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DESCRIBING WHAT IT'S LIKE TO SEE MARY, SEER TELLS OF TRANSPORT TO ANOTHER DIMENSION
@Spirit Daily
When we visited with seer Mirjana Dragicevic Soldo at Medjugorje last month, she gave many insights into what it's like to see the Virgin Mary: how it is to be transported out of our time and space to a place where an indescribable woman stands in a splendor that's transcendental.
It is not our dimension. As it says in Scripture, the sanctuary of God in heaven opens. There are flashes of light. She is the great sign adorned with the sun. When she comes, says Mirjana, everything disappears. All that's left is a surrounding of blue. Although Mirjana has been seeing Mary since 1981, she says she could never treat it casually. "I could see her a hundred years, but I would always recognize that she is the Mother of God," says Mirjana, who spends a day of fasting and night of prayer before her apparitions and then takes several hours afterwards to recover.
Being transported from our reality to a place that's heavenly and then returned to earth after a few minutes of an apparition is excruciating. When Mary is there, says Mirjana, even her family disappears. If it were not for them, she would not want to return to physical existence.
It becomes obvious in talking to this astute, well-spoken seer that the power of an apparition is more than most realize. Mirjana, who now receives an apparition once a month (her daily ones stopped in 1983), says that when she is about to see Mary a tremendous feeling wells up inside. "I think, if she doesn't come in a second," says Mirjana, indicating a feeling of bursting, "I'll die!"
There are a lot of misconceptions about seers. People tend to think the Virgin directs their every move when in fact the seers ask few if any questions during the apparitions. They are too in awe. They are in the presence of a woman who has been given an extremely high place in heaven. They are left alone to decide many things. Mirjana says she has to pray like anyone to understand many of the messages.
"A visionary is not special," the seer emphasizes. "We can make mistakes like all of you."
Back in the early days of the apparitions the Communists would often follow, detain, and threaten the seers (Mirjana was once shown a mental hospital, as well as a morgue), and yet on one such especially tense occasion, when Mary next appeared, she said nothing about what had happened that day. "At the beginning it was very different. I never knew if I would be alive tomorrow. They were coming every day in my home and taking me and returning me at about one or two in the morning. When they sent me home I would have an apparition but Blessed Mother didn't say anything about this. She would give me a message and then leave. I would think, 'She doesn't know what's happening with me? How is it that she isn't saying anything?'"
There are thus limits to the communication. Seers face trials like everyone.
How do the rest of us communicate with Mary? How does she respond to prayer?
According to Mirjana, it's fine to write petitions, but before we even ask, the Virgin, who is an emissary for her Son, realizes our needs. "Blessed Mary reads our hearts and knows all these things that we want," says Mirjana. "If you pray, she is reading your hearts and knows all these things."
Mirjana says that an image of Mary hanging in her basement [see below] has the closest feeling of the Virgin, although it is not a replica by any means. "This was made by an Italian, and Father Slavko [Barbaric, a deceased priest in the local parish] gave it to me," says Mirjana. " I like it because Blessed Mary is not like this, but this painting has something, maybe in the face, or how she is taking her hands, or how she is looking. In this painting I have something from Blessed Mary."
Mirjana also likes the Shroud of Turin.
And she says she has been told parts of the Virgin's life story.
"She gave it to Vicka [Ivankovic] and myself," says Mirjana. "I have small things. I need to receive more."
Were there things that surprised her? she was asked.
"There were so many surprises, so many things. But when she will tell me, I will give it to everybody -- not like a book, because it is not a book, but like a script of her life. It will be revealed generally."
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