The Spirit of Medjugorje

"Dear children! Out of love towards you, God has sent me among you, to love you and encourage you to prayer and conversion, for peace in you and in your families and in the world. Little children, do not forget that true peace comes only through prayer, from God Who is your peace. Thank you for having responded to my call. (With Ecclesiastical approval)"

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Fr. Michael Della Penna's Vocation Testimony

      The following is excerpted from a testimony by Fr. Michael Della Penna on Fruit of Medjugorje (Episode #571, aired on 8/4/24). We recommend you go to Marytv.tv to hear the entire testimony (too long to include here).
     Hello everyone. My name is Fr. Michael Della Penna. I'm from Boston, and I'm really delighted that I get a chance to share a little bit of what happened to me through Medjugorje.
     I can begin way back in 1989 when I was a college student and I was living next door to one of my best friends. In the middle of the night, he actually knocked on my door and felt that he was being called to Medjugorje. At that time, I had never even heard of the word, so my response really was "Medju-what?" I never thought of anything like that, and I saw in him a beautiful emotion. I saw him really feel that he had an encounter with God and, of course, having grown up with him, I immediately felt drawn, and I knew I was going to go. That was in April of 1989.
     He convinced his entire family, six others, so there were eight of us altogether, and we wound up traveling there in September of 1989 - his family and myself. While we were there, I would say the first three days maybe, we didn't feel too much, but it was pretty impressive to see all of the different nationalities, all the different countries. You could definitely experience the universality of our faith and how it transcended country and language. That was pretty impressive. But for the first three days, we didn't feel much until my friend, Rick, and I decided that we were hungry. It was late at night, and we had thought we had read something about there being a pizza place open. We wound up looking for it with our flashlights. Of course there was nothing, especially at that time, so we decided to climb Mt. Krizevac. It was one of the first times I ever actually prayed the Stations of the Cross going up and we found it very prayerful. We were talking about life and God and different experiences.
     When we got to the top of the mountain, that's where we were just looking at the sun, as the sun rose over the horizon. I remember being awed by the fact that you could stare directly at the sun. I always describe it as almost a little host sitting right in front of the sun, kind of just moving a little bit. But there was a certain mellow peacefulness about that experience. And as we looked at the sun, I looked at the sun - I saw the sun kind of just go like this (gesturing), move around like that. Of course I looked at Rick. I said, "Did you just see that?" And he had. At that moment, I always describe it, it wasn't as if I felt anything bad. It was the contrary. I felt that we were witnessing this beautiful miracle, if you will, solar phenomenon, and it really touched me.
     We ended up going down the mountain and while we were there, I always describe it as each one of us experienced something that awakened in our heart the truth. It came affirming in me the reality that God is real, the Eucharist is real, Mary is real. One person described it as you almost go from black and white to color. It was a good analogy I think in a sense. It's a metaphor that, all of a sudden, everything comes alive. You look at your life in a different way through a different lens. You see a new paradigm of reality. So that conversion experience really awakened me to the truth of what I suspected. I thought God was real, and I used to go to church once in a while, but I wound up going to Confession here, and it was a beautiful emptying, if you will, and I'll never forget the priest asking me afterwards if I had a spiritual director. At that time, I didn't even know what a spiritual director was, and I told him I didn't. He said to me, "When you go back to Boston, get one."

