Pope Prayed Before Image of Medjugorje Gospa

   The web portal of Radio Vatican reports in a post of July 21, 2007, that Pope Benedict XVI, currently staying in Lorenzago di Cadore until July 27, spent one hour praying in front of an image of Our Lady of Medjugorje.

   Radio Vatican said that it was a very poignant moment. “The Pope went to the small chapel in the forest and prayed in front of the image of Our Lady of Medjugorje. An interesting story is connected with this image: it was brought in the 80’s and was stolen. After some time, the thief brought it back to the small chapel. The Pope prayed the Rosary and spent about one hour there,” said the Radio Vatican journalist.                    

                                                                                     © Information Center “Mir” Međjugorje  www.medjugorje.hr.

On Prayer 

   This time I am asking you to pray for those who suffer from any addiction. And for their loved ones. Ask Our Lady to set them free, to be open to the grace that will free them from the dependence on whatever addiction that has a hold on them. It may be food, alcohol or drugs. Pray that they are willing to admit their problem and seek the necessary help. Please also pray for their loved ones whose lives may be difficult due to their addiction. Especially for children. Often people turn to food, alcohol or drugs because they have problems. But these are not the answer. They become another problem. Those who suffer should turn to Jesus who helps us through all problems.

The Sign of the Cross

By Father Albert Joseph Mary Shamon

   We make a cross by tracing our right hand from forehead to breast, from left to right shoulder. The Sign of the Cross expresses our belief in the mystery of our redemption.

   To the cross-sign, we add the words, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” to express our belief in the Holy Trinity, another great mystery of our salvation.  The Trinity tells us that even though God is one, He is not an alone God, because He is a Community of three loving Persons.

   We express the oneness of God when we use the words “In the name of,” for we use the singular “name” and not the plural “names.”

   And we express who the three Persons are in the one God by the words, “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Because these three Persons are equal, we join Them together by the coordinate conjunction “and.” We say, “of the Father,”  “and of the Son,” “and of the Holy Spirit.”  These “and of’s” are very important, for they express the equality of the three Persons.

   When we say, “In the name of the Father,” we touch our forehead, for the Father is the head of the Trinity. When we say, “and of the Son,” we touch our breast, for the Son came to teach us of the love of the Father for us, and love is in the heart. When we say, “and of the Holy Spirit,” we touch first our left shoulder at the word “Holy” and then our right shoulder at the word “Spirit,” for the Holy Spirit is the strength of God, the Comforter, Who helps us carry the burdens of life. We carry things on our shoulders.

   We go from the left shoulder to the right for two reasons: first, we write from left to right (in the East, they write from right to left; therefore they sign themselves that way – from right to left); and secondly, sin puts us on the left hand of God, but the forgiveness of sin brings us to the right side of God, and sins are forgiven by the Holy Spirit. “Receive the Holy Spirit,”  Jesus said when instituting the sacrament of Penance. “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.” (Jn 20:22-23)

   In history God demonstrated the power of the cross by using it to bring the pagan Roman Empire to an end. After the death of Diocletian, Constantine the Great inherited the poorest portion of the Roman Empire – Briton and Gaul.

All of Italy was given to the pagan Maxentius. Militarily, Maxentius had more than double the power and the strength of Constantine’s army. So Constantine’s officers were overwhelmingly against his invading Italy.

   But in the springtime of 312 A.D., Constantine, on the march with his army in Gaul, saw a cross in the sky in front of the sun with the words, “In hoc signo vinces “ (“In this sign you shall conquer”). Constantine ordered the cross to be put atop his battle standards. After this vision, all his doubts about invading Italy vanished and gave way to absolute certainty. Fearlessly, and with lightning rapidity, he descended into Italy and engaged Maxentius in battle.

Although outnumbered four to one, Constantine won a decisive victory. Maxentius and his troops retreated to Rome. The only bridge for them to cross the Tiber was the Milvian Bridge. But under the weight of the number of fugitives, the bridge collapsed, and Maxentius fell into the Tiber, and in his heavy armor, drowned.

   The next day, October 29, 312, Rome opened its gates to Constantine, who entered it in triumph. Constantine always attributed his victory to the cross. In thanksgiving, he ended the persecution of the Church, gave her legal status, outlawed death by crucifixion. Later on, his mother, St. Helena, went to Jerusalem and found the relic of the true cross of Christ.

