Photo Credit: CNS Ann Corrigan
This is our experience of a trip to Medjugorje in a little village in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Counting down the days to ApriI 22, 2019, I would join a group parish pilgrimage to Medjugorje.
One day out of the blue the husband of my sister Margaret said that he would be on holidays from his employment from April 22, and suggested she could travel then if she wished. Their son has special needs and so they have been unable to holiday together. She decided to change her travel dates and so was now booked to travel. Her original plan was to meet me the following week in Split. I was a bit apprehensive as I was not sure what my sister would think of Medjugorje. She asked what we would do while there. I explained that pilgrims go there and it is place of peace and tranquillity. She suggested she might do her own thing some of the time. I also added rather quickly that there might also be a few hills to climb! Mount Podbrdo and Krizevac.
The day arrived and our bus full of adults, teenagers and children left Zadar airport for Medjugorje. We were with a great bunch of people. We laughed as Fr Jaimie entertained everyone with a story and funny impersonations along the way. Following a short break on arrival we walked a few kilometres to the base of Blue Cross Mountain. Margaret spoke immediately of the sense of calm and inner peace she felt. The peace emanated from everywhere and everything. It is almost difficult to put into words. I was relieved as I now knew she would be happy there.
The second evening my sister was tired and I headed off to the group prayer meeting. On my return she said she could hear the prayer and music from the church all evening from her open room window and it was beautiful. There was a change in her the next day as she was touched by the experience. From then on she participated in the pilgrimage itinerary every day. I no longer planned our day. I followed her lead and was happy to do so. Margaret especially loved going to daily Mass and the outdoor evening Blessed Sacrament Adoration. Individuals were free to take part in whatever interested them each day. The group used WhatsApp message service for communication. We also were free to make our own plans and we took a day trip to Mostar. I had a feeling though that my sister’s heart was in Medjugorje and we joined the group for the afternoon to climb Mount Podbrdo.
On the evening of a healing service Margaret purchased beautiful rosary beads which she now carries with her. By now there was a real sense of letting go of everyday struggles which gave way to inner peace. My sister truly embraced the spirit and peace of Medjugorje and we were inspired by the outstanding show of faith, devotion and warmth we saw there. The Masses and adoration were packed to capacity every day. We were also truly inspired by Fr Jaimie and Fr John, our spiritual directors and the level of witness they gave. My sister attends Mass again and visits the church often on our return home. Theamazing fruits of Medjugorje is the gentle and beautiful time of grace it gives. The sense of inner peace that came over us stayed with us on our return home. Our faith was awakened and rekindled and we left Medjugorje greatly touched by the experience and the desire to return again.
Fr Jaimie Twohig
I first went to Medjugorje when I was 16 years old in the year 2005. Up until this point my faith was very lukewarm. I always went to Mass, but I was going through the motions more than anything. At that point in my life I was unhappy. There was a deep emptiness inside that I tried to fill with all the wrong things. My mother went to Medjugorje a year earlier in 2004 and she loved it. There was a difference in her after the trip. So, when she asked me to go with her the following year I was happy to go mainly because the trip was in mid-May which meant I got a week off school! But what I received in Medjugorje was much more than that.
Immediately I was struck by the peace of the place and I enjoyed the group that we travelled with. One night our group had a prayer meeting. During the prayer meeting I had a great experience of a motherly love that surrounded me. To be honest I had felt Our Lady’s love around me for the week, but I don’t think I was in a place within myself where I was able to accept it. But at the prayer meeting this night I opened my heart to the love that Our Lady had for me. It felt like I was walking on air because in that moment I knew that Our Lady was real and that she loved me personally as her child.
A few nights later I was still walking on air after my experience and one thought suddenly struck me; if I was going to follow this path of the love of God that Our Lady so beautifully revealed to me in Medjugorje then I am going to have to change my life. In my search for happiness I had allowed sin and selfishness to rule me. Jesus says “a tree is known by its fruits” (Luke 6:45) . Sin and selfishness had made me miserable. Then I would look around at the people we travelled with and could clearly see the fruits of their lives in trying to follow God in their love, joy, peace and laughter which was such a contrast to my misery. I wanted what they had. So it may look like the miracle happened at the prayer meeting when I opened my heart to Our Lady’s love but I think the real miracle happened two nights later because in that moment I saw my old life and the life God was offering, and by His Grace, I chose God. That is not to say I never struggled with sin again, I did and still do but I thank God for the Sacrament of Confession and the beauty of it that is so clearly on display in Medjugorje. In Medjugorje so many lives have been transformed by the grace of the Sacrament of Confession.
