Posted on November 11, 2018.
Veterans Day was originally Armistice Day, marking the anniversary of the end of World War I. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 1918, the guns fell silent in Europe. Today is the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
The war was the result of very complex dynamics, but the immediate trigger was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Above is a picture of the pistol that was used to kill him, thereby sparking World War I.
World War I ushered in a horrific sequence of events. While the war raged, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia led to the rise of Communism as a global force in the world, inflicting destruction of unprecedented historic proportions on the world. After the war, the Great Depression ravaged the nations, followed by World War II, which brought unspeakable horrors never yet seen. Then followed the Cold War, with its threat of global nuclear annihilation. Though much has changed, the world has by no means yet recovered from the consequences of that fateful pistol shot in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
I find it an interesting coincidence, if coincidence we can call it, that Medjugorje is also in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The visionaries who claim to see the Virgin Mary there say that in the visions Mary speaks of herself as the Queen of Peace. Today, she is honored there by that title, or, in the local Croatian, as the Kraljica Mira. Indeed, on my two trips to Medjugorje, I experienced a profound, penetrating, otherworldly sense of peace in that town. I feel that the Queen of Peace truly reigns there.
Perhaps Mary came to Medjugorje, just a few hours away from where World War I began, to share with us that sense of peace that we need to end the wars and conflicts of the world and to heal the deep wounds of the past.
