Wednesday – Last day in Medjugorje

For my last day in Medjugorje, I decided to do my own thing – to have a solitary day. But it wasn’t really solitary..I spent it with Jesus and Mary and many amazing people that I met along the way.

The Statue of the Risen Christ

After mass, I headed to the statue of the Risen Christ. At the start of our trip, it was Italy’s version of Labor Day and it was also Mirjiana’s monthly apparition, so there were SO MANY people here. When I had previously visited the statue, the line to touch the statue where it’s weeping was really really long, and so instead we just sat and prayed for awhile.

There are still a lot of Italians here, since Italy is so close by, so I strategically went to the statue during the Italian mass.

The line wasn’t too bad. I stood waiting and watched as pilgrim after pilgrim climbed up on the step stool and touched the knee of the statue, where the fluid comes from.

If you recall from my other post, they tested the fluid and said it’s unlike any fluid we have on Earth, but that the closes thing it resembles is a human tear. That’s why people describe the statue as “weeping.”

You might ask – so…why is the KNEE weeping? And I wouldn’t blame you…because I asked the same thing.

The thing is, the statue is many times taller than a person, so if anywhere else was weeping, you wouldn’t be able to reach it…so my guess is it's for convenience sake. But apparently, one of the visionaries said she thinks it is to remind us to get on our knees in prayer.

Definitely wouldn't be able to reach the face if it was weeping...

Anyway there have been healings documented as result of the tears, such as a blind man being able to see and a woman who was healed of breast cancer after touching the fluid.

Most pilgrims touch the tears and make a sign of the cross, and a lot of people also buy these little handkerchiefs and they wipe the tears with it and then bring them home to friends and family to bless them.

So I’m standing in line, and you can’t really see much besides people wiping this statue. It’s not like there’s just water pouring out of it or anything, So I started to wonder – how much fluid is there? Is it coming out of a crack? What is this going to look like…?  And I’ll do my best to describe it for you:

As I got closer, I started to see. There isn’t a crack or a hole or anything, but there is a droplet of clear fluid that just kind of forms and then starts rolling down the statue. Exactly like a tear forms in a tear duct and then rolls down a face. If you wipe the tear away, another one replaces it immediately.

This bronze statue of the risen Christ is sitting in the hot sun, being buffed and dried by hundreds of people., and it weeps without ceasing.

It’s absolutely incredible. There is no explanation for it. I climbed up for my turn with the statue and just watched as a teardrop formed and fell. I caught it and put it to my forehead. I caught the next and put it to my heart. I stared up at the risen Christ and thought 'Dear Lord – You truly can do anything. You can defy the power of death and also the laws of nature. Thank You God, for this miracle. Thank you for your suffering and your tears. Thank you for your gift of mercy and eternal life. Lord, if You were here I would wipe away every tear and ask that You not weep for me, but for those who do not know You.'

I swiped another tear and brought my fingers to my lips, then placed my kiss back on the spot, and then gave the next person their turn.

Here's a decent video of the statue weeping. In this video, the tears seem to be forming in THREE places, but when I was there it was just the top two, and mostly the middle one.

I stood in front of the statue for a little while and reflected on the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Wonder of God’s plan, and I ended up weeping next to the weeping statue.

Thank God for sunglasses! :)

Once More to the Castle

It was a beautiful, beautiful day. Sunny and 70 degrees, and I didn’t know what to do next. Going back to the Castle popped into my head as an idea so I decided to make the long walk in the sunshine.

When I arrived, I found Nancy in the kitchen and she said, “You’re just in time, Patrick is giving testimony in the main hall in English! Go!” I had a fleeting thought that I’d already heard it and didn’t need to again, but when Nancy tells you to do something, you do it happily.

So, I walked into the main hall and grabbed a seat and listened to Patrick’s story for a second time. It was just as beautiful and moving as the first time around. One specific thing I took away from hearing it the second time was about his oldest child, the one he doesn’t really talk a lot about during the story besides to say “my oldest child was into so much immorality that I can’t even speak about it.” It turns out, the oldest child is still umoved by the changes in Patrick, and so there isn’t a ton of closure there. Patrick says that he consecrated his child to the Blessed Mother, and that Mary promised that if you do that, She promises to save them in the end, and he said that promise brings him a world of comfort.

