Medjugorje
Visionaries Call Out For Far More Respect For The Priests
If we lose our respect for the priests, we
will lose our respect for the Church and God as well, says Mirjana Dragičević-Soldo,who
was surprised to see how Christians in America look at their clergy. It should
be remembered that the priests represent Jesus Christ on earth, adds her fellow
seer Jakov Čolo.
MEDJUGORJE
– To the detriment of all of the Church too many of the faithful have lost the
respect for the priests, and the time has come for Christians to restore the
clergy to the dignity and honor it deserves, Medjugorje visionaries
Jakov Čolo and Mirjana Dragičević-Soldo this morning
pointed out in a lecture to a group of mainly American pilgrims.
Mirjana
and Jakov, gifted with daily apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary for 18
months and a little over 18 years respectively, thereby seek to counteract the
modern trend of seeing the priests as nothing but ordinary men. This attitude is
harmful and therefore should be changed, they agreed.
“The
priests do not need our criticism and judgment, but our love and our prayers. If
we lose respect for the priests, we will end up losing our respect for the
Church and for God,” said Mirjana.
“I
was surprised to see the way the priests are looked at in America. It was very
different from what I am used to. If a priest enters a house here, everybody
will stand up for the priest. Nobody will start talking before the priest talks.
We know that through this priest, Jesus Christ is in our home. It is very
important not to criticize your priests,” Mirjana added.
“The
priests represent Jesus Christ on earth,” Jakov added for his part.
Especially
Mirjana stressed that Christians of today are bearers of a great responsibility.
Assigned with the mission to pray for unbelievers she has traditionally been the
Medjugorje seer to speak of present time with the greatest sense of serious
urgency. Now she took the time to clarify how
co-operation with Heaven must take place.
“Our
Lady says thank you in all of her messages since you were the ones who responded
to her call. We are all connected in the way that it is all Our Lady’s plan.
Open your heart and ask Our Lady what she wants from you. You can see God’s
help and God’s plan in everything,” Mirjana said.
“We
have to pray to see God’s plan and what is wanted from us. Our Lady said so
many times, ‘Pray, and you will have all the answers,’ ” Jakov agreed.
“This
time is a time of decision. We who call ourselves God’s
children have great responsibility. We are able to change the
unbelievers, but only through our prayer and our example. Our Lady told me that
all evils such as divorce and abortion come from unbelievers. When you pray for
them, you also pray for yourself and your own future,” Mirjana said.
Jakov,
assigned to pray for the sick, gave his own perspective on this by mentioning
that other kinds of healing are more important than the physical ones.
“Most
people pray for physical healing, but what really matters is the healing of
hearts, since most people’s illness are in the heart. Our hearts should not
look on our crosses in life as God’s punishment, but as God’s help to us,”
he said before going on to talk about his 20 minutes visit to Heaven when he was
only 10 years old.
“Heaven
is not what we can see with our eyes. Heaven is what we can feel in our hearts.
I believe that we can all experience that here on earth. If God comes first in
our lives, we can feel Heaven even here. Our Lady has come to prepare us for
Heaven, and every day we have to ask ourselves if we are ready for that,”
Jakov said before Mirjana added:
“We
have to be ready to stand before God every second.”