About the Author
Fr Slavko Barbarić, OFM, was born near Medjugorje in 1946. He was ordained a priest in 1971. He studied philosophy and pastoral theology in Sarajevo and Schwaz (Austria) and obtained his master’s degree in 1973 in Graz, Austria. He gained his doctorate in religious education in 1982 in Freiburg, Germany.
Fr Slavko began working with the pilgrims in Medjugorje in January 1982. He conducted numerous retreats and tirelessly spoke about the events of Medjugorje all over the world. He wrote many articles for various publications and is the author of many books on the spirituality of Medjugorje. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Fr Slavko died on November 24, 2000, at 3.30 PM, on Mount Križevac (Cross Mountain) in Medjugorje, after having prayed the Stations of the Cross with the parishioners.
About This Book
In this book, Fr Slavko pays special attention to one of the elements of Medjugorje, which was rarely mentioned in his previous books. It is the spiritual path of the prayer groups that Our Lady inspired here.
The Medjugorje pilgrims are quite familiar with those visionaries, who benefit from Our Lady’s apparitions. If they know nothing about the experience of the “visionaries of the heart”, they miss a complementary and important dimension of Mary’s pedagogy in Medjugorje.
The phenomenon of “inner locutions” opened a new path at Our Lady’s school in Medjugorje – the interior prayer, deeper understanding of the Word of God, free development of traditional prayers. For example, Our Lady taught Jelena to pray the “Rosary of Jesus” and to reflect on some passages from the New Testament that are not mentioned in the traditional Rosary. In this rosary, we repeat the Our Fathers and the Glory bes, without the Hail Marys. This is an invitation to freely develop our prayer within the frame of what the Tradition has taught us for so many centuries.
It seems that Mary opened in Medjugorje two wings of a diptych in order to respond to the needs and expectations of most diverse believers, whatever their origin, education, and spiritual affinities may be. To those who have already made their first steps in prayer, and who want to go further, Mary offers a school of interior prayer, which includes attentive listening, inner attention and interior silence, and whose goal is to receive “the personal message”, the answer to personal questions, which can happen only by the grace of the Holy Spirit. This dimension of Medjugorje should be familiar to all of us, because the apparitions in the strict sense of the word will always be rare, while each Christian is invited to hearken in order to hear the voice of God that speaks in a heart that is purified, pacified, open and available.
The Author Speaks
This book would like to help all those who personally, as a family or as prayer group have responded to Our Lady’s call. It would like to help them understand the meaning of her invitations. It would also like to form individuals, families and groups in the spirit of Our Lady, and help them to act and grow in this spirit.
The greatest grace that one can receive in Medjugorje is not the intellectual understanding of the necessity to pray, but the concrete desire to pray and to truly follow the call of the Queen of Peace. This is at the same time the greatest strength of Medjugorje. The most important, however, is the fact that the events of Medjugorje moved so many people to pray, to persevere and to grow in it faithfully. If we follow Mary’s call to prayer, we can reach the goal, and the goal is peace between God and men and peace between men.
This book would also like to tell the history and the development of Our Lady’s methodology and pedagogy. It will try to help all those who pray to avoid dangers on their way, and to benefit from all the advantages of common prayer. This book also contains concrete propositions about how to organise common prayer and how to pray together.
The most important, however, is the fact that the events of Medjugorje moved so many people to pray, to persevere and to grow in it faithfully. If we follow Mary’s call to prayer, we can reach the goal, and the goal is peace between God and men and peace between men. We learn nothing new from the messages and the invitations of Medjugorje. The newness is that the pilgrims receive a strong motivation and make a personal experience. If nobody had responded to the call to prayer, all the messages and events would have had no meaning.
Dear readers, my desire for you is to feel a deep desire to pray and to follow this desire personally, as a family and as prayer group.
Themes
PRAYING WITH THE QUEEN OF PEACE
Silence of the Heart – Condition to Encounter Jesus
Positive Attitude to Creatures Is a Fruit of Prayer
Invocation of the Holy Spirit
THE FAMILY IN THE MESSAGES OF THE QUEEN OF PEACE
Outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Family
Prayer and Times of Prayer in the Family
Love in the Family
The Bible in the Family
The Family Is Invited To Consecration and Holiness
Satan’s Destructive Plans
God in the First Place
An Example of Family Prayer
PRAYER GROUPS
Basics
Ivan’s Prayer Group
New Intervention
“The Large Group”
“The Small Group”
Recommendations for Prayer Meetings of the “Large Group”
Our Lady Teaches Us to Pray the Our Father
Visions and Messages to Jelena and Marijana
Golden Rules for the Medjugorje Prayer Groups
Activities of the Prayer Groups
Prayer Groups and the Parish Community
PRAYER FOR UNBELIEVERS
Prayer for the Experience of the Love of God
Publisher: ICMM
Author: Fr Slavko Barbarić
Language: English
Original language: Croatian
Translation / Review: Lidija Paris / Fr Leon Pereira O.P.
Edited in 2022
Size: 195 x 120
156 pages
