More Fruits of Medjugorje 3

More Fruits of Medjugorje 3




Apparition Hill, Medjugorje (10/28/99)

Our first pilgrimage to Medjugorje came up suddenly and most unexpectedly, a common link shared by many of our tour group's members. In hindsight, much of what had transpired for many of us over the proceeding days, months, and years was only leading up to this pilgrimage and the events that would unfold in Medjugorje.

For me (Mary), there was a powerful conversion experience that began when I prayed the Rosary for the very first time in September, 1998. And although this was the day that I realized an abundance of graces from the Blessed Mother, it was Divine Mercy Sunday when I knew in my heart the unfathomable mercy of Jesus (as Sr. Faustina describes). My confession, after many years, triggered the start of an incredible spiritual journey that eventually led me to Medjugorje. Our Lady was laying the groundwork, so to speak, perhaps in an effort to ready me for what I was to experience there.

We are still very much overwhelmed by the events that unfolded as 5 of us climbed Apparition Hill on October 28, 1999. And, although we have separate accounts written by each of us who were part of the experience of that day, we've decided to share just one (Margie's account) because they are all lengthy and very similar in essence. Our Lady's presence in Medjugorje is very real as you will gather from our "experience" there.

(Those on Apparition Hill for this incredible experience were: Margie, my "spiritual anchor" of sorts, who was surprised with the money to travel to Medjugorje just in the nick of time; Eileen, my sister and the one whose subtle urging prompted Margie and me (Mary) to go; Diane, a nurse, wife, and mother from Wisconsin who was a member of our tour group; and Marcie, Diane's mother and a grandmother who's also from Wisconsin and was a member of our tour group.)

This is an account, written by Margie, of our experience upon Apparition Hill, Medjugorje, on October 28, 1999:

I knew upon awaking Thursday morning that this was destined to be a terrific day. Not only was the morning itself beautiful, with bright sunshine, clear blue sky and perfect temperature, but most amazingly, we finally got hot water for our showers after several days of cold water! Croatian French toast with Log Cabin syrup just added to our joy. After breakfast, we prayed the Rosary with members of our group outside in the glorious morning, then went to the English Mass at 10 a.m. After Mass, we shopped and walked around downtown, planning to head over to Apparition Hill around lunchtime. We stopped to get some sandwiches for lunch, then began to climb the hill.

Before beginning, my friend, Eileen, pulled me aside and hesitantly asked me to look at her rosary beads to see if I thought they might be turning gold. She was almost afraid to consider this possibility, and actually thought she might be imagining it. I looked at them, and sure enough, the links connecting the crucifix and the medal to the clear crystal beads had turned gold. The links looked just like my husband and daughter's rosary beads, which had turned gold earlier this year.

Eileen was very happy about this, and said that the fact that only a few links had turned gold meant that she needed to keep praying the rosary.

Eileen, her sister Mary, and I each took out our rosaries and began to pray as we climbed. We were distracted by a man sitting at the side of the hill. He was sketching the most beautiful portraits of Our Lady and Jesus that we had ever seen. We stopped and admired them, and tried to purchase one from him, but we were unable to communicate with him because he spoke no English. Even our experience with hand motions and sign language, which we had mastered during the week, was of no help. Unlike other local merchants, he did not even understand the word "dollars". We motioned to him that we would climb the mountain and on the way down we would each buy one of his drawings.

We continued up the hill, praying the first mystery. All of sudden, Eileen stopped walking and looked up at the sun. She announced that she could not see the sun, that it looked like a "giant blur." Mary then looked up at the sun and she too announced that it was not there; she could not see it. But in place of the sun, Mary saw a large white disk that she thought looked like a host. I then tried to look at the sun as they both were, staring directly into it without shielding their eyes in any way, but I was unable to do so. The sun was just as strong and bright as it ever had been all week, and I could not look directly into it, try as I might. I exclaimed several times, "How can you two do that? This is killing my eyes each time I try!" They continued to stare at the sun like this for several minutes. Accepting the fact that I would not experience this miracle of the sun, I took my camera out of my backpack and snapped two pictures-one of them looking at the sun and another of the sun itself.

After the phenomenon stopped, we shared our experiences with it and then started climbing and praying again, with even more exuberance. Just then, Eileen looked down at her rosary and shrieked, "They are completely gold now!!! Look!!" I ran over to her and saw that the beads which only minutes before were completely clear in color had turned to gold, along with every connecting link. But even more amazing was that the beads looked to have grown in size, to almost triple the size they had been. Even more incredible was that these beads were not only gold, they were glowing! They seemed to be giving off light in rays shooting out from them. We passed them around between us, but Mary was not able to see the gold, or the size change, or the light. Only Eileen and I could see this, and we both jumped up and down and exclaimed about how they were so gold.

