Medjugorje – Day Two

It was sometime between 1.30-2.00am before I got to sleep but, when sleep finally came, I was deeply, peacefully unconscious – until 6am when a thunderous clash of bells from St James Church across the road tore me from my sleep and I jumped out of bed to close the window. After half an hour’s effort, I fell asleep again and enjoyed another hour of bliss until a blast of music and another session of the clanging bells told me it was 7.30am. Why did I bother to take an alarm clock?

Breakfast was juices, make-it-yourself tea and coffee, excellent bread, cereal with reconstituted powdered milk and the mains: fried eggs, boiled eggs, small sausages and slices of cheese. By now the remainder of the Joe Walsh tours party had arrived – at 3am this morning – and they were tucking in - or fast asleep, depending on their stamina.

St James Church (interior)

English Mass was at 10am in St James Church, which was smaller than I expected; I was expecting something cathedral-size given the two million visitors a year to Medjugorje but it was little bigger than my parish church back home. For a Catholic church, it was also relatively plain with simple Stations of the Cross, plain plastered walls, decent modern stained glass windows, a modest altar – but a lovely side aisle with a large statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Twelve priests were concelebrating, the church was full and the warm, soaring sound of a violinist led the praise. The PA system was not flexible enough and distorted the words of the soft-spoken priest but generally did a good job of sharing the slower, louder, clearer spoken intercessions and the Gospel reading. The congregation, mostly Irish, knew the words, there was no need for missals here and the occasional Latin parts such as the Agnus Dei were confidently said.

The kneelers were wooden, a penance in itself, certainly if you have dodgy knees, like me. All the while Mass was being said, there was a constant stream of visitors, young and old heading for the BVM chapel where they knelt and prayed before the statue of Mary…and contrary to posted instructions that they would not be allowed, cameras and short shorts were both in evidence.

Tour Guide sets out the agenda for the day

Afterwards, as we walked to the Conference Hall for a briefing from the Joe Walsh tour guides, we passed occasional people sitting, deep in prayer, oblivious to the crowd around them and the chirping of crickets. A nice thing!

The three guides, Katarina, Dragana and Diana introduced themselves and each gave a short presentation to the Joe Walsh pilgrims present, about 90 of us, mostly elderly, mostly Irish (there were jokes about  the Irish and English falling apart without sufficient tea breaks).

Early afternoon, we assembled at the statue of Our Lady, just inside the church property boundary. I realised that I had mislaid my spectacles and also forgotten to bring the tour radios (which enable us to hear the tour guides and the broadcast translations of Croatian Masses and prayers). Sadly, I confess that my frustration boiled over and your holy pilgrim uttered a most unholy and un-pilgrim-like word…in the holy precincts. I’m definitely going to have to go to Confession now!



walking in 85 F degree heat...phew!

 

Vineyeard

Fig Tree

Fruit Tree 

lovely grapes
 

The 30+ minute walk to our destination, the Blue Cross, took us past the outskirts of the village, past fig and pomegranate trees, past vineyards with ripe bunches of green and black grapes, past small stalls set up by the village people selling fruits, jams, alcoholic beverages, embroidery, lace and tablecloths. It was certainly over 30 degrees Celsius (the mid-90s Fahrenheit) and the sweat rolled off us as we toiled along, praying the Joyful Mysteries. (We could have gone by taxi – only five Euros for up to four people - but it was a form of penance or mortification, ‘no pain, no gain’, negated somewhat by buying 10 figs for one Euro (70 pence) from a stall – the sweetest, juiciest figs that I’ve ever tasted).

the modern Blue Cross

Arriving, it was a short scramble of five minutes up an incredibly rocky hill before we reached the Blue Cross - yes, a cross painted blue - set in an area where the visionaries sheltered from the Communist authorities hunting for them and where Mary subsequently appeared in apparition. It is also where Ivan the visionary holds his prayer group.

original Blue Cross

Actually, the large blue cross where we gathered was not the site of the original apparitions, that is marked by a smaller blue cross just to the left, the larger blue cross marks a more spacious area specially created to cater to the larger groups of more elderly pilgrims (like us).

For an hour we listened to Mary’s 25^th July message, prayed, listened to some hymns to Mary accompanied by a guitar, then Philip the lead tour guide told us – at some length - the story of several momentous moments in his life, interspersed with quite interesting interpretations of some of Mary’s messages, and concluded with prayers from one of the accompanying priests.

All this time a stray dog lying beside me slept on. He seemed much more comfortable than me, I was perched on a jagged sliver of rock and was tempted to envy him – except that he twitched vigorously every few minutes, bad dreams or indigestion I suppose.

Hotel dinner at 4.45pm – pork steak – was followed by the Rosary in Croatian at 6.00 pm followed by International Mass in Croatian at 7.00pm (with simultaneous translation into the main European languages available by radio). We were told that the Rosary would pause at about 6.40pm when the apparition happened - and it did; a bell tinkled and everyone fell to their knees. Perhaps a little credulous, I was expecting to see a visionary experiencing a vision but was informed that the apparition was happening in the visionaries’ private chapels and not at the church. 

The Mass that followed was also held outside and there were about 80 priests on the altar and I would estimate (based on a count of the benches) that there were four to five thousand people attending. We had personal radios that provided a translation of the Mass but the homily – which was rather good – went on for about 25 minutes and I must confess that my eyes closed and I faded in and out  (probably due to transmission problems…). It was pleasantly cool, the dense black clouds threatened rain and there were several bursts of thunder and lightning but it stayed dry.