje speaks for itself through the task that Our Lady has given to the parish. Last year's resolution also expresses it: Medjugorje does not need to be completed or corrected and it needs no addition. Medjugorje is authentic. The guarantee of this authenticity is the nearness to the Gospa.
There is the danger in the work of a journalist of trying to establish his credibility by giving the impression of dealing with particularly important or exclusive information which others do not have, of having a special source of information, and all this with the purpose of having his news accepted. In this job concerning news, exclusivity is a particularly efficient means to make oneself an interesting person. This pretended nearness to the source of information is often a self-deception and usually a sign of a deformed, manipulated and even false information which spreads itself all the faster if the person who gives the information has gained the trust of the public. Truth and untruth are independent of the nearness of the source of information. It serves the personal gain of the one who gives information, and has nothing to do with being an instrument in the hand of God. Such persons run the risk of becoming victims of their own uncontrolled "huntfever".
I would like to make you aware of another danger in our work. Unfortunately our experience shows that wrong information spreads faster than the right information. Perhaps it is linked to the fact that human beings are more open to unusual things than to what is normal. All those who work with spreading the news, journalists and others, have here a great responsibility. This is why I would suggest that different Medjugorje-Centers in the world should try to attract or to form journalists who are sufficiently formed and who have a sufficient knowledge of the job. It seems to me that the spreading of the faith and of the Messages is at least as important if not more important than the spreading of other news, a work that is usually done by very qualified specialists.
I would like to mention once again the Message of March 25th 1994. It says: "I wish, dear children, that all of you who have felt the perfume of holiness through the Messages that I give you, carry that into the world which hungers for God and his love." It says "all of you". Gospa speaks about all, and means all those who can receive Messages and who have recognized therein their responsibility. All are not charged with a public work, but all are public. And many people around us will observe us with an examining eye, to see whether Medjugorje is something they should have to do with themselves. Thus all the more should we make our own the idea of being an instrument and allow the hand that guides the instrument to be visible. A tool should not deform the sight of the hand. The same is valid for the spirituality of Medjugorje. We are also responsible for the purity of the spirituality of Medjugorje. God speaks today through the apparitions and Messages in a modern, actual way, to our world which is full of dangers for humanity, full of difficulties which seem unsolvable within the Church, and with profound oppositions between peoples. Gospa speaks about the "Salvation of the world" which is necessary and intended by God. This is not an apocalypse. This is a call for a new beginning, a renewal of the world. With the sense of a spirituality of renewal and not of the restoration of old times we should try to distinguish and not confuse Medjugorje with other cases of apparitions. All of us who work with the public have the responsibility to take care so that the authentic spirituality of Medjugorje may continue to develop and that the Messages themselves may be put in the lime light, and not general desires which we often confuse with Medjugorje. Now when the apparitions are still continuing to take place, it doesn't make much sense to try to make the link between the content of the Messages and the general theology of salvation of the Church. Gospa has chosen this place to say what she is saying. She could have done it in another way. She has chosen Medjugorje as it is. We have to take it seriously.
This Message expresses that for a new age and for a new Church, God wants a renewed people. I am convinced that Medjugorje is not just a cosmetical correction of the Church or of the world in difficulties. The Messages say often that every person is called to the fulness of life in God. The Church will have a new face and a new figure. We are called to contribute to that and to think about and change the way we are living our job and its ways, traditions and laws. We should discover again the dignity of those who receive the news and out of respect and love for them, we should transmit true news, that whish can help them develop as human beings and can allow them to come closer to God. We should spread news that awakens and quenches the hunger for God and his love. Where can journalists develop who are conscious of such a responsibility, if not there where one can breath the fragrant perfume of holiness?
HOW TO PREPARE PILGRIMS FOR A PILGRIMAGE TO MEDJUGORJE
I am very honored to be with you today and I greet you under the mantle of Our Mother's love and I speak as one of you, as a leader, as a friend and as someone who. like yourselves, desires to live Our Lady's messages and to help others to do the same. I have been coming to Me|ugorje since October of 1983, and have been there fifty-five times during the twelve years. When I came the first time, I never expected to return. But God had another plan. I should have suspected something because my first visit was a surprise, a gift from the Lord, and a response to His call.