   St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars, used to say that the Sign of the Cross is formidable, because by it we escape the power of the devil. Even in the movies, Dracula is depicted as shrinking from the cross.

   Often Jesus taught, “Whatever you ask in My name, I will do” (Jn 14:13). Imagine the blessings that flow to us when we begin what we do “In the name” of the Most Holy Trinity! No wonder we say, when we make the Sign of the Cross that we are blessing ourselves!

   Lastly, by the Sign of the Cross, we sign over to God, so to speak, all that we do. When Columbus took America in the name of  Isabel and Ferdinand of Spain, it became a Spanish possession. Similarly, whenever we do anything in the name of the Trinity, we sign it over to Them, thereby sanctifying our actions and making them redemptive. Parents should sign their children with the cross when they kiss them goodnight before going to bed.

                                    Used with permission from Our Lady Teaches About Sacramentals and Blessed Objects

After a Startling Vision of Jesus on the Cross, Comedian Turned into a Catholic

    When life seems to be closing in on us, in a world that so often seems upside-down, there's one way to exit, and that's through humor. A sure cure for our ills is found in laughter!  Usually, we should be laughing at ourselves.

And one thing that should make us smile is how silly it is to worry when we have God. In the Light of His eternity and angels and watchfulness, there is nothing to fear but lack of prayer. We can even pray for a good sense of humor!

     Many of you have heard the experts talk about how laughter can help us recover from serious illnesses. That's because humor is a spiritual release and when we release something on that level, it goes to both our emotions and bodies. A great example of this -- of both healing and laughter -- is Char Vance, the television producer and comedian from New Orleans who is often out there speaking at conferences and causing people to roll in the aisles. Char had been in the radio business when she suffered a horrendous accident. It was on Halloween night at a farm she owned back in the 1980’s. She and a group were riding on a tractor-pulled wagon when suddenly they caught sight of the barn on fire. Char jumped off in hopes of running to the blaze, but got caught underneath, injured so badly it looked like part of her leg would have to be amputated. The ankle was severely damaged.

Just crushed. No bone support at all. It looked like a lifelong handicap.

    At the time, Char Vance was not a Catholic, but a friend got her to go to the apparition site of Medjugorje -- much besmirched these days by the devil. And for good reason: this is a place of enormous conversion. Ask Char. Her recounting of her trip and her conversion to the Catholic faith -- more importantly, to faith in Jesus -- is a hilarious excursion into deep spirituality. Finally, it has been captured on videotape.

     At Medjugorje, where Char hobbled in a huge, lumbering cast, the Louisiana woman climbed the holy highland of Mount Krizevac despite those who thought it was crazy, and despite her own skepticism. "I wondered why [after Apparition Hill], they wanted us to go up the mountain," she jokes. "I said, why do you have us climbing two hills, two mountains in one day? It's not like we're going to run out of fun things to do here!"

     Here she was in a place with no TV and no hotels and no pools, drinking beer while everyone else was praying the Rosary in a way she saw as strange and obsessive.

     But Char went up the "hill." As she walked a dirt road on the outskirts of the village, something had said to her, "You know, it will be just your luck if something big happens up there and you're gonna miss it." That's what had finally convinced her to go up. She and her companions caught a cab.  When they got to the mountain, many others were doing the same.

     "I didn't know a lot of prayers," says Char, who was not a Catholic at the time. "I knew 'Now I lay me down to sleep' and the Lord's Prayer, but that's the most wonderful thing you Catholics have: you have prayers for everything," she jokes. "You know, you got department heads. You lost something, you got St. Anthony. You got bad eyes, you got St. Lucy..."

     Heading up the mountain and praying at the Fourth Station of the Cross, Char propped up her cast on a boulder and here comes a monk -- a very unusual monk. "He had on this white robe and the hood up and he's carrying a tripod with nothing on it, no camera. And he's looking directly at me," says Char. "And coming to me. And he says, 'You know, when I was in Germany, I had the good fortune of meeting Theresa Neumann.' To me it was like saying, 'I met John Jones.' He said, 'You know who that is, don't you?' I said, 'No.' And he said, 'Well, she was a stigmatist.'" “Got me again,” said Char.  "Don't you know what a stigmatist is?" the man asked. “Uh uh,” replied Char.

