Svedectvá

By Emily A.

“Go to Confession. Unburden yourselves of all sin. In return, I will give you peace in your hearts.” – Message from Our Lady of Medjugorje on the 28th February 1988.

I have just returned from my fourth pilgrimage to Medjugorje where I served for three months as a volunteer. It was during this time that I felt a very gentle and silent nudge within me that Our Lady wanted me to make a General Confession.

By Emily A.

I grew up in a good and loving Catholic family and from a very young age, I always just knew that God is love. However, when I was just ten years old, it felt as if all of my childhood joy and innocence was just harshly snatched away from me.

I lived and grew up with a sister who has cerebral palsy and autism. She would often scream and cry, lash out and make threats to hurt me. I didn’t understand her behaviour and I felt frightened, hurt, rejected and confused.

By Emma Sisk

Packing my suitcase to go on holiday last week, I had an unusual checklist for a 24-year-old: no make-up, no bikini, and no going-out gear.

My 9.3kg suitcase contained clothes for seven days, a book I would not read, and my rosary beads. After nine hours of travelling, I arrived at a little village, in Bosnia Herzegovina,that has a seemingly unpronounceable name: Medjugorje, the religious-conversion capital of the world.

By Michael H. Brown

In May of 1988, when I first went to Medjugorje, the famed apparition site, I was furious.

The first morning there, I was convinced it was a case of mass hysteria.

As a journalist I was geared to observe circumstances, and what I saw concerned me greatly.

By Steve G.

Some supporters of the Medjugorje phenomenon point to the substantial number of conversions as evidence that the “apparitions” must be authentic. Sceptics are written off because they “don’t understand” how Medjugorje has changed so many lives and how pilgrimages to Medjugorje have been so instrumental.

Well, I’ve been there and done all that. Even bought some souvenirs at the local gift shop. But I still don’t believe in Medjugorje. Here’s my story.

• Andrea Cunningham: „Medjugorje is a special place”
• Fr. Charles Colazzi about the experience of Medjugorje
• Medjugorje helped me understand the Gospel
• “I received encouragement for priesthood and music ministry in Medjugorje”
• Every day I feel Gospa’s and Jesus’ grace

By Louise Roseingrave

The voice was an eerie guttural, horrible sound, ferociously angry.

The body was thrashing; it took six men to control its charged strength. The crowd was praying feverishly in Italian, ‘Santa Maria, prega per noi.’ Those words now etched in my memory. I had gone with an open mind to Medjugorje, Bosnia Herzegovina, where Our Lady has been appearing to six visionaries for the past 32 years. But I wasn’t expecting to meet the devil.

I was wandering by St James’ Church, where millions of pilgrims attend beautiful masses and prayer services, when I stumbled upon an exorcism.

By Tanja Popec

Coming to Medjugorje for many is a chance to search for a miracle, apparitions or some special message. Even theologians question about religious curiosity and wonder whether something special indeed happens there. Theologians, perhaps, even more than the others, always have a certain personal struggle since they have heritage of personal knowledge, discipline, obedience to hierarchy and their personal life with God, who even when He is silent, speaks a lot. Many have asked me how I feel about apparitions in Medjugorje? But, I do not think that it is up to me to decide whether those apparitions are for real and where do they come from. Actually, my faith is not bigger because of the apparitions nor it is smaller. I am waiting for the opinion of the Holy Father who will give the final judgment when the time for that comes.

By Jakob Marschner

Elena Artioli’s type of brain disease never vanishes or decreases in size. But hers did after she went to Medjugorje. Her Italian specialist knows of no other cases in the world when this has happened. To Elena herself, her spiritual renewal is the greatest miracle and gift that she received.

This is my personal experience of, and witness to Medjugorje. I would like you to share this post to draw more attention to the best place on earth, so that others may have the opportunity to fall in love with Medugorje, Mother Mary, and ultimately Her beloved Son Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Pascale Gryson-Selmeci, a married Brabantian and mother of family, testifies of her healing that occurred in Medjugorje Saturday August 3rd, after having communed at Mass. Suffering from leukoencephalopathy, a rare and incurable disease with symptoms appearing as those of Multiple Sclerosis, she participated in a pilgrimage organized at the end of July, in the event of the children’s festival. Patrick d’Ursel, one of the organizers, witnessed this healing.

According to witnesses, this habitant of Walloon Brabant was ill for 14 years, unspeakably. It was after having taken communion that Pascale felt a force. To the surprise of her husband and relatives, she began to speak and rise out of her chair! Patrick d’Ursel recollects Pascale’s testimony.

