«We will only have peace and prosperity if we place God at the forefront»

Let’s consider what the upheaval caused by an invisible and indecipherable virus means for a West which had considered itself invulnerable. In addition to death, the virus is bringing various other evils in its wake, bringing to light a crisis of faith in God as well as a newly-found need for Him. It is impossible not to think of the Blessed Mother messages over the last 39 years at Medugorje during an era of conflict between her and Satan. An era that is the time of the ten Marian secrets that the visionaries will be required to reveal to the world. Interviewed by The Daily Compass, Sister Emmanuel Millard, a resident of Medugorje and a great apostle of the Blessed Mother, explains Mary’s warnings and how to fight evil so as not to fear the future and to construct an era of peace.

The world that thought it had eradicated suffering and sickness now finds itself unable to understand the nature of this virus and the way it spreads, and there is also no certain cure. All this is paralyzing the human race, that thought it was invulnerable. Is this good or evil?
Humankind has always been vulnerable and always will be due to original sin. But the illusion that we are not vulnerable by means of science, progress, and materialism has led humankind to be convinced that God is no-longer needed . The virus is an evil and does not come from God, but it comes as a result of people growing distant from God. God however has permitted it, and, like every evil, He can use it in our favor: until now we thought that we could do it without Him and thus we lived in the absence of true peace, love, light and salvation. This spiritual void, which we created ourselves, was invaded by demons who sought out the void so that that they could fill it, as Jesus says in the Gospel. Therefore this world-wide virus, that is severe and probably man-made, comes at a moment in which humankind was already dancing with the devil. On the other hand, many people are now asking for the first time what the meaning of human life is: “If something smaller than a fly can place the entire world in crisis, what is human life?” We are forced to stop and ask ourselves what happens after death, as the Blessed Mother has been asking us to do for years through her messages given to the visionaries of Medugorje. “Stop, and reflect on your future” and ask yourselves, “What do you want?” This search is permitting many people to receive the light, to think that perhaps there is a God who loves us and can save us. Only goodness can arise from a fountain of goodness! Many are trying to draw close to the Lord, to finally rely on Him because now they have no false alternatives left. I have heard from many people how this is happening.

However, it must be said that despite the closings and quarantines the infections continue, but those who govern us (and also many Christians) are still convinced that in order to save ourselves we need a human strategy and thus God has been placed aside. In addition, abortion and euthanasia are being promoted, while technology is making us become accustomed to living in a virtual world. Many of our children will emerge from this dependent on it. How can we defend ourselves from this?
This pandemic is provoking all of the evils you have listed. I think also of gratuitous pornography, about the pedophilia crimes that are growing (Editor’s note: based on police data, UK), but we can choose to keep ourselves distant from all this and have recourse to God. The majority of those who govern us are pagan (but not all!), and they do not know God, and also many Christians live in sin! Therefore it is understandable for the solution to be sought through human means. But the novelty is that human means cannot do more than it is already to stop this crisis, and this is positive for the reasons mentioned above. With regard to children, however, the role of parents is so important! But it is not enough to explain; you must also teach by example. If parents explain the faith and its foundations to their children from their infancy: life if a struggle for good, a struggle that has a cost, half the battle is already won. And because we are weak, we must ask God for strength. Today the internet offers us everything, but if we are careful to limit children’s exposure to it and help them to look for God there also, they can be nourished with beautiful things even with this means.

The economy has been paralyzed, unfairly in many people’s opinion (there are those who think that the economic collapse will produce even more poverty and thus cause deaths). Then there is the problem of the lack of testing, so people who think they are cured actually may infect others. But beyond all this, walking through the empty and silent streets, thinking of Sundays that used to be spent in shopping malls or working, thinking of how people used to consider Holy Communion as a right, thinking of how people used to see globalisation as an imperative, how they embraced the ideology of immigration at all costs, one cannot help but think that perhaps all this has also brought a lot of good.
This is another reason for which the Lord is teaching us through trial: we believe that happiness comes from economic well-being, despite the fact this epoch is among the most desperate and sad of all (we think of the rate of depression, suicides, and family crises). All this is because, even if the belly is filled, humankind cannot withstand being distant from God because we are made for Him. For this reason the Blessed Mother tells us that we have progressed as a civilisation but we have lost God and thus we have not truly been satisfied. Satan leads us astray with selfishness and modernism, says the Blessed Mother. The biggest error is to think that only this life exists and that everything is built and made for earthly life: in this grave hour, the failure of modernism is evident, and so we should put God first, for that is where our salvation lies! Many have already done so. The Blessed Mother has said that she is content because, as the visionary Marija has said, the triumph of the Immaculate Heart has already begun in a few hearts. In a few hearts...that ought to increase in number! Our Lady has promised us, “In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” She did not say at the end of what exactly, but we know that every triumph is preceded by a conflict. There is no triumph over peace. It was in the moment in which everything seemed lost that Jesus triumphed over death, and Jesus and Mary make one single Heart together! We are involved in the same battle for the same victory, and all of Heaven is assisting us, the saints and angels!

