I was so disappointed at the time. Many of us had been seated at the great outdoor church that is central to Medjugorje, ready for Mass, when it was mentioned that there would be an apparition of Mary for the visionary Marija just moments and one mile away. The fortunate ones heard the call and headed out for an experience that would mark their visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina for life. Meanwhile, I sat shivering on a pew as Mass proceeded in Croatian, oblivious to the meaning of the sermon and unknowing of the apparition until an hour later while seated at a pizza restaurant. Then the news trickled in: Marija had been given an unexpected celestial visit at a luxury hotel called The Castle; and all had gone as usual until The Possession.
The Possession. I had witnessed one on my last visit to Medjugorje nearly five years earlier when Mirjana, another visionary, had had her special annual visit from Mary on her birthday, March 18. It was outside, and as we waited, even the birds – even the wind – had gone quiet until the screaming began. Without explanation it was clear what was happening. We were witnessing a case of possession and I can tell you that to hear it is no small thing. It sends cold chills right down to the toes. It is like watching a horror movie at the drive-in, and then realizing that it is true, that the Zombies, chain-saw massacres and demons are right outside your door. Beware!
The story that night was told to us in text messages and gossip, until finally we were to hear the rest of the details from an actual witness. In a nutshell, what she told us was this: as Marija sat passively for her most lovely visit, a member of the audience suddenly shrieked and then cursed. It did not seem possible that the bizarre voice could come from the victim herself. This alien presence then pled for mercy as it was apparently forced from its poor victim by the sanctity of Mary’s presence. It was said that the voice of the demon soon trailed off as if receding into the distance – this in a closed room- with its final screams being, “Help me! Help me!” Some young people in the audience came to believe, at last, in Hell, which might do them some good. Most who were there quickly reinforced their allegiance to Jesus. Others expressed skepticism: was this just showmanship? Was this Elmer Gantry-style carnival spirituality engineered for profit?
The last question will always linger over any peculiar happening at a spiritual event, from healing to talking in tongues, for that is the way we are. It doesn’t matter that we understand nothing of creation or our purpose in life without the aid of our spiritual betters; we will always try to put things back into our boring but manageable box. At heart, we are all deathly afraid of the unknown; and at heart, we are particularly afraid of unknown evil. It does not have to shriek at us from a writhing victim at a religious gathering, either, for it is silently dormant in all of us in the personage of death. Manifestations of the dark side can be no more than reflections of this ultimate evil, placed upon us, Christians say, by our own arrogance and impudence towards God.
But certain apparitions of evil still take us by the short hairs. I did not see the flight of the demon that night, but I did struggle with the dark side during much of my stay in this most Catholic of sites in the former Republic of Yugoslavia.
To begin with, I had had a presentiment that this visit was going to be difficult for me, even frightening. Understand that nearly every pilgrim in Medjugorje believes that his steps towards this goal are and have been guided by some celestial force or forces, particularly the graces of the Virgin Mother. With this, nothing is given to chance and everything out of the ordinary is considered a sign. So it was that the incident in the garden some two months earlier had taken on significance for me.
What happened was this: I was down in our large vegetable garden about 70 yards from the house when thunderclouds suddenly bellowed directly overhead, unleashing both the sound of thunder and the fury of lightning. Without thinking, I sprinted all-out for the house, forgetting my age and my weak Achilles’s tendons. For 20 yards I flew like a twenty-year-old athlete, giving me an unusual youthful thrill until, like an old jalopy, everything suddenly crapped out. I could nearly hear the ball bearings grinding and the muffler dragging.
Two days later I was severely lame in my right ankle. Given that it was two months from our trip, I did not give it a second thought. However, by the time of the trip, I was still as lame as ever. In Medjugorje, where rocky hills are everywhere and everyone walks, I was going to have to struggle mile after mile, day after day.
That was the small of it. The presentiment also had real internal roots that came from nowhere I could locate, and within the first few days in Bosnia/Herzegovina manifested themselves all too well. I was un-customarily weepy and lethargic. The food seemed bland, the bed hard, the bathroom leaky. The thrill that should have permeated me, as it did others, was often simply lacking. I felt strongly that I was on a purgative pilgrimage, and should have girded myself with a belt of thorns. A horse-hair whip would have fit in, although it seemed unnecessary. Every step was a struggle, and sleep was never enough.
Then, three days from the end of our trip, disease struck. On the second night, I coughed so hard that I dry-heaved for nearly a half hour, non-stop. The following day, my stomach muscles were so sore that every cough was an agony. Chills and profuse cold-sweats predominated. Days later came the unbearably long trip back, the sleepless nights, the endless discomfort in tiny plane seats made by closet sadists. Within a few days of our return, we found as a group that about a third of us had been manifestly infected with Covid.