We were making such a spectacle of ourselves that two men climbing near us came over and asked what was going on. We told them about the miracle of the sun and showed them the beads. They were unable to see that the beads were gold-they saw them as silver. We passed them around several times and even tried to convince them that they were gold, but they just did not see it. A young man from their group walked by; they called him over and asked him what color the beads were, and he answered that they were silver.

We began to realize that this little miracle might be only for us to see, so we said goodbye to the men and continued to climb and pray. We spotted two women. Marcie and her daughter, Diane, from our pilgrimage group coming down the hill toward us, and so we called out to them.

We met them halfway and showed them the beads and told them about the miracle of the sun. Both of them shrieked when they saw the beads-they could see that they were gold. We passed them round between us exclaiming about these events, and suddenly, Marcie shrieked, "Look at your hands!" The palms of our hands looked as if they had been dipped into gold glitter, and we understood that this resulted from our passing the rosary beads back and forth between us. It was almost as if the gold had "rubbed off" onto our skin! Or maybe Our Lady had sprinkled us all with gold dust, because the glitter seemed to fade and be replaced by circles of golden light, about the size of nickels, on our hands. We looked up at each other and saw that the circles of gold light were on our shirts, appearing and moving and disappearing on all of us. The gold light changed to white light, and we continued to see the circles on only a few of us, then only on our friend, Mary.

What happened next is very difficult to put into words, but here goes. We watched the circles of light on Mary's white T-shirt for about a minute, and then Eileen, Diane, and I started to see images appear within the circles. The images looked like a negative image for a photograph, in shades of gray, light and dark. As we watched the circles, images would develop there, like an instant photograph develops. The first image to appear was Our Lady, which changed into the face of Jesus. I saw images of the Blessed Mother, Jesus, little crosses, the Sacred Heart surrounded by thorns, the Immaculate Heart of Mary pierced by a sword, Mary holding the Infant Jesus, St. Joseph, Mary crying, the resurrected and glorified Christ, the Shroud of Turin face, a globe with North and South America connected by a cross, St. James Church with mountains in the background, a chalice with a host over it, a host with a dove on its bottom left, an African nun, a man playing a flute, a hand holding an empty bowl, and other images which I can't recall exactly. The images I saw were as clear as a real picture, or drawing, and the detail was amazing.

As each of these images would appear, I would describe what I was seeing to the others. Other than a few images at the beginning, Eileen, Marcie, and Diane could not see what I saw, but they did see the circles of light and saw images of human faces which they could not identify develop within them. Mary could not see anything, and it was almost comical to watch her, trying to hold still in one position so as not to upset what was happening, and shouting "What do you see now?"

One image in particular struck me with an awareness of Our Lord's presence there on the hill. I saw a globe with the outlines of North and South America, connected by a cross over the area where Mexico would be. As I prayed out loud for clarification, I asked the Lord what this meant. The continents faded and were replaced by a circle with a dove in the lower left-hand quadrant. I understood the circle to represent the Holy Eucharist in the form of a host. The words came from my mouth: "The Holy Spirit will bring us peace."

After several minutes of this amazing happening, I began to doubt that this was divinely inspired, and wanted to stop. I did not want to be "imagining" or inventing anything, and I thought that maybe I was doing this. I have a very deep devotion to Our Lady and did not want to offend Her in any way. I made a conscious effort to stop, and looked away from Mary and began to pray. I asked Our Lady and Our Lord if this was real, and if it was from them. I told them, in just these words and just as I speak to my friends and family, that I did not want to be involved in this if it was not divine, and I did not want to be creating miracles or "looking for signs." I looked away and prayed out loud for a minute, then I felt an uncontrollable need to look over at Mary again. Crying, almost unwilling to continue, I shrieked, "Oh - oh - there's another one!" and the circles kept appearing with images for a while.

Several times I stopped, prayed, and felt the need to look again. It soon became clear that this was some form of communication between heaven and us here on the hill, and that we needed to be open and cooperate if we were to hear and understand what Our Lord and Our Lady were trying to tell us. Our prayer changed then, to one of apology and sorrow for having doubted this event was divine, and we pleaded with Our Lady to please make clear to us what She wanted of us. The images continued, and I saw more images of Our Lady and Jesus, churches and crosses.

