Most books I review I consider special, and have many of my
underlines in them (or my weird comments in the margins). They teach me or make me happy or speak of
things in a way clearer than I’ve seen before, and so I recommend them. This book is not like those. It has no in-depth looks at Christian
doctrine, it didn’t teach me much, nor did it have (as you might expect) any great
promotion of “messages from God”. This
book is special because as I read it, it made me shed tears of joy.
Having
been to Medjugorje in 1987 and seen Mirjana and the other visionaries there,
this book brought back all the memories of those most special, life-changing
days of my life. This book tells the story
of events in a village of communist Croatia starting in 1981, but in truth,
this book is largely an autobiography of Mirjana Soldo, a most common woman, to
whom the Mother of God chooses to appear --- and tell her about the current
state of the world, and its future.
Mirjana notes that when she and the others saw future events they were
scared, but “if we who know the future don’t let fear darken our lives, then
why should anyone else?” She tells us to
pray, and trust in God. This is a
beautiful book of hope, and a call to prayer and fasting for the world.
Hearing so many scary things about our country these days, we
all need to read the uplifting words of this book to find peace. You don’t have to travel half way around the
world, as I did, to feel the blessings being bestowed in a small village there,
nor to recognize the importance of the events unfolding there.
Read this book to
find hope in YOUR heart. The world needs
this hope.
- - - - - - - - - -
Some of Mirjana’s simple but important words:
Living on Earth, one
is usually attached to earthly things --- which is completely normal --- but
when you come to know heaven, you look at the world in a different way. You understand that life on Earth is only
temporary and death is not an end.
The devil will try to
convince you that following God only leads to suffering, and that living
according to the teachings of Jesus will rob you of your freedom, but, I do not want to give the devil any
importance. He only has as much power as
we give him, and we can only give it to him through our free will.
“You cannot consider
yourself a true believer,” Our Lady said, “if you do not see Jesus Christ in
every person you meet.”
We can only make a
difference with our prayers and example, and only if we have love in our
hearts.
Our Lady does not want
us to go around preaching to others. She
wants us to talk, but with our lives, not our mouths. She asks believers to live as examples of
people who know God’s love.
Regarding the terrible war which raged for years in all of
Yugoslavia, Mirjana notes that Our Lady said to pray: Prayer
had the power to change everything. And
of its impact on herself Mirjana said, this
war was the beginning of one of the most intense inner struggles I’ve ever
experienced: to forgive the seemingly
unforgiveable.
And finally, I very much like these words of Mirjana:
Nothing should prevent us from
seeing Jesus in other people – not differences in race, religion, politics, or
trivial things like the way someone dresses or what they do for a living. Our Lady asks us to see Jesus in everyone. In the homeless man begging for spare
change. In the Muslim and the Serb. In the atheist who doesn’t believe in Jesus
and the Christian who doesn’t understand Him.
In the newborn baby and in the unborn baby. In your priest, in your bishop, and in the
pope. In those who have hurt you and
those you have hurt. In the thief. In the drug addict. In the worst sinner you know. And, perhaps most importantly, in
yourself. See Jesus in everyone.
As human beings, we make all sorts
of excuses to circumvent the commandment of loving our neighbors as we love
ourselves. Forgive but don’t forget, some say.
Or the Croatian proverb, The wolf
changes his fur but never his temperament.
True love, however, has no
conditions.
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