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.
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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.
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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.