YEARS AGO, I came to possess (how, I can´t recall), a glossy-paged booklet on
scientific findings on the Marian apparitions in Medjugorje (the visions began in
1981 and continues to this day).
Specifically, scientists, headed by Dr. Henri Joyeux, studied the visionaries there to find out whether they were merely hallucinating, or experiencing something that science would be able to explain after all, or simply lying (an improbability even in the eyes of laymen at that stage of the apparitions). The scientists attached modern scientific instruments on the visionaries, particularly when they were seeing the Blessed Mother, with so many wires attached to their heads you´d be reminded of Frankenstein.
The conclusion: all five visionaries were physically and mentally healthy and that instruments attached during apparitions indicated they were visually experiencing a tridimensional object during their visions. It was this object that established a barrier to science as it was applied in Medjugorje. The object, after all, was supernatural.
Recently, 20 years later, the same group of scientists conducted another study of the apparitions through the visionaries and came to this conclusion: “After twenty years, our conclusion has not changed. We were not wrong. Our scientific conclusion is clear: the Medjugorje events must be taken seriously.”
Contrary to some dark forces the foreign media have been reporting, the Medjugorje apparitions are reaching higher credibility in Catholicity. Polish Archbishop Henryk Hose has said: “I believe that the message of peace, which is central here in Medjugorje, is intended for the whole world,” and that the message being delivered in Medjugorje can be put at the same level as those in Lourdes and Fatima.
It should also be noted that the commission established by then Pope Benedict XVI to study the Medjugorje phenomena voted overwhelmingly to recognize as supernatural the first seven appearances of Mary in 1981.
Notes Catholic writer Mark Mallett: “For the first time in 36 years since the apparitions began, a Commission seems to have ´officially´ accepted the supernatural origin of what began in 1981: that indeed, the Mother of God appeared in Medjugorje. Moreover, the Commission appears to have affirmed the findings of the psychological examinations of the visionaries and upheld the seers’ integrity, which has long been attacked, sometimes ruthlessly, by their detractors. The committee argues that the six young seers were psychically normal and were caught by surprise by the apparition and that nothing of what they had seen was influenced by either the Franciscans of the parish or any other subjects. They showed resistance in telling what happened despite the police [arresting] them and death [threats against] them. The Commission also rejected the hypothesis of a demonic origin of the apparitions.”
Why is it important to take Medjugorje seriously? Because there must, without doubt, be a serious reason for such long-standing Marian apparition there. The Blessed Mother, nay, God Himself, is telling us something. Thus, the messages from Medjugorje are God´s voice reaching out to us. Two important words echo from there repeatedly: prayer, peace.
Prayers not only for favors, but also for mercy, peace between God and mankind, peace among mankind. I would think these are appeals for something really big afoot. See the Blessed Mother´s messages in her apparitions in Akita, Japan in 1972.
