Medjugorje: why there?

It is hard for me to know where to begin in sharing about my personal Medjugorje pilgrimage…  So I guess I will just start at the beginning and explain why my husband and I chose to go to Medjugorje at all.  After all, we could have spent a lot less money and went somewhere more tropical and fun like Hawaii, so why did we choose a poor village in the middle of Bosnia to spend our summer vacation?

Well, like I had explained in an earlier post, Paul and I truly believe that Our Lady of Medjugorje is largely responsible for the two of us getting married.  (Here's a quick recap for those who don't know the backstory: My senior year in high school I made my first pilgrimage to Medjugorje, and the biggest prayer intention on my heart was guidance in my vocation.  I was feeling equally drawn to the religious life and to married life, so I asked Our Lady at the top of Mount Krizevek (Cross Mountain) to send me my future husband my first year of college; otherwise, I would pursue religious life and not waste my money finishing college.  And she answered my prayer in a way that only could have been her careful arrangement.  While I was home from college on Christmas break, my brother Steve was visiting with Paul, an old classmate of his, who was in the Navy but home for Christmas break. My brother happened to mention that his little sister (that’s me) recently went on a trip to Medjugorje.  This greatly intrigued Paul, who had recently become very interested in Marian apparitions, so he decided to give me a call.  We arranged to meet at Mass and then go out for bagels to chat about my pilgrimage.   That was the first of many chat sessions…   We dated long-distance for the next 3 years and married in the month dedicated to Mary, May 26, 2000.)

So, ever since our courtship, we dreamed of going to Medjugorje together to thank Our Blessed Mother for bringing us together and to ask for her continued blessings upon our marriage. That's one big reason we decided to go there, but there's more...

I wish the rest of our love story was so simple and sweet, but if I was honest, I would have to say that yes, our marriage has been strewn with sweet roses, but those roses have been covered with painful thorns.  If the two of us did not have our strong Catholic faith, a deep commitment to the marital covenant, and a belief that God and His Blessed Mother had brought us together, there is no way we would still be wearing our wedding rings.  I suppose every marriage has thorns—it’s bound to happen when two sinners choose to live together for life—but my uber-romantic heart never imagined the pain and scars those thorns would cause.  Had I known about the thorns ahead of time, I might have chosen the convent (but I'm sure that would have had thorns of a different kind!).

The past year of our marriage has been particularly hard.  A thorn that I did not expect pierced my heart and I was not sure if our marriage could recover.  I knew we needed Our Lady’s help to find peace and  healing.  Quite frankly, I wanted to quit...to pack my bags and my kids and run away to my mom's house in South Dakota.  But since I knew deep down that God would not approve of that choice, I chose to run into the arms of my "other" Mother in Medjugorje instead.  So, with our thorn-pierced hearts, my husband and I boarded a plane bound for Bosnia.

48 hours later we arrived in Medjugorje—jet-lagged, but filled with expectant hope.  The grace and peace that surrounded us was so tangible that I felt like I could cup it with my hands, put it in a bottle, and bring it back home with me.  A priest once said that "in Medjugorje, it seems as if the veil between heaven and earth is somehow thinner there." The picture below seems to capture that mystery.  I took that photo right before Mary was about to appear, and it was as if the heavens were literally opening up to allow for Our Lady to descend to earth for the apparition.  The thin veil separating heaven and earth truly appeared to part for a few miraculous moments.  I really think that priest was onto something, and perhaps the "thinner veil" is why the graces feel so tangible there.  Perhaps that is also why more graces seem to be able to penetrate the hearts of pilgrims who go there and hear Our Lady's messages, leading so many souls back to God. With Mary appearing every single day since 1981, how could there not be extra graces there?  What a gift from God that has been given to us for so long!  Paul and I felt so blessed to be immersed in those miraculous graces.

So, that is why Paul and I chose Medjugorje----for the graces our marriage needed so desperately.  Did we find the graces and healing there?  Yes.  But, not quite in the way I had expected.  Neither one of us miraculously changed, we didn't see Mary appear to us or any spinning suns, my rosary did not turn gold, and my broken heart was not perfectly healed...but we received the grace of mercy.  Mary softened my heart to forgive my husband; she also showed me the big plank of pride stuck in my eye and that I needed forgiveness too (just as much or more than he!), and thankfully Paul and the Lord were gladly willing to forgive me once I humbled myself enough to ask.    

Mercy has been one of the greatest miracles for pilgrims who come to Medjugorje ever been since the apparitions began.  St. John Paul II called Medjugorje "the confession box of the world," which is an apt description if you ask anyone who has been there.  All day long hundreds of thousands of people from countless countries go to confession in Medjugorje.  Priests spend hours upon hours in the confession boxes---they even sit on chairs all around the church to hear the pilgrims' confessions because there simply aren't enough confession boxes for all the people who want to confess their sins and reconcile their souls with God!  It is a beautiful sight!  And for many Catholics, myself included, confession in Medjugorje is a grace-filled, healing experience, sometimes even the spiritual pinnacle of their pilgrimage.

At least 3 times in the 10 days we were there, I went to the Sacrament of Confession, and each time a miraculous healing took place.  One time in particular, while hiking up Cross Mountain and reciting the Stations of the Cross, a battle of spiritual warfare was taking place inside of me...  My soul became filled with such bitterness, disappointment, even hatred for my husband that it sickened me, scared me, and seriously made me question my salvation. I think Satan was working overtime on my marriage in Medjugorje.  He was ticked off that my husband and I had come to this holy place to seek extra graces from Our Lady to save our marriage.  And so the father of lies began to whisper his crafty lies on that hike up Cross Mountain, and "gullible Maria" was falling for them again.  Thankfully, I could sense the spiritual danger and knew how weak I was at fighting this battle on my own.  So immediately after the hike was over, I asked Fr. Edmond, the holy and humble priest in our tour group, if he would hear my confession.  Praise God he said yes!  We sat right on the front porch steps of the visionary Jakov's house, and I wept and confessed my sins.  Christ's mercy rushed in and the battle quickly changed course.  Satan fled (probably with his tail between his legs) and I was filled with peace.  I loved my husband again---complete, unconditional love like Christ had for me.  I was forgiven and made new, which gave me the grace to forgive and have hope again. Another Medjugorje miracle had taken place!  Praise the Lord for His unending mercy from the cross!

Paul and I with Fr. Edmond

So many graces and miracles took place in our marriage during that 2 week pilgrimage.  We had some really tough days, like the one I mentioned above, when Satan was working hard to prevent Paul and I from embracing the healing graces that Mary was sending us.  But most days were simply filled with peace, love, and joy.  What a joy it was to receive Jesus in the Eucharist daily surrounded by on-fire Catholics, to hike with my husband in the sunshine as we talked and prayed about our future, to be present for the daily apparition and place our intentions and those of our family and friends directly into Our Lady's hands, to eat meals with him without having to cut up anyone else's food into tiny bites, and to simply be together basking in the graces that surrounded us... That's why we chose Medjugorje.  

Will our  marriage still have thorns?  Yes it will (in fact, I can feel a sharp prick of one right now as I type this).  But the graces we received in Medjugorje taught us to focus on the beauty of the blossoms instead, and that if we offer up the thorns to Jesus, His love and mercy can transform them into something good and sweet.  

  

Love and mercy...sweet indeed!