Medjugorje – Day Five

We set off from the foot of Cross Mountain at 5.40am. No, it’s not a mistake, at 5.40am. Due to the heat of the day, high eighties to low nineties Fahrenheit (about low 30s Celsius) we began our climb as it was getting light, the crickets were chirping to welcome the dawn and the vendors’ shops were already open for business at the foot of the mountain.

According to the guide, the origin of the cross on the mountain is as follows. The people of Medjugorje Parish have always been poor, mainly subsistence farmers. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, due to several successive years of too little rain in summer and too much in winter, harvests were poor and thousands died from starvation. They approached the local Bishop with a plan to build a huge cross on top of their highest local mountain. This coincided with the Vatican requesting parishes worldwide to commemorate the 1,900^th anniversary of Jesus’ death. When the Vatican heard of the plan for the cross, Pope Pius XI contributed a piece said to be from the original True Cross and this relic is contained in the crossbeams of the cross. Even the name of mountain was changed to Krizevac, meaning Cross Mountain.

The cross was constructed in 1933, it is over eight meters (or 27 feet) high, the mountain itself is 1,700 feet above sea level (although the base is already at a height of about 500 feet). In 1933 there was no heavy lifting machinery available so volunteers carried the sacks of cement and sand, the barrels of water, tools and the steel bars all the way up to the top. There is what is referred to as a path to the top today. There isn’t. A path is a smooth track and there is no such thing; only rocks, large and small, many jagged, some smooth, and an occasional patch of mud. What has been done is that the trees and shrubs have been removed for a width of six to ten feet in a zig-zag process meandering up the mountain side until the top. In 1933 they did not even have the benefit of such a ‘path.’    

 

There are bronze images of the 14 Stations of the Cross paced at equal distances all the way up to the top (plus a couple of extra ones and a memorial to Fr Barbaric).

 

We set off, G and I with climbing boots and poles, most of the grannies with a stout stick – while three men and a young lad went barefoot.

We adore you O Christ and we bless you

For by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

Fr Martin led the prayers at each Station, ending with a beautiful rendering of ‘Were You There when they Crucified my Lord?’

 

memorial to Fr Slavko Barbaric
 

It was hard work. In all, it took us three and a half hours to go up to the top and then come back down – but all the grannies, granpas and youngsters made it. The 11^th to 12^th Station was the most difficult with extra-large rocks that made huge steps necessary.

At the top there was the cross where we said a prayer. We had each carried a small stone from the base – in our hand, not in a bag or pocket - all the way to the top, and now we deposited it with the prayer and left both in the care of Our Lady. Some of the objects left at the cross were sad, the photo of the young boy, presumably dead or very ill, for example, and several of the pilgrims carried personal family burdens with them.

The cross bears a legend: To Jesus Christ, Redeemer of the human race, as a sign of their faith, love and hope, in remembrance of the 1900 years since the death of Jesus.

It was very still and peaceful at the top, a light wind was blowing and there were panoramic views of the surrounding countryside. Many of the pilgrims sat alone, lost in reverie.

view of St James Church from Cross Mountain

 

making the way down the mountain...very carefully!

The route down was quicker but not much easier, it was a different challenge, mostly of keeping balance. All the grannies etc. made it!

 

Sadly, we passed one elderly gent who had fallen and badly hurt his head and his knee. Fifteen minutes later, I counted nine uniformed emergency personnel making their way up the mountain, four carrying a stretcher. I believe they may have been First Aid volunteers from Medjugorje.

When we were in the taxi (5 Euros) back to town, G and I remarked how well we felt; there was not the least fatigue, my bad knees and my painful broken elbow gave me not the slightest trouble on the climb. As we devoured our waiting breakfast with relish, G, who eats sparingly and is famously self-disciplined - and slim as a result - went for seconds. Now, that’s a miracle!

Mass was in the Conference Hall celebrated by an Indian (I think) priest serving in an Irish parish who sang much of the Mass. I’m close to being tone deaf myself but the priest was slightly better. A different priest then offered me the Host from the chalice saying ‘Blood of Christ.’ I thought I was hallucinating – that’s what getting up at 4am does to you – but there was nothing wrong with the local choir (of three persons) who were outstanding, including one lady who both sang and played the violin.

