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Eighteen years of grace: The Miraculous Miracle of Medjugorje!

      In this weekend's editorial, we commemorate the eighteenth anniversary of the reported Apparitions at Medjugorje. We say "reported" because they have not yet been fully approved by the Church, but the important aspect of all this is that in eighteen years they have not been disapproved. Satan and his cohorts have tried to discredit Our Lady's work at her special Oasis of Peace, but, as we deduce in today's commentary what her Divine Son Jesus has said to the fact that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. We point out how Medjugorje has withstood the test of time and time is waning down, the sands of this millennium sifting down to the final grains as Our Lady strives to complete the mission she began at Fatima. For this weekend's commentary, Medjugorje is a successful syllogism that makes sense!, click on CATHOLIC PewPOINT.

For an in-depth feature on Medjugorje and why it has impacted so many throughout the world, click on THE STORY OF MEDJUGORJE: 18 YEARS OF GRACE

Medjugorje is a successful syllogism that makes sense!

      Eighteen years ago today the Mother of God chose a remote mountain village to establish the course for the rest of this millennium in preparation for the new millennium. Many call it the Third Millennium, the twenty-first century or the 2000 era, but we like to refer to it as the coming of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart which will usher in the Reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Second Pentecost, the Era of the Eucharistic Presence, the New Advent or the Age of Peace. The reason we say this is because Our Lord and Our Lady have imparted this. Fatima and Medjugorje are bookends to the tumultous, turbulent twentieth century - one that has seen more killed in wars than any other century, one that has sought peace globally but not found it, settling for what Our Lady has referred to time and again as the "false peace." It was peace the Blessed Mother brought when she first spoke to the six Croatian children in a pristine farming valley some thirty miles from Mostar in what was then the Republic of Yugoslavia under the shadow of the hammer and sickle of communism. There on the rocky hillside known as Podrbo Blessed Mary said,

"I have come to tell you God exists, and that peace is necessary for the salvation of the world. In God is found true joy from which true peace flows."

      Note, Our Lady didn't say peace comes from peace treaties or cease-fires, no it comes from and through God. What God began at the Cova in Fatima He is finishing at the Podrbo and on Mt. Krizevac in Medjugorje. Our Lady said to the seers at Fatima, "In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph." We are closer to that time. All the Blessed Mother has imparted is being fulfilled and she has said that when her apparitions cease in her special Oasis of Peace her mission will have been completed. She will not appear anywhere else in the world. She affirmed this in her May 2, 1982 message when she said,

"I have come to call the world to conversion for the last time. After that, I will not appear any more on this earth."

Medjugorje is her last hurrah and ours! This final act began eighteen years ago today where on that hill now known as "Apparition Hill" she appeared to six visionaries who would become as well known as Saint Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes or Francisco. Jacinta and Lucia at Fatima. Their names are household names in Marian circles today: Ivanka Ivankovic who was 15 at the time, Mirjana Dragicevic who was 16, Marija Pavlovic who was 16, Ivan Dragicevic also 16, Vicka Ivankovic the oldest at 17, and the youngest being ten-year old Jakov Colo. Today all are, of course, adults and all are married save for Vicka who still lives in her original home in Medjugorje. Vicka, Ivan and Marija are all receiving daily apparitions and the latter receives the monthly message imparted on the 25th of each month for the world. To read the entire story on Medjugorje, we recommend going to The Medjugorje Story for four installments written last year detailing the spiritual phenomena that has been occurring steadily for an unprecedented eighteen years.

      Though this editor doubted the apparitions at first, once we visited this Oasis of Peace I was converted like never before. This ministry of MIR-A-CALL Center and the communications apostolate of the DAILY CATHOLIC exist because we took seriously her request of August 16, 1984:

"I beg of you...to live my messages and relate them to whomever you meet."

One of the aspects we never took into account were the visionaries themselves. Consider that all but Jakov were in the prime of their teen years. Having two sons who are in that same age bracket presently, it emphasizes all the more the authenticity of the apparitions because what teen-ager wants to be ridiculed, wants to go against what the peers think, will stand strong in their conviction when waffling from one fad to the next? How many teens would value faith over the world no matter what? We would have to say only those who have the faith and believe. The visionaries have been blessed to have seen and to believe. Now they ask us to believe without seeing. Teens, on the whole, don't buy that logic. Consider the pressure brought to bear against the visionaries from authorities in the village from the communist government at the time to the parish priests and even parents, not to mention the village people or the bishop. Even one of the most staunchest backers of the visions and visionaries Father Jozo Zovko the Franciscan priest who was imprisoned and tortured did not believe the visionaries at the outset, but God has a way of getting through our thick skulls. The children knew this, and through all the ordeals and extensive scientific tests in which they were questioned, probed, stuck and constantly harassed, they remained true to God's Holy Will. One would think that after eighteen years if this was a hoax in any way one of the six would have slipped up and admitted such or contradicted one another. But through 6,570 days or 157,680 hours or nine million four hundred sixty thousand and eight hundred minutes all six visionaries have held true to their calling as messengers of Heaven. Now add to that the thousands, possibly millions of conversions that have occurred as a result of the Medjugorje messages and one has to ask: How can this not be supernatural?

