[Music]
Here, the faith was not free.
We were allowed to go to Holy Mass on Sundays.
And, that was it. That was what we could do.
The rest of religious life was taking place at home.
Our parents taught us to pray.
We prayed Holy Rosary every evening together.
But, they did not talk about the faith, much.
Because, they were afraid.
As kids, we cannot speak about it in school.
If so, they could have problems.
That is why I had never heard about Lourdes, or Fatima.
I didn't know that Our Lady could come here to earth
in such a way.
I thought she is up in Heaven, and we pray.
When Ivanka told me that she thought
Our Lady is up on the hill,
I was kind of rude. I had a rude response.
I told her, "Right. She hasn't got better things to do?"
"And she came to the two of us?"
And I left her there, and I wanted to return to the village.
But, when I got to the first houses,
I felt this call within me.
I had to return back. When I got there,
I saw Ivanka standing at the very same spot.
She told me, "Look now, please."
I saw a woman in a long, greyish gown,
who was holding a baby in her arms.
Everything was really strange.
Because, no one went to the hill.
Especially not a person in a long gown
with a baby in their arms.
At that very moment, I felt all possible emotions
that we are able to feel.
Pride. Beauty. Incomprehension.
Fear.
And, what was the most intense emotion
was the need to flee this place.
I ran back home.
When I got home, I found my grandmother
and I told her, right away:
"Granny, I think I saw Our Lady up on the hill."
She told me "Take the Holy Rosary. Go to your room, and pray."
"Leave Our Lady where she is."
I didn't have the strength to explain everything to Granny.
I just wanted to be alone, in prayer.
That was the only way I had peace.
The following day, I was helping my uncles,
like every day before that.
But, when the time came that I saw Our Lady the day before,
I felt this calling, again.
I told my uncle that I had to go to the hill
because something has been calling me.
When we got there,
nearly half the village was there, already.
Someone came with every visionary.
We saw Our Lady at the very same place.
This time, she was not carrying a baby in her arms.
On that day, 25 June 1981,
was the first day we got to hear her.
She introduced herself.
She told us, "My dear children. Do not be afraid.
I am the Queen of Peace."
That is how our daily apparitions started.
For a short while, we had the apparitions at the hill.
As I said earlier, it was a time of communism.
Shortly afterward, police came, with dogs.
They surrounded the hill.
Everyone there, eventually ended up in prison.
In those first days, Our Lady showed some miracles.
Nearly everyone from the village saw something.
For example, there were two miraculous healings, right away.
Then, the cross on Cross Mountain was disappearing, with
Our Lady appearing on that spot, instead,
dressed in white.
The local people saw this.
I will give you an example what the situation was like.
We, who had been brought up in communism,
had learned how to be silent.
The fewer words you say, the better for you.
So, when the cross was disappearing at Cross Mountain,
everyone was silent. They just looked at it.
One young man was 25 at that time.
He was unable to remain silent, because of the emotions he felt.
He said, "Look! There is no cross! Our Lady is there, instead!"
He was sentenced to prison for six months.
That was the situation at that time.
The word "Mir" was written in the sky.
"Mir" means "Peace."
At that time, Father Jozo was our parish priest.
When the police came to him, to tell him to close the church,
because Holy Mass was now forbidden,
Father Jozo said, "I saw with my own eyes,
that the word Mir is written on the sky.
I cannot close the church.
Do with me as you will."
He ended up in prison.
But the local people had seen all of that.
Knowing us as children,
they trusted us, and they helped us.
We had an apparition every evening at a different spot.
I had daily apparitions like that, until Christmas, 1982.
That is when Our Lady entrusted me with the 10th Secret.
She told me I would no longer have daily apparitions.
She told me it would be once a year.
Every 18th of March, as long as I live.
She also said I would have extraordinary apparitions.
Those apparitions started on 2nd August, 1987.
Those are ongoing until this day.
I don't know how long I will have them.