After the testimony, I was able to talk to Patrick alone for a bit (a rare, rare opportunity!). He mentioned that some people are really offended by the part of his talk where he says that going to Confession is the most important thing he ever did, and that one time this week, a woman got up and walked out during that part!

Wouldn’t you know it, right after he said that, a woman from the talk he just gave came up and told him how wonderful of a story it was and how grateful she was that he gave it and then she says, “And the part about confession! So wonderful. It truly is a powerful force and an amazing thing that priests can do! I was so happy to hear you say that.”

It wasn’t that Patrick needed the affirmation that he should continue telling that part of his story (he wouldn’t have stopped just for one upset person), but it was just impeccable timing.

Afterwards, I also confided in him that hearing his story was one of the things that finally made me decide to go to confession for the first time in 6 years, and I told him how I had had some less-than-great confession experiences previously, so he told me about one he had like that, too.

Later that day, I ended up Skyping with my sister Michelle, and she told me, “The number one impact that you’ve had on me so far reading about your experiences is that I’ve decided to go to confession again, after not going for over 12 years.”

Sometimes the terrible things that happen in the world can snowball, gathering mass and force and speed and becoming a vicious cycle of bad influencing and creating more bad. It’s so wonderful when good things and blessings and changes of heart can snowball instead! When one person’s conversion influences another’s, theirs can influence someone else’s too, and so on!

Isn’t God great!?

By the way - if you want to watch Patrick's testimony for yourself, this is the best video I can find on YouTube. It's a little weird because it's being translated into French as well, but it's still good, and it shows that people from all over the world come to hear Patrick's testimony.

After chatting with Patrick for awhile and realizing that my friends from the day before (Josh, Dan, and Elisa) were not there, I told him that I should probably get going and so I gave him a hug goodbye and taught him how to “hand-hug.”

I went and found Nancy by part of the castle that’s under construction, and she was with a group of Americans who were from Iowa, of all places. One woman was originally from Madison, one has a son-in-law who works at Epic, and one is actually a nurse at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (my customer)! Isn’t that wild?

I don’t really believe in coincidences in Medjugorje.

I had a really pleasant conversation with them and then a young woman who was with them, Lindsay, gave me her email and told me she could get me in touch with someone in Iowa City if I was interested in joining a prayer group or something while I’m working there.

I’ve been praying for months to find a prayer group or a life group like I had in college. Who would have thought I would find one on the other side of the world? Seek and ye shall find, I guess! Now I need to keep praying for one in Madison!

Lindsay ended up helping me find my way back to the church (I took a detour while chatting with them) and we were able to talk a little more about our paths to Medjugorje.

Before we left the castle, Nancy shared a little bit of her story as it had intertwined with Patrick’s. She said that when her brother sent them the book of messages, she saw that the main message was a call to conversion, and since she went to mass twice a year and believed in God, she considered herself a practicing Catholic, so she said, “The messages are good, but they’re not for me. I don’t need to be converted.”

As I’ve found this week, conversion doesn’t just mean believing in God. It doesn’t just mean going to church occasionally. It means converting your lifestyle, doing everything you can to seek Jesus, to praise God, and to be an example of Christ’s love.

Your heart can't even contain the joy that comes from Nancy kisses!

The Climb – Apparition Hill Barefoot

I made it back from the castle and grabbed lunch, then changed clothes and headed out to Apparition Hill. I knew I wanted to climb one of the mountains barefoot (people do it as a means of suffering with Jesus and offering it up to God) but I didn’t want to do it the first time, because I knew I would be agonizing the whole time like ‘how much FARTHER is it?!’

After climbing both with hiking shoes, I decided I would do Apparition Hill barefoot, because it is much, much shorter. Then, if I could do that, maybe someday I will do Cross Mountain without shoes.

So I walked up to the hill, put my Toms shoes in my purse, pulled out my rosary, and started climbing.

It wasn’t too bad at first. But it never got easier, only harder.