      But, as we have documented in these pages for years, there are those who are out to destroy Medjugorje and their argument holds no water - only half-truths and opinions with no proof of a hoax. Who else operates this way? We all know it is the master of lies - the prince of darkness who despises Our Lady, her Oasis of Peace and those who adhere to what God is asking of us. The Yugoslav Episcopal Commission has been reviewing this political-religious "hot potato" issue for well over a decade because of the resentment to the Franciscans that stems back centuries as we've also documented in the DAILY CATHOLIC over the years. The fued between the diocesan priests and the people who so passionately and, at times, radically back the Franciscans is a main reason why Rome has yet to fully approve Medjugorje. It is because peace has not fully come. Our Lady has laid out the blueprint for us, but yet so many want further proof. The Blessed Virgin has been warning us and still we are so slow to respond. They forget her words of her June 24th message in 1983 when she said,

"You cannot imagine what is going to happen nor what the Eternal Father will send to earth. That is why you must be converted! Renounce everything. Do penance."

There are those who are heeding her messages, but many are not. That is the bane of human nature. Yet there have been enough that much of the chastisement has been mitigated because of the faith of many of Mary's little ones. We have often said that there would be fewer conversions if Medjugorje were fully approved because many would go there because it was on the docket, so to speak, whereas the faithful go today and have been going there even during the Balkan conflict over this past decade out of faith. As Jesus says in John 20: 29, "Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed."

      Probably another unsurmountable fact are the fruits of Medjugorje. We can personally attest to this. We also refer to Christ's words in Matthew 7: 17-20, "Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them." Therein lies the authenticity of Medjugorje: the test of time which have produced good fruits. Therefore, Our Lady's Oasis of Peace cannot bear bad fruit. Therefore after eighteen years the tree grows strong. The reason it has is because it is from God and no amount of opposition from the evil one can defeat it. That is the deduction of why Our Lady chose this remote mountain village and why she has been imparting Heaven's will from this Oasis of Peace in a desert of war and hatred. Try as he might, the devil is having a devil of a time destroying Medjugorje because Medjugorje is a syllogism that makes sense!

Michael Cain, editor

      After centuries of turmoil, Medjugorje stands out as a true Oasis of Peace in a land torn by total strife. The Queen of Peace's eighteen year miraculous mission at Medjugorje is unprecedented in the history of Marian apparitions. The four installments below afford all the opportunity to go back to the basics...back to the roots of our faith and understand why God chose this remote mountain village as the hub of peace for an entire world.

Medjugorje's Miraculous Mission

• The Apparitions of Medjugorje: "Prepare the Way of the Lord" part four

• The Apparitions of Medjugorje: The Meaning of the Messages! part three

• The Apparitions of Medjugorje: Preparation for the Apparitions part two

• The Apparitions of Medjugorje: 15 centuries of Catholicism and Conflicts! part one

Too many so-called experts complicate and confuse the simple message of Medjugorje

     In her column this week, Sister Mary Lucy Astuto celebrates the 18th anniversary of the apparitions at Medjugorje and asks why we can't get with the program and understand that all Our Lady has conveyed from her special Oasis of Peace comes straight from the Blessed Trinity. She reinforces the good fruit of Medjugorje and how the finite mind cannot fathom why God would allow His Mother to appear there for eighteen straight years. The answer is simple. Man is thick-headed and time is running short, very, very short. Our Lady's messages are mankind's last hope before satan would devour a humanity that would rather embrace the world, the flesh and the devil instead of the rewards and riches of Heavenly bliss as Mary foretells in her messages from Medjugorje - a special spiritual phenomena that has produced a plethora of good fruits worldwide. For her column this weekend, Medjugorje's 18th Anniversary click on GETTING TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER

MEDJUGORJE'S 18th ANNIVERSARY

      June 25, 1999 marks the 18th Anniversary of Our Blessed Mother’s daily appearances in Medjugorje.

      Imagine! Our Heavenly Mother has been coming every day for the last 18 years to call us, her children, to greater prayer and to conversion. On occasion I meet someone who discounts Our Lady’s appearances there. They cannot believe that Heaven would send her every day for so long a time.