Fr. Michael motioning about the sun miracle, photo credit Marytv.tv

     In other experiences here, I would say there was a profound sense of - I'm sure everyone's been saying for the last 43 years - there's a supernatural, beautiful deep peace, indescribable. That's something I think I've felt - it's been kind of like a thread of continuity through all of the visits when I come back here. There's a stillness, sort of like existential I would describe it, as if everything is OK, like you're supposed to be here, everything's the way it is supposed to be, that sense of perduring reality of this is where God wants you and it fits well in your soul, if you will.
     I also often describe it as you're walking or you're sitting and you feel like right around the corner you can see or meet Jesus - that "Heaven on earth" experience. And that, of course, keeps me coming back, I guess, besides the fact that you get to experience so many others, so many other people get re-awakened to that truth. They see God for the first time or they experience God in that transformation. For me, it never gets old - seeing someone awake to that truth is remarkable.
     Right now, we're in a group. We have about 41, and my cousin - to watch her experience God and try to integrate that into her life is life-changing for me because I see the joy that she's discovering, as I did back in 1989.
     So all of those experiences, so-called "coincidences" - as we open up the Scriptures and it will be speaking to our hearts - all of that, I brought back with me to Boston. But I was in a situation where I had been - I had just recently broken up with my girlfriend and I was confused...I really wanted to go back with my girlfriend. I know that what I experienced was real. I didn't really know how to integrate that into my life. I didn't know what that meant - that I saw the sun, that I was awakened to this new truth. Matter of fact, I couldn't reconcile that with all of my friends and college life. So one day I'd be partying and hanging out with everybody and doing my old things, and then the next day, I'd be like, "I want to give myself to God," and it was going back and forth.
     So I did take the advice of that confessor. I got a spiritual director, and I was working it out with him. He was very good and kind of slowing me down. One of the analogies he gave me on a retreat was that we are all like diamonds in the rough. I always took that to heart, meaning that at one and the same time, it was a way to kind of affirm our knowledge that we are these precious gems to God, and yet at the same time, when you find a diamond in the rough, it has probably dirt and rock stuck to it, and it's necessary that there has to be a process of purification. So that became a nice metaphor for me in my life as I continued on that last year, senior year, in school.
     I was slowly trying to make sense of everything that happens. I graduated and wound up working for the church at St. Leonard's, and I was doing odd jobs - painting, stripping the floors...all these kinds of things. But what it gave me the opportunity to do is, at 12:00, I'd go to Mass. And that's where I really felt that peace. That's where everything felt right. I kept on getting fed by the Word over that course of time. Then I began to speak to another priest about the possibility of thinking about a vocation and he wound up inviting me to discern for the month of December. So what I did, during that month, I just focused, I opened myself, I read Scripture, I tried to listen. I tried to be open to wherever God was calling.
     I had a few experiences, one of which was very formative...I just thought of becoming a Eucharistic Minister at that time and we'd bring it to the shut-ins. I was in rehab...I'll never forget this moment where I came in this room and there was an elderly gentleman and he was dying...he had a beautiful spirit about him. He shared his life with me... and we had so many things in common...There were so many similarities, commonalities, and then towards the end of the conversation, after I'd given him Communion, he shared with me that when he was young, he had discerned a vocation. He had thought about becoming a priest, but never did. He kind of regretted that he did not give himself to God. I remember going home and letting that really interiorize, digest, ponder that experience. I realized that could be me when I was older, regretting this invitation from God to follow Him more intimately...

Fr. Michael in Medjugorje

     So that's when I joined the Franciscans in 1991, and I kind of put it in my head I would give it like 2 years... I would say that after the first four months, I knew this was exactly what I wanted to do. Everything just fit for me and I loved it and I still love it! I love being a Franciscan. I love the experience of always being able to learn about God. I love the opportunity to deep-dive into His Word. It's a neverending richness where He has unfathomable mysteries that are always awaiting us. He invites us to explore it...So for me it was a doorway in a sense, to be invited to journey into God and to explore all of the depths of His love and to receive that at the same time, ministering in such a beautiful way to serve Our Lord, where I've found I always receive much more than I gave. In giving of yourself, you really do receive so much more back. It's such a fulfilling, beautiful vocation...
     What does it mean that She keeps coming? I've been contemplating that actually, I think like all pilgrims. There's a few things that come to mind. Like a good mother, She repeats what She's been saying, probably because we're not listening. She can see that those messages...the very last one [6/25/24] I found so penetrating. She said again that peace is being threatened and She said there's an attack on the family and She's saying put God in the first place. Those three alone I think are life changing in the sense that when you do put God in the first place, everything else lines up. That's when you have peace in your heart, that's when your family is grounded in the truth...

     What is it about our time that is so perilous? ... I remember there's a beautiful homily that a bishop gave when I was in Assisi right after the earthquake, when they had a huge statue of Mary over the Basilica of the Portiuncula. It was gold-leaf colored and they took it down because they were afraid it was going to fall. The bishop took that opportunity to say, "In the time of trouble, our Mother comes down from Heaven to be with Her children." I do see all of this in the context that She wants to guide us in a special way. It really is a school of prayer...When She speaks about conversion and She talks about putting Scripture in a visible place, She's telling us what we know intuitively, but we probably haven't applied. How many of us really read the Bible every day? Everybody can, but we don't. That's the key. It's putting habits into concrete action so that we can get His Word inside of us. She knows that's what's going to give us the grounding, that's what's going to open our heart, that's what's going to bring healing, that's what's going to bring peace...We might see them as very simplified or even basic.
     It reminds me of Naaman when he was told to wash himself in the water seven times and he rebelled. He thought it was too silly...he thought it was too easy. I think the messages that Our Lady gives us are often, maybe even 80% of the time, they kind of brush aside - too simple, too easy, and we don't put them into practice. But there's an infinite depth to doing so. It reminds me that you can't see the beauty of a church and its stained glass windows unless you're inside... if the sun's out, the vibrancy, the dynamism of those colors from within can be just unimaginably beautiful... When you're in that prayer, when you enrich yourself with the Word, when you submerge yourself into that beauty, then all of a sudden, life becomes transformed.
     We had a beautiful homily today by an Irish priest. He said, "Cleanse yourself." There's an experience, a depth of intimacy that we can all have access to by simply divulging, cleansing, emptying, that comes through the Sacrament [of Reconciliation]. That's why She's saying it...They're the Sacraments of the Church offered to us the last 2,000 years, that I think some of us take for granted...We see them as too simple a solution for such a complicated problem...I'm always really blown away by the analogy that the most sophisticated computer in the world...it's all based on two things: zero and one. It comes down to such a basic simplicity. I think for us, our spiritual lives can be very much reduced. It's simple - avoid evil and do good. Take that message into our heart and apply it...