Those apparitions are also a prayer for unbelievers.
Our Lady never calls them that.
Because if you say about someone, "You're an unbeliever,"
you judged and condemned him.
Our Lady never does that.
She says "the ones that have not yet discovered the love of God."
She is asking our help.
When she says, "our help,"
she does not mean the six of us, the six visionaries.
She means the help of everyone who feels she is their mother.
She says we can change unbelievers,
with our prayers, and by our example.
She asks that we put prayers for them as a priority in our daily prayers.
Most of the ugly things which happen in this world,
comes from them.
That is why Our Lady says,
"When you pray for them, you pray for yourself, and your future."
In addition to prayers, she asks for our example.
She doesn't want us to preach.
She asks us to speak with our own lives,
so unbelievers can witness in us, God, and the love of God.
I kindly request you consider this In the most serious way.
If you could see the tears of Our Lady just once,
the tears she cries for unbelievers,
I am sure you would pray with all your heart.
She says this is the time of great decision.
She says it is up to us, who say we are children of God,
that there is a great responsibility upon us.
When she asks prayers for unbelievers,
she would like us to try that in her way.
That would be, the way I understood it:
First, feel love for them.
Feel they are our brothers and sisters
who were not as lucky as we were,
to feel the love of God.
When we feel that way, we will be able to pray for them.
Never judge, never condemn, never criticize.
Simply love them.
Pray for them.
And, give your own example.
Our example tells a lot.
We all have unbelievers,
in our house, somewhere nearby, at our workplace,
and that unbeliever looks at us, and at our life.
We must ask ourselves whether the love of God,
is what they see in us.
I will give you a nice example.
One evening, when I went to Holy Mass in Medjugorje,
our church was crowded.
I am unable to stand up very long.
I saw a small space on one of the pews.
I sat down.
Our brothers and sisters from Italy were there.
When I sat down,
they began to yell and complain.
You know how temperamental our brothers and sisters
from Italy are.
They all said, "Get up! This is our bench!"
"We got here, first!"
So many words in just one moment.
I got up, and I was silent.
One lady approached me.
She recognized me.
She told them that I am one of the visionaries.
They gave me the whole bench just for myself.
[Laughter]
The reason I tell you this:
What do you think would happen
if I was an unbeliever?
And I was entering the church for the first time?
And inside, are the ones who claim they know the love of God?
And they behaved toward me in such a way?
Would I ever enter the church again?
And whose responsibility would that be?
That is something that Our Lady tries to say.
We can all learn to speak nicely.
But, Our Lady wants our lives to speak, instead.
That with our example, it can be shown
that we are trying to live the love of God.
In these apparitions of Medjugorje,
the most important message of Our Lady
is the Holy Mass.
But, not solely on Sundays.
When we were children,
at the beginning of the apparitions,
she said on one occasion,
"If you have to choose
between an apparition or Holy Mass,
you should choose Holy Mass.
Always.
Because during Holy Mass,
my Son is present, with you."
Throughout all the years of apparitions of Our Lady,
Our Lady never said,
"Pray and I will give."
She always says,
"Pray, so I can pray, and ask my Son for you."
Jesus is always in the first place.
Many pilgrims, when they come to Medjugorje,
think that we visionaries are important.
That it is enough to say something to us,
that God listens to us more than to others,
but that thinking is wrong.
Because, for Our Lady as a mother,
there are no privileged ones.
For her, we are all her dear children.
She chose us,
to speak the messages to us.
But, she chose every single one of you.
That is something she said in one of the January 2nd messages.
She said, "Dear children,
I have invited you.
Open your hearts.
Let me in, so that I can
make you my apostles."
So, in the eyes of our Holy Mother,
we have the same importance.
There are none whom she listens to more, or less.
I learned, at the very beginning of the apparitions,
You heard when I said "my uncle, my grandmother."
Because I am the only one of us six visionaries
who was not born here, nor grew up here.
My parents are from here.
