DID the Blessed Virgin Mary appear at the Holy Angel University in Angeles City years ago? I can’t remember the date now but I and my mom were among the hundreds who rushed to the university gymnasium where, reports had said, Medjugorje visionary Ivan Dragicevic was to have another of his regular Marian apparitions.
I had hoped the apparition would happen on the gym’s stage in the presence of hundreds, but the gathered people were told it would occur in a private room with a few people present, including a mestizo government official in the company of a beauty queen for whom he had left his wife, an arrangement that I thought was enough to spoil apparition prospects.
I am not sure whether the apparition was scuttled by the unholy tandem, but when finally Ivan came on stage to speak, all he said (as far as I remember) was that he never got any doomsday message from the Blessed Mother and even appeared displeased that some people tend to focus on reports of chastisements.
At that time, I had already been writing about mystic encounters that warned of such things as “three days of darkness” so Ivan turned out to be a downer.
The purpose of this story is, in part, to briefly draw readers from worries over covid 19 amid national and government officials’ blusters about their capability to hold the wall against any virus as against the huge loopholes between their words. It really dampens me to dwell on this, so...
On the 30th year of the Medjugorje apparitions in 2011, Ivan gave a rare interview that people surely would be interested in.
Ivan said that at one time, he dared ask the Blessed Mother how come she was so beautiful, and she replied: “I am beautiful because I love and you will be beautiful ... I love you too.”
Asked whether the appearance of the Blessed Mother had changed over 30 years, he said: “Our Lady is always the same: a girl in her prime, but really looks like a woman of great maturity. She has a grey coat and white veil, and at Christmas and Easter, wears robes of gold. Her eyes are blue and her cheeks are just shades of pink. Her head has a crown of twelve stars with her feet resting on a cloud that suspends from the ground, reminding us that She is a creature of Heaven and immaculate. But I cannot really communicate Her beauty fully.”
To the question on how he felt when seeing the Blessed Mother, Ivan replied:
“I can hardly describe my emotions when I see what is in front of me ... every day something occurs that has no equal on earth. The Virgin herself is Paradise. Her presence gives you such a joy, pierces you with such a light! But also the context that surrounds it is sublime. So She shows me happy people in the background, or a place of shining angels in a beautiful place full of flowers... It ends when the apparition is over. It’s difficult to readjust, because nothing in the world, in art or nature, has those colors, the smells, and reaches such a perfection of harmony.”
Ivan also said that to him, the Blessed Virgin is a mother: “She feels like Mother to me. My earthly mother took care of me until that day of Apparition then it was the Lady because of her apparition. Both are excellent mothers, because I was brought up with passion on what is true. But since I experienced the love of Our Lady, I realized that her blessings, her prayers, her advice are nourishment and pivotal for me and my family. There is nothing sweeter and more shocking than when She addresses me, saying, Dear child!. It is the first message: we are children of God, and loved. We are children of the Queen of Peace, Who bridges the way from heaven to earth because she loves us. And, loving, wants to lead us, because She knows what we really need. “
Ironically, Ivan was also apocalyptic in tone during the interview. Asked about prophecies of punishments from heaven, he replied: “Signs of the times show that the world is troubled. And the secrets of Medjugorje certainly contain prophecies of painful events. However, for example, the seventh secret has been mitigated by prayers. It appears to me every time that you recognize the hope in Her eyes and the light of Paradise. The Madonna is not here to punish....”
THAT WAS probably what Ivan wanted to say at the Holy Angel University: the Blessed Mother came to save us from punishment, to spare us through conversion from Divine Justice.