In reflection, it’s a little bit like life with faith and life without faith:

Climbing with shoes on/life without faith – you can walk up the rocks rather quickly, and you don’t really look where you step because it doesn’t matter if it’s sharp. You make your own way up the mountain, as you please.  What you might not think about is that each sharp rock is taking a toll on your shoes. Each step is wearing them down, and someday, after enough battering, the shoes will simply fall apart (there are actually some soles of shoes discarded along the way). You can wrap your soul in earthly things and you might feel comfortable and in control, but it’s really just temporary and you will find that you didn’t do anything to strengthen or nourish your soul along the way.

Climbing without shoes on/life with faith – you have to go up much slower, and you can only take it one step at a time as you try to find the right place to put your foot. You climb with caution, aware of your limits and of the vulnerability of your bare feet. You have to test the footing carefully before putting your full weight on it, and make sure that it won’t harm you and won’t support you. You don’t really choose your own path, you just look for the right spots and head in the right general direction. Sometimes you go too fast on your own and end up on something sharp. Sometimes it’s painful even when you’re going cautiously. And man, is it tiring. But at the end, when you sit down to rest and wash your feet, it feels wonderful and you understand what it means to rest. Similarly, if you approach life with faith and understanding of what can harm your vulnerable soul, you will not only strength it but protect it in the long-term.

I didn’t experience a fraction of the pain that Jesus must have experienced being whipped, crowned with thorns, and crucified, and I don’t really understand how or why God uses suffering as part of His plan, but I do know that Jesus’ passion is what saved all of us.

The only way I can even begin to comprehend it is if I think of it this way: when we’re kids, our parents have to punish us in order to teach us what is wrong and what is right. Grounding us or putting us in timeout doesn’t mean they don’t love us, it means that they are trying to teach us how to be good.

For example, let’s say a brother and a sister get into trouble for being up to no good, and one the older brother says, “It was all my idea. Don’t punish my sister” – the brother steps up to take the punishment and “suffers” more than they needed to out of love – in order to save their sister from suffering. Maybe some parents would see through it and say “Nice try, I know you both are equally guilty” but doing so would teach their son not to sacrifice for another out of love, and just imagine how that little girl would feel, seeing her brother take her punishment for her, and getting off scotch-free even though she knows she is equally guilty. That would probably have a much more profound impact on her than being grounded would.

So that’s kind of what Jesus did for us. Only there’s two big differences: 1) Jesus is totally blameless and did it anyway and 2) God=Jesus=Holy Spirit=God, which means God was right there with Jesus on the cross, which means God Himself accepted our punishment for us.

Isn’t that incredible? Doesn’t that make you feel loved?

So that’s kind of what I tried to do climbing Apparition Hill barefoot. I devoted the climb to the conversion of some specific people that I love and I asked God to accept my suffering for their sake.  If they never convert, if they face Final Judgment and they never accepted God into their hearts, I pray that my suffering and my prayers can ease their punishment and lead to their eventual salvation.

We are so touched in movies and books when a group of people are facing impossible odds, being chased by enemies and one person decides to stay behind and says, “You go on ahead. I’ll slow them down.” They sacrifice themselves in order to save their loved ones.

How heroic! How loving! How good, since now the other protagonists will survive!

And then we turn around and we say, “How can suffering ever be for the good?”

I’m not saying that I fully understand God’s purposes or plan – I definitely do not. I’m not even saying that I’m totally right about this…I’m just trying to find a way to conceptualize it that make sense to me.

I’m also not saying that God causes all suffering, or that He delights in suffering. On the contrary, I think that He wants to comfort us when we suffer, and heal us when we’re ill (look at all the miraculous healings Jesus did!). But I believe that He can bring Good out of everything – including bad things like suffering. I also believe that like a loving and wise parent, He might view an intentional decision to suffer for the sake of another out of love as a beautiful and wonderful thing.

In fact He might even look at it and say, “I understand. I’ve been there.”

Anyway…I’m writing this on the bus ride to Dubrovnik, and I’ll have to post it later. We’re spending the day in Dubrovnik and then start the long trip back to the States early in the morning.

I hope you don’t mind the reflections intermingled with the narrative. And I hope you comment if you have thoughts (even arguments). I think I will be processing this past week for quite awhile, and plan to continue blogging about it – and you’re more than welcome to stay with me as this literal journey ends and flows into my continued journey back home :)

Peace. Peace. Peace.

P.S. If you want to see one of the visionaries having an apparition, here is Mirjiana's apparition from March of this year and here is the message from Mary during this apparition.