I first heard about Me|ugorje from Fr. John Bertolucci who had come to Me|ugorje in late 1982 and early 1983 to make the first documentary on the events being reported in the little, unkown village, between the hills. I believed from the beginning. Why wouldn't Our Lady appear in our day? I grew up in the era after Fatima, and always believed in Our Lady's apparitions and her messages, even though I never studied them or delved into them. I just believed.
Following Fr. John's visit, Fr. Micheal Scanlan, President of the University where I was working, came to Me|ugorje and I asked him to pray for me and to ask the visionaries to pray for me, specifically in the major sin areas of my life. That though, I knew, came from God, because I had never used those words before, "the major sins areas of my life," and I neve had heard them spoken by anyone. When he returned, he gave me a response which he believed was from the Lord, and that word began to change my life.
Some weeks later, as I worked at my desk on a fund raising project, I heard, "You should go to Me|ugorje, soon." I though someone had come into my office and, as I loooked up from my desk, I said "Soon?" There was no one in the room. My secretary had heard me say "Soon?" and stepped into the room to see if I had called her. Later she told me that my face was as white as the wall behind me. I was in a state of shock because the voice was so real. It was not in mind, but there was no one in the room!
That was June, and in October I was in Me|ugorje. Every penny of the trip came to me our of the blue. I didn't ask anyone for money and had no way of knowing that people knew I needed $1500 for the trip. But, by the day I left, I had received $2020. I had an excellent opportunity on that first trip to learn much about the events and the visionaries because I was with Fr. Joe Pelletier who was interviewing them for the book which he subsequently wrote on Me|ugorje. I sensed on that first visit that something was going to change in my life. I didn't know wha, but something was going to happen.
Upon my return, I put the $500 left over from the trip into a savings account because it was given to me for the trip and I didn't think I should use if for anything else. That was in October and in February I received a call from a person whom I didn't know except for a few telephone conversations. He told me that during their evening Rosary, he and his wife both had the thought that they should send me some money toward my next trip to Me|ugorje. What trip? I hadn't any planned. He simply said that I should think about it because I was supposed to go again.
It wasn't long before several people asked me to take them to Me|ugorje and my first pilgrimage group was formed. That was in May of 1984. Again, with the money the couple sent and what was in the bank, I had enough for the trip. There were five of us, all women. We came, believed and returned and when I saw the impact of Me|ugorje in their lives, I was convinced that I should bring others to Me|ugorje to experience Our Lady's presence and intercession. There were graces here that brought about changes in people's lives.
Being the director of Journeys Business Card, a travel program at the University where I worked, it seemed matural that I would plan a pilgrimage to Me|ugorje. We couldn't call them "pilgrimages" in those days because of Church regulations, and so I called them "journeys, and opportunity to come and experience Me|ugorje for themselves." However, before my next group pilgrimage materialized, I returned in May of 1985 with the couple who had sent me the money for the second trip. In July of 1985, I brought my first pilgrimage group. There were 188 of us. We had to stay in Neum, along the sea coast because there wasn't a place for such a large number closer to Me|ugorje. Each day, we left the hotel early in the morning and returned late at night. The drive took over an hour, and most days we were having dinner at midnight. There were no rest rooms or restaurants in Me|ugorje at that time. We brought a lunch from the hotel each day. That was a true pilgrimage. There were many natural penances. We had many opportunities to do penance and to offer many inconveniences to the Lord. But, I must say, it was one of the best pilgrimages I have ever led. The people were great, and God ws not to be outdone in generosity.
That trip began a series of pilgrimages which bring us to this day and the reason why I am standing here before you. I am probably one of the pioneer pilgrimage leaders and soon became, in the United States, the unofficial "official" source of information in the United States. Because a person offered me his telephone credit card to pay for phone calls to Me|ugorje, I was able to call often and "check out" the many rumors that constantly float around the US. His funding continued until the beginning of this year when his financial situation changed and he no longer pays my Me|ugorje phone bill. So, I can't call as often as I would like to.
Early on im my bringing people to Me|ugorje, I realized that I have a very serious responsibility towards the people in my groups. That responsibility begins even before we gather at the airport to begin the trip. Besides sending people the list of what to bring and what not to bring, and allaying their fears about coming to a Socialist country, I realized that there was a need for spiritual preparation. And this was actually more important that any physical preparation they could make. Over the years, I developed some key points which I share with the participants group by way of letters, because my groups are usually from all over the country and we can't get together before the trip. Our first meeting is usually at the airport.