      My answer to that is: “Why not???” Who of us can fathom God or His Works? Who of us can fathom God’s love? Who can fathom a love that is so profound that it would seek relentlessly the saving of those who are on the verge of being lost? What mother, that is a good mother, could stand by doing nothing when she sees a child (or children) in great danger?

      St. Monica prayed constantly and every day for 20 years for the conversion of her son, St. Augustine. Who could justifiably find fault with God for sending Our Lady every day even for 100 years, if that is what it would take?

      Those who say God would not send Our Lady for so long a time, in my opinion, are guilty of great pride. Their judgment confines God, as if they could put Him in a box. God doesn’t behave according to what humans think, but how He would think, He Who is the All-Knowing and All-Good God, Infinitely perfect, Who cannot act contrary to His Love.

      If we were to compare the size of a pencil point to the size of the universe, we would say there could hardly be a comparison. Yet the human mind is like a “pencil point” compared to God’s Intelligence. The human mind is hardly comparable to the Intelligence of God and anyone who thinks they know how God SHOULD behave should be reminded that God’s Intelligence and love is infinitely greater than their own.

      In Scripture God tells us that His Ways are not our ways, nor are His Thoughts, our thoughts. We can take that literally.

      Most people (including priests) are hardly educated in the area of Mystical Theology, a true branch of Theology. Yet so many make judgments as though they were experts in the field.

      How many of us (untrained personages) would presume to tell a brain surgeon how to perform an operation? In like manner, should all of us be careful to presume to condemn Medjugorje based on limited knowledge and training.

      “You shall know a tree by its fruits,” Jesus said. Unless people take an HONEST look at the fruits of Medjugorje and see the thousands of conversions (not possible for satan who would thereby be working against himself), the hundreds of prayer groups and Eucharistic adorations ... all because of their experiences in Medjugorje, could they be in a position to judge wisely.

      Thank you, dear Blessed Mother, for coming for so long to us in that humble village. Please don’t give up on us. It is now evening time. It is getting late. And we need you more than ever.

      And God bless you, dear reader.

Tarzan swings into first, unseating last week's swinger Austin Powers during third week of June for Top Ten Movies

      In the third week of June a legendary swinger "Tarzan" ousted another swinger - "Austin Powers: the Spy who...". Probably a bigger surprise was that the megahit Star Wars' "Episode One - The Phantom Menace" dropped to fourth behind first-run "The General's Daughter" a taut, sleazy who-dunnit touting John Travolta. "Notting Hill" came in fifth followed by "Instinct", then "The Mummy" in 7th, "Entrapment" held down 8th, with The Matrix at 9th, and, even though it was only shown in 283 theatres nationwide, "Tea with Mussolini" stayed in the top ten and could stay there when the film is put into wider distribution next week. The next test will be the heavily anticipated Fourth of July weekend when many blockbusters will be released including the campy Wild, Wild West. For the Top Ten review for the third week of June, click on MOVIES AND MORALS

1.   TARZAN

(Disney)    $34.4 million in one week
      Because of intensely menacing hunting scenes, the U.S. Catholic Conference classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is G -- general audiences. "Tarzan" is Disney's animated tale about an orphaned baby boy raised by jungle gorillas who grows up before encountering his first humans, including a duplicitous hunter intent on capturing his beloved ape family and spunky Jane, who tempts Tarzan to return to civilization. The classic characters of Edgar Rice Burroughs are appealing, the animation splendid and the music tuneful but some action scenes of predatory violence are too intense for younger children.

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2.   AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO...

(New Line)    $31.4 million last week/   $116.1 million in two weeks
      Because of comically intended violence, frequent sexual innuendo, crude references, rude gestures and a few instances of profanity, the U.S. Catholic Conference classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned that some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" is a mindless sequel to the '97 spoof in which the swinging British secret agent (played by Mike Myers) time travels back to the '60s to recover his libido and joins forces with a comely CIA agent (Heather Graham) to again save the world from the wacky machinations of a madman and his miniature clone. Silly shenanigans alternate with gross toilet humor and lame sexual innuendo for a mixed bag of goofy, truly tasteless entertainment.

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3.   THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER

(Paramount)    $22.3 million in one week
      Because of sporadic intense violence including rape, full nudity, videotape of a sadistic sexual encounter, frequent rough language and intermittent profanity, the U.S. Catholic Conference classification is O -- morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. "The General's Daughter" is a lurid military thriller in which an Army criminal investigator (John Travolta) assigned to solve the brutal strangulation of a promiscuous female captain (Leslie Stefanson), is pressured to participate in a cover-up after he unravels a widespread criminal conspiracy of many years standing. Despite sleek visuals and some strong performances, the movie plays like a cynical and at times grotesque potboiler.

