The visionaries of Medjugorje were given 10 secrets at different times. Daily apparitions of the Blessed Mother ceased after each visionary was given the 10th secret, with their apparitions reduced to only once a year.
Alas, the latter secrets seem to be terrifying. The 10th, inescapable. This much we can gather from interviews of the Medjugorje visionaries. Here are some of them. The late Franciscan priest Fr. Janko Bubalo’s interview of visionary Vicka, of whom he was former confessor:
Fr. Janko: “Last year, 1982, she (Blessed Mother) revealed to Ivanka and to Jakov that awful ninth secret. That was on the first day of the novena in honor of the Immaculate Conception. And on the very day of the feast (December 8th), she revealed to you that sad eighth secret. And this year, 1983, on the very feast itself, she revealed to Marija the already mentioned ninth.”
“It is interesting that I, both last year and this year, was at the apparition and that I took note of how unhappy and awkward you were on both the occasions at the revelation of the secrets – last year on Ivanka and you, and this year on Marija.”
“We already mentioned somewhere what it was that Ivanka told me at the time, and Marija told me the same this year. For when, in jest, I told her that she seemed frightened, she, quite seriously, told me that I, too, would have been frightened had I heard.” Vicka: “And she told you well!”, Fr. Janko: “It was on November 29th 1982.
(…) During the time of the encounter, I noticed two different moods in you, the seers. You were smiling and bright-eyed as usual, even though you were seriously sick at the time. Marija was bright-eyed, if serious, as she usually is.
But on Ivanka and Jakov’s faces it appeared as though they were experiencing something painful. I noticed some sort of spasm on Ivanka – as though she was about to cry.” Vicka: “At that time, the Virgin gave them the ninth secret and did not do so to Marija and me.”
Fr. Janko: “Well, I heard that also at the time. I later asked Ivanka as to whether or not the Virgin showed her any glimpse of the secret. And, almost through tears, she said: ‘Why, I would have died had she shown it to me!’
“I experienced something on the very day of the Immaculate Conception. I was with you then also, at your encounter with the Virgin. Again, something interesting, namely, on that occasion you, who normally look happy at the encounters, seemed somehow serious.”
Vicka: “Perhaps. At the time, I also received the eighth secret.” Fr. Janko’s impressions were confirmed by a group of pilgrims who were present when visionary Marija Pavlovic received her secondlast secret.
BBC reporter Mary Craig quoted a pilgrim as having said: “Marija received the ninth secret before our eyes in the Chapel of Apparitions. She cried grievously.” During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vicka’s cousin Karlo asked Vicka: “Remember how you cried when you received your seventh, eighth and ninth secrets, and Marija also?
If you say that the Virgin did not mention this war precisely in the secrets, then, what are we waiting for?” Vicka replied: “You have just given yourself the answer to your question.” BBC’s Craig also once reported in the 1980’s that while a team of French and Italian scientists examined the visionaries and their apparitions, they observed visionary Jakov Colo’s breathing stop for 10 seconds.
Jakov later said the Blessed Mother gave him a vision of one of the secrets. “While she was confiding the tenth secret to me, she was sad,” Jakov recalled. Visionary Mirjana was the fi rst to receive the 10th secret and was given the task to announce the secrets to the world at a specific time.
Mirjana, 16 days after receiving the 10th secret, told Fr Tomislav Vlasic as follows: “The eighth secret is worse than the other seven. I prayed for a long time that it might be less severe. Every day, when Our Lady came, I pestered her, asking that it be mitigated. Then she said that everyone should pray that it might be lessened.”
She said the 10th secret can no longer be lessened, while the other ones could be, through prayers and fasting.
This, as we recall the words of the Blessed Mother on June 24, 1983 in Medjugorje: “You cannot imagine what is going to happen nor what the Eternal Father will send to earth. That is why you must be converted! Renounce everything.
Do penance. Express my thanks to all my children who have prayed and fasted. I carry all this to my Divine Son in order to obtain an alleviation of His justice against the sins of mankind. I thank the people who have prayed and fasted. Persevere and help me to convert the world.”
And then Mirjana advised those who asked her what they should do amid the secrets, saying thus: “Our Lady said people should prepare themselves spiritually, be ready and not panic; be reconciled in their souls. They should be ready for the worst, to die tomorrow.
They should accept God now so that they will not be afraid. They should accept God, and everything else. No one accepts death easily, but they can be at peace in their souls if they are believers. If they are committed to God, He will accept them.”
