Medjugorje Prayer Book. Wayne Weible

      TWO

      Who Is This Woman?

       “I am the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

       “. . . I have come because there are many true believers here. I wish to be with you to convert and to reconcile the whole world.”

       “. . . Peace, Peace, Peace! Be reconciled! Only Peace. Make your peace with God among yourselves. For that, it is necessary to believe, to pray, to fast, and to go to confession.”

      (Messages given June 26, 1981)

      Who is this woman of apparitions who comes to teach us through the apparitions in Medjugorje, and why is she the one sent to us in these times? To answer this we need to know a little more about her. There are three critical passages of Scripture that summarize who Mary is, her role in the world today, and her acceptance of that role. I begin with her acceptance of the first part of her mission, that of being the human mother, the human tabernacle for God to come into the world.

      We look in the New Testament to see where Mary’s role as messenger for these times originates. In the account in the Gospel of Luke, God sends the Angel Gabriel to greet the teenage Mary. He begins with these words: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” The salutation is as much title as it is greeting. The powerful archangel asks her to be the mother of the Messiah. She will conceive a child, he tells her, the promised Savior of the world. God Himself will come as a weak, defenseless human baby.

      After Mary asks, “How can this be, since I know not a man,” the Angel Gabriel tells her not to be afraid, that the Spirit of God will come upon her. She accepts with this humble reply: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:26–38).

      Thus, Mary is, above all, the human mother of Jesus Christ. In later scriptural passages, she becomes the mother given to us as a spiritual mother, the second part of her mission, directly from the cross by her Son.

      Can you imagine Jesus suffering from more than five thousand inflicted wounds, cruelly nailed to a cross to die an excruciating death of suffocation, pushing up on torn, bloodied feet, to say in agonizing short breaths: “Woman, behold thy son!” and to John, the beloved disciple, standing in for us: “Son, behold thy mother!” (John 19:25–27)? Can we really see this as a Jewish son telling a friend to take care of his mom now that he will be gone?

      I find it difficult to look at this dramatic horror as simply an act by a loving son to make sure that his mother would be taken care of domestically after his death. It is Jesus, the Man-God, giving His mother the second part of her mission: to lead us to Him, to His gift of salvation through death on the cross.

      This is Mary, the chosen mother of Christ and the appointed spiritual mother, who is fulfilling her mission through the apparitions in Medjugorje. She has done this in past apparitions as well, notably in La Salette (France, 1846), Lourdes (France, 1858), and primarily in Fatima (Portugal, 1917). If you do not know about past apparitions of the Blessed Virgin—including her appearance to Bernadette at Rue du Bac, Paris, France, 1830, and as early as 1531 in Guadalupe, Mexico—you may want to learn about them to fully understand the magnitude of the Medjugorje apparitions. Historical understanding will help you see the unifying scope of the great gift of grace God has given us through all of Mary’s apparitions.

      Next, we skip ahead to Mary’s mission and how it plays out in these modern times—and, as many, including myself, believe, the end times of this era of unsettled peace. Mary is described in the Book of Revelation as “. . . a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (12:1). This is the woman who appears in Medjugorje. According to the visionaries’ descriptions, she has a crown of twelve stars on her head and, each time she appears, she comes in a brilliance of light—literally clothed with the sun. She makes it abundantly clear in her numerous messages that she comes now to prepare us for these final times before her Son brings His peace that passes all understanding to earth. She even stated to the visionaries in an early message that “. . . These will be my last apparitions on earth.” Mary tells us this blunt truth, but mercifully adds, “. . . because it will no longer be necessary.”

      The reason that future apparitions will no longer be necessary is that the mission God gave her will be complete. Shortly after the end of her appearances to the last visionary, the special future-events messages, or secrets, as we call them, will begin to occur. At their conclusion, the peace of Jesus Christ will reign on earth again, and the children of God will worship Him as they did in ancient times.

      This is the same “Gospa” (the literal translation for “Our Lady” in the Croatian language she uses to speak to her visionaries in Medjugorje) quoted in the Scriptures above. She is fulfilling Holy Scripture, giving us affirming messages of learning and hope, and she does so with a motherly, hands-on approach.

      As if to confirm her mission in these modern times, Our Lady began her conversation to the visionaries on June 25, 1981, with these words: “Praise be Jesus!” She still greets the visionaries this way with each apparition. We can know almost certainly that heaven sends the entity that appears to the visionaries in Medjugorje, because Satan cannot utter these words! She follows them with this statement from her first conversation with the visionaries: “I am the Blessed Virgin Mary, and I have come to tell you that God exists and that He loves you!”

      Thus, Mary gives immediate confirmation in Medjugorje as to who she is and who sent her. When the visionaries asked her why she was appearing in their village, she replied, “I have come because there are many true believers here. I wish to be with you to convert and to reconcile the whole world.” This message, along with the greeting, gives full context to her mission for these times.

      I hope that you now have a clearer idea of who this lady of apparitions is and why she is the one sent from heaven as messenger for these times. Possibly from the Scripture passages and her first messages, you can see her overall intent in desiring to bring all of us, her children, to her Son through a stronger prayer life. There’s a lot more “evidence” through her words to the visionaries, and we’ll cover it in the ensuing pages.

      Let me point out one more overriding trait of Mary that I have discovered in my years of involvement in the Medjugorje apparitions. Statues, paintings, icons, and other images consistently portray the Blessed Virgin Mary as somber, pious, unsmiling, solemn, and grave. From the beginning of my experiences with her, she is seen and heard as a breathtakingly beautiful, graciously informal, and, above all, intimate Mary. I am left with this feeling in prayer and thought. Intimacy is the same feeling described by the visionaries after each encounter with Our Lady. This is her way of reassuring us that she is indeed the spiritual mother of the world.

      We begin our experience of the power of prayer through the Medjugorje apparitions with Mary’s basic message to us, made clear from the first day:

       Pray! Pray! Pray!

      THREE

      Her Teachings in the

      “School of Prayer”

       “Dear children, I have chosen this parish in a special way, and I wish to lead it. I am guarding it in love and I want everyone to be mine. Thank you for having responded tonight. I wish you always to be with me and my Son in ever greater numbers. I shall give a message to you every Thursday.”

      (Message given March 1, 1984)

      As if to underline the urgency of our times, Mary has been giving teaching messages meant for each one of us through the visionaries, daily, weekly, and monthly. During the first thirty-three months, the Blessed Mother taught the visionaries, the villagers, and the children of the world in her special Medjugorje “School of Prayer.”

      At first, the “Teacher” came daily in a brilliance of three flashes of strange light, radiating joy and singular beauty, gaining our attention by interceding for