Medjugorje – it is happening, truly

A trial before the road

Just before we left, something happened that hurt me.

An unjust accusation. It hurt.

The trip to Medjugorje was approaching. A meeting with the Mother of God.

And my thoughts, instead of being with her, kept falling into a black hole of analysis and tension. Instead of peace – disquiet. Instead of joy – a weight.

Today I know that this was the cut.

Made in me, so that I might bear fruit.

A wild fig from the sycamore, if it is not cut into, keeps inside itself what is poisoning it. It swells and rots from within. The fruit turns wormy and inedible.

Only the cut releases what is inside. It lets out the accumulated weight. And it allows the fruit to ripen – sweet and good to eat.

That was the moment when I had to let something out. To hand it over. To entrust it.

I did not know then that one day Dzika Figa would come into being. But even then I was learning that without the cut there is no ripening.

Medjugorje – a place of prayer

The apparitions at Medjugorje began on 24 June 1981 in the parish of St James the Apostle in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Six young people were said to have seen the Mother of God on the hill of Podbrdo, today known as the Hill of Apparitions.

The Mother of God presents herself as the Queen of Peace and calls for prayer, fasting, conversion, the Eucharist and confession.

Today Medjugorje is one of the best-known places of pilgrimage in the world. It is a place of joy and of entrustment, but also of faith and testimony, of prayer strewn with stones.

We arrived.

Given how many places there were to see, our parents’ physical strength and the mood of a teenager, we needed rather deeper synchronisation of plans 😉 We were on the Hill of Apparitions (Podbrdo). We climbed Cross Mountain (Križevac), but the time we spent there was decidedly too short.

We rather tend to find that our first visit anywhere is a „from here to there” affair – a bit of a reconnaissance, moving from point to point within a set time, just to be everywhere and see everything. Second visits are decidedly calmer.

Medjugorje is beautiful. The church and the outdoor altar are entirely adapted to many thousands of pilgrims; the tiny confession rooms in every language are lovely, and there is no shortage of Polish priests there.

The Christ who came home with us

In one of the shops in Medjugorje we saw a painting.

Christ – but what a Christ!

Hand-painted in oils. A depth of colour, with the navy blue I love predominating. A gaze that does not pass a person by.

For three days we kept coming back to that shop. We wondered whether we could allow ourselves such an expense. Whether it was sensible. Whether it was going too far, and whether it would even fit in the car, because it is a large painting.

A painting is not a fridge magnet 😉 you cannot tuck it in among your clothes.

In the end the decision was made. A little negotiation in the shop, and Christ travelled back to Poland with us.

Today he hangs in the central place in our home.

In his rightful place.

All day long he has a fine view of us all. He looks at us at the table. In silence and in conversation. In tension and in laughter.

It is impossible not to notice him, and impossible for him not to notice us 😉

You have to start talking.

The fruit, after we came home

After we returned, the matter that had upset me so much simply did not exist. The subject had died away, practically as though it had never been.

The tension subsided, and the disbelief grew: had there really been a problem at all?

An ordinary miracle – and for me an extraordinary one.

Perhaps because beforehand it had been cut into. Let out. Handed over.

Medjugorje and entrustment

At Medjugorje I prayed above all for our marriage. For unity. For peace. For protection from what can undermine the foundations.

Everything I could, I gave to the Mother; everything I entrusted to her, and there was nothing more I could do.

The matter that was hurting me.
Our marriage.
Our family.
The intentions and the people I carry in my heart, and those to whom I promised my prayer.

This pilgrimage was, once again, a grace and a fulfilment. It was gratitude and love.

And it was, once again, a lesson that before a fruit becomes sweet and good to eat, it has to be cut.