But, when they married, they moved to Sarajevo.
So, I was born and raised there.
I always visited here, because the rest of my family was here.
But when the apparitions began,
because the communists wanted to stop everything,
I was returned by force to Sarajevo.
Here, where you are now, in this zone,
is populated by Croatians.
Croatians are Catholic.
Here, the communist police were 'Croatian,'
and, when they took us for interrogations,
they yelled, they swore at us,
but nothing else.
But, in Sarajevo,
the situation was completely different.
In Sarajevo, there were true communists.
And, mainly Muslims.
Every single day, they came to my house.
They would destroy everything around.
And, they would take me with them.
I was just 15, then.
I never knew if I would ever return home.
I thought Our Lady would help me.
But, when I would have an apparition,
she told me the same things as told to the other visionaries.
Nothing regarding me, or my situation.
I don't need to tell you how alone and abandoned I felt.
The five of them were here, together,
in the village that loves and supports them.
But in Sarajevo, I had only my parents and my brother.
Everyone else was forced to distance themselves from us.
But, through prayer,
I understood,
for God, for Our Lady,
there are no privileged ones.
If you are having a hard time,
take Rosary, and pray.
God will not leave you alone.
When I felt that in my heart,
I was able to deal with
everything that hurt me,
with far more strength.
Also, now, in Medjugorje,
many times, people say,
"I had a healing,
I got to know the love of God."
I have never met many of those people, in my life.
So, I was not the one who prayed for them.
They had open hearts.
They asked for Mother's help.
She asked her Son, for them.
I am telling you this, so you may understand
when you need Our Lady, our Mother,
you do not need visionaries.
The only thing you need is an open heart.
Our Lady says,
"Open your heart, and I will be with you."
So, it is up to us,
if we want our Mother with us, to be at our side.
Our Lady asked for prayer in families.
She says nothing unites family as well as praying together.
She says parents have a great responsibility to their children.
Because, they are the ones who should put the rules of faith
in their children.
They can, if they pray together,
and if they go to Holy Mass.
We cannot talk to children about the importance of Holy Mass,
unless they see that we put Holy Mass In first priority.
We cannot speak about the importance of prayer,
if they do not see us praying.
That is why Our Lady says the parents have great responsibility.
Because children know what they see in their homes and families.
And, they see a lot,
way more than we think.
I always like to give this nice example from my family:
When my older daughter, Marija, was just two,
I had not talked to her about the apparitions.
I thought, at age two, she is unable to comprehend anything.
One day, when she was playing with a friend, in her room,
I heard her friend say, "My mother drives a car."
Since I don't drive, Marija was silent a moment.
Then she said, "Big deal, to drive a car.
My mother talks to Our Lady every single day."
[Laughter]
Without me saying anything, she understood.
That is why it is important for children to see
that for their mother and father, God is the first priority.
Our Lady asks us to fast.
Bread and water, Fridays and Wednesdays.
She does not ask people who are ill, to fast.
She said that, through prayer, they will understand
other things they can do.
If you never fasted two days a week,
if you never prayed the Rosary every day,
I would suggest you begin
the way Our Lady showed us to begin.
First thing she asked:
Seven Our Fathers, Hail Mary, Glory Be, and Creed.
Then, she asked for the first part of the Rosary.
And, that we fast on Fridays.
Also, it is not necessary that you begin with bread and water.
You can begin by not eating meat on Fridays.
Catholics never ate meat on Fridays.
That can be a beginning.
After a while, Our Lady asked for the second part of the Rosary.
And then third (part of Rosary),
and that we fast on Wednesdays, as well.
She was going step by step.
That is an example for us.
What is important is to go with her.
When you fall,
she will give you a hand to get up.
It is important to start
walking with her.
I would recommend you all,
present here with me,
don't begin fasting here.
Once you return home,
then begin.
I don't want any of you to become dizzy,
especially now.
Who will take you to the hospital?
[Laughter]