Statement of Bishop of Medjugorje
6-15-2006
SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
MEDJUGORJE, 15 - VI - 2006
Dear brothers and sisters,
Dear
candidates for Confirmation, I am happy to be with you and your families here
today for the conferring of the sacrament of Confirmation. Through the required
instruction and the sacrament of Reconciliation you have prepared yourselves to
faithfully receive the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The gifts of wisdom,
understanding, knowledge and counsel, are concerned with our minds, with the
enlightening of our use of reason; while the gifts of fortitude, piety and fear
of the Lord, regard our hearts and the strengthening of our free will. These
are not fleeting gifts that you will joyfully receive today as candidates for
Confirmation and which will be gone tomorrow. This is the seal of the gift of
the Holy Spirit. Once sealed you always remain sealed with the Holy Spirit!
However, each of these gifts requires your efforts in conformity with your
growth in knowledge and witnessing through a life of faith.
Do not fear to be strong in God before people, even though the world may consider you
cowards and backward. Christ the Lord, God’s Truth, teaches us: "Everyone
who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in
heaven (Mt 10:32).
Do not be ashamed to be fearful of the Lord and pious, full of
awe towards God and his holiness, even though this passing world may ridicule
and mock you. The world has no fear of, nor sense of shame in transgressing
God’s commandments. We on the other hand, are believers and worshipers of God,
who adore him in spirit and truth.
The world counsels on how you can most
easily lose yourself in fleeting passions, but the Holy Spirit counsels us on how we can most easily
reach eternal life. Whoever then takes truthful counsel, is lead by the Spirit
on the right path.
The world tempts you and invites you
to behave according to its perverted fantasies and passions,
yet the Holy Spirit lets you learn and discern by acquiring unending knowledge that leads to the Father’s
house. Today, do not allow yourself to just receive the seal on your forehead
and then continue living as if you do not possess the Holy Spirit within you.
II. - Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood
of Christ. The Church celebrates today the Solemnity of the Most
Holy Body and Blood of Christ. We Catholics believe that the historical event
of Jesus’ Last Supper, described in each of the four Gospels, is one of the
greatest mysteries of our holy faith. During that evening, the Lord Jesus,
while he ate with his disciples, took bread, blessed it, broke the bread and
gave it to them saying: “Take; this is my body”. He then took the cup, gave
thanks and gave it to them. And all drank from it. “This is my blood of the
covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mk 14:22-23).
Eucharistic
sacrifice. The mystery of the Lord’s Supper is
first of all a sign of Jesus’ sacrifice through his death on the cross and
resurrection to new life, which he offers us as a divine gift. Why is this at
the very core of Christian faith? Because this is what God desired and
accomplished! If the all-wise God decided on this path of salvation, then his
entire divine intervention is nothing else than wisdom and goodness. We become wise and prudent when we accept this
sacrifice as an expression of God’s grace and love. The sacrifice can only be
understood and accepted in the context of love. Sacrifice is the most
convincing demonstration and evidence of love. God is Love. Therefore, the
Eucharistic sacrifice is an expression of God’s love towards us. In a specific
historical moment on
Eucharistic
banquet. This mystery of Jesus’ love is not
only his divine sacrifice for us weak people, but it is also our spiritual food
for our journey towards eternal life. There is no health, nor life without
bread. Mankind does not know all the ingredients of bread and wine, yet he
still eats and drinks of them with joy and moderation. Are we even aware of the
process of how wheat and grapevines grow? How does a seed sprout or a grape
mature? How is the seed transformed into bread, or the grapes into wine? Do we
know how bread and wine are then transformed in our living organisms? Despite
our lack of knowledge, this does not lessen the strength of bread nor wine to
sustain our lives in good health through their nourishment.
Something
similar occurs with our spiritual health. We cannot understand what the Holy
Eucharist is, but we accept it with faith and partake of it with the greatest
respect of heart for our eternal salvation. Jesus said to us: “Whoever eats of
this bread will live forever” (Jn 6:51). While our
earthly bread and wine serve for this life, so too Jesus’ Body and Blood serve
for spiritual and eternal life. None of us are worthy of this for we are all
sinners: in our thoughts, words and actions, as well as through our omissions
in doing the good that we should do. Whoever unworthily eats and drinks of this
Sacrament, that is, while in sin, in disorder, in obstinacy, that person is
guilty of sinning against the Body and Blood. However, those
who confess and repent for their sins, God grants them forgiveness and feeds
them with the Body and Blood of Christ. Let us give thanks to God who first of
all sets us free from our sins in the sacrament of Confession and who nourishes
us with his Eucharistic Body. The Mass is therefore the center of our personal
and communal lives. This is the will of our heavenly Father, established by the
Son of God, which happens through the power of the Holy Spirit. We believe in
the words of Christ, for his words “are spirit and life” (Jn
6:63).
In memory of him. The
Lord Jesus left us a great divine truth and mystery: “This is my Body”. “This
is my Blood”. These words were spoken by Christ himself. From the very
beginning, the Church has always literally understood this holy text and
message from Jesus’ Last Supper. Not even a single letter has ever been
changed, nor have they been understood according to other symbolic meanings in
order to make them more acceptable to people. Jesus said these words once and
forever! He also commanded that this be done in memory of him! In memory of
God’s great works of salvation. We acknowledge and believe in what has been
communicated to us! We celebrate the liturgy in the same fashion as we have
received it. Let us give thanks to God for the immeasurable gift of Jesus’ Most
Holy Body and Blood. This act and mystery contain the past: “Christ has died”;
the present of Christ’s resurrection: “Christ has risen”; and the future:
“Christ will come again”, when he shall come and prepare a place for us so that
we may be where he is (Jn 14:3).
