Children of Medjugorje 2006

Children of Medjugorje
www.childrenofmedjugorje.com
pray@childrenofmedjugorje.com


President: Arnold Ochs



Vice-President: Sister Emmanuel



Advisors:

Archbishop Frane Franic



Archbishop D. Peter Chung

Bishop Nicholas D'Antonio, O.F.M.

Bishop Michael D. Pfeifer, O.M.I.

Bishop Donald Montrose

Fr. Daniel Ange

Ralph Martin



January 10, 2007



Dear Children of Medjugorje

Praised be Jesus and Mary!



1 – On January 2nd, Mirjana received her monthly apparition. At the end, she shared this message with us:



"Dear children, in this holy time full of God's graces, and His love which sends me to you, I implore you not to have a heart of stone. May fasting and prayer be your weapon for drawing closer to Jesus, my Son, and coming to know Him. Follow me and my luminous example. I will help you. I am with you. Thank you!"



Then, Mirjana added, "The expression on Our Lady's face throughout the apparition was one of pain and sorrow. She spoke to me of things I cannot yet speak of. She blessed us and any religious articles. The expression on her face was especially serious while emphasizing the priestly blessing; and she asked us to pray and fast for priests."



In this first report of 2007 I warmly wish all of you a very holy and blessed New Year! May 2007 be a time when we will console our Blessed Mother by working on our hearts and allowing them to be filled with love!

I cannot hide from you that we were deeply shocked when we heard about Our Lady's expression of sadness. It came right after Christmas and New Year celebrations, a normally joy-filled, happy time. Our Lady might have serious reasons to show sorrow and sadness! Imagine a very tender heart dying to communicate love to another heart and instead he finds a stone in front of him! A stone does not absorb God's grace. It is waterproof. What is the fruit of prayer and fasting? To a heart of stone who decides to change, prayer and fasting can allow God to do what He loves to do and what He is the only one able to do. "He is the one who turns the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water." (Psalm 114:8) Let's not be mistaken. Our Lady's sadness is not a condemnation of our stony hearts but rather an exhortation full of hope! She is asking us to melt before our Creator.



2 – Most of you know and even practice our beautiful tradition to receive a saint companion for the year (see PS3). On January 1st, we asked the Holy Spirit to reveal the Saint who chose to help Children of Medjugorje for 2007. You should have heard the cry of awe that came out of our mouths when we read the little leaflet with the name of our Saint for the year. "Our Lady, the Queen of Peace herself, has chosen us!" Here is the phrase that goes with it: "I need you. You are important to me!" (Message received by Jakov in July 1981). Our job is to Pray for the plan of Our Lady in Medjugorje.



Our second thought was that if we receive the Queen of Peace as our special pal, it means that we will all need her in a special way this year! Let us not leave her jobless; let us remember how powerful she is before God with her humility! Isn't she the one chosen to crush the head of the serpent? Let us all decide to read one of her messages each day and put it into practice, as she begs us to do. Then her divine peace, her 'Shalom', will fill up all the emptiness that is in our hearts, due to materialism and sins! Let us take her hand more firmly than ever so that she may lead us, asking ourselves at each step of our day, Mother, what would YOU do in this situation of mine?



3 – On January 2nd, as Our Lady was insisting so seriously on the blessing of a priest, a Canadian, Monique F. had a powerful reason to say "amen"! Today, Monique is 57. This is part of her story:



I left the Catholic Church when I was 13 years old. It was during the 'Silent Revolution' in the province of Quebec, Canada. I was very much involved in an East Indian path over a 22 year period. It was one of the most austere spiritualities in India. I had no intention of returning to the Catholic Church. Apart from knowing that my uncle was a priest I had never thought of the Catholic Church in the 22 years of my absence.



My husband and I were living on Vancouver Island at the time. My father's brother, Fr. Gerard Faivre, was a retired White Father Missionary of Africa. In 1985 we were expecting his visit but it needed some preparation. One of his requests was that I contact the pastor of the local Catholic parish so that he could say his daily mass while visiting us. I felt somewhat distraught inside and I asked my husband, Jeremy, to show me where the church was in the town. Jeremy drew a map for me and I discovered that we lived only 3 miles from the church. In seven years, I never noticed it. On the following Monday morning I drove my husband to work with my two sons in the backseat and went directly to the church to meet the local priest with my request.



