Medjugorje: True Or False?
The world is in great need of peace, and peace can be obtained through prayer as a divine gift; but not just any prayer will do: it must be the prayer of people who are at peace themselves. Not just any kind of peace will do, but the peace that is the fruit of prayer and penance. What kind of prayer? He said that Our Lady gave, as a suggestion, the whole rosary, then all fifteen decades; but, he said, the prayer could take other forms. The important thing is to pray a lot, every day. What kind of penance? Again, it is a suggestion: the now well-known Medjugorje fast, as much bread and water as a person wants, but only bread and water, on Wednesdays and Fridays. However, penance can take another form; but the important thing is to do it.
In spite of headlines screaming that Medjugorje has been “approved,” the fact remains that only seven out of many thousands of alleged apparitions have received a majority positive vote. As the Ruini Report details, 13 Vatican commission members voted in favor of supernatural origin of the initial seven apparitions, while one voted against and one vote was suspended. The 30,000 or so apparitions following those — from 1982 onwards to the present day, 35 years’ worth — received no votes in favor of supernatural origin, with 12 offering no opinion, while two voted against. (my source: Church Militant)
MY SUGGESTIONS
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
(Gerald Manley Hopkins)
This is certainly true that deep down in the depths of every human being, at the point where God’s creative action and our human existence that rises out of it meet, there is what is called the heart, our inner tabernacle. Thomas Merton wrote of his mystical experience in Louisville:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . .
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”
In the Christian life the heart is even more resplendent: heaven and earth are united in the Eucharist because they are united in Christ who is both God and man, and they are united in the heart of every Christian who abides in Christ because Christ actually lives in him.
55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.
Indeed, the Church of Christ is united in all her parts by such a bond of love that her several members form a single body and in each one the whole Church is mystically present; so that the whole Church universal may rightly be called the one bride of Christ, and on the other hand every single soul can, because of the mystical effect of the sacrament, be regarded as the whole Church… The cohesive force of mutual charity by which the Church is united is so great that she is not merely one in her many members but also, is some mysterious way, present in her entirety in each individual…..By reason of her unity of faith, she has not, in her many members, many parts, and yet through the close-knit bond of charity and the varied charismatic gifts she shows many facets in her individual members. Through the Holy Church is thus diversified in many individuals, she is none the less welded into one by the fire of the Holy Spirit. (On the Dominus Vobiscum)
“Hello, my Mexican friends! Why have you come over here?”
“Isn’t it true that we are about to have an apparition?”
“Yes, we have apparitions here; but Our Lady lives in Mexico!”
“That’s not Our Lady!” she exclaimed in horror.“But it is in accordance with your description!” said the poor sculptor.“I know. But it isn’t Our Lady.”The sculptor took out of his case a pile of holy pictures of the Mother of God under different titles and asked her to choose the one that most reminded her of the apparitions. She chose Our Lady of Perpetual Succour without any hesitation.“That is Our Lady!” she said firmly.“But that isn’t anything like your description of her!” cried the sculptor.“I know. But this is Our Lady,” said St Bernadette.
Pope John XXIII and the icon of the Theotokos de Kazan |
I hope that putting the question into the context of a realistic, “one-storey” universe may help to keep any suggested answer from being distorted by false but easy contrasts. The world is not divided into a miraculous dimension of faith and a humdrum, ordinary, secular dimension, cut off from God: God is closer to everything that exists than things are to each other. Moreover, because of all the prayer and penance that goes on there, it has become what my Irish ancestors called a “thin” place where the presence of God to whom all things are possible can be sensed everywhere you go in the ordinary, created world of restricted possibilities. In a modern, secular world that suffers the superstition that it exists independently of God, this is Medjugorje’s great achievement. Because of it, the Good News has been brought to the poor, liberty to captives, new sight to the blind, the downtrodden are set free, and the year of Lord’s favour is being proclaimed.
The first thing to realise is that, unlike Lourdes and Fatima, the young people involved were very ordinary and common or garden Catholic kids and not already candidates for sanctity. This was stressed by the parish priest in the early interviews.
This means that, unlike St Bernadette, they are not particularly pure in heart. Our Lady told them they were chosen because they were ordinary and average. As Croatian peasants, they are people of simple but deeply embedded Catholic faith; but they would also have been receptive to all kinds of ideas, prejudices, opinions, points of view and beliefs that were current in Yugoslavia at the time. The apparitions made them very dependent on the Franciscan parish clergy; and, while these priests were brave and pious, and dedicated to their beloved people who had received pastoral care from Franciscans for hundreds of years, they were not saints either, and their feud with the local bishop who wanted to put his own secular priests into that and other parishes, became bitter. All this would have been absorbed by the seers who hadn’t the clarity of vision that sanctity could have given them.
For four hundred years, the Franciscans had looked after this region when it was part of the Ottoman Empire. The story is told in the video above. Attempts by bishops to re-introduce secular clergy to replace the Franciscans have been met by opposition from both the friars and the people who identify with each other as they have done so through all the difficulties caused by an Islamic government. Unfortunately, replies from the Virgin in support of the Franciscans have caused the original bishop and his successor to call into question the authenticity of the apparitions. Perhaps that, and other mistakes are the reason why the commission wants only to support the first apparitions.
We have seen that God is very near to us and that there are many ways that he uses to speak to us, through his providence, through the readings in the Mass and in lectio divina, which is a conversation with God, by the sacraments, through superiors and even through neighbours: all we need is ears to hear. There is nothing strange or miraculous about it. There are also miraculous ways as I believe happened in Lourdes and Fatima, as well as Mejugorje. However, there is no reason to believe that the miraculous ways are more real and authentic than the non-miraculous ways: they command our attention more strongly.
We who practise lectio divina, try to discern God’s Providence, interpret God’s word etc know how easy it is for self-will and temptation can so easily cause us to misinterpret God’s voice, so that we must always interpret in humble obedience to the voice of the Church. Having said that, I in no way wish to call in question the reality of God’s communication, only our ability to listen; humble obedience is central, as is ecclesial charity which is the sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence. Situations like the bishop – Franciscan disagreement is obviously very bitter; and, in that context, the voice of the Holy Spirit is difficult to discern, except, of course, the call of humble obedience. In the light of this, I think the question has to be formulated thus:
If the Blessed Virgin chooses to use as her instruments people because they are “ordinary and average” rather than children on the verge of sanctity, can her message be distorted by their average ordinariness, so that her truth could be mixed with views taken for truths by peasant children of Medjugorje?
Why would she do such a thing? Perhaps because, if she chose saints, the apparitions would not have had the tremendous effect on the people of Medjugorje itself, an effect that is truly surprising. I don’t suppose there are few villages in the world that pray as the Medjugorje people pray. They can pray like that because the Virgin spoke to people no better than they are. Sanctity normally takes time. I wonder what kind of gospel would have been written by St Peter if he had written it during those first years with Our Lord?
If Pope Francis simply writes off these apparitions, what will the community of ex-drug addicts who are friends of mine say who live together inspired by the teaching of Medjugorje? Also, how can I explain my cross and chain which turned to gold – the one thing I couldn’t accept about Medjugorje before it happened to me? It is alright speaking about Our Lady as the postman, but slides into insignificance once we participate in the prayer-life of a Medjugorje pilgrimage or hear confessions there. On the other hand, the Franciscans and the seers, or some of them, have not always been devoid of self-deception. I await a nuanced judgement, one that won’t damage the work of grace that is Medjugorje.
Source: http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.com/2017/05/medjugorje-true-or-false.html
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