Maybe that would explain the dreams, for they were the weirdest and perhaps darkest part of all. On the night of my retching, which felt close to death, I had an ongoing dream that seemed to last for hours. In it, the universe was depicted as a vast organism made of tightly-fitted triangles, like pizza slices. With the removal of one, it was shown to me that everything filled back in as is nothing had happened. In my mind I was made to understand that, while we had free will, our will could never displace the overall will of the ordered universe, both existing perfectly side by side. This also explained how we could have secular time combine perfectly with the endless time of God, all at once. I marveled over the genius of it that night, although I can scarcely say more about it now.
Then, on the night of our return, I had a deep 10 hour sleep where, first, I had a long and congenial conversation with Fr Leon, a famous speaker at Medjugorje, followed by a torrent of information of unknown content that poured like Niagara Falls into my unconscious. The power of it was both frightening and exhilarating, and I had the distinct feeling that this power was coming directly from Medjugorje. What exactly it poured into me I did not and still do not understand.
It may have been nothing but sickness, all of that dream weirdness. However, the possession of that woman was not, and the sickness and lameness were all very real. And it is this where the basis for the purgative pilgrimage lies.
Yes, this world of ours really does end in the grave. To hang on to any shred of it is to court fear, loss, and ultimate tragedy. Sin may be seen as this clinging, and pain and suffering are there to convince us to let go. The aforementioned Father Leon referred jokingly to his time with the “happy-clappy” Christians, and we know what he means: in his youth he wanted to have light and love and joy without the darkness and pain and fear, but that is not how it works. No religion worth its salt, and certainly none that can last 2,000 years, avoids the key issues of suffering or death. In Medjugorje, our Mother points the way to the cross just as much as she touches our heart with her love. It should not surprise us, then, when demons howl and pain and suffering afflict us there – especially there.
Still: It is Halloween today, a day that held our distance ancestors in terror of the coming darkness, and our Christian ancestors in hopeful prayer for their dead. Now we joke about death and evil and eat candy and whistle past the graveyard as if such breeziness can make it all go away. That’s OK. We laugh on pilgrimage, too, and they feasted before the day at Cavalry. But we cannot learn without facing the darkness. It is faith and trust in God’s perfect goodness that we must nurture. It is why we pray and travel to holy places and stand before the evening sky to reach as far as we can into the fading light for one last kiss of celestial beauty. It is why we yearn with reverent hope to grasp that divine promise, here, there, and anywhere, before the closing darkness descends upon us in this broken world.
I was so disappointed at the time. Many of us had been seated at the great outdoor church that is central to Medjugorje, ready for Mass, when it was mentioned that there would be an apparition of Mary for the visionary Marija just moments and one mile away. The fortunate ones heard the call and headed out for an experience that would mark their visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina for life. Meanwhile, I sat shivering on a pew as Mass proceeded in Croatian, oblivious to the meaning of the sermon and unknowing of the apparition until an hour later while seated at a pizza restaurant. Then the news trickled in: Marija had been given an unexpected celestial visit at a luxury hotel called The Castle; and all had gone as usual until The Possession.
The Possession. I had witnessed one on my last visit to Medjugorje nearly five years earlier when Mirjana, another visionary, had had her special annual visit from Mary on her birthday, March 18. It was outside, and as we waited, even the birds – even the wind – had gone quiet until the screaming began. Without explanation it was clear what was happening. We were witnessing a case of possession and I can tell you that to hear it is no small thing. It sends cold chills right down to the toes. It is like watching a horror movie at the drive-in, and then realizing that it is true, that the Zombies, chain-saw massacres and demons are right outside your door. Beware!
The story that night was told to us in text messages and gossip, until finally we were to hear the rest of the details from an actual witness. In a nutshell, what she told us was this: as Marija sat passively for her most lovely visit, a member of the audience suddenly shrieked and then cursed. It did not seem possible that the bizarre voice could come from the victim herself. This alien presence then pled for mercy as it was apparently forced from its poor victim by the sanctity of Mary’s presence. It was said that the voice of the demon soon trailed off as if receding into the distance – this in a closed room- with its final screams being, “Help me! Help me!” Some young people in the audience came to believe, at last, in Hell, which might do them some good. Most who were there quickly reinforced their allegiance to Jesus. Others expressed skepticism: was this just showmanship? Was this Elmer Gantry-style carnival spirituality engineered for profit?
The last question will always linger over any peculiar happening at a spiritual event, from healing to talking in tongues, for that is the way we are. It doesn’t matter that we understand nothing of creation or our purpose in life without the aid of our spiritual betters; we will always try to put things back into our boring but manageable box. At heart, we are all deathly afraid of the unknown; and at heart, we are particularly afraid of unknown evil. It does not have to shriek at us from a writhing victim at a religious gathering, either, for it is silently dormant in all of us in the personage of death. Manifestations of the dark side can be no more than reflections of this ultimate evil, placed upon us, Christians say, by our own arrogance and impudence towards God.