 

Evening Mass at 7pm in Croatian at the outside altar with several thousand present – and an orchestra of 20-25 players plus a choir of 40 – wonderful! The simultaneous radio translation into English kept cutting out – I think my radio is faulty – and I had a problem relating the priest’s introductory remarks about men needing liquid courage to go to a dance with homily remarks about getting closer to Jesus. Never mind, the crowd were commendably devout as usual, and the priests distributed Communion effectively to the vast crowd, several persons on their knees waiting for the wafer. The sense of reverence was palpable.

At 9pm it was completely dark. We met in front of the statue of the Queen of Peace and one of our tour priests blessed our candles and we then processed to the special area set aside for burning candles with its large crucifix faced by rows of candle holders. There are benches behind for supplicants to sit and pray in front of the crucifix as their candles burn. The area is usually very busy – and unusually, everything is carried out in complete silence.

Fr Martin catches up on his sleep after a tough day

Afterwards, the priests led us to another part of the site where there are large tiled representations of each of the Mysteries of Light. As we walked there, a large group passed us, two abreast, holding up their flickering candles and chanting a hymn to Mary in some Slavic Language. Magical. Our own Rosary was special too, the area was silent expect for the chirping of crickets and the distant roar of traffic (chattering Italian worshippers going home were quietened by the tour guide putting a finger to his lips). After each mystery a singer accompanied by her guitar sang a relevant hymn, her beautiful voice shimmering in the air – and this being an Irish audience, soon had a choral accompaniment! Fr Martin, having led one of the mysteries took the opportunity to catch up on some sleep...  

Medjugorje - Day Four

The 6am thunderous clanging of the church bells was accompanied this morning by real thunder and lightning with torrential rain…but by 8am the sun was out, the sky was blue and by 10am the wet streets had dried. 

By 10am the 60 Joe Walsh pilgrims were on a coach for the 30-minute trip to Mostar, the sixth largest town in Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H), population 110,000, and one that suffered horribly during the 1991-1995 war.

The guide gave us a brief potted history of B-H as we drove along. Basically - as far as I remember it – the Croats originated from the Iraq/Iran area and migrated to this area in the 7^th Century, became Christians in the 9^th century and were conquered by the Turks in the 13^th-14^th centuries. The Turks ruled for several centuries (during which period the Christian Croats were persecuted) until the Austro-Hungarians came along in 1878 and favoured their fellow-Christian Croats. All was well until Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo (then in Bosnia, now the capital of B-H) and World War One followed. Then World War Two arrived and Yugoslavia rose out of its ashes, ruled by Tito (who also persecuted religion) until the fall of the Communist states and the War of Independence 1991-1995 that split the former Yugoslavia into 7 separate territories (B-H, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia).

The guide had everyone’s rapt attention – not just because the talk was fascinating but because if you looked out of the right hand windows it was a sheer drop of several hundred metres to the valley far below; for 15 minutes the road performed a winding zig-zag along the top of a mountain - and we said the rosary with especial fervour, eyes closed.

We survived and debussed to attend 11am Mass at St Peter & Paul Church, which was destroyed three times – in the first and second world wars and in 1992 during the war of independence – but re-built each time, and now includes a Franciscan monastery and tower whose height makes it a landmark throughout the city.

The church is not completed yet, its walls and barrel vaulting are bare concrete but it has excellent acoustics. Father Joe from our party said Mass, including the Our Father and Hail Mary in Irish Gaelic.

There was a poignant memorial in the entrance - a board with the photographs and personal data of 66 Franciscan priests martyred by the Communist partisan in 1945 because they were religious; the youngest was just 20.

There is still tension between Croatians and Bosniaks, a fellow pilgrim was told that parking a car with a crucifix on the rear view mirror in the ‘Moslem’ area of the city was inviting the paintwork to be scratched. A local guide said that they were determined to forget the horrors of 20 years ago and aggression was now restricted to the supporters of Croatian versus Bosniak football teams...however, I was not completely convinced, if only because supporters of the far-right BPS nationalist party, founded by a Bosnian former Army Commander, sees to want to resume hostilities as suggested by the graffiti below.

Some of the wounds of war...
 