I have been asked to share some of these things with you today. I don't propose that what I am going to say is the only way to handle groups or even the best way, but the ideas have been tested and used successfully for many years.
As leaders, we have the responsibility to guide and direct the people so that they can have the best possible, spiritual experience on the pilgrimage. As someone said yesterday, have be sheperds. To do so, I learned the need to "hang loose." Being from the US where we come from a very technological society, we like to have things organized and know ahead of time exactly what is going to happen. Well, I learned that doesn't usually happen on pilgrimages to Me|ugorje, or any place else, for that matter. Travel to other countries always involve cultural differences and we have to allow for them. In coming to Me|ugorje, we are coming to a country that culturally sees life differently from the way we do. Also, in the early days, because of government restrictions, and because of the Bishop's restrictions, there were many things that it was not possible for the priests and sisters in Me|ugorje to do. We had to learn not to try to "organize" Medjugorje, even in our minds, because that could be a great distraction to the work God wanted to do in us on the pilgrimage. I learned this first, from my own experience on the first three trips I made here, and it was solidified more and more on each pilgrimage. I realized my purpose in coming to Me|ugorje was not to change things according to my thoughts or way of doing things, but to enter in and to experience God's grace through Our Lady's presence. I always share that with my groups, because I have learned that many Americans have those kind of thoughts, and they can really just become great distractions.
There are many examples I could give you to illustrate this point, but let me shre just one that made a deep impression on me. One Easter Saturday evening we were packed shoulder to shoulder in the church and, at that time there were no side doors and there wasn't very much oxygen or circulation of air. The center aisle was as full of people as were the other aisles, and I wondered how the priest was going to bring the Pascal Candle into the church as the Liturgy calls for. All of a sudden, the lights went out, and I heard Fr. Tomislav's voice coming from the back of the Church. It wasn't long before he was in the middle of the center aisle and soon he was in the Sanctuary. I had no idea how he and the others managed to part the crowd and move up the aisle. It reminded me of God's parting the Red Sea for the Israelites to pass through! The next day, I said to him, "That must have been difficult last night, coming up the center aisle through the crowd." He looked at me and said, "What crowd?" I knew then that we saw things very differently and that I could never second guess what I saw happening. You know, in the US there wouldn't have been one person allowed in the center aisle. It would have to be completely clear for the priests and the procession. Not so, in Me|ugorje!
And so, to "hang loose" became very important from the first moment of our journey. Many times, the airline schedule didn't work out as originally planned, and we had to make adjustments even before we got to Me|ugorje. Sometimes we had long waits in the airports along the way. There were often unexpected things happening. We never knew if we could check in the group as a whole or if each person had to check in individually. By learning to "hang loose" we freed ourselves to be open to God's grace and the impulses of the Holy Spirit. No expectations, disappointments, only surprises from the Holy Spirit. So, from my first letter to the people, I stressed this need. I asked them to pray for the grace to "hang loose" and to pray for all the people who would be on the trip with us. I fould that made a big difference in the compatibility and acceptance of each other in the group. When you pray for someone, you somehow experience them in a different way.
I also stress the importance of "hanging loose" throughout our time in the village. After people started to come in greater numbers, and people began returning for a second and third visit, I realized even more how important it was to help the people to see each trip as a new experience and not to come with the expectation that this trip would be just like so and so's trip or a previous trip they themselves had made. No two days are ever the same in Me|ugorje and no two trips are ever the same. There are different opportunities, different people to interact with and different moments of grace. We have to be flexible with our schedule and make changes on a moment's notice when we heard something was going to happen, like the Prayer group meeting on the mountain or one of the priests was going to speak in the church that afternoon.
This concept leads into the next dimension of our preparation and that is that a pilgrimage is a journey, a spiritual journey into the unkown with many uncertainties. The trip that we are on is just part of the lifelong journey that we are on to the Lord. The days we are together are a concentrated time during which we are away from our daily duties and distractions and we have the opportunity to walk more closely with Jesus and Mary.