He explained what a stigmatic was (someone who had received the wounds of Christ) and pulling out a rosary told her that he had put it on her stigmatic wounds and that it had since healed people of many problems, including cancer. "Here I am with this big cast on the rock, and he says, 'I would like your permission to put this on your head!'"

     It's hard to convey how Char tells this story. Her inflections, her timing, her side comments are hilarious. The tape shows an audience in constant stitches. But she was telling a serious story. "When something like this happens, you think 'somebody has tapped into your thoughts' -- and you better start thinking some holy pious thoughts QUICK!"

     The mysterious stranger told Char to say seven Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s, and Glory Be’s, and when she got to the top, the Creed. "When he left he would talk to others," she recounts. "If they were French he would begin talking in French. If you were Spanish he would start speaking Spanish. It was like he knew what you were before he got there."

     At the seventh Station, the comedian noticed the "monk" was kind of winded. Char offered him a canteen of water. "He smiled a smile that went all the way through me," she says.

     Medjugorje is famous for the reports of mysterious strangers -- including monks or nuns in white. When Char got to the top, the seers were ready to have an apparition. Char didn't want to see anything -- afraid there would be hysteria and she would fall off the mountain! They were at the large cross there. "All of a sudden it's gets quiet, quiet, quiet. All of a sudden, that cross lit up, and it lit up, best I can describe it, like those old strobe lights, quick, and I see Jesus on the cross. I saw Him like I have never seen a person before or since. He looked horrible -- horrible -- His nose was laying over, and He had this enormous crown, not this little crown like you see. This thing was like a big bird's nest. That quickly it lit up again and I saw it again."

     Vance wasn't alone. Others in her group were astonished to witness the same thing. The mountain is known for a wide array of phenomena -- although this particular type we had not previously encountered. It is the cross where the Blessed Mother says She prays each day.

     A woman next to Char said, "Did you just see Christ on that cross?" Char felt "totally zapped." She now knew without a doubt that God and the Blessed Mother existed. When she got back, she had to go to the doctor for x-rays. She went in the waiting room "and all of a sudden the technician comes out with all these x-rays and he says [in a loud voice], 'Charlene Vance, you've been healed, you've been healed!'" 

     "You should have seen the people in there with their ‘People’ magazines!" she jokes. But it was true: the nurse ran in too, and then the doctor arrived -- gracing them with his "presence." "When's the last time you saw a doctor come into the waiting room!" she recalls with a roll of her eyes. "The nurse said, 'Did you hear that?'" The doctor said he had to take a look at it. It looked like there was bone growth! He asked Char to slowly try to see if she could move her toes. She could do more than that. She could rotate her whole ankle! She was with her mother. "I started dancing around and saying, 'Ma, ma, I can walk, praise God I can walk!' He runs out and brings out another doctor and they look at the x-rays and my mother says, 'Doctor, doctor, what is it,' and he says -- direct quote -- 'There's absolutely no correlation in her x-rays before she went and when she got back. There's total bone growth everywhere.'"

     Jesus is the same as He was 2,000 years ago, she tells those who see her. "Miracles do happen. Believe in miracles. Expect a miracle. Miracles do happen," says Char, who now helps produce videos for Focus International, headed by retired Archbishop Phillip Hannan. "The real miracle was when God healed my head with the gift of faith. Miracles do happen, but they happen in God's time and in His way."

     Char had some medals from Medjugorje and started walking all around and passing them out to the people in the waiting room. "Have a medal! Have a medal!" She walked out of that office and never needed crutches like they said she would need crutches and never received a day of therapy.

     And yes: Charlene Vance became a Catholic six months to the day that she had climbed the mountain.

[Footnote: She also was to learn that Theresa Neumann, the stigmatic, had been born on Friday, April 8, which is Char's birthday -- in fact she too was born on a Friday -- and was injured trying to put out a fire in a barn. It was her ankle that was injured, and the mystic was healed a year later!]

                                                                                                                                                    www.spiritdaily.com

Mirjana Answers Questions of Pilgrims

The following questions were asked of Mirjana outside her home after her talk on June 19, 2006.

Q: What can we do to bring back the teenagers who stop practicing the Catholic faith they were brought up in?

A:  When the children are adults and they leave our home, I would like to give you some advice – to pray for them and to pray that She (Our Lady) can do with them what She considers correct. We should never judge, criticize, or push them, but to show them with our own lives the love of God. This is the best way.