The images seemed to stop, so we all caught our breath and shared our thoughts about what had happened. We knew for sure that we needed to keep praying, so we started up the hill again doing just that. Diane had been climbing the hill barefoot, and so we decided to join her in this as an act of thanksgiving for this miracle. We found some rocks to sit down on and removed our shoes. Mary sat on a rock directly across from me, facing the sun while all of us had our backs to the sun. We all noticed that the circles of light had returned but how they were much larger, about the radius of a water glass and all over her shirt. Again, we could all see the circles except Mary.

What was interesting about this is that the position Mary was sitting in would have resulted in a filtered sunlight effect on her body and clothing, as the sun was shining down and through the brush on the side of the mountain-but instead the light formed into perfect circles. Even when we asked Mary to move, the circles remained in the same place on her shirt.

We immediately began to pray and ask Our Lady what these circles meant; we were desperate to know what She was trying to tell us. Just then, all the circles lined up, and formed themselves into a chain. Simultaneously, we all exclaimed, "She wants us to pray the rosary-they are in the shape of rosary beads." We also saw a silhouette of light, which resembled the outline of Our Lady, with Her arm extended out, pointing toward the rosary. This was a no brainer for all of us-it was as clear as day that if we wanted to know Her desires for us, we should pray the rosary.

At this point we felt a gentle breeze blow by us, yet there had been no wind on the Hill that day. I recalled reading the night before that Our Lady says the wind is Her sign. I mentioned this to the others, and Diane exclaimed that she too had read the same thing last night. We all felt a real presence of Our Lady at that moment.

We were satisfied with that and thought that was the end. But Our Lady is full of surprises. What happened next was truly extraordinary. Again, I was privileged to see images in the circles. The first image to develop was that of a beautiful baby on his mother's shoulder. It was clearly a baby boy, with curly hair, bright eyes, and a happy toothy smile. I took this to mean that we should be praying for the children in the world, perhaps especially the war orphans in Bosnia.

Then that image disappeared, and I saw the image of the face of a fetus appear-it seemed to be a child in the womb, perhaps 3-4 months old. I am the mother of 4 children, so I recognize the facial features of a fetus. We all took this to mean that we should be praying for an end to abortion in the world, and that we should work for the pro-life cause.

In a few moments, I saw a circle of light appear on Mary's sleeve. Within it I saw an image develop which was hard to discern at first, but after a minute I could see that it was a baptismal font like they have in some churches, with a dome over it and a cross on the top. On either side of the font stood two tall candles, and the font was on a table of some sort. Behind the font I could see that it was inside a church.

I told the group what I saw, but I really didn't get the meaning of this one. A baptismal font? What could that mean? Was Our Lady trying to focus us on the importance of the sacraments? Again, I asked Our Lady for help in discovering Her messages here. We all discussed how puzzled we were by this, and then Mary said, "Maybe I should have another baby-maybe that's what Our Lady is trying to tell me." We all agreed that that was a possibility, but to be sure we should all pray the rosary as Our Lady had told us and then we would know.

Then, Marcie began to see an image in another circle, which I could not see. Up till now, Marcie had not seen any of the images. Marcie began to cry and was seemingly shocked to see an image appear. Because she wanted to be certain, she asked Mary to move to the right and then to the left, and was overwhelmed to see the circles move with her. Through her tears, she described what she saw-two silhouettes, a man and a woman facing each other, about to embrace, and perhaps kiss.

It was getting toward the time when we needed to return to town, so we started down the hill. Mary and Marcie were so overcome with emotion that they practically ran down the hill ahead of Diane, Eileen, and me. The three of us passed the artist on the side again and he stopped us. The artist gave a drawing of Jesus to Eileen, then grabbed it back and gave her a drawing of Our Lady. He repeated this procedure with Diane, and gave me a drawing of Our Lady. He refused to take any money so we just threw some cash at him, thanked him and started to leave. He began to point down the hill at Mary and Marcie. He kept pointing and saying something we could not understand until we asked him, pointing to Mary, "Her? You want her?" He nodded.

We shouted down to Mary to come back up. Reluctantly, she climbed back up and when she reached the artist, he was rifling through his 1" pile of drawings. He seemed to know exactly which one he was looking for, and upon finding it, pointed to the sky, said the only English word we could understand, "MADONNA", and then pointed to his ear. He handed Eileen the picture and motioned for her to give it to Mary. Eileen looked at it and exclaimed, "Here's Our Lady's answer."

When she handed it to Mary, it was absolutely amazing. The drawing was of a beautiful little baby, very similar to the image I had seen on her shirt. Unlike the other pictures, it was not a drawing of Mary or Jesus, and did not resemble what we would consider the Christ child to look like. The artist again pointed up to the sky with praying hands, and again said "MADONNA." He pointed to his ears, then pointed to Mary, and said "bebe." It seemed that he was trying to communicate that Our Lady had told him to give this picture of the baby to Mary.