Spanish hockey player Litus Ballbe’s big dream was to play the Olympics, until a visit to Medjugorje gave him the call to be a priest. Now he is studying, but still his first dream has come true: His seminary has allowed him time for hockey, and on Monday he played at the London Olympics.

I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’.

For eight months, 2 years old Joshua battled a last stage cancer that brought him through a transplantation, 80 chemotherapy cures, and 17 radiotherapy sessions. When nothing worked, his parents took their son to Medjugorje. Back home, tests showed 19 tumors and all bone metastases to be gone as the beginning of Joshua’s now complete recovery.

All the medical tests were negative when Silvia Busi fell very ill at 16. Within days, the all-normal Italian girl found herself in a wheelchair, unable to move her legs. Nine months later Silvia’s illness disappeared as suddenly as it had come about, during an apparition to Medjugorje visionary Ivan Dragicevic. The gift of faith is the biggest one I got, she says.

Journalists of radio station “Mir” Medjugorje regularly invite pilgrims who come to Medjugorje to witness about their apparitions. Here, we will bring some of those experiences.

Davor Terzic, musician and composer from Rovinj came with his wife Vesna to Medjugorje. Davor is very much present at Croatian music scene and he is regularly participating at every festival of spiritual music. “We visited other Croatian shrines like Marija Bistrica and Vepric, and here we are in Medjugorje, for seventh, eighth time. We try to have a little bit time for ourselves every year. Our work is related to music, we make our living from that. We come here to thank God for everything he has given us in the previous year. This is where we feel fulfilled.”

By Devon Bailey

One of the messages I keep coming back to this year is the message of being “Real”. Meaning speaking only truth. Today I am going to tell you a true story. For some of you it will be hard to believe and for others I hope that it will clear some of your doubts. The story that I am about to tell you is completely true and I am promising right now that I will not lie to you.

By Benedetta Sangirardi, affaritaliani.it

Ania has a rented house in Milano. It is colorful and cozy. When you enter, you have the impression of a lively, very lively apartment. It is not one of those houses from which you get out early in the morning just to come back late at night. Ania Goledzinowska, 28, a Polish model, intercepted in the Ruby-gate investigation for the Silvio Berlusconi‘s "Bunga Bunga" nights, engaged to Paolo Beretta (Silvio Berlusconi’s nephew) is a very sweet girl. She welcomes me in a sleeveless shirt and tracksuit, her computer turned on the sofa. Blonde and blue eyes she is involved in writing her second book "a thriller with religious overtones". Far different from her first "With the eyes of a child" ("Con Occhi Di Bambina", published by Piemme Edizione), among the 100 best-selling books in Italy (81^st place).

By Nestor U. Torre, Philippine Daily Inquirer

When June Keithley introduced me to Countess Milona von Hapsburg last Thursday, Oct. 6, I was struck by the great contrast between her storied royal lineage and her sweet simplicity of dress and demeanor.

Here, clearly, was a person who had succeeded in transcending the trappings of "royalty” to focus exclusively on the more important aspects of life that now mattered most to her.

They were mostly significantly led by the spiritual mission that had prompted her many years ago to uproot herself and her family and live in the Marian apparition site of Medjugorje, a small village in the former Yugoslavia.

The famous Italian water polo player, 24 years old Alex Giorgetti came to Medjugorje. He comes from Savona in Italy, and he is offense player of Pro Recco, as well as the member of men’s Italy National Water Polo Team. They were the champions at the World Championship this year. Young Alex had meeting first with Fr. Miljenko Šteko, the Head of the Information Office in Medjugorje and gave him the water polo ball signed by all of the players of Italian team. He later shared his life experience with journalist of Radio Station “Mir” Medjugorje. He told us about his conversion that he experienced a year ago when he met Jesus in Mary and is very happy after having completely changed his life.

The following is Deacon Ken Finn’s account of his remarkable interactions with Mary, the Mother of God.

My first encounter with the Blessed Mother happened when I was travelling in an RV with my wife, Marie. We co-authored a Catholic Bible-study, called The Bread of Life, and we were making a grand circle, clock-wise through the outer states of the country, introducing our study to parishes. One night, at the beginning of our trip, we parked our RV in the parking lot of the mission in Santa Barbara, and as we lay down to go to bed, our conversation turned to the sadness of people who are unable to bond with their mothers from birth. My wife and I had adopted three children, who were about eight weeks when we got them, and we wondered if they might have been deprived of the precious gift of early bonding.

