Such apparitions were of great importance in the beginning of our journey, as our founder states: “In the Community, the spirituality of Spousal Love will be encouraged by studying the lives and writings of St Francis of Assisi and St Teresa of Avila, seeking to experience in our own vocation the same love that burned in their hearts . Along with them is the Queen of Peace, as Mary calls herself in the apparitions of Medjugorje, in Yugoslavia. Even before knowing the content of her message in these apparitions,
God had already put in my heart that the Queen of Peace had a lot to say to us.
How grateful and surprised I was to see in her messages what God had already inspired so strongly in our vocation. Let us be deeply and truly attached to her who is the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, and implore her intercession so that He can generate in our hearts the Spousal Love for her Son Jesus”. (Writings of Shalom Catholic Community)
Mother who exhorts us to pray
On the other hand, the title of Queen of Peace in the tradition of the Church far surpasses the apparitions of Yugoslavia. For us, it became the symbol of the Mother who exhorts us to pray:
“There will be no new if there is not a deep life of prayer in each one of us! Each day it becomes more real to me. The Queen of Peace (Medjugorje) may speak for us!” (Writings of Shalom Catholic Community)
An indication that we could serve God in any state of life
In addition to the unequivocal appeal to life of intense prayer, the Queen of Peace was, at the beginning of our journey, an indication that we could serve God in any state of life and that our call to Spousal Love was independent of this state, as the founder expressed in Written States of Life: “Open to other ways, the vocation (= state of life) that the Lord has for us, wanting to seek the truth for which He created us and not what we have already put in our head and what we do not have the courage to deliver into His hands, we will be on the right path of happiness. I am pleased to hear in this regard the statements of the Queen of Peace in Medjugorje.“
As we know, when asked by the seers about their states of life, the Queen of Peace advised them to make their own judgment, not requiring them to embrace this or that way of life. The titles of Queen of Peace and Spouse of the Spirit are united when the Mother is presented by the founder as the one who, entirely guided by the Spirit, is for us an example of Peace being a fruit of life in the Spirit, of experience with the Risen Jesus and not the fruit of our merely human efforts:
“Peace is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and only by a deep union with the Spirit of God, we can be soaked in it. There is no peace like the one that comes from the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and we can never enjoy this fruit unless we cultivate it through prayer and renunciation of self (mortification of which the Queen of Peace has spoken to us). It is this safe path that the Gospel gives us. That is what we want to follow. This we wish to embrace, experience and proclaim” (Writings of Shalom Catholic Community)
“To proclaim peace, we have, above all, to live it, to have it in our hearts. We have to be bearers of this peace, because we can not give what we do not have, and the only way to acquire this peace is to let ourselves be influenced by Jesus Christ, our Lord. As the Queen of Peace said, it is in the way of prayer, of diving in the heart of God, of allowing to be drenched with His Holy Spirit that we can live in Peace” (Writings of Shalom Catholic Community)
Peace is the fruit of conversion
The Queen of Peace reminds us, finally, that Peace is the fruit of conversion, prayer and mortification, exactly the way that our founder presents us in the New Work and Spousal Love, basic writings of our vocation: When Our Lady, in Medjugorje, where she is called Queen of Peace, speaks of peace, “it refers not only to peace in the political sense, to the absence of conflicts among nations, but to peace which is the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Writings of Shalom Catholic Community)
Translation: Ellen Lima