Fr Petar Ljubicic is a central figure in the Medjugorje events. He is the priest to whom the visionary, Mirjana, will announce the Secrets ten days before they take place. He will announce them to the world three days before.
Fr Petar joined the 2011 True Life in God pilgrimage in Rome and agreed to give this interview during it. A report of the pilgrimage is available HERE.
Here is Fr Petar's message for the 28th anniversary:
Dear brothers and sisters,
With great joy and love I greet you all present here to celebrate this great Anniversary of True Life of God. We are living in the time of mercy.
The truth is that every time is in some way a merciful time. God is doing everything to be known more and loved more by us, that we will be able to live as His beloved children. He is giving us numerous signs of His Presence through many revelations of Mary, and especially through the TLIG messages given through Vassula. He wishes to save all people, as they all are His children. Some people have recognised the signs of the time and have met Him by trusting Him and letting Him lead them by the power of His Holy Spirit.
The truth is that every time is in some way a merciful time. God is doing everything to be known more and loved more by us, that we will be able to live as His beloved children. He is giving us numerous signs of His Presence through many revelations of Mary, and especially through the TLIG messages given through Vassula. He wishes to save all people, as they all are His children. Some people have recognised the signs of the time and have met Him by trusting Him and letting Him lead them by the power of His Holy Spirit.
We are all craving for the new and better world. But it is impossible without God. A man needs God to become a new man, a better man, more righteous and more blessed. That is exactly what Medjugorje talks about. That is also what Jesus is talking about through Vassula...
All the more, it is obvious that it is not only man who is morally pulled down, but all physical and biological structures are being demolished. With the denying of and withdrawal from God, man is pulling darkness down on himself and he is more and more degraded (Fr. Dr. Ljudevit Rupcic “Medjugorje - the Door of Heaven and the Beginning of the Better World” page eight).
Today we are witnessing a great corruption and degradation of human society. The family is diminished along with the holiness of marriage. It is incomprehensible to see the pleading of many for euthanasia, pornography, prostitution, same sex marriage… With these we are undermining our future and heading to destruction.
The spirit of modernism, secularism and relativism increase all the more. The antichristian vision of the world is more present. What is going on in Europe?
All Christian roots are being removed from society. Almost the whole world becomes sick because of the lack of morals. It could be rightly said that the demon of immorality is collecting its tribute. There is an artificially produced “moral panic”. The pornographic industry in Europe is earning 2,500 Euro every second! Every year the pornographic industry earns over 75 billion Euro. Every year 45 million innocent unborn children are killed, 100 every minute! Is it not a crime of modern society? Is not human life sacred? The basic human right, and the divine right, is the right to life. Today the liberals talk widely on liberty, but what is liberty without respecting basic values and human rights? We all agree on this: man was never more insecure, more anxious and worried, unsatisfied, more sinful and sick, never in greater misery and torment than he is today.
All Christian roots are being removed from society. Almost the whole world becomes sick because of the lack of morals. It could be rightly said that the demon of immorality is collecting its tribute. There is an artificially produced “moral panic”. The pornographic industry in Europe is earning 2,500 Euro every second! Every year the pornographic industry earns over 75 billion Euro. Every year 45 million innocent unborn children are killed, 100 every minute! Is it not a crime of modern society? Is not human life sacred? The basic human right, and the divine right, is the right to life. Today the liberals talk widely on liberty, but what is liberty without respecting basic values and human rights? We all agree on this: man was never more insecure, more anxious and worried, unsatisfied, more sinful and sick, never in greater misery and torment than he is today.
Healing of the world and the human heart can happen only through conversion. Reading the messages of True Life in Godmakes clear to us that without conversion there is no true life! Conversion is a merciful awareness that God is here, that He loves me and that He wants me to be happy for all eternity. That is God’s merciful call echoing all the time in us, the call to seek God and always return to Him and live according to His will.
That is God’s gift with which He endows every man. Our response to God’s call is our irrevocable decision to put everything aside and place our total trust in God. Conversion is a mercy that is always preceded by God’s action. Conversion is a strong conviction that God can change us, it doesn’t matter how far we are from Him or how sinful we are. For God, it is always possible to save us. It is true that He doesn’t do it without us.