Q: My prayers are gravitating towards the whole world more than for my family and friends. Has the Blessed Mother said anything about that?

A: I do not consider that as wrong. I do the same. I would say, when I pray, say, “Dear God, you know what we need because I do not know what we need. I will pray, and You, dear God, You lead my family.”  But it is not wrong, at the same time, to pray for your family and friends. But somehow I feel closer to God praying like you just said.   

The Little Medjugorje of Kazakhstan

   Fr. Daniel Ange gives the following testimony regarding the Medjugorje Shrine of the Queen of Peace in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is in a strategic position, since it links Eastern Europe (freed from Communist ideology) to China (still under Marxist oppression). Fr. Daniel Ange had the grace of preparing the youth for the visit of Pope John Paul II which, he said, would be “decisive for Asia, the continent of the Church’s third millennium.”

  “After the immense joy of participating at the youth festival in Medjugorje I received the gift of leaving for the ‘little Medjugorje’ in Kazakhstan to prepare young Catholics for the Pope’s visit.

   “This oasis sprouted up from nothing in the middle of the desert in 1936 during the first wave of massive deportations under Stalin…I had the grace of meeting some of their survivors who had been torn away from their hometown of Galicia (west Ukraine, then Poland). The faces of these old men and their wives were deeply marked not so much by the torrid summers and freezing winters, but by the dramatic events of their youthful years. They were between 5 and 15 years old when they arrived here…

   “In 1941 a miracle answered their desperate prayers. Reduced to famine and dying by the day, the entire village was pleading with the Queen of Heaven to intercede, when on March 25 the big freeze was suddenly over.  Never before had there been such an early and sudden thaw. And there before them lay a large lake (7 km long and 70 m deep) which had formed under the snow; full of big fish.  The catch was so easy and abundant that airplanes from Karaganda (650 km) came to find food for the big city.  (And the fish were tropical – never seen before in that region – and in such abundance a cannery was built providing jobs for the local inhabitants.) Over the years, the lake diminished in size as living conditions improved; now it is a little more than a large pond.  I met members of the delegation that in the ‘80’s dared to go to Moscow to ask permission to build a church. It was denied; but in 1990 – at long last – a fisher of men arrived: a priest from Poland [John Paul II]. This was a bigger miracle than the fish! Thomas Peta, the capital’s young bishop for the past two years, had the joy of receiving the Holy Father…

   “Local authorities eventually gave way to the pressing demands of the inhabitants, and a church with two spires was built and dedicated to the Queen of Peace: the first Marian shrine in Kazakhstan.

   “Fr. Thomas [Archbishop Tomasz Peta, Archbishop of Maria Santissima in Astana, Kazakhstan] was very surprised when he went to Medjugorje and discovered that the title was one She had given Herself, and that his little church was strangely similar to the Marian shrine in Hercegovina.  When he went back home he had a copy of the great cross on Krizevac erected on a little volcanic hill and dedicated it to the martyrs of Kazakhstan.  He also called Ojiorne the ‘little Medjugorje of Kazakhstan.’

Editor’s note: The above is an excerpt from the updated version of Denis Nolan’s book, Medjugorje and the Church, © 2007. It is a “must read” for priests and bishops. The story below is also from this book.

Reagan, Gorbachev and Medjugorje

   Just prior to signing the Peace Accord in 1987, President Reagan was given (by Alfred Kingon, at the time America’s Ambassador to Europe) a letter from Marija Pavlovic, one of the visionaries in Medjugorje. According to Kingon, President Reagan, visibly moved, phoned his thanks to Marija in Medjugorje, and then proceeded to his meeting with Gorbachev after first exclaiming, “Now I’m going to this meeting with a new spirit!” Marija would later write Gorbachev, “at the request of Ambassador Kingon,” informing him, as she had the American President, of Our Lady’s message of peace from Medjugorje. Kingon testifies that it was translated into Russian and put into the hands of Gorbachev at the Kremlin.

   Also some time later, Reagan wrote Fr. John Villanova, chaplain of the Sanctuary of Fatima, Portugal, thanking him for having sent the Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima. It was “upstairs in Nancy’s and my bedroom” at the White House when he and Gorbachev “were meeting downstairs.”