 

After Mass the tour guide took us on a brief tour of the Old Town. As we walked along we could see more buildings still pockmarked by bullet, shell and splinter holes and others that were completely destroyed – although there is a lot of re-building work going on and I assume the worst examples of damage have now been repaired or replaced by modern buildings.

The highlight was viewing the Old Bridge, built by the Turks in 1566 – but completely destroyed in the war in 1993 and rebuilt about 10 years ago; it now has UNESCO World Heritage status. Youths were jumping from the parapet into the river Neretva for small change provided by the crowd of tourists – many of them Koreans – waiting below.

Then we visited the Old Town with its wall-to-wall Middle Eastern bric a brac, familiar to anyone who has visited a souk or Hindu bazaar. There is an old mosque with a minaret providing the best view of the city, open to the public for a small fee. What struck me though was a novel but chillingly apt local souvenir; rifle, handgun and machine gun cartridges welded together to form brass warplanes, tanks or artillery pieces…     

G and I stopped for lunch at Sadrvan Restaurant and ordered what we thought was closest to the local cuisine: bey soup (chicken stock, meat, veg and rather a lot of starch) and a mixed platter of local dishes (fapraka, dalme, Bosnian cookies, small cevap, cevap duvec, boiled potatoes, rice sour cream) and a glass of the local red blatina (not much body but palatable). It all came to a modest Euros 23.69 (£17) for the two of us. A small soft ice cream at the bus station provided dessert.

On the way back we took a different route – but still ended up driving along the edge of precipices. Father Joe led us in the Rosary and then a rendition of ‘O What a Beautiful Morning’ to commemorate the re-building of Mostar. Many with eyes closed lapsed into sleep and the half-hearted attempts at song soon petered out...

outdoor Mass at the Altar behind St James' Church

Evening International Mass in Croatian at 7pm was followed as usual by the Creed and (seven times) Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.  I believe this was Mary’s favourite prayer according to a message and I think I read somewhere that it was an earlier Franciscan favourite too. As usual there were several thousand people there from the preceding Rosary who attended Mass and then the various prayers and blessings afterwards – a truly impressive sight!

Medjugorje – Day Three

We were wide awake when the tolling church bells shattered the morning quiet at 6am. Half an hour later our group of 60 pilgrims was striding through the fields, past the vineyards, loudly declaring the Sorrowful Mysteries. It was beautiful, the early sun bright but cool, the first stallholders setting out baskets of fruit as we strolled by.

Half an hour later, after passing the home of one of the visionaries (Vicka’s, I think), we began our ascent of Apparition Hill. I must confess that G and I felt a little over-dressed. We had followed instructions and were equipped with proper hill trekking boots and two trekking poles each. The majority of our companions were middle aged and elderly Irish men and women, many without sticks, some wearing sneakers, plimsolls or court shoes, a few barefoot. There were even kids, one girl wearing plastic diamante-decorated plastic sandals. They were dressed for an afternoon stroll while we were ready to ascend the Himalayan foothills!

 

It was incredibly rocky and steep, a few patches of sun-baked mud between the rocks, sharp thorn bushes everywhere else. Our trekking poles were soon put to good use and G soon lent one of her poles to an elderly and overweight lady who was struggling.

 

 

 

Up we climbed, stopping every 50 metres at a plaque illustrating one of the five Joyful Mysteries where we took out our beads and said a decade, led by one of the Irish priests. In 45 minutes or so we had reached the top and veered right to the place where the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared to the visionaries.

 

It was now marked by a statue of the BVM, a copy of the one outside St James’ Church. For the first 20 years of the apparitions, the location was marked by a wooden cross; the Communist authorities occasionally tore it down but the villagers promptly replaced it. The location has a great view over the valley, fields and vineyards to the village of Medjugorje. Many pilgrims knelt and prayed before the statue of Mary or at a nearby crucifix.

We saw two seriously disabled people being carried up in chair-litters, borne aloft by four men, one at each corner. What a wonderful thing to have such caring and practical friends (I suspect their ancestors did the same and removed part of the thatched roof to lower their friend into the room where the great Healer waited!).

G, who has a talent for lightening burdens, had acquired two gardener’s kneeling pads - one Euro each from a local shop - which made sitting on the rocks more comfortable. (They were also invaluable for placing on the wooden kneelers in St James’ Church – if you plan to visit and have a wonky knee or a tender bottom, please acquire a kneeler and a couple of trekking poles – the latter were useful on the way up, invaluable on the way down.)  