A young man from the United States, Michael, came to Medjugorje in March and he just sent me a letter. I share it with you because it may encourage and inspire each one of us in our personal call to prayer in the midst of our daily concerns.

"My last pilgrimage to Medjugorje was life changing for me, as the Gospa revealed to me early in the pilgrimage that I needed to pray for peace in my soul. I realized that, though I prayed and believed and had many miracles happen to me in the past, I still did not have much peace inside me. It was hard for me to pray with love, to mean what I was saying.

"I was raised in a devout Lutheran home in New York and always believed in God, but from my teen years onward I rejected organized religion, believing it was created totally by man and not by God. After marrying Ed and reluctantly agreeing to raise our children Catholic, I told him, ' Don't EVER expect me to become Catholic. You have to be born that way - you'd have to be crazy to choose it voluntarily! ' I rejected the Church's teachings, thinking they were made up by men who had nothing better to do than make people feel guilty and miserable. I occasionally went to church with my family, but found it profoundly boring.

By Michael H. Brown

... I'll go by what the Church ends up formally concluding (it is currently in the hands of a Vatican commission) -- period -- but my personal belief is that this is a place halfway between here and the hereafter, a supernatural spot where the dimensional partition is thin. I had gone through my "conversion" (actually, my return) to the Church years before, as I said (independent of any apparition), but this brought me into a deeper and richer phase of Catholicism. It also spurred my writing in the Catholic realm. Not only did virtually everyone change for the better after visiting, but did so profoundly -- converting others, establishing Adoration in their parishes upon return to the U.S., starting uncountable Rosary groups, and in many cases becoming priests. The seers are human -- and not perfect (is anyone?) -- but the good fruits vastly outweighed any "bad."

The young Franciscan Peter Kim Dae Woo visited Međugorje for the second time. He comes from the parish Incon in Korea, where he serves as the assistant parish priest. He was ordained in 2009, despite his great desire to become a singer. He studied at the University for electrical engineering, but he dreamt of music, and that had even reduced his student’s performance at the university. “I studied for four years, but I was not interested in that at all. I would spend most of my time playing and singing, the music was my whole life. I was student only up to the moment when I got to know music a bit better. At one point, I was no longer attending classes. Back in those days, I used to have a nick name “factory of curses”, because all of the words that were coming out from my mouth were bad, but I did not care for that at all. I only cared for music and lived in its world completely. I socialised with ‘so-called musicians’”

“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed” (Jn 20, 29)

Christianne Claessens – the first witness of healing of woman from Switzerland Joelle Beuret – Devanthery in Medjugorje, in October 2010, as she describes the pilgrimage and all of the events.

The more we listen to our guardian angel or the Lord, the more they speak to us. That was discovered by a woman in Massachusetts who experienced a dramatic conversion from life as an exotic dancer to a promoter of the Rosary -- leaving us lessons along the way.

This is all according to the book, Full of Grace: Miraculous Stories of Healing and Conversion through Mary's Intercession, an anointed work by Christine Watkins that details a number of incredible life turn-arounds.

Druggies. Homeless. A New Ager.

And Angela.

Famous Italian actress and convert, Claudia Koll, came to Medjugorje in the beginning of November on a pilgrimage. She gave interview to radio station “Mir” Medjugorje and she openly spoke about her life and her conversion. It felt as we had listened to the unwritten story of Mary Magdalene of our days. She told us about all of the troubles and difficulties she had while she was growing up, all beacuse her mom had died during her birth. She was raised by her granny and had many identity crises while she was educated and at the end got completely lost in the world of movie production.

How does a young person feel when he or she is called to discover God's love? We asked a member of the Beatitudes Community, Br. Jean Uriel Frey, to tell us about his conversion which began in Medjugorje, and about the way in which he uses his "treasure" to help others.

My Lord and My God, You are all Good, all Powerful, all Merciful. I don't believe I can imagine how beautiful God is, and I have a big imagination...but Medjugorje gave me an experience of the profoundly personal and beautiful relationship with God each person is called to through the beauty that is Our Lady. In Medjugorje, it is like Heaven has come down to earth. I felt the deepest desires of my heart were seen and constantly being revealed to me in prayer. I prayed for most of the 14 weeks I was in Medjugorje, and every day was filled with God's presence, all of the prayer and fasting came completely natural and was desirable while I was there. I experienced my relationship with God in a tangible way, my relationship with God became more real to me than the mountain I was standing on. Every dream in my heart was answered by God while I was there, even the deepest most hidden desires.