Growth and modernization have come to Medjugorje as a result of the millions of pilgrims who have visited the village since apparitions of the Virgin Mary were first reported there in 1981. PHOTO COURTESY: Modzzak
Ivan Dragicevic was relieved the morning of June 25, 1981. Relieved that the Virgin Mary, whom he was convinced he had seen atop a hill the day before, had not come to his room during the night. Relieved that he and the five other teenagers that had witnessed the apparition had not been arrested by the police or the Yugoslav secret service. Relieved that the people of the village of Medjugorje, now part of the nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, did not dismiss their claims of a vision out of hand.
Instead, some of the villagers convinced four of the young people, including Dragicevic, to return to the hill in mid-afternoon.
“Never in my life will I forget that day,” Dragicevic recently told an audience at St. Petronille Catholic Church in Glen Ellyn. “Our Lady was already waiting for us. She was holding the baby Jesus in her arms.”
Dragicevic’s initial impulse was to do what he had done the day before when he first saw Mary.
“I wanted to run away,” he said, “But there was something stronger than me.”
He said Mary motioned for them to come closer, then spoke to them for the first time, offering words of reassurance.
“I will protect you,” Mary told them, according to Dragicevic. “I will comfort you. I will guide you.”
Dragicevic said Mary has appeared to him every day since and her primary message has been one of peace.
“Our Mother has come and presented herself as the Queen of Peace,” he said. “And who can know better than a mother, whose son has sent her, how necessary peace is to this tired world, how necessary peace is to today’s tired families, to today’s young people, and to today’s church. Our Mother comes to us and wishes to help us. She wishes to point out what is not good and she wishes to show us what is good.”
Dragicevic said Mary has told him over the years that these are the most important things:
• Peace
• Conversion
• Returning to God
• Placing God in the first place in our lives
• Prayer of the heart
• Penance and fasting
• Staying faithful
• Love
• Forgiveness
• The Eucharist
• The message of hope
“She brings us hope,” Dragicevic said. “Hope in faith. Hope in the church… She wishes to heal our pain. She wishes to bind our wounds… She wants to lift up the sinful hearts. She comes to us because she is concerned about our salvation.”
That salvation comes only through Jesus Christ, Dragicevic noted.
“The greatest crisis is a crisis of faith in God,” he said. “People have been distant from God. They’ve been distant from prayer.”
Dragicevic said Mary wants people to pray the Rosary and spend three hours a day in prayer. That sounds like a lot, but Dragicevic said prayer can include attending Mass, adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, reading the Bible, doing good works, and even conversations with family.
“Today’s families are spiritually sick,” he said. “There can’t be physical healing… if there is not spiritual healing first.”
He said prayer should not be mechanical, but a conversation with Jesus.
“Our Lady does not give us more than we are able to do,” he noted. “Today, we often say that we don’t have time… You have to make a decision to pray. We have to desire to pray… When somebody loves something, they always find time for it.”
One topic that Dragicevic did not discuss was the secrets that he and the other visionaries claim Mary has given them. There are supposed to be 10 secrets, of which Dragicevic has received nine. Three of the visionaries claim to have received all 10 secrets. For them, daily apparitions have stopped, though they report Mary still appears to them at least once a year and will for the remainder of their lives. One of these is Mirjana Dragicevic-Soldo, who will speak at The Totally Yours Prayer & Conversion New Evangelization Conference April 25-26 at the DuPage Expo center in St. Charles.
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