When Mary showed the picture to Marcie, she burst into tears and pointed to the baby's hands, where it looked like the baby was holding a pair of rosary beads. A closer look revealed that the baby was holding a necklace chain with some sort of medal on it. Marcie could barely get the words out to tell us that the image in the medal was exactly the same image she had seen on Mary's shirt, that of a man and woman entering into an embrace.

Words cannot express the absolute joy and wonder we all felt at that moment. It seemed to be Our Lady's direct answer to our questions on the hill. She even gave us a tangible reminder of Her desire-that She wishes for Mary to cooperate with God to bring a new life into the world-a life that we are sure will have a very important job to do for Our Lady.

We cried as we quickly rode a taxi back to the church, where we joined a group of people pointing up to Mt. Kriezevac and exclaiming. We looked up and witnessed another miracle, a huge fire at the base of the cross, almost a neon bright light, which we saw break apart and come together again several times. Eileen saw a circle of pink over the cross. We later learned that no one climbing the mountain that afternoon at that time saw any fire there. Our guide told us that in fifteen years working there she had never witnessed anything that spectacular.

Inside the conference center, I asked Eileen to pull out her rosary beads so I could see them. They had turned back to their normal size, shape, and color. Yet, later that evening, Marcie was astonished to discover that the links of her husband's rosary beads, which she had been carrying in a bag around her neck, had turned to gold.

When asked to comment on the light at the cross outside, Fr. Brandimir recalled Jesus' words, "These people are seeking signs." He went on to explain how signs mean nothing for him, but that Jesus means everything to him. He told us that there are signs everywhere, but we fail to see them. In fact, he said that out of 100 people who would witness the light on the mountain, most would try to reason it away and many would not believe it at all. The real power of Medjugorje is not in the signs, he explained, but in the sacraments. It is there that we experience a profound meeting with Christ Himself. It is this meeting that Our Lady wants to bring about by Her appearances here. Our Lady wants to once again give Jesus to the world. Fr. Brandimir went on to remind us that Our Lady invited each one of us here, and that we should strive to behave like Her, imitating Her virtues of humility, self-sacrifice, complete trust and faith in God. Like the wedding at Cana, Our Lady instructs us here "Do whatever He tells you."

After the talk by Fr. Brandimir, we all went outside. We looked up to see if the light was still at the base of the cross, but it was gone. Diane saw the cross surrounded by a pink ball with gold rays streaming out in all directions. It reminded her of a monstrance.

These miracles are just one of the many wonders of Medjugorje. Yet, Medjugorje is not about supernatural, cosmic events, or miracles, which convince us that God is real. Faith built on miracles alone is no faith at all. Medjugorje is about God-a God who loves each and every one of us in a very personal and individual way, a God who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who gives us exactly what we need when we need it. The miracle I experienced on Apparition Hill was custom designed for me by the one who custom designed me at my creation-God.

This miracle on the hill was just one example of how God showed me this very personal love that week. I could write volumes about the many ways He loved me in Medjugorje, and continues to love me here in Massachusetts. I could tell you about how He took something very painful to me and turned it around to help someone else there that week, something I had waited over 11 years to happen. I could tell you how each one of us in our group brought something special and unique with them to share with others on the pilgrimage, so that like a beautiful symphony we all resounded together in one harmonious song of joy, sorrow, and love that week.

But the thought I will leave you with is this-how great the Father's love is for us, we will not fully comprehend until our time on earth is done. Yet, in moments of grace, He allows us just a glimpse of Himself, for He knows just how much of Him we are ready to welcome.

May Jesus and Mary bless you abundantly! MIR--

Margie, Eileen, Mary, Diane, and Marcie

EPILOGUE

Three years have passed since we experienced the miracle on Apparition Hill. We have since come to learn that October 28 is the Feast of Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes. Saint Jude is now our special intercessor. One year later on October 28, 2000, Mary and Diane returned to Medugorje and marked the anniversary of our miracle with yet another miracle, this time a sudden appearance of medals at the Blue Cross. The medals were of a unique design and were inscribed with the words “Jesus , Redeemer of All, Born and Unborn.” There was one medal for each person present to witness the miracle.

One of the people present to witness this miracle was yet to be born. On August 15, 2000, the Feast of the Assumption, a visit to her obstetrician confirmed that Mary was indeed expecting a baby, due on or around Divine Mercy Sunday 2001.

This incredible gift from God, Maria Grace, was born on March 30, 2001 and baptized June 24, 2001 on the twentieth anniversary of Our Lady’s apparitions at Medugorje.

“Blessed is she who believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled.” Luke 1:45

Margie Ohrenberger


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