After a late gulped breakfast - with a hard-boiled egg takeaway for later - we shot off to 10am English Mass at St James.  

In the afternoon we took taxis (5 Euros for a car of four) to Cennanolo, a community for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts that has a large house and workshops on the outskirts of Medjugorje. The place was absolutely swarming with organised tours of visitors. As we arrived a large group of several dozen was leaving and half an hour later another group arrived. Our lot of 60-70 was treated to a lecture by two former addicts, now part of the community...and invited to visit the gift shop. It was not the most meaningful and informative visit to a charity – but one thing sticks in my memory. Joseph was proud of the fact that many of the addicts who had entered the community had transformed their lives to the extent that several had become priests and nuns. ‘You can recognise the nuns’ he said with a smile ‘- they still have tattoos on the neck and arm.’    

some of the languages in which Confessions may be said

In the early evening I visited the Confessions area; Medjugorje is well known for encouraging examinations of conscience. There were several priests offering Reconciliation in Croatian, Italian, Polish, German and several other languages, including two English confessors. There number of queuing penitents was about 60-70 with the Italians predominating. I joined a queue of merry Irish pilgrims who were joking about the relative severity of priests they knew. In no time at all I was in the confessional, it was face-to-face with a kneeler separating us, and then I was out again, lighter.

St James Church (again)

 

The Outdoor Altar behind St James Church

a portion of the crowd at the evening Rosary said in Croatian

The night ended with Mass in Croatian, followed by Adoration of the Cross. As usual, several thousand attended.   

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. 

Medjugorje – Day One

The Joe Walsh Tours flight from Gatwick to Split in Croatia (formerly part of Yugoslavia) was via Norwegian Airlines and was crammed with families and young men with five o’clock shadows and flip-flops – a bucket and spade charter. We eagerly scanned the passengers, looking for fellow pilgrims and eventually identified – correctly – the only three; two middle aged Irish folk and a younger man.

The plane, a Boeing 737-800 was interesting in that the tail fin had a picture of an eminent Norwegian. What famous Norwegians do you know? I was stuck until I looked at the flight magazine which named 74 whose images appear on the airline’s planes, including Victor Borge, Greta Garbo, Edvard Grieg, Henrik Ibsen, Soren Kierkegaard, Jenny Lind, Edvard Munch…etc. 

It was raining in Split when we arrived and a passenger service agent with an umbrella shepherded us onto buses – which then travelled all of 100 yards to disgorge us in front of the main (only) terminal. Processing was efficient and courteous and we were soon in a minibus on the two-and-a-half hour journey to Medjugorje.

Ninety per cent of the journey was via a newly-constructed and excellent motorway. We whizzed along at 60 miles an hour, under leaden skies and dark scudding clouds, up into the mountains. It reminded me of the Scottish Highlands - very steep and rocky – as we climbed past occasional jagged peaks rising to over 3,000 feet and then swooped down into narrow valleys before ascending once more.

 

What was different was the trees, every hillside was almost completely covered by trees and bushes. There were small villages and individual houses in the most inhospitable locations that were visible only by a small patch of white wall and red-tiled roofs sticking out above the sea of green vegetation, and occasionally you would see a church tower or a lonely cross on a mountain peak. Isolated they may have been, but the lines of electricity pylons and mobile phone masts suggested they were plugged in to society.

The Croatian and then the Bosnia-Herzegovina border guards decided they did not need to see our passports - they may have heard us loudly reciting the Joyful Mysteries and decided, correctly, that we were harmless.   

As we left the motorway and trundled into Medjugorje along a dusty single track, the dark clouds began to lift, the sun made an appearance – and a rainbow suddenly appeared ahead of us. Two of my fellow-pilgrims were both Medjugorje veterans - one with 30+ visits since 1988 - and immediately assumed that this was a sign; the Queen of Peace is known to herald her presence by a rainbow. I’m afraid I just assumed it was a welcome but natural meteorological phenomenon.  

 

Our hotel was the Pansion Dubrovnik, situated right in the centre of the village, about three hundred yards from St James’ Church, the epicentre of organised spiritual life.

