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Commentary from our correspondent in Bosnia:
Healings Hint Father Slavko’s Intercession May Be Powerful
The Feast of all Franciscan saints brings news of two people seeming to be cured due to heavenly prayers from the late Medjugorje Franciscan.
By Jakob Marschner in Bosnia-Hercegovina
@copyright spiritdaily.com
MEDJUGORJE - Only a week after the death of Father Slavko Barbarić of Medjugorje, two cases may indicate that the Virgin Mary was serious when her latest Medjugorje message encouraged the faithful to pray for his intercession from Heaven.
Since the message came out Medjugorje has been waiting for the first parishioner to claim that Father Slavko’s heavenly prayers had obtained otherwise unexpected graces to flow. This report came on the Feast of all Franciscan saints, when it was known that a local teenage girl suffering from the eating disorder of anorexia had started to eat soon after her mother had asked for Father Slavko’s intercession.
While great caution must be taken and the healing must show to be permanent before any conclusion can be made, the story does not stand alone. From the USA a 63-years old Medjugorje pilgrim gives the impression that Father Slavko’s prayers in Heaven might be stronger than those of 50,000 thankful souls recently released from Purgatory.
This pilgrim says that ten days prior to the death of Father Slavko he started a daily devotion to a prayer given in the 13th century by Jesus to St. Gertrude the Great who was promised that the prayer ("Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen”) would release 100 souls from Purgatory every time it was prayed.
Having said this prayer 50 times a day for ten days the Medjugorje pilgrim had gathered 50,000 freed souls from Purgatory praying for a cure to a knee disease of his - yet it was not until he asked the same favor from the late Father Slavko that his knee turned better from one moment to the next. Scheduled for a surgery by the middle of December he gives this account of what happened:
“I prayed for Father Slavko’s intercession, and also prayed a Rosary before I went to walk into the kitchen and I was walking around the house without my cane. Suddenly, I realized I was walking without the cane and I thought that it was strange that I could do so,” says the American whose name has been withheld for the sakes of being cautious about a health improvement that has not proved to be permanent yet.
“I took the cane to church and said to a friend that I felt like I could walk into the church without my cane. I left the cane in the car and walked up the church steps with no problem. I have not been able to kneel for months in church. Even in September at Medjugorje I was not able to not kneel,” he says.
“I knelt during the Consecration and maintained that position until the people started to receive Holy Communion. My knees began to hurt a little but I was trying to sort out reality. I thought maybe the hurt was normal hurt for a 63 year old man. Anyway I was able to walk to Holy Communion without pain. I am not 100% pain free but I am also thinking that maybe my knee muscles are atrophied from not using them much during these past months”.
The Medjugorje pilgrim further tells that on Monday he was able to kneel while praying the entire Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary as he and other faithful waited for the Virgin Mary to appear to Medjugorje visionary Ivan Dragičević in Milford, MA.
“And today I am walking around like I am healed and I was
even able to
climb my front steps with a minimum of discomfort. Walking today has been
excellent. I think I am being healed in stages,” the 63-year-old American
concludes.
Meanwhile the Medjugorje visionaries seem to be starting to recover from the death of their spiritual director. Annalisa, the Italian wife of visionary Jakov Čolo, says that her husband is doing all right. And Vicka Ivanković, back on her stairway talking to the pilgrims, is radiant and joyful and seems very much honest and genuine when saying that first of all she feels happy knowing Father Slavko is in Heaven.
“It was the will of God, and it should bring us only happiness. It is an occasion to learn that we must always be prepared to enter the Eternal Life, and we should be conscious that all life is a preparation for something that might happen only five minutes later. We can also be happy that we have had such a good example among us”, she says.
Vicka Ivanković tells that since Father Slavko’s death last Friday the visionaries have joined in prayer in church, in the parish house, and on Apparition Mountain, but that a formal meeting is yet to be scheduled among them.
“It is too early for that. The situation after his death is not sufficiently clear,” she says.
One man who would readily sign that statement with his signature is Father Svetozar Kraljević on whom most of Medjugorje is resting at the moment. Being the only experienced friar left at the Virgin Mary’s foremost apparition site Father Svetozar is now working overtime in order to catch up with a great many tasks. All week he has had assistance from Father Ivan Landeka, the former parish priest who was transferred this Summer after nine years in Medjugorje.
Vicka Ivanković also says that she has no further details as to which part of the Virgin Mary’s plan is “about to be realized” as she told pilgrims earlier this month. For this to come about she encourages all to pray for the Virgin’s intentions. If and when she receives more details Vicka will keep Spirit Daily up-to-date.