   A non-Catholic, Ambassador Kingon, secretary to President Reagan’s cabinet before being named Ambassador to Europe, gave the testimony – and also his own, after his pilgrimage to Medjugorje – at the 1992 National Conference on Medjugorje at the University of Notre Dame: “Our Lady is now coming for all Her children on earth, in preparation for a major turning point in the affairs of men!”

Editor’s note: As noted above, this story is also from Denis Nolan’s book, Medjugorje and the Church, © 2007.

The text of Marija’s letter to President Reagan can be read in our book The Best of “The Spirit of Medjugorje,” Volume I.

The Best Kept Secret of the Church

By June Klins

   As Catholics, we are so blessed to have Our Lady, the saints, the Rosary, the sacraments, especially the Eucharist -  but there is another source of holiness that is often overlooked. It is the best kept secret of the Church.

  One night in July, the young Redemptorist priest leading our annual St. Ann Novena, talked about the concept of redemptive suffering.  Father Matthew lamented, “The words ‘Offer it up’ are rarely heard any more.”
   Father Matthew, who is wise beyond his years, started out by asking what makes a "saint" different from other good people, other followers of Jesus, who seem to do all the right things. What sets them apart? Father said that through his readings of the writings of the saints, he has come to the conclusion that the one thing that sets them apart is how they react to suffering. He called it “the secret of the saints.” The saints embraced their suffering. He gave the example from the Acts of the Apostles where Peter and John were scourged and left "REJOICING that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name." (Acts 5:41)

   Father said that suffering can become a great victory. When we embrace our suffering and unite our suffering with Jesus, we can be a source of grace and apply it to others and situations in the world. As we offer up our suffering, the suffering loses its power over us because now our suffering has a purpose. Father told a story about a conversation he had as a seminarian with a woman in a nursing home. This woman, who was not Catholic, complained to him that although she prays and prays and prays, her condition was getting worse instead of better. Father went out on a limb and explained to her the Catholic perspective on suffering and suggested that she offer up her suffering for her family. She smiled widely and said, "That is beautiful! You mean my suffering does not have to be in vain?"  After that her whole countenance changed. A few days later the head chaplain of the nursing home, who was not Catholic, asked Father what he had said to that woman because all the nurses had remarked about her attitude change. After Father explained to the chaplain about redemptive suffering, the chaplain asked if the Church had any documentation on that. Father told him to read Pope John Paul's Encyclical on the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering. After the chaplain read it, he remarked that it was the best piece he had ever read on suffering. From then on, the head chaplain made this encyclical mandatory reading for all those training to be chaplains.

   Father Matthew said that we all have suffering, either great suffering or many little trials and that we waste the benefits of suffering when we complain and want people to feel sorry for us. He said that St. Catherine of Siena appeared after her death and said that the only regret she had about her life was that she did not suffer for Christ more. St. Padre Pio once said, "The angels envy us for one thing only, that we can suffer as Christ did, and they cannot."

   Father said that when we rejoice in our suffering, the devil has NO POWER over us. The devil always tries to frustrate us and disturb our peace, but when we offer it up for God's glory, the devil's plan BACKFIRES! The saints say that the devil comes around less because we thwart his plans by transforming the suffering into God’s glory, just the opposite effect that he wants. Suffering can actually be a powerful weapon of spiritual warfare!  

   Father ended his talk by saying that God allows suffering so we can become sources of grace to benefit ourselves and others, as the saints did. Father admitted that it is easier said than done, and suggested that we pray for the grace to be able to see Jesus in our suffering.

   One person who has definitely been able to do this is 53 year-old Andy Meier, who was paralyzed in the bus accident of Medjugorje pilgrims we reported on last month. The ”Milwaukee Catholic Herald” quoted Andy: “All I have left is Christ. I’m a lot closer to God now, no doubt about it…Out of the suffering any of us may have gone through, our number one hope is that if anything, this will motivate people to turn back to God. If vocations can come out of this suffering, that’s the greatest gift.”  He added, “Spiritually, I don’t think I’ve ever been stronger.”

   "Dear children! For these days while you are joyfully celebrating the cross, I desire that your cross also would be a joy for you. Especially, dear children, pray that you may be able to accept sickness and suffering with love the way Jesus accepted them. Only that way shall I be able with joy to give out to you the graces and healings which Jesus is permitting me. Thank you for having responded to my call." (September 11, 1986)

Our thanks to Wendy Ripple, Tom Klins, Bernard Gallagher, Denis Nolan and Dominick Anselmo for their pictures.