Medjugorje child
THE HIDDEN CHILD OF MEDJUGORJE, Sister Emmanuel. Children of Medjugorje Inc. 2007. 414pp
Reviewed by Michael Shackleton
Sister Emmanuel Maillard is a staunch believer in the apparitions of Our Lady at Mejugorje and seizes every opportunity that she can to draw our attention to Mary and her message, as conveyed by the six young visionaries who claim they have seen her.
Perhaps Sr Emmanuel is trying hard to soften the official Church’s heart. In spite of Pope John Paul II’s personal conviction that Mary really revealed herself at Medjugorje, the official Church has given the visionaries a cautious reception.
Sr Emmanuel has assembled in this book a number of anecdotes and narratives of human interest concerning the way in which pilgrims to Medjugorje, and others who have been influenced by the visionaries’ experiences, have been spiritually jolted to the realisation that God will not be ignored. The hidden child of Mejugorje is in fact Jesus himself, whose merciful call to the modern world to return to him, is relayed by his Mother for the sake us all.
Readers who are sensitive to appearances of Our Lady in the past will be pleased with the author’s approach to calling Christians to receive again the core of the Gospel in a contemporary setting.
While they might be convinced that the visionaries are honest in truthfully retelling what they have heard from Mary, they might be less convinced by some of the mystical experiences that Sr Emmanuel herself claims to have had.
The most bizarre, I think, is her description of “hearing” the hosts in the ciborium crying out in anguish because each one knew into whose particular sinful soul it would be received. Several hosts, she claims, were crying for help (help from whom?), horrified at the prospect of being consumed by an unworthy communicant. It is surely daft to imagine the hosts as something like jelly babies in a fanciful children’s tale, fearful of having their heads bitten off. Each host is, after all, the Body of Christ who said: “I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners” (Mt 9:13).
Medjugorje draws millions of pilgrims every year, including senior Church dignitaries, to be reminded of our destiny as the People of God and our duties to God and one another. As a high-profile reminder, it could serve a praiseworthy purpose for the Church, which Sr Emmanuel’s book, with reservations, may help to disseminate to a wider public.
- Can a Christian Doubt Heaven? - June 24, 2025
- What is the Church’s Teaching on Original Sin? - December 7, 2024
- Three Are One: How Can I Explain the Holy Trinity? - July 2, 2024