Medjugorje: The Message (1989)

When I was in high-school I remember hearing about a small Yugoslavian village called Medjugorje where some kids my age were having visions of Mary. Soon there were videos being shown and scientific studies that showed it wasn't a hoax. Then there were pilgrims and more stories and it all created a great sense of something magical, heavenly actually occurring in our lifetime.

Sure, I had heard of Fatima and Lourdes and other Marian apparitions, but the Mother of Jesus appearing in my lifetime? Amazing.

So, here it is some twenty years later and I'm going to Mass at my mother's church in North Carolina and meet a guy named Wayne Weible who has been kind enough to donate some of his books on Medjugorje to the small church library. It turns out Wayne and his wife are parishioners there and are very nice people.

After heading back to my Mom's cabin and as I was packing my bags to head back home my Mom gives me a copy of Wayne's book. I cracked it open two days ago and found myself unable to put the book down.

The book is about Wayne's personal journey to discover the Marian apparitions in Medjugorje, his calling and its impact on his life. A Lutheran, Wayne watched a video tape on the goings on in Yugoslavia and was immediately called to investigate and tell the story of Mary's visions and messages there. Over the years the Lord leads Wayne to Medjugorje, then in a Communist country where atheism was the official religion and where religious items were confiscated at the border, where he investigated, met and was touched by the Marian apparitions. Over the years and subsequent returns to the small village Wayne became more and more involved with the key players there such as the local priests and even the visionaries themselves.

Wayne's story is compelling on it's own. But, what makes Wayne's book extraordinary are all of the stories that he relays from people he had met and were impacted by the events going on over there. His small, intimate story evolves into a worldwide spiritual tsunami that washes over the entire world with a reinvigorated faith in Jesus. Amazingly, by the end of the book you can actually comprehend the massive and uplifting impact this event and the messages relayed by the visionaries has effected Wayne, the people of the village and, eventually, the entire world.

During the reading of this book I felt myself changed as well.

I've always felt that the truth of Christ and the flame of the Holy Spirit is in us all and that, given the quiet and the focus, we would naturally be drawn to it. And, on some deep spiritual level, that truth is recognizable to us. We know it when we hear it or see it. We just know.

That book touched that inner truth within me. Mary's messages, in their simplistic beauty and divine effectiveness, make complete sense to me. I felt like my eyes had somehow been opened to some great, holy mystery to find the message so simple that I had looked passed it all this time.

Through the book Mary repeatedly puts our focus on her Son, Jesus and talks about peace, about inner peace and peace between brothers and sisters. As I read the book I realized that there is a big difference between contentment and peace. I believe we spend most of our time confusing the two, believing we are at peace when we are merely content.

By the end of this book I feel I had found an inner peace that I had not felt in a very long time. A peace that is deeper and real. A peace that derives from the truth.

It inspired me to check the web for the latest events on Medjugorje. It amazes me that the visions have continued for over 25 years now. Never has Marian visions lasted this long. There are videos online that can be seen here and various other websites such as www.medjugorje.org and www.medjugorje.net.

Interviews with the visionaries also put it all into a greater perspective. As one visionary says, "Never ask for what you want. Mary (and Jesus) knows this. Always pray for unbelievers." This is a great example of the simplistic, but important message. Jesus has already told us he will provide for our needs. So praying for that is redundant. But if all of the unbelievers become believers, well then there would be true and lasting peace.

This turns our prayers from being selfish to being selfless, which is the essence of following Jesus' example.

In the end, reading Medjugorje: The Message has filled a gap that had been in my spiritual life for quite some time. It's a great, inspiring and potentially life-altering read.

The Devil's Final Battle (2002)

The Third Secret of Fatima. Did we get the whole story?

That's the question The Devil's Final Battle by Father Paul Kramer tries to ask. The Fatima story is an amazing one. In 1917, just before the unleashing of World War I, three children in Portugal see a vision of Mary. They are told to tell the people to honor the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Tens of thousands hear of the children's visions and go to Portugal, seeing the miracle of the dancing sun.

