Mirjana Speaks on Forgiveness

      The following was taken from a question and answer session with Mirjana in November of 2018.

     Q.     One of the men who interrogated you came back and apologized to you.
     A.     Miki [the translator]: "Many of them came back to apologize after the war.
     Q.     That was my question – whether others have come back to apologize for the harsh treatment?
     A.     To be honest with you, I forgave them right away. Because Our Lady invites us to forgive. And She says that we cannot follow Jesus if we are not ready to forgive. And, while bad things were happening to me in Sarajevo, I used to forgive immediately. Maybe I was even a little selfish, because I wanted just love to reign in my heart. Not revenge. Not hatred. I just wanted Jesus in my heart. So, when the first person came to ask me for forgiveness, I didn't even know who that person was because I forgave so much that I completely forgot him. Only through his explanations, I comprehended, finally, what he was talking about.

Mirjana

     But, one of them was interesting. He brought me a cassette recording from an interrogation. And, on that one, I heard my voice as a little girl. And those policemen asked me, "What did you see?" I said, "I saw Our Lady!" And then a policeman told me, "You saw $#!%!" And I said, "No, $#!% is the one that I am looking at right now." But, in order to describe or explain this to you, I was not especially brave. But I was convinced that they would kill me anyway. It is better to be killed with my head up and not that they humiliate me. So, in a certain way, I was kind of proud, and I felt as if I was helping my Jesus to carry His Cross. And that policeman, when he brought this cassette recording, he said to me, "At that time, I already wanted to shake your hand, to tell you, 'Oh, congratulations!'... but I was not allowed to. But now I desire to do that."
     But, you see, it is not only visionaries who are like this. Everybody in the village was like that. Because in communism, you simply have to choose: God or power. Here, everybody decided for God. And they had to do everything on their own. Country never helped you. If you want to have a road, you have to build it on your own. If you want to have a telephone, if you want electricity, water – you have to do it on your own.

"Forgive and you will be forgiven"
(Lk 6:37).

     And also, many people simply disappeared overnight.
     They would be taken away by communists, and they would say to their wives, "If you even cry in public tomorrow, or if you dress in black, your son might disappear next night." But, in spite of this, nobody said, "I do not want God." Everybody went behind God. For example, when apparitions started, even military came into the village, and then they occupied the church with the automatic guns. Then our priest asked them, "Can I please enter and turn on the bells? (Because Masses do not happen.) They said, "Yes, you may." But if you turn on the bells, and people who are in the fields working heard bells, they said, "Our priest is calling us. Nothing else matters." All the soldiers saw like 1,000 people, unarmed, gathering around church. They couldn't shoot, because how would they explain this to the world? And then they reopened the church. I mean, I was not especially brave; everybody was brave at that time.