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4.   STAR WARS: EPISODE ONE - THE PHANTOM MENACE

(20th Century Fox) -    $18.9 million last week/   $328.1 million in five weeks:
      Because of sci-fi swordfights and battle sequences, the U.S. Catholic Conference classification of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace is A-II - adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG -- parental guidance suggested. "The Phantom Menace" is a disappointing prequel to the "Star Wars" trilogy in which two Jedi knights (played by Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor) intent on saving the planet Naboo from Federation invaders enlist the help of a young boy who will eventually become the evil Darth Vader. By emphasizing fantastical creatures and myriad special effects, writer-director George Lucas loses much of the movie's human dimension and ends up achieving mostly visual spectacle. May 1999

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5.   NOTTING HILL

(Universal)   6.9 million last week/   $79.7. million in four weeks:
     Because of an off-screen sexual encounter, some crude references, occasional profanity and minimal rough language, the U.S. Catholic Conference classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned that some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. "Notting Hill" is a gauzy romantic comedy in which a Hollywood movie star (played by Julia Roberts) and a timid London bookseller (Hugh Grant) fall in love but he finds himself too intimidated by her fame to pursue the relationship. The contrived crowd-pleaser is long on stunning smiles and sugary sentiment but short on realistic romance. May-June 1999.

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6.   INSTINCT

(Disney)   $3.22 million last week/   $27.1 million in three weeks:
     Because of intermittent violence and a few instances of rough language and profanity, the U.S. Catholic Conference classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. In "Instinct", psychiatrist Cuba Gooding, Jr. must uncover why imprisoned American anthropologist Anthony Hopkins chose to abandon civilization for life among Ruwandan gorillas which led to his killing two park rangers a few years later. Balancing out a simplistic script and formula scenes of prison brutality are the steely performances of the two intense actors. June 1999.

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7.   THE MUMMY

(Universal)   $3.2 million last week/    $142 million in seven weeks:
      Because of recurring stylized violence and fleeting partial nudity, the U.S. Catholic Conference classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned that some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. "The Mummy" is a spirited horror adventure set in 1920's Egypt where a treasure hunting Yank (played by Brendan Fraser) is confronted by a revived 3,000 year-old mummy whose evil powers seemingly know no bounds. The lavishly shot action movie is stuffed with spooky special effects and comical moments that downplay horror in favor of rousing, old-fashioned entertainment. May 1999

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8.   ENTRAPMENT

(20th Century Fox)    $1.35 million last week/   $82 million in eight weeks
      Because of a romanticized view of crime, fleeting violence and a few instances of rough language and profanity, the U.S. Catholic Conference classification is A-IV, adults, with reservations. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned that some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. "Entrapment" is a mindless escapist caper in which a wily insurance investigator (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) appears to join forces with the world's craftiest art thief (played by Sean Connery) to nail him red-handed. The glossy fantasy of double-crossing daredevils is sluggishly directed which limits the suspense. April 1999

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9.   THE MATRIX

(Warner Brothers)     $1.3 million last week/   $163.9 million in twelve weeks
      Because of excessive violence and recurring profanity, the U.S. Catholic Conference classification, O -- morally offensive. Motion Picture Association of America rating, R -- restricted The Matrix is a convoluted sci-fi tale in which a tiny band of cyber rebels led by Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne do battle with virtually indestructible humanoid killers from the 22nd centry. The action movie's violence is glorified, glamorized and made to look exciting with a dazzling array of eyepopping special effects. April 1999

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10.   TEA WITH MUSSOLINI

(MGM)    $614,000. last week/   $8.7 million in two weeks
      Because of some threatening situations, sexual references and a few instances of coarse language the U.S. Catholic Conference classification is A-II adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG -- parental guidance suggested. "Tea with Mussolini" is a warmly nostalgic tale in which several art-loving English matrons (played by Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright and Judi Dench) residing in 1930's Florence care for an abandoned boy who returns as a teen to help when they are interned as enemy aliens during World War II. While it shows how the Italian youth lad comes to appreciate English culture what succeeds best is the gently humorous depiction of the women, including their two brassy American pals (Cher and Lily Tomlin) and how they manage to survive the tragic circumstances of wartime Italy. May 1999

Reviews provided through Film & Broadcasting Division of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and figures provided through Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

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The DAILY WORD

"And he who does not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life fosr My sake will find it."

Matthew 10: 38-39

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Click here to go to SECTION TWO and SECTION THREE or click here to return to the graphics front page of this issue.

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June 25-27, 1999 volume 10, no. 123   DAILY CATHOLIC