 

Our room was pleasant, two regular beds plus a sofa bed, ensuite, neat, clean – but the advertised wifi did not always work and was not capable of uploading images - so this report on Medjugorje will be posted on our return to the UK.

After a late supper of soup followed by pan-fried chicken and fruit, we went to check out the surroundings. The main street through Medjugorje was crowded on either side with religious souvenir stalls, the usual kitsch that will be familiar to Lourdes visitors. We popped into several shops to compare stocks and prices with Lourdes. Much of the range of small items was familiar (and cheaper) and there was the expected differences in modelling of the Blessed Virgin (stance, colour of dress, surroundings) and rather more in the way of pilgrim aids; sticks, stools, chairs, hats, clothing etc. There were several small bookshops selling Catholic books and CDs, obviously specialising in the apparitions. The increased number of bookshops was a definite improvement on Lourdes. I had quite forgotten that the index in locally-produced books is at the end of the book, not at the beginning! Based on a sample of one transaction, Medj shopkeepers are very pleasant with excellent English.

St James' Church

 A Croatian language Mass was in process at St James Church – not in the church but just behind it where there was an open-air altar and in front of it, on what looked like several hundred park benches, were seated several thousand people – all perfectly quiet and attentive. In fact, apart from the priest’s loudspeaker words, the only sound was the frantic chirping of birds in the surrounding trees. It was a strange contrast, the solemn ritual of Holy Mass and the energetic participation of nature … it brought to mind thoughts of St Francis.

Beside the church were two buildings with confession rooms, and , including those in the church, there were about 60 small confession rooms. On the entrance door to each was a sign giving the language employed and the priest’s name. There was also a red or green light signifying whether the confessional was empty or in use. There were about a dozen people waiting for confession in Croatian as we passed at 8pm. In the paved area in front of the church some visitors knelt and prayed in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin while others took in the sights – rubbernecking as American say – or posed for carefully arranged selfies in front of the landmark church.

Medjugorje seemed quite busy, a constant stream of pilgrims/tourists flowed past the restaurants and souvenir shops, the Italians seemingly in abundance, noisy and unselfconsciously flamboyant as ever – God bless them! The taxis, contrary to expectations, do occasionally stop for people crossing the roads using the zebra crossings  - but it helps if you carry crutches that you can wave at them!.   

We were back in the hotel by 9pm. Next stop breakfast at 8.45-10.00am then Mass in English at St James Church followed by a briefing from the Joe Walsh tour guides, an afternoon of doing something or other (unknown at this stage) followed by an early dinner at 4.45-6.00pm then Rosary and a pause for the ‘apparition’ at St James Church, followed by International Mass said in Croatian, followed by blessings and prayers for healings. The loudspeaker rendering of hymns, rosaries and so on from the church continued until 11pm or so, it was never intrusive but pleasantly reassuring  - prayer and praise is what the place is about.

Medjugorje – A Place of Grace or Diabolic Deception?

Exactly two years ago - to the day - I wrote a post about Medjugorje (Whither Medjugorje?), sparked off by the recurring mental debate about whether I should go there on pilgrimage; the timing coincided with the return from Medjugorje of a friend, Cathy, who was positive and enthusiastic about her experience.

Two years later, I am still uncertain about the worth of Medjugorje as a place of pilgrimage. There have undoubtedly been many valuable fruits – Mary’s Meals is often cited – and the tales of lives transformed are numerous and impressive. I have met many returned pilgrims who were as enthusiastic as Cathy – and also one or two who were quite obsessive!  There is also quite a bit of negative background to be found, in books and on the internet, that - at minimum - sounds warning bells.

At the risk of being boring myself, let me repeat some of my earlier blog, which is a summary of the position as I viewed it then – and now, supplemented by other and more current information...

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The history of Medjugorje and its surroundings is complex with racial, cultural, religious and political elements involving the Byzantine, Roman and Ottoman Empires; the Slavs, Franks, Bulgarians, Bosnians, Serbs and Hungarians; Orthodox, Moslem and Catholic adherents - a real stew of peoples, plots, conflicts and battles that continued until the Second World War, with contributions from the Nazis, Chetniks and Ustasa.