III. – “Apparitions”. First
of all, the fact that a person makes a humble Confession and receives Holy
Communion in this parish church and that this person feels spiritually well due
to God’s forgiveness, each and every believer will recognize and give due
praise to God for this, who is the source of all graces. At the same time, this
person will take care not to proceed from this state of grace towards an illogical and inconsistent conclusion:
“I made a Confession. I feel good and now I am converted. Therefore the Madonna
is appearing in Medjugorje!” This type of believer and penitent is nonetheless
obliged to go to confession, receive the other sacraments, observe the
Commandments, whether any private apparitions are recognized or not.
Secondly,
I would be an irresponsible minister of the Mystery of the Body and Blood of
Christ, if today I were not to publicly advise, from this place and on this
occasion as well, to all those interested throughout the world, that in this
local Church of Mostar-Duvno, there exists something
similar to a schism. A number of
priests that have been expelled from
the Franciscan OFM Order by the Generalate of the
Order, due to their disobedience to the Holy Father, for years now have been forcefully keeping a few parish
churches and rectories along with church inventory. They have not only been illegally active in these parishes, but
they have also administered the sacraments profanely,
while others invalidly, such as Confession and Confirmation, or they have
assisted at invalid marriages. This
type of anti-ecclesial behaviour is shocking to all of us. At the same time,
this scandal of sacrilegiously
administering the sacraments, especially of the Most Holy Body of Christ,
must shock all the faithful as well who invalidly confess their sins to these
priests and participate in sacrilegious liturgies. We pray to the Lord that
this scandal and schism be uprooted as soon as possible from our midst.
Thirdly,
I am truly grateful to the Holy Father
the Pope, to John Paul II of blessed memory and to the reigning Benedict XVI,
who have always respected the judgements of the bishops of Mostar-Duvno,
of the previous as well as the current bishop, regarding the so-called
“apparitions” and “messages” of Medjugorje, all the while recognizing the Holy
Father’s right to give a final decision on these events. The judgements of the
bishops, after all the canonical investigations made thus far, can be
summarized in these following points:
1 - Medjugorje is a catholic parish in
which liturgical and pastoral activities are carried out, just as in all the
other parishes of this diocese of Mostar-Duvno. No-one except the official Church
authorities is then authorized to attribute the formal title of “shrine” to this
place.
2 - On
the basis of Church investigations of the events of Medjugorje, it cannot be
determined that these events involve supernatural apparitions or revelations.
This means that till now the Church has not accepted, neither as supernatural
nor as Marian, any of the apparitions.
3 - Priests who canonically administer this
parish of Medjugorje or those who come as visitors, are not authorised to
express their private views contrary to the official position of the Church on
the so-called “apparitions” and “messages”, during celebrations of the
sacraments, neither during other common acts of piety, nor in the Catholic
media.
4 -
The Catholic faithful are not only free from any obligation to believe in the
authenticity of the “apparitions” but they must also know that church pilgrimages are not allowed,
whether official or private, individual or group, or from other parishes, if
they presuppose the authenticity of the “apparitions” or if by undertaking them
attempt to certify these “apparitions”.
5 - As
the local Bishop, I maintain that regarding the events of Medjugorje, on the
basis of the investigations and experience gained thus far, throughout these
last 25 years, the Church has not confirmed a single “apparition” as
authentically being the Madonna. The fact that during these 25 years there has
been talk of tens of thousands of “apparitions” does not contribute any
authenticity to these events, which according to the words of our current Pope,
who I encountered during an audience on 24 February this year, commented that
at the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith they always questioned how all these “apparitions” could be considered authentic for the Catholic
faithful. They particularly do not seem to be authentic when it is known
beforehand that these so-called “apparitions” will occur:
To one of the “seers” on the 18th
of March every year, but along with this she will also receive an “apparition”
on the 2nd of each month, with “messages” which you can expect,
according to the established procedures;
The second will receive an apparition
on every day of the year, and if this were not enough, an added special
“apparition” on the 25th of each month along with a type of press
release, which once again you can foresee and expect;
The
third will receive an “apparition” on the 25th of December, on
Christmas day, along with a message similar to the ones already mentioned;
The fourth will receive an
“apparition” on the 8th of September every year along with a
specific message;
The remaining two will receive the
same, every day along with “messages” that can be anticipated since they are
variations on the same theme. This fact and the flood of so-called apparitions,
messages, secrets and signs, do not strengthen the faith, but rather further
convince us that in all of this there is nothing neither authentic nor
established as truthful.
Therefore I responsibly call upon
those who claim themselves to be “seers”, as well as those persons behind the
“messages”, to demonstrate ecclesiastical obedience and to cease with these
public manifestations and messages in this parish. In this fashion they shall
show their necessary adherence to the Church, by neither placing private
“apparitions” nor private sayings before the official position of the Church. Our
faith is a serious and responsible matter. The Church is also a serious and
responsible institution!
Through
the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the greatest possessor of the
gifts of the Holy Spirit, who through the same Holy Spirit conceived in her
body and gave birth to the Second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, who
gives us his Most Holy Body and Blood for eternal life, may He - who is the
Way, the Truth and the Life – help us so that the truth of the Blessed Virgin,
his Mother and Mother of the Church, Seat of Wisdom and Mirror of Justice, may
shine forth in brightness in this parish and diocese, without even a hint of
incredibility, yet all in accord with the constant teachings and practice of
the Church. Amen.
Ratko Perić,
bishop