The Associate Press reports “Americans are more divided than ever, gridlocked over social issues, race, gender and the economy. It’s no longer just Republican vs. Democrat, or liberal vs. conservative. It’s the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent, rural vs. urban, white men against the world. Climate doubters clash with believers. Bathrooms have become battlefields, borders are battle lines. Sex and race, faith and ethnicity … the melting pot seems to be boiling over.”
Is it just a sign of the changing times? Is it The End? Or could it be there’s an invisible war raging all around us that is trying to turn our already hot-water situation into a boiling mess and perhaps even a divine plan to stop it?
With the growing divide, it is important to note that throughout history, Satan has often been referred to as the “Diablo” or “The divider.”
The devil is one who does everything in his power to separate us (dia-bolos in Greek meaning ‘he who divides’) from the vertical link uniting true believers with God, and which alone saves them from solitude and death.
At Medjugorje Our Lady warns us that “Satan is angry.”
Visionary Mirjana, in her book, My Heart Will Triumph, talks about the real existence of Satan or the “Devil.” She writes,
“Our Lady also continually warned the parish that the devil was angry, saying in one of the weekly messages, ‘these days Satan wants to frustrate my plans.’ Likewise, she once told me that Jesus struggles for each of us, but the devil tries to interfere.”
“Whenever I come to you, my Son comes with me, but so does Satan,” the Blessed Mother once informed them.
“The devil prowls around us and sets traps. He tries to divide and confuse us so that we will detest ourselves and abandon ourselves to him. An invisible war rages all around us, but Our Lady is here to help us win.” There are those who attempt, even in the name of religion, to vilipend it.
Perhaps his attacks on Medjugorje should come as no surprise, in that the parish was soon to attract millions, including tens of thousands of priests (inspiring many more to become priests), build what may be the busiest set of confessionals (there are dozens) in the Catholic world (yes, even more than the Vatican), and establish an annual “youth day” in which 14 archbishops and bishops and 700 hundred priests concelebrate (as just a few examples). More than 60,000 young people from 97 countries took part in the Medjugorje youth festival held recently August 2-6, 2019.
Catholic News Service reports, more than 40,000 apparitions have been claimed over 38 years at Medjugorje, where six teenagers reported first seeing an apparition of Mary, June 24, 1981, while herding sheep.
Some of the visionaries say Mary still appears to them daily with messages at the town, which was largely untouched by the 1992 to 1995 civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In May 2018, Pope Francis named Archbishop Hoser as apostolic visitor, after a papal commission recommended that Medjugorje, which attracts up to 3 million visitors annually, be designated a pontifical shrine with Vatican oversight.
A ban on pilgrimages organized by Catholic dioceses and parishes was lifted under papal decree May 12, making possible the five-day festival.
Mirjana, in her book unequivocally speaks about the truth of Satan:
“Although I rarely speak about the devil, I can tell you with certainty that he exists,” writes the visionary. “I saw him once. All I will say is that it was the most terrifying experience of my life, but love drove him away. In that moment, I learned that nothing in this world compares to his ugliness and his hatred for God — but unlike God’s power, his is limited.”
Comforting words in a time that looks quite chaotic. In an age where nearly one-third of all US News is reported by one agency (The Associate Press) and distributed across the globe, is it really any wonder that most Americans see only half the story.
The pope’s apostolic visitor to Medjugorje, Archbishop Henryk Hoser, who presided over the festival Aug. 3, said the hilltop shrine had become “a place of meeting and knowing,” adding that “the secret of Medjugorje” was “an invisible reality, but intense and very present.”
Archbishop Jose Rodriguez Carballo, secretary of the Congregation for Institutions of Consecrated Life, said in an Aug. 2 address that the young pilgrims were “in deep unity” with the pope and grateful to him for “opening up the possibility of coming to pray here.”
Radio Medjugorje reported Aug. 5 that parts of the festival had been watched via the internet by more than 2.8 million people worldwide.
Speaking at an Aug. 2 press conference, Archbishop Hoser said the pope had “opened a great door to enter Medjugorje” with his May decree, adding that he was “personally and intimately convinced” the Marian center offered “a model for new evangelization.”