What a challenging place that the Mother of God (Our Lady of Medjugorje, Queen of Peace) reportedly chose for her communication! There are unsettling parallels with the Rwandan apparitions of Our Lady of Kibeho that took place at the same time. Both alleged appearances took place in 1981 and both presaged conflicts; the Rwandan Genocide in 1994-5, in which the UN estimate that about 800,000 died, and the Bosnian War of 1992-5 when over 100,000 people died. Two ‘holy’ places, with their shrines and pilgrimages sited amid a landscape scarred by the sinfulness of humanity.
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Today, there seems to be three views about Medjugorje in the Catholic community.

The first is “Medje-what? How do you pronounce it? Where is it?”

The second - and most prominent on the internet - is “A wonderful place, prayerful, I experienced something that has changed me forever...”

The last is “Work of the devil, Stay away.”

Learning how to pronounce the word ‘Medjugorje’ is easy now (Med-joo-gori-yeh or thereabouts!), thanks to the internet.

Also, thanks to the internet, those with negative views on Medjugorje can readily communicate their reservations or contrary opinions. These seem to fall under three main headings

DIVISION & REBELLION

There is a history of confrontation between the local ordinary of Mostar and the Franciscans in Mostar (who promoted the apparitions). Indeed, the local Bishops of Mostar, Pavao Zanic, and his successor Ratko Peric, have both ruled against the apparitions, after investigating them. Under the principle of collegiality, religious at all levels should have honoured this decision, but, instead, quite a number have visited Medjugorje or allowed facilities to the alleged visionaries when visiting their areas, sowing the seeds of division and apparently promoting an illicit cultus or alternative magisterium. (Indeed, at one stage, in 1991, Bishop Peric was kidnapped, beaten up and held hostage in an illicit chapel belonging to the Franciscans.)   

In 2007 Bishop Peric summarised the local church’s view (Bishop Peric's Statement) 

The Church is competent to say this. In her name, 30 chosen priests and physicians, working together in three Commissions for 10 years, in more than 30 meetings, dutifully and expertly investigated the events of Medjugorje and brought forth their judgement. And not one, but twenty bishops responsibly declared that there exists no proof that the events in Medjugorje concern supernatural apparitions.

However...a final view on the question has now been subsumed by the Vatican. In March 2010, Pope Benedict XVI established a Commission of 17 experts under the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), headed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, to report on the alleged apparitions. In November 2013 Pope Francis commented that the BVM ‘... is not a postmaster, sending messages every day.’ In January 2014 the Commission’s report on Medjugorje was provided to the CDF. In June 2015 the Pope, flying back to Rome after a visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina, told a reporter that a decision on the apparitions was imminent.    

Three days later, in his homily during Mass, Pope Francis cautioned against those who look for God‘with these Christian spiritualities that are a little ethereal,’calling them ‘modern Gnostics.’These people, he said ‘tell you this or that: no, the last word of God is Jesus Christ, there is no other!’ He also warned against those ‘who always need novelty of Christian identity. They’ve forgotten that they were chosen, anointed, that they have the guarantee of the Spirit, and they seek.’

Francis observed that there are those who might ask, ‘But where are the seers who tell us today, ‘the letter that the Madonna will send us at four in the afternoon…’ He cited this type of predicted vision as an example of those who base their faith on novelties, explaining that these people ‘live from this.’However ‘this isn’t Christian identity. The ultimate word of God is named ‘Jesus,’ nothing more,’he added.

DIVINE NATURE OF COMMUNICATIONS

Some commentators accuse the seers of receiving messages that are contrary to faith, for example, claiming Mary has said that all faiths are the same and equal before God. The visionaries are alleged to have given inconsistent reports in the early years and lied. It also strains credibility that tens of thousands of messages have been received since 1981 (compared to a handful at Lourdes and relatively few at Fatima). The messages are also described as anodyne, banal, boring or, in a few cases, even heretical and supportive of cults like Bayside, or validating the existence of UFOs!

However...there is a dispute as to the actual words said, reported, and translated. Although there may be some tape recordings surviving from the early days, and original transcripts are said to display numerous contradictions and inconsistencies, in many cases we are going back 30+ years to fallible recollections. The few alleged messages of Mary that I have read seem consistent with Catholic doctrine, emphasising prayer, repentance, fasting, the Bible, the Eucharist - however, we are talking about literally thousands of messages.