It is a time to receive the special graces available in Me|ugorje, especially the grace to examine our lives and to make a good confession. It is a time to receive the mercy of the Lord Jesus and a time to give mercy to others.
People always ask, "How do we give mercy to others?" My response is very simple: "By being aware of the others in the group and their needs, by being ontime, by not criticizing or speaking unkindly about others on the trip, by not monopolizing table conversation, and so on."
A journey is a golden opportunity to see ourselves as God sees us and to make some changes in our lives--if we take advantage of the many moments of grace the Lord provides. He can use everyone and everything to speak to us, if we are open to listening to Him.
God has a plan for each of us on the trip and many people do not know how to hear God speaking to them. Sometimes people come so burdened with prayer requests and petitions that they don't take time for themselves. This can also be used by Satan to block out God's grace that He wants to give to the person. So, the very first day, I ask people to lay their prayer petitions, other cares and concerns, their burdens and requests at the foot of the Cross, at Mary's feet, and ask her to pray for them and to give them to Jesus. I also ask each person to agree to pray each day for each other's intentions. That way, we can all be free of the burden of these requests and free to listen to the Lord, knowing that Our Mother has them in her care.
Each day, after breakfast, I present what I call "A Word For the Day." The first morning, I tell my group that God has a word for them, on their journey, a little special gift, and they should begin to seek Him for that word. I believe no one comes on pilgrimage to Me|ugorje on their own. Each person is called by the Lord who wants to bless them in some way. It may come during the time in Me|ugorje, on the way home, or even after they get home, it will become clear. It doesn't have to be something earth shattering, but just a tender touch of the Lord's love. It may be a realization that something has to change in their life, or in a relationship, or in the family. It could be a call to deeper conversion, or an experience of God's love through another pilgrim. But, I believe that God has a plan on the pilgrimage and He wants to grace each person in some special way. Each evening at dinner we share our day and the people are built up by hearing each other's testimonies. They can ask questions and I can clear up any misunderstanding they may have.
I also caution the pilgrims that they are not in Me|ugorje to meet the needs of every other pilgrim they meet or even to minister to others at the detriment of their own pilgrimage. This is a problem to some people who think they have to take on the cares, concerns and problems of everyone they meet. This becomes a distraction and a way of avoiding their listening to the Lord. Yes, they have to be kind and helpful, but it should not totally absorb them so that they miss out on the gift God has for them.
The second morning, I suggest they look at their lives and their relationships, their commitments and see if there is anything standing in the way of their grwoing in holiness or in receiving the gift from the Lord. Often, the Mass readings for the day give a perfect theme for that day. For instance today reading says: "Oh Lord, inlight a light that may guide me and cast my darkness away." On the third day, I stress the need to go to confession. In my experience, I have found that there is a special grace available in Me|ugorje and that is the grace to make a very good confession. Many people have testified that even though they just went to confession before they came on the trip, they were able to unburden a sin or a problem that they had buried many years before in their subconscious and it was always there and a stumbling block to their growing in holiness or ridding themselves of a sinful habit they really didn't like. And so on, for each day of the week, I seek a word from the Lord and share it with the group. Often the season of the Church year has an influence on the spiritual plan for our time in Me|ugorje. I try to be open to the Holy Spirit and let Him lead me in what I plan for the people. But I believe God does have a plan for each group.
The people often have many questions and I try to answer them in the best way I can. They come with false information or ideas about Me|ugorje, the visionaries and so on. It is important to give them an opportunity to ask questions and give them correct information. Usually, on the bus from Split or Dubrovnik, I give an update on the visionaries, the messages and so on.
During our time here, I encourage my group to take time for themselves, to be alone with Mary and Jesus. To go off by themselves to a quiet place and sit before the Lord in the posture, "Here I am, I come to do your will." I believe it is important, even for married couples to go apart from each other to spend time alone in prayer. Because of the availability of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, I encourage them to spend time before the Blessed Sacrament, too, to just sit there--without speaking--and gaze on the Lord, to let long radiance into their heart. If they need rest, I encourage them to take time to rest, especially on the first two days we are in Me|ugorje. I preach the Gospel of Common Sense. God gave us common sense, He expects us to use it, and He blesses us when we do.