But certain apparitions of evil still take us by the short hairs. I did not see the flight of the demon that night, but I did struggle with the dark side during much of my stay in this most Catholic of sites in the former Republic of Yugoslavia.
To begin with, I had had a presentiment that this visit was going to be difficult for me, even frightening. Understand that nearly every pilgrim in Medjugorje believes that his steps towards this goal are and have been guided by some celestial force or forces, particularly the graces of the Virgin Mother. With this, nothing is given to chance and everything out of the ordinary is considered a sign. So it was that the incident in the garden some two months earlier had taken on significance for me.
What happened was this: I was down in our large vegetable garden about 70 yards from the house when thunderclouds suddenly bellowed directly overhead, unleashing both the sound of thunder and the fury of lightning. Without thinking, I sprinted all-out for the house, forgetting my age and my weak Achilles’s tendons. For 20 yards I flew like a twenty-year-old athlete, giving me an unusual youthful thrill until, like an old jalopy, everything suddenly crapped out. I could nearly hear the ball bearings grinding and the muffler dragging.
Two days later I was severely lame in my right ankle. Given that it was two months from our trip, I did not give it a second thought. However, by the time of the trip, I was still as lame as ever. In Medjugorje, where rocky hills are everywhere and everyone walks, I was going to have to struggle mile after mile, day after day.
That was the small of it. The presentiment also had real internal roots that came from nowhere I could locate, and within the first few days in Bosnia/Herzegovina manifested themselves all too well. I was un-customarily weepy and lethargic. The food seemed bland, the bed hard, the bathroom leaky. The thrill that should have permeated me, as it did others, was often simply lacking. I felt strongly that I was on a purgative pilgrimage, and should have girded myself with a belt of thorns. A horse-hair whip would have fit in, although it seemed unnecessary. Every step was a struggle, and sleep was never enough.
Then, three days from the end of our trip, disease struck. On the second night, I coughed so hard that I dry-heaved for nearly a half hour, non-stop. The following day, my stomach muscles were so sore that every cough was an agony. Chills and profuse cold-sweats predominated. Days later came the unbearably long trip back, the sleepless nights, the endless discomfort in tiny plane seats made by closet sadists. Within a few days of our return, we found as a group that about a third of us had been manifestly infected with Covid.
Maybe that would explain the dreams, for they were the weirdest and perhaps darkest part of all. On the night of my retching, which felt close to death, I had an ongoing dream that seemed to last for hours. In it, the universe was depicted as a vast organism made of tightly-fitted triangles, like pizza slices. With the removal of one, it was shown to me that everything filled back in as is nothing had happened. In my mind I was made to understand that, while we had free will, our will could never displace the overall will of the ordered universe, both existing perfectly side by side. This also explained how we could have secular time combine perfectly with the endless time of God, all at once. I marveled over the genius of it that night, although I can scarcely say more about it now.
Then, on the night of our return, I had a deep 10 hour sleep where, first, I had a long and congenial conversation with Fr Leon, a famous speaker at Medjugorje, followed by a torrent of information of unknown content that poured like Niagara Falls into my unconscious. The power of it was both frightening and exhilarating, and I had the distinct feeling that this power was coming directly from Medjugorje. What exactly it poured into me I did not and still do not understand.
It may have been nothing but sickness, all of that dream weirdness. However, the possession of that woman was not, and the sickness and lameness were all very real. And it is this where the basis for the purgative pilgrimage lies.
Yes, this world of ours really does end in the grave. To hang on to any shred of it is to court fear, loss, and ultimate tragedy. Sin may be seen as this clinging, and pain and suffering are there to convince us to let go. The aforementioned Father Leon referred jokingly to his time with the “happy-clappy” Christians, and we know what he means: in his youth he wanted to have light and love and joy without the darkness and pain and fear, but that is not how it works. No religion worth its salt, and certainly none that can last 2,000 years, avoids the key issues of suffering or death. In Medjugorje, our Mother points the way to the cross just as much as she touches our heart with her love. It should not surprise us, then, when demons howl and pain and suffering afflict us there – especially there.
Still: It is Halloween today, a day that held our distance ancestors in terror of the coming darkness, and our Christian ancestors in hopeful prayer for their dead. Now we joke about death and evil and eat candy and whistle past the graveyard as if such breeziness can make it all go away. That’s OK. We laugh on pilgrimage, too, and they feasted before the day at Cavalry. But we cannot learn without facing the darkness. It is faith and trust in God’s perfect goodness that we must nurture. It is why we pray and travel to holy places and stand before the evening sky to reach as far as we can into the fading light for one last kiss of celestial beauty. It is why we yearn with reverent hope to grasp that divine promise, here, there, and anywhere, before the closing darkness descends upon us in this broken world.
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