The church responds favorably to the visions and messages. They institute the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Two of the children die very young. The third, their cousin Lucy, becomes a nun and continues to get visits from the Virgin Mary on occasion. Mary gives her insight into future events. About upcoming chastisements and apostasy in the church. She is given secrets to divulge to the church hierarchy. Secrets about the need to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart in order to avoid a great chastisement. She tells them that God is unhappy with us and He will use Russia as a force of chastisement and the outcome will include the annihilation of entire nations.

The church does not consecrate Russia. The Russian revolution ensues. The official belief is in Russia now atheism. Russia takes over countries in the coming decades, changing borders, erasing nations.

And still the Church does nothing.

The Third Secret, the one that deals with attacks on the dogma of the Catholic Church and apostasy within its ranks are held, under orders of Mary, until 1960, when she wants them read to all the people.

But the Church does nothing.

Jacinta Marto (age 7), Lucias Santos (10)
and Francisco Marto (9) in Portugal, 1917.

Soon after 1960, Vatican II is instituted. The Church is impacted by new liberalism. Liberalism previous Popes had warned about. Apostasy creeps into the church structure. As foretold in Revelations, the dragon sweeps down a third of the stars from the sky... i.e., Satan effects a third of the priests in the church. Sister Lucy herself warned that the Devil will attach clergy specifically because corrupting a clergy's soul has the effect of corruption hundreds more.

Later, in 1981 Pope John Paul II "releases" the contents of Third Secret, explaining the symbolism and describes the slain "bishop in white" laying dead among the faithful as the attempted assassination on his life. And with that statement, the mysteries of the Third Secret are closed.

Or are they?

What about the contents related to the dogma that Sister Lucy started and revealed early on, but withheld the rest of the contents until later. She apparently delivered two items to the Church, a letter in a sealed envelope approximately 25 lines long that seems to be the words from Mary herself. And she also gave them a notebook of her visions, the including visions specific to the Third Secret that is four pages, about 60 or so lines, describing the vision, but not the Marian message behind it.

Thousands watch the Miracle of the Sun
at Fatima

It is concluded, in The Devil's Final Battle, that the Vatican released the information related to the four page visionary description, but has never released the Marian words itself, because none of the Vatican released information has to do with the attack on the dogma of the Catholic Church. And because numerous priests, bishops and cardinals who had seen the single page within the once-sealed envelope mentioned its contents and none of their comments are in line with an assassination attempt on a Pope.

The book is an intriguing read and meticulously researched. It offers numerous well documented and disturbing attempts, specifically by European Masons and later Communists, to infiltrate and corrupt the Catholic Church from within.

It was written before Pope John Paul II's death and is very hard on a guy named Cardinal Ratzinger... who happens now to be Pope Benedict XVI. It contends that Mary came to those three children to keep us from our own weaknesses, to avoid liberal reinterpretation of the faith and which would eventually move up the Vatican food chain until major church changes would be put into place in contradiction to the Church's dogma.

When one thinks that the Church's action could have prevented the atheistic Marxist revolution in Russia... How would the world be different if Russia was, in 1917, instead converted to Catholicism?

How would the world be different if in the 1960s Vatican II had not been instituted?

What would the Church be like now if it had, as requested by Mary, read aloud the contents all of the secrets of Fatima, owning up to its own human frailty instead of protecting itself from its flaws, thereby leading to the current state of diminished vocations and the priest sex-abuse scandals.

How much better of a place would that world be like to live in?

The Devil's Final Battle is a thoroughly investigated book, but, to be honest, I don't have the knowledge to know if the assumptions put forth in the book are accurate or simply just a conspiracy theorist's interpretation. Taking it at face value, however, the book does make numerous valid and prayer-provoking points.

Above all it makes me wonder how things would have been different if the Church would have listened to the Mother of God through the voice of those three little children.