I have found that God hardly ever acts the same way twice. He treats us individually and uniquely. Sometimes He speaks to a person while we are making the Stations of the Cross going up Kri`evac, or while we are silently climbing the Apparition Hill, or waiting outside the Church for the evening prayer to begin. I always ask my groups to climb in silence, to spend time alone in silence at the top of the mountains, and to return down the hills in silence. The penance of not speaking to one another provides God a good opportunity to reveal situations or things that He wants to correct or change in our lives, or an opportunity for us to experience the tender touch of His presence and love. I encourage silence for two reasons--first physical and second, to walk with Our Lady and ponder. More than once, pilgrims have told me that during the Stations of the Cross someone came to their mind that they knew they had never forgiven for some event in the past. That thought is a moment of grace for them to forgive the person or to be reconciled with that person, at least before God. It is not always possible to go to the person to seek or to give forgiveness, but they can go before the Lord and do so.
I encourage the pilgrims to take advantage of all the opportunities available to them; to go to the Church to listen to the various priests speaking in the afternoon, to visit the visionaries and to pray with them. I try to help them see everything in perspective, to give them the right attitude towards things, even to the shops and restaurants. Use them but don't let them absorb you. When we visit the visionaries, I explain they are not theologians. We are visiting them to hear them tell us the most important messages and to pray with them. They are not "gods", just instruments in Our Lady's hands. Seeing the visionaries, or the sun dancing, or having their rosaries change color are not the most important reason for their being on pilgrimage. God can and does use all these things to grace us, but they should not be the focal point of our visit. The evening Rosaries, Mass and prayers after Mass are important, I believe, to their experience in Me|ugorje. Even though the Mass is in another language, I encourage my groups to come to Church and participate. The time of the homily is an excellent opportunity for their personal prayer time. I encourage them to use it to their advantage. I also suggest in my letter before the trip that they borrow a Missalette from their Church because it helps to have the Mass prayers in English during the Croatian Mass. As I said before, it is also important that we, as leaders, set the example and participate ourselves. If we have come to Me|ugorje with a second agenda, we should consider what we are doing and perhaps not do it. All too often I have had people complain that they never see the leader in Church or at the Rosaries. A good shepard is present with his flock!
As you know, many people experience great peace while they are in Me|ugorje and some even fear returning home because they know they are going back into the same situations they left. A dear friend of mine used to say, "When you are on pilgrimage or at a conference, everything is "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit." But when you go home, it is "As it was in the beginning in now and ever shall be..." It doesn't have to be that way. I caution my groups on the way Satan would like to rob them of their peace. It is true; the situations back home haven't changed, but the people have. As a result of their pilgrimage, they now have different tools to deal with the problems. On the way home, they can almost count on some delay at an airport that may cause them anxiety. This is just a trick of Satan, and we have to deliberately not let these things bother us. Satan soon learns that he doesn't have an audience with us and goes elsewhere.
On the last day, usually as we are leaving Me|ugorje--after our Rosary, I tell them that in reality, the true pilgrimage, the true journey, begins when we leave Me|ugorje and return to our daily lives. Then, we have the challenge to live Our Lady's messages in the best way we can, given our families and situations. I try to caution people not take things so literally that thea bring havoc into their family life by the changes they want to make when they return. A better approach is to go slowly, begin yourself and invite others to pray with you, or to fast with you, but please don't impose things on them. It won't last if you do this. Lead and guide by example. Give God a chance to work in your life and bring about your ongoing conversion. the thing which will cause others to change is the change they see in us. When we are more loving, don't loose our patience so quickly, go out of our way to help someone, then they begin to see that our lives are more peaceful and much richer and they want it also. See how they love one another. When they begin to ask us questions, that is the perfect opportunity to share Our Lady's messages and our experiences on pilgrimage. Words without changes in our lives do not have a positive effect on others, especially our families.
After we are home, I send a letter to the group, summarizing our trip, encouraging them to live Our Lady's messages, to follow through with the graces they have received and to make whatever changes they have been led to consider. I also caution them to be patient with God, to begin in small ways to live the messages, and to be more loving with their families and in the work place. They will fail, as we all do, but each day we must begin again. God doesn't look for success, He looks for effort. And He gives us the grace to begin again, and again, and again. I include in my letter an issue of Our MMM--giving people an opportunity to receive them monthly messages.