I have been a priest for nearly three years and ever since that first trip to Medjugorje in 2005 I have been there nearly every year since. Whenever I was struggling to discern my vocation a trip to Medjugorje always gave me the clarity I needed. There are so many conflicting voices in the world we’re in. Going to Medjugorje is like going home to your mother’s and allowing her voice to direct you. In Medjugorje she says to each of us in a different way what she said to the servants at the wedding feast of Cana “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2:5).
Grace O’Shea
Medjugorje is a small town in the country of Bosnia. Our Lady began to appear to the children in 1981, when Bosnia was still a communist country. The children that Our Lady appeared to were in grave danger by declaring that they had seen the Blessed Mother. However, Our Lady protected them and she is still appearing to this day in Medjugorje. Our Lady’s fist message to the children was “Peace, Peace, and only Peace.”
Medjugorje is the most peaceful place I have ever been to. I first went there in 2017 with my family. I had heard people describe it as an anointed and peaceful place, but I had never really believed it until I went there myself. The whole feeling of Medjugorje is peaceful; the people are peaceful and the atmosphere is peaceful. However, there is also an inner peace that ascends upon anyone who visits Medjugorje. It is a peace that cannot be described, understood, or imagined. Even if there is suffering or pain in one’s life they can still experience this peace. The unexplainable peace in Medjugorje is also a proof of Our Lady’s true presence there.
My family had always wished to go to Medjugorje. We tried saving for the trip many times but something would always happen to drain the money. In December of 2016, we decided to start the Five First Saturday devotion to Our Lady to ask her to bring us to Medjugorje. The Five First Saturday devotion requires that, for five consecutive first Saturdays of each month, you attend Mass, receive Confession (within eight days) and say the rosary with a 15 minute mediation on the mysteries of the rosary. Although we hadn’t told anyone about our intention, on the second Saturday we were anonymously given a donation that paid for the trip to Medjugorje. We were elated! Our Lady is so generous. We finished our fifth First Saturday devotion on April 1 and headed off to Medjugorje on April 2. Our Lady was paving the way for our family to go to Medjugorje and receive the peace and graces she had waiting for us over there.
Our Lady knows that we would never be able to grow closer to her and to Jesus on our own. So, she has given us five stones to follow in order that we can get to Heaven. These five stones are: praying with the heart, fasting, Confession, the Eucharist, and Scripture. By following these five stones, we are immersed in the love and protection of Our Lady and Christ. The Five First Saturdays is an amazing gift from Our Lady. During this devotion, we are given the opportunity to put into practice the five stones of Medjugorje and Our Lady never leaves our prayers and intentions unanswered.
Medjugorje is a very special place to go. In the past three years, I have been to Medjugorje four times. Our Lady has always called me back to visit her and to receive the peace she has waiting for me over there. I highly recommend for anyone who wants to experience Our Lady or come closer to her to visit Medjugorje, and receive the peace and graces she has waiting for you.
Michael Collins
Medjugorje for me is where I got a taste of the internal peace that God wants all of his children to experience in this lifetime. I had visited this beautiful place twice in my early teens but it wasn’t until I landed in this small town in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 2014 at the age of 26 that I realised how special a place it was. It was the place where I finally listened to what God was telling me all my life, which as St Augustine preaches “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord; and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.” In other words, until you come to know God and live through God you will be restless and the peace and happiness that every human being longs for will be absent.
This peace which many people talk about experiencing in Medjugorje is something which is difficult to find in our world today. Through my visit I regained a sense of who I was and what God created me for and that I am greatly loved by God, all through Mary. Our Lady constantly points the way to her son and this is exactly what she does in Medjugorje. She calls for daily conversion and an encounter with Christ through the Sacraments. She is always looking out for her
‘little children’ guiding us and leading us back to the right path. One of my highlights of Medjugorje is the outdoor adoration at night, where thousands of people of all ages worship Jesus and regain that peace which we all yearn for.
There are many other beautiful parts of Medjugorje from Cross Mountain, to Apparition Hill, Blue Cross, to the Risen Christ the list goes on. But each time I go back a different place becomes my favourite spot, each one where I experience a different encounter with Christ on this journey of faith. Medjugorje is really something to be experienced, no words can ever explain or capture it fully. To anyone reading this I say go and experience the peace of Medjugorje, you will not regret it! Our Lady Queen of Peace, pray for us!