In support of the supernatural nature of the visionaries’ experiences, it is said that three separate and detailed scientific examinations of them failed to reveal any subterfuge or impropriety (- so they have not been ‘found out’ over the last 34 years, which must say something). Then there is the ‘miraculous’ signs, the sun spinning or being encircled by rainbows, base metal rosaries becoming gold, healings and so on...and there are also tales of credulous pilgrims staring at the sun for so long that they suffered eye damage.

LIFESTYLE OF THE VISIONARIES AND THEIR PROMOTERS

None of the visionaries has opted for a religious life (as did the visionaries in Lourdes and Fatima). It has been said that they did not seem exceptionally devoted to the Eucharist, and several seem to have benefitted materially from their situation, owning nice houses and cars. Their main promoter and spiritual advisor, Father Tomislav Vlasic, was reportedly suspended by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, investigated for matters including sexual immorality and creating a New Age cult, and then allegedly defrocked (or allowed to revert to non-clerical status). Similarly, two Franciscans accused of serious improprieties, including in one case impregnating a nun, were declared ‘innocent’ by the BVM  in several ‘messages’.  

However...it can be argued that participating in a Catholic marriage is also a worthy sacramental life. Some who have seen the seers’ houses regard these houses as unexceptional (although they have been enlarged to help house pilgrims) and many view the visionaries as exemplary Catholics. Also, it can be argues that not all those clerics and religious involved with the phenomena are, absent grace, able to resist the wiles of the Evil One.

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...so, are the good fruits, the conversions and genuine piety seen at Medjugorje enough to validate the apparitions as the fruits of grace?  

I don’t know.

But, I’m going there in a few days time for a week’s pilgrimage and, if I decide either way, I’ll let you know.

Windows Warrior...

The new PC operating system, Microsoft’s Windows 10, was officially launched on 29 July. Since I was keen to try it out, I loaded it on my desktop on 1^st August, three days later (and on my birthday). 

All went well for just over a week. There are enough bells and whistles on Windows 10 to satisfy the most determined technophile. Edge, the new browser, is lean, mean and a delight to use.

However...yesterday, on switching on, I found a warning message: 'CRITICAL ERROR - Your Start menu is not working. We'll try and fix it the next time you sign in.' It asks you to click on the 'Sign out Now' button.

So I clicked it and switched the PC off and then on several times - but with absolutely no effect.

Mmmh...a quick check on the internet showed that this ‘critical problem’ was being experienced by quite a few people and someone believed a Microsoft person had committed to come up with a fix.

In the meantime, I scoured the internet for possible solutions and applied various suggested remedies - mostly deleting suspect programs and applying scripts to the command line; nothing worked...nada, niet, zilch.

By the way, although this was described as a ‘critical error’ it only affected a few facilities, like the Start button (but the right-click button still worked), Search, app tiles and the Edge browser (but I could use my old, buggy, Internet Explorer and my Google Chrome browsers to access the internet).

So, in summary, it was far from being a disaster. So, why was I so irritated and why did I not wait until Microsoft came up with a ‘fix’ ?

Good question. The answer is probably because I saw ‘curing’ it as a challenge and also because I’m naturally rather impatient...

The next step was to re-install Windows 10, which took 2-3 hours. This had no effect, the ‘Critical Error’ message glowed even brighter.

At this stage I was losing faith in Windows 10 and decided to re-install Windows 8.1. On attempting, I found that it was impossible as ‘some files required for the installation have been removed.’

Gulp...

But then I had a brain-wave. The most recent restore-point was a couple of days ago – possibly when I had downloaded the item that caused the malfunction. So, I then attempted to roll-back to the earlier point, a few days previously.

...AND IT WORKED. The critical error message disappeared and the beautiful Windows 10 was re-born. However, I did lose some applications including Adobe Creative Cloud with Photoshop and Lightroom, which had to be re-installed.

So, the moral is, if you are a Windows Pioneer, like me, be prepared to take some knocks in the early days. (My sons are less charitable in their assessment; the elder one thinks that anyone who installs new software immediately it comes out, without waiting for one month or more in order for it to bed down is simply asking for trouble; younger son was more succinct – you’re an idiot, Dad!).