The stamp of peace!
By Željka Šaravanja

This year five stamps have been printed with the recognisable motifs of Međugorje: The Statue of Our Lady, the Belfry of St James Church, the Statue of Our Lady at the Hill of the Apparition, the Statue of Fr Slavko Barbarić at Mother’s village, and the Rosary in the hands of a believer.

Twenty-six years after it was first reported that Our Lady had appeared to a group of children, Međugorje has turned from a small Hercegovinian village into a place of pilgrimage, peace, and prayer. Through issuing the stamps dedicated to Međugorje and the Queen of Peace, the Croatian post-office of Mostar wished to make a small contribution to the spreading of the Međugorje message all over the world. The first such stamp was the image of Međugorje Queen of Peace, whose author was Ivica Šiško, and it was launched on May 12th, 1993. This year five stamps have been printed with the motifs of Međugorje: The Statue of Our Lady, the Belfry of St James Church, the Statue of Our Lady at the Hill of the Apparition, the Statue of Fr Slavko Barbarić at Mother’s village, and the Rosary in the hands of a believer. Designed by Miro Raguž, with the photos by Studio Blagec from Split, the stamps have been printed in sheets of ten, with the nominal value of one Mark.

Mysterious are the ways of Our Lord and inaccessible to the human mind, but time gives the answers to our wonderings. Međugorje had been planned in the Lord’s schedule long ago, otherwise the parish of Međugorje, established in 1892, would have been under the protection of some other saint, and not St James, the protector of pilgrims. Our Lady, together with St James, keeps watch over the millions of pilgrims coming to Međugorje to make sense of their lives, or maybe in quest of mental or bodily healing, or simply to thank the Lord for all the gifts of life. It is not easy to climb to the place of the first Apparition by the steep and arid path, especially during the hot summer months when the temperature often exceeds 400C, but children, the old, and the barefoot, do not give up walking to Our Lady by the path beaten down by the feet of countless pilgrims.

Beside the Hill of the Apparition there is Križevac (Cross Mountain) with an 8.56m cross erected on top by the citizens of Međugorje, engraved with the words:˝To Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of mankind, as a token of our Faith, Love and Hope, as the Memorial to the 1,900th anniversary of the Anguish of Christ”.

With the beginning of the Apparitions, the Way of the Cross commenced being prayed at Križevac. The posts were marked by wooden crosses at first, and in 1988 the bronze reliefs were mounted. After the Piety of the Way of the Cross on November 24th, 2001, under the 14th post, the well-known Franciscan and Charismatic Fr Slavko Barbarić ended the journey of his life.

The full article can be found on page 45 of Vol 3
2007 issue.