Roisin Daly
My first encounter with Medjugorje began back in 1989, when my dad took me on a holiday to Medjugorje along with my two Aunts. Wow was it different then. My memories were of a beautiful church resting at the base of a mountain which at the top had a white cross. The time we were out coincided with one of the first ‘Youth Weeks’ which Fr Liam Lawton took part in. The group was small enough to all sit under the trees in the park close to the school. If you wanted a cold drink or ice-cream, a young local boy had a cool box on his bike and you got it there. I remember being prayed with in one of the meetings and that was my first experience of the Holy Spirit, which at the age of 16 years old, left a lasting impression on me.
It took me a further 18 years to come back, due to the busyness of life! However, as soon as I landed in Medjugorje, I felt the presence of a beautiful peace and the feeling of not wanting to leave. As it happened due to overbooked flights and my boss at the time giving me an extra week off, I managed to stay two weeks in Medjugorje. This was truly a life changing experience. I was fully living in the world, I had the great job, plenty of money however I still wasn’t truly happy and always had a feeling of a hole in my heart. I managed to attend some prayer meetings at that time out in Medjugorje and I was beginning to fully give myself over to Our Lady, to understand confession, adoration and fully take part in Mass and not just attend ‘out of duty’. On one occasion as I went into the little Adoration Chapel, and knelt down and began to pray, in my heart I felt Jesus was using a power hose and filled it with so much love, I thought I was going to burst. That was the first time I truly felt His unconditional love, and when I went outside the tears began to flow, even though what I felt was so much happiness, in those moments Jesus became alive for me, Our Lady had brought me back to Medjugorje and her son had healed my broken heart.
On coming back to reality, my life had changed, I felt very uneasy in the old life and slowly my world was beginning to change. I became fully immersed in Youth 2000, and then onto Pure In Heart, where I met my husband. We were lucky enough to attend World Youth Day in Cologne – 2005. We were with Pure In Heart and from Cologne we headed to Medjugorje for a week, this was truly a piece of heaven on earth.
Now going forward another 11 years, we were lucky enough to bring our children back with us for a week, when they were aged five, six and seven. What a wonderful way for them to see people freely expressing their faith. We also had those wonderful moments, I really wanted to stay in adoration a little longer, and my prayer was answered when my youngest child fell asleep in my arms!
On the 30th Anniversary of my first visit to Medjugorje, as a family we joined Fr Jamie and Fr John along with the other 120 people or so foryet another amazing week in Medjugorje. This time as the children have gotten older to the age of 10, nine and eight, they were delighted to spend a week with their friends, going to Mass, climbing the mountain and sharing meal times with them. The friendships have grown as we continue to live out our lives in the arms of Our Blessed Mother as she not only teaches us but also our children how to become ‘Children of God’! I look forward to continuing our journey together.
Stuart McGovern
The first time I went to Medjugorje was in 1985 when I was 12 years old. On our first night I found myself kneeling beside the six visionaries on apparition hill. I knew it was a solemn moment, and I knew that Our Lady was appearing, but I was too young to really grasp what was happening. I looked at Ivan’s face as he spoke, but I didn’t know what he was saying. Then it was all over.
My mother had gone to Medjugorje a year earlier. She had witnessed a miracle while she was there, as had the rest of her small group, and she had come home a different person. They were all convinced that Medjugorje was a place of special graces. Her real wish was to get the whole family back there and 12 months later she got her wish. It took us two days to get there and we only stayed for three days, but for me, they were to prove to be three very important days.
A few years later when I was 15 years old my father died and I was so angry with God that I pretty much gave up my faith. I went through the motions here and there but I was far removed from what it was to be a Catholic. I spent the next 10 years searching the world for happiness. Life was a party and was great fun but deep down there was always something missing, a deep longing for something more. For a long time I thought it was just the grief of losing my father, and to some extent it was. At the same time I knew that I was running from the only one who could help me and heal me and give me back the joy I once had. My initial experience in Medjugorje was always in the back of my mind so I decided to go back again.
I returned in 2007 and as soon as I arrived I felt a great peace. As the days went by I realised that Medjugorje really was a place of special graces. Being there is not really something that canbe expressed to others. The atmosphere is quite unique and difficult to describe except to say that there is a feeling of heaven’s presence. At the same time it’s very social place and a place where I’ve made some very close friends. Since that trip 12 years ago I’ve gone annually and each time it has been like a shot in the arm for my spiritual life. I immediately recognise the benefits of going in my life and always look forward to my next trip. When people ask what it’s like and why I go each year I find it difficult to answer because it’s a personal experience between me and the Queen of Peace, between me and my God. That kind of thing is too difficult to explain. The only answer I can give is the same answer Jesus gave to Andrew and John when they wanted to know where He lived, ‘Come and See’.