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“Dear children! Also today, I call you to be love where there is hatred and food where there is hunger. Open your hearts, little children, and let your hands be extended and generous so that, through you, every creature may thank God the Creator. Pray, little children, and open your heart to God’s love, but you cannot if you do not pray. Therefore, pray, pray, pray. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

(Monthly message given September 25, 2004)

She has come to the village of Medjugorje for more than twenty-five years to ask us to pray. She has done so since June 25, 1981, appearing through the mystical power of apparition daily to at least three of an original six children chosen to be visionaries.

She is the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, chosen messenger of God for these times. Her purpose revealed through dramatic messages to the visionaries at Medjugorje is crystal clear: to save her children—all of her children, the washed and the unwashed—through the holy power of prayer.

The Mother of Jesus has made clear that our present-day world is far from the graces of her Son. It is a world without peace. She comes into this caldron of turmoil by God’s holy grace calling herself the Queen of Peace. Mary is inviting, urging, pleading, and even begging us to listen, to pray, and to convert our hearts to the ways of Jesus. Because of the positive response by so many, the grace of the Medjugorje message continues.

The apparitions take place in the little township of Medjugorje located in the rugged mountains of Bosnia-Hercegovina, home to the visionaries. The village has become a modern-day Mecca. More than 35 million people have made pilgrimage to the predominantly Croatian Catholic community where they believe the Mother of God is appearing.

People go there for many reasons: curiosity, physical and spiritual healing, desire for solutions to their personal problems, and others. They go to find elusive personal peace. Mostly, though, it is a great place of prayer. Many pilgrims return home spiritually transformed, wanting to do their best to answer the Blessed Virgin’s call. Many of them become active graduates of this amazing “School of Prayer.”

Two prevalent questions in the hearts of most returning pilgrims—and in the hearts of those who learn of this incredible grace through books, tapes, talks, and personal witness of individuals—are these:

Who is this biblical woman of apparitions?

What does she want from me?

Thus, the purpose of this book is twofold. First, it is to answer these basic questions through learning about the awesome power of daily personal and group prayer. Reading Mary’s messages given to the world through Medjugorje will help you to understand.

Second, my personal purpose is to give you a guideline for developing an intimate and dynamic prayer life through these lessons. I pray that they will open the hearts of all who read them so that each child of Mary may become an active participant in God’s plan of salvation for the world. While the tone of much contained here may sound “Catholic,” I mean it for people of all faiths and beliefs.

Using the teaching messages Our Lady has given us at Medjugorje, coupled with my own personal witness, I’ll try and give you insight on the above questions as well as the tools needed through my own personal prayers, and much more. I will tell you how she molded my prayer life by her messages to the visionaries at Medjugorje and through personal messages directly and indirectly to me.

Everyone can experience this charism of prayer through intimate guidance by the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is not just for visionaries or unique individuals, but for those who truly believe, surrender to the will of God, and then try to obey the requests of the individual mission given to each of us.

All of us are asked to be participants. But it is our own free will that has to answer yes or no to God’s request. In this case, the request comes from Mary in Medjugorje.

To acquire this heavenly grace, it is mandatory to develop an intimacy with our spiritual mother, Mary. This intimacy is necessary to truly accept and develop a strong prayer life with purpose. We begin with our conversations—our prayers—with her and to her. She is affectionately called “Our Lady” or “Blessed Mother” by many who have found that intimacy. These are the names I will refer to or call her in this book as a way of expressing my own intimacy with her.

My qualifications as a writer and commentator on the subject of apparitions of Our Lady and her biblical role are more journalistic and spiritual than they are theological. I am not a priest or minister or theologian. I’m simply a layperson who found spiritual conversion and my own lifetime mission triggered by discovery of this incredible event. But I’ve been involved in visiting, studying, and investigating the apparitions at Medjugorje for more than twenty years, having traveled there seventy-seven times as of this writing.

I’ll tell you of my Medjugorje involvement in the ensuing chapters, but first, let’s look at the woman who appears in apparition in Medjugorje. . . .