Over these years, I also have learned that since we Americans come from a "do oriented society," many people, after their experience in Me|ugorje, do not recognize the call to deeper conversion, and think they are being called to start a Center, a Newsletter or a travel group. I caution people to stop and listen, to take root before they begin "doing" anything. Rather, I encourage them to allow God and Our Lady to continue their work in them, to let the change mature. When they are "seasoned" and their changes have taken root and have become a part of their daily life, then, if they still feel the call to do something, they should explore it. Many such beginnings have come and gone because people acted too quickly and the proper spiritual foundation was not laid.
I am sure that all of you, as leaders, have had many experiences that you could share with us, and those of you who lead pilgrimage groups have excellent programs. My point in sharing with you today is not to try to get you to adopt my ways of doing things, but rather to stress the responsibility we, as leaders, have to assist our people in their walk with Our Lord and Our Lady. The example, the balance and the peace in our own lives speaks volumes to the people in our groups. And so, I encourage you to pray a lot, to seek guidance for your group and to share what Our Lord gives you.
1. R. Schnackenburg, Neutestamentliche Teologie. Der Stand der Forschung, Munchen, 1965, str. 12.
2. W. Kasper, Einfuhrung in den Glauben, Meinz, 3 1973, str. 10.
3. Citirano prema; J. Ratzingeru (izd.), Die Rrage nach Gott. Quastionees disputatae 56, Herder, 1973, str. 5.
4. H. U. von Balthasar, Klarstellungen, Herder Taschenbucherei 393, Friburg, 1971, str. 70.
5. Usp. L. Scheffczyk, Grunddlagen von Erscheinungen und Prophezeiungen, u: Fatimakongress in Augsburg 1981. Ein Bericht zusammengestellt von P. Luis Kondor SVD, Druckerei: Grofica Amondina - Torres Novas - Portugal, 1982, str. 16-40, 17.
6. T. J. Šagi-Buniæ, Vrijeme suodgovornosti 1, Zagreb, 1981, str. 137.
7. L. Scheffcyk, nav. dj., 19.
8. K. Rahner, Visionen und Prophezeiungen, Questiones disputatae 4, Frieiburg, 1958, 26.
9. Usp. R. Brajèiæ. Što se danas zbiva oko Marije?, O@ 5 (1976), 402-420, str. 405 sl.
10. K. Rahner, nav. dj., str. 9.
11. K. Rahner, Visione und Prophezeiungen, str. 43.
12. K. Rahner, nav., dj., str. 43 sl., posebice bilješke 43; usp. takoðer A. Kusiæ, Parapsihologija u svjetlu znanosti i telologije (II), CuS 3 (1982), 220-231, str 228 sl.
13. K. Rahner, nav. dj., str. 46.
14. K. Rahner, nav. dj., str. 74.
15. Usp. Isto, str. 74, posebice bilješka 96.
16. L. Scheffczyk, nav. dj., str. 27.
17. R. Schnackenburg, Die Johannesbreifen, HThK zNT XIII/3, Freiburg 1970, 219 sl.
18. H. U. v. Balthasar, Vorerwagungen, str. 330.
19. Marialis cultus, br. 28.
20. Usp. M. Schmauss, Mariologie (Kath. Dogmatik V), Munchen, 1955, str. 248; O. Semmelroth, Maria; u Handbush teologischer Grundbefriffe II, Munchen, 1963, str. 120; B. Duda, Marija i božanstko promaknuæe èovjeka, BS 1 (1974), str. 221.
21. K. Lehman - A. Raffelt (izd.), Rechenschaft des Glaubens, K. Rahner - Lesebuch, Freiburg / Zurich, 1979, str. 309 sl.
22. T. J. Šagi Buniæ, Vrijeme suodgovornosti 1, Zagreb, 1981, str. 317.
23. Usp. B. Duda, navl mjl, str. 231.
24. L. Scheffczyk, nav. dj., str. 35.
25. L. Scheffczyk, nav. dj., str. 36.
26. Isto, str. 37.
27. Isto, str. 38; usp. B. Duda, nav. dj., str. 231.
28. R. Brajèiæ, Što se danas zbiva oko Marije?, O@ 5 (1976), str. 405 sl.