To convert means to allow to Jesus Christ to have a firm hold of us by the power of His grace. It means to surrender totally to Him, to give Him our whole life, to always rely on Him. It means to choose Jesus as our Teacher and Saviour. To obey Him always and follow Him on our life’s path. To convert means to become aware that God exists, have an experience that He is here and comprehend that He is the closest to us in our life. It means that man’s life has a purpose only when it is in accordance with the plan which God has for him.
God’s plan for a man is to know God, to love God with all his being, to surrender to God totally and serve Him joyfully to be able to become perfect and blessed, holy. Then God fills man’s heart with a perfect joy, with true peace and spiritual contentment. Then a man feels saved. To convert means seeking for God always. Always going back to Him, acknowledging that we were wandering away from Him; also acknowledging all our sins and rejecting the evil one and all our sinful temptations. When we repent sincerely for everything we do, we are receiving the grace to change ourselves, we become better, more equitable, more sincere, more just, holier. Convert yourselves, that is change yourselves, have peace with God, with brothers and sisters, and with your own self. In other words: renounce any sin, stop sinning, give to God first place in your life. That is necessary to do tirelessly every day.
The essence of conversion is to become aware of our sins, to acknowledge them sincerely and repent of them. When we receive absolution we start to live a new life with the power of God’s grace. Conversion is putting away selfishness and any other sin, in acceptance of love, and in giving of oneself. To be able to convert every day, we have to pray with our heart. To pray with the heart means to pray with love, wholeheartedly. It means to pray with all our being: with our body and soul, open, humble and with a clean heart. It means to be totally open to God. To Him, give the first place in our life. Surrender totally to Him and have total trust in Him and from Him, expecting every good from Him. It means to pray wholeheartedly and humbly, devotedly and trustfully, steadily and piously.
According to the instructions of Our Lady of Medjugorje and the messages of True Life in God, to pray with the heart means to live prayer as an encounter with God. It means to unite with Jesus and feel and experience the beauty of prayer and the greatness of the grace which God is giving to us. It also means to receive great graces. To pray with the heart means to allow God to remove all obstacles so that prayer remains in our hearts in every moment.
If we are striving for our conversion daily, and pray with the heart, then the ardent wish of Our Lord –Unity – will be accomplished earlier. “So that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me!” (Jn 17, 21) – was the prayer prayed by our Divine Saviour in His High-priestly’ prayer in the eve of His Passion.
It has been 28 years since our Divine Saviour began pleading, crying and calling us through Vassula to understand seriously this time of grace and do our best to achieve the Unity of all Christians, to be one flock with one Shepherd. Let us pray and help our Saviour so that Unity comes as soon as possible.
“Every Christian, everyone who considers himself included by his baptism into the mystery of Jesus Christ and in His Redemption, must have an ecumenical heart. An ecumenical heart is a heart which loves with the Heart of Christ.” Ecumenism produces in the soul a disposition which respects both the person and the community … (Cardinal Franjo Kuharic).
Christians from different beliefs from all around the world are gathering to pray for the re-establishing of full unity. The Cross of Our Lord is calling us to unity. Jesus Christ truly died to bring together, into one body, all the scattered people of God (Jn 11, 52): yesterday, today and always. I ardently call all Catholics that this week they make their prayers stronger, and unite them with the prayers of other baptised, so that our common Lord allows us to celebrate with one voice and one heart!” (John Paul II, January 15th 1984.)
“In spite of the centuries-old distrust, we must work for Christian unity believing that we shall receive this unity as a gift of God at the time when God decides!” (Dr. Frane Franic, Archbishop of Split). Let us ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate us to be able to live in humility and love so that this unity of all Christians can come as soon as possible. Let us do everything possible so that the sin of disunity disappears, as well as incomprehension and disagreement. Our Divine Saviour is expecting it from us. Let us turn every moment of our lives into a moment of salvation for us personally and for our brothers and sisters and in this way prepare the path to Unity.
Thank you for your patience, love and prayers. Maranatha!
God bless you all!
Fr. Petar Ljubicic