As I was drove onto the church grounds, I could not help but notice a huge sign that read COME BACK HOME. When I read those words, I felt an arrow enter my heart; I felt a real deep disturbance in my soul. I knocked on the parish door and was greeted by the secretary. I asked for the priest but was informed that he was not available as it was his day off. I had no clue that priests had a day off and so I insisted that I needed to see the parish priest. She was quite annoyed with me and reaffirmed that he was not available.



I again insisted that at least she could let him know that I was there and then he could decide whether or not to see me. At that moment the door of his office opened. It was apparent that the parish priest had been listening to the conversation. His name was Fr. Ralph. He invited me in and asked who I was and where I lived. Right away I asked him for a key to the door of the Church for my uncle so that he could celebrate Mass. I saw this priest as just another person.



I had imparted my message and wanted to get back to my day when he asked me why he had never seen me in church. I said to him, 'Church!' 'Do you think that I have time to come to church with two little ones?' He replied, 'Oh, I'm sorry I didn't realize that you have a different God from the one I have.' I was taken aback by his remark and a little insulted. I said in turn, 'I don't have a different God from yours.' Then he said, 'Well, as we don't have a different God, then may I give you a blessing?' I agreed. I was holding my son's hands at the time. The priest blessed each one of us with holy water, making the sign of the cross on our foreheads. I felt a burning sensation on my forehead after his blessing. He then asked if he could come and visit our family. I said, "Sure, whenever you would like!" He took out his notebook and we agreed upon Thursday night.



That Thursday night he visited our family. Fr. Ralph invited the children and I to come to his daily mass at the Poor Clare Monastery. "There is a small group of sisters, it is very quiet," he said. So I promised to come and have a look. I went the next day at 8 a.m. with my 2 boys, I was nervous. I walked in and started to cry. I cried for one solid month! I went everyday because I felt secure and unnoticed; and I knew that the Lord was there. Jeremy, my husband, couldn't take that I was betraying my spiritual life, he was very angry. We were elders in our ashram. We were strict vegetarians. We meditated 2 and half hours a day and did spiritual readings. I told him I did not understand why I was going to church everyday, but I could not help it. That year, we were often fighting and arguing. However, the Holy Spirit was so strong in me that I felt God's protection within me. So I had the strength to resist my friend's pleas that I return to the ashram. I started to pray. Jeremy watched me change, even the pictures of our Gurus and Masters were changed into pictures of Our Lady. Within a year and half Jeremy received a special grace of conversion and joined the Catholic Church too!' This happened over 20 years ago and to this day every time I enter a Catholic church and bless myself with holy water in the sign of the Cross, I feel the same burning on my forehead where the priest had first blessed me."



This is the journey of a simple blessing in a soul.



Dearest Gospa, no matter what the spirit of the world teaches us, it is you we want to follow! Please be patient with us, take our hardened hearts. We want to start anew with you!





Sr. Emmanuel +





PS 1 - Children of Medjugorje is getting renewed in the States! Here is the contact for the new office of Children of Medjugorje. Please cancel the previous contact.

New phone number: 877-647-6335 or 877-Mir-Medj

New E-mail address: pray@childrenofmedjugorje.com

New mailing address: P.O. Box 18430, Denver, CO 80218-0430, USA



Our website www.childrenofmedjugorje.com, offering the translation of these reports in several languages, is under renovation. It will be up again February 28th, please excuse the dust!



PS 2 - Mission in India! Sr. Emmanuel and 2 assistants (Chrissey and Kristin) are leaving for India for a 10-day mission. We particularly entrust this mission to you. The Indian people are very spiritual, eager to know what Heaven says in order to live in God's grace. So this mission can bear much fruit. Your prayers are welcome! Thank you!



PS 3 - A SAINT FOR THE YEAR

You will find a list of more than 100 saints and heavenly friends on our website, www.childrenofmedjugorje.com. Cut out each name, fold and place all the papers in a basket. Put the basket on the family altar. Then, with friends and family, prayer groups or parishes, after calling for the presence of the Holy Spirit, ask each participant to pick a paper at random. You can also pick extra papers for the persons you carry in your heart but who are not present physically. The tradition goes that it is the Saint who chooses you, not the other way around. The Saint wishes to spend a year closer to you, to talk to you, to help you. It is up to us then to learn more about the life, the writings of the Saint. As we pray the Saint everyday, he or she will help us from the Heavens, in all the little aspects of our lives. He or she is also praying for us.

With this little piece of paper, you are actually receiving a particular prayer mission.

If you need to find more information on the Saint who has chosen you, go to your favorite Christian bookstore.