The Spirit of Medjugorje

"Dear children! I am with you to tell you that I love you and to encourage you to prayer; because Satan is strong and every day his strength is stronger through those who have chosen death and hatred. You, little children, be prayer and my extended hands of love for all those who are in darkness and seek the light of our God. Thank you for having responded to my call."

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Questions to the People Who Built the Cross in Medjugorje

By Kay Mule

     I have been thinking about the people who built the cross in Medjugorje. You may recall, Croatian villagers carried up the cement, stones, water, whatever it took to construct the 30-foot, 16-ton cement cross on top of what is called Mount Krizevac or Cross Mountain.
     If I could speak to you, the young people of 1933, I would ask you some questions. I wonder if you could have envisioned the strangers that this cross would bring, the priests, bishops, nuns, those who believe who come to strengthen their faith, those who are skeptics coming to see why so many are drawn to this place?

     Could you have realized the changes this cross would bring to your poverty-stricken area? Could you have dreamed that your homes would be turned into small hotels where millions of foreign people would sleep? That Medjugorje would become a household word in many areas of the world?
     Did you know that your grandsons and granddaughters would become guides for pilgrims seeking to renew their faith? That your sons would not have to go to Germany for half the year to find gainful employment to meet their families' economic needs?
     There is no way you could have envisioned the building and construction of ever larger houses and mini-hotels that would dot the farm landscape. Did you realize that the narrow roads through which your children walked to school or brought home your sheep and cows would be used by huge tour buses that barely fit? What would you have said if you had known that thousands of pilgrims would be walking through your vineyards and tobacco fields?

     Would you find it hard to believe that the atheistic government, which was so strict on where and how you would worship, would actually encourage people to come to your church to pray? That the church, which was too big when it was built, would become unable to hold all the pilgrims so that an outside chapel would be necessary?
     You built that cross as a penance, a sacrifice and also as a plea to God to protect your hidden little valley from terrible lightning and hail storms that destroyed your crops. As we come to Medjugorje to climb that same rugged path of the mountain where you painstakingly built your cross, we reflect on your cross and ours. We realize that, as you could not foresee the good effects of your penance and sacrifice, we may not feel the effects of our sacrifices either.
     We pray for God's strength and the power of the Holy Spirit to guide and sustain your descendants as more and more pilgrims come seeking, in your peasant simplicity, something which is lacking in "modern" society.
     The Medjugorje Star, October/November 2020