He said Medjugorje should be seen as “a living, dynamic reality,” with over 700 vocations so far recorded there, adding that the center’s importance was summed up “by the people coming here, praying here, being transformed here and returning to their countries with the Gospel spirit they breathed here.”
(c)Mary TV/Anthony Zubac
Looking even more intently behind the veil of modern day pessimism and one-sided new reporting, we can begin to see what Archbishop Saint Fulton Sheen prophesied in 1952 is actually transpiring today in Medjugorje:
“Within three decades the definition of the Assumption will cure the pessimism and despair of the modern world. Freud, who did so much to develop this pessimism, took as his motto; “If I cannot move the Gods on high, I shall set all hell in an uproar.” That uproar which he created will now be stilled by a Lady as powerful as an “army drawn up in battle array.” The age of the “body beautiful” will now become the age of the Assumption.
“In Mary there is a triple transition. In the Annunciation we pass from the holiness of the Old Testament to the holiness of Christ. At Pentecost we pass from the holiness of the historical Christ to the holiness of the Mystical Christ or His Body, which is the Church. Mary here received the Spirit for a second time. The first overshadowing was to give birth to the Head of the Church: this second overshadowing is to give birth to His Body as she is in the midst of the Apostles abiding in prayer. The third transition is the Assumption, as she becomes the first human person to realize the historical destiny of the faithful as members of Christ’s Mystical Body, beyond time, beyond death, and beyond judgment.
“Mary is always in the vanguard of humanity. She is compared to Wisdom, presiding at creation; she is announced as the woman who will conquer Satan, as the Virgin who will conceive. She becomes the first person since the Fall to have a unique and unrepeatable kind of union with God; she mothers the infant Christ in Bethlehem; she mothers the Mystical Christ at Jerusalem; and now, by her Assumption, she goes ahead like her Son to prepare a place for us. She participates in the glory of her Son, reigns with Him, presides at His Side over the destinies of the Church in time, and intercedes for us, to Him, as He, in His turn, intercedes to the Heavenly Father.
“Adam came before Eve chronologically. The new Adam, Christ, comes after the New Eve, Mary, chronologically, although existentially He preceded her as the Creator a creature. By stressing for the moment only the time element, Mary always seems to be the advent of what is in store for man. She anticipates Christ for nine months, as she bears Heaven within her; she anticipates His Passion at Cana and His Church at Pentecost. Now, in the last great doctrine of the Assumption, she anticipates Heavenly glory, and the definition comes at a time when men think of it least.
“One wonders if this could not be the last of the great truths of Mary to be defined by the Church. Anything else might seem to be an anticlimax after she is declared to be in Heaven, body and soul. But actually there is one other truth left to be defined, and that is that she is the Mediatrix, under her Son, of all graces. As St. Paul speaks of the Ascension of Our Lord as the prelude to His intercession for us, so we fittingly, should speak of the Assumption of Our Lady as a prelude to her intercession for us. First, the place, Heaven; then the function, intercession. The nature of her role is not to call her Son’s attention to some need, in an emergency unnoticed by Him, nor is it to “win” a difficult consent. Rather it is to unite herself to His compassionate Mercy and give a human voice to His Infinite Love. The main ministry of Mary is to incline men’s’ hearts to obedience to the will of her Divine Son. Her last recorded words at Cana are still her words in the Assumption; ‘Whatsoever He shall say to you, that do ye.'” (Fulton J Sheen, The World’s First Love, Mary, Mother of God. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. New York. 1952)
Archbishop Sheen clearly saw that Mary, in her Assumption, is the key to our age of despair. In Mary, humanity has an example of Christ’s resurrection hope. In her Assumption, life again has meaning.
Our Lady has come to cure the pessimism of the modern age!
Our Lady’s Messages from Medjugorje serve as an important reminder, there is more than one side at work in this war of worlds. We must be vigilant to seek out the truth beyond the news that is hand-fed to us. And, while it may appear there is a great gap and division between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, those who are willing to fight alongside of Our Lady know whose right hand she is seated at and He has an unmatched record in bringing the 1 back into the 99. On this truth, let no heart be divided, In the End her Immaculate Heart Will Triumph! Christ, her Son, has already won the victory.