Last July 25 the Blessed Mother said that sin would reign, it seems that this virus is only the beginning of a trial given to the world in order to convert. But then the Blessed Mother continued by saying that we will be able to resist only if we belong to her. Can you explain how we can become hers so that we do not live in terror and desperation?
Yes, she said, “Sin will reign,” and she added, “but if you are mine,” meaning if you live all of my messages (prayer, reading the Bible, the Eucharist, confession, fasting) “you will overcome, because your refuge will be the heart of Jesus.” Today we have only this refuge, we should not seek another! The closer we are to this wonderful Heart, living the messages of Our Lady, the happier we will be already here on earth.

You mention the Eucharist, yet Masses in most of the world are being celebrated privately as has never happened before, not even during plagues: Marija, visionary of Medugorje, has said recently that the forbidding of going to Church or to celebrate the Mass is the work of the Evil One. It appears that we are living the time of Holy Saturday which Cardinal Ratzinger spoke about. Many of the faithful feel lost, like the pious women who asked, “Where have they taken my Lord?” How should we live this suffering?
Certainly the pious women wept, but they soon got up and went to look for Jesus despite the police of their time, despite the danger and the guards. In this way they expressed their strong attachment to Jesus. Thus, if churches are open, above all else we can go to pray in them. Where churches are closed, or if the sick are in quarantine and it is forbidden to visit them, this is not the fault of the faithful. God has no limits in giving Himself to us. Thus God comes even now to those who call upon Him. I have often gone to China; there are people there who walk many miles in order to go to Mass, but in other cases the distances are so great that people can only unite themselves to the Mass spiritually. It is not the same thing, but despite this, even  precisely in this trial, people become holy. I encourage people who truly do not have any alternative and who would like to go church but cannot, to follow the Mass on TV and make a spiritual communion with their heart.

Medjugorje is empty for the first time in 39 years (since the apparitions began in June 1981). Last March 18 the Blessed Mother said that she would no longer appear on the 2nd of every month. In one year it will be 40 years that the apparitions have been occurring. What signifiance does this have for the world?
We don’t know what will happen; only the visionaries know the secrets. But we should recall that at Christmas in 1982 the Blessed Mother said to the visionary Mirijana that she would no longer appear to her daily but only once each year on March 18. Then about 20 years ago she granted her a particular favour, for a limited time, appearing to her on the 2nd day of each month. Why? The Blessed Mother knows. Why did she stop? This too, she alone knows.But there is one thing that we also know for sure: if she did so it is for our good, with her maternal love. And so even if we do not understand, we must not think that Our Lady abandons us in the moment of need, but we should give thanks for this choice that we will understand one day. We should thank her for the apparitions on the 2nd of the month that lasted for more than 20 years!

On March 18, 2018, the Blessed Mother warned us that the trials would be even harder, but she said that souls of those who die in God are not lost and that it is necessary to have unlimited faith in the love of God as she did (even at the foot of the Cross). She perhaps was asking us to fear sin even more than the death of those who are dear to us. What should we pray for?
The Lord loves us so much that he has only one concern: He wants us to be with Him in Paradise to enjoy forever a happiness that we cannot imagine. To live the dream of all peoples. Sin is an accident permitted by God that can, however, be forgiven. Eternal happiness, in contrast, is forever. Our Lady and Our Lord certainly prefer temporal suffering to eternal damnation. In the village of Medugorje a pilgrim once saw a shepherd who was breaking his sheep’s leg, and so he shouted to him: “No, what are you doing?” He responded to him: “I am doing it in order to save this animal that continues to run away and risks getting lost and dying. With its leg broken for a while, it will not be able to walk. I will carry her on my shoulders so that she can get used to me, to my voice, to my smell, until she can do without it. And when she can walk again she will no longer run the risk of wandering and getting lost. God loves us like that, this is the faith that we must have in Him today, because God has only one thought: the salvation of souls, that is, the eternal happiness of His creature.

Then there is the question of suffering permitted by God that scandalises many Catholics. Yet if it is offered to God, it can generate love, good, and conversions, as John Paul II teaches in Salvifici Doloris. 
Suffering offered to Jesus saves souls. This is the scandalous mystery of the Cross and co-Redemption. The Blessed Mother is co-redemptrix, as many saints and mystics and even popes have affirmed. Mary offered her sufferings at the foot of the cross and she united them to those of her Son, helping Him to save the world. We too are the body of Christ, the Church – in baptism we have received the grace of the royal priesthood of the faithful, with the extraordinary possibility of offering our sufferings in order to unite them to the suffering of Jesus and thus make them divine. As Saint Paul says: “I want to complete what is lacking in the Passion of Christ in my own flesh.” He, like other saints, offered his sufferings to help the Saviour to save souls. This is the great consolation that we ought to give souls that now suffer in solitude. Such desperation in fact does not come from any physical suffering but from the perceived lack of any meaning for which to live it.

From the point of view of a God who does everything for the salvation of souls, could it be that the trials will continue until the world converts?
I believe in God’s surprises. But on December 25, 1999, Our Lady asked us to place Jesus at the forefront of our lives. She said that if we did this the new century would be one “of peace and prosperity.” And so if we do not put Jesus first , we will continue to suffer; instead of obtaining peace and salvation. On God’s part, the call is completely clear. But man must listen! Shema Israel!