Product Description
One sign involved the death of the great American politician Ted Kennedy, aged 77 and 6 months, on the author's last day in Medjugorje in August 2009. This tied in with the coincidence of the death in May 1990 of Cardinal Tomás O'Fiaich, aged 66 and 6 months (666), during his first episode of illness, which signalled the beginning of his troubles. Those troubles began not long after a mysterious experience during which he discovered that Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley's names came out at 666 on the same numeric alphabet.
My Miracle in Medjugorje is a unique insight into the ways of God and a journey of reflection for the pilgrim that is a fascinating, absorbing and often breathtaking pilgrimage through his life from his earliest experiences of God to, and beyond, the point when he becomes aware that God has chosen him for a special life.
From the Publisher
From the Author
From the Back Cover
One sign involved the death of the great American politician Ted Kennedy, aged 77 and 6 months, on the author's last day in Medjugorje in August 2009. This tied in with the coincidence of the death in May 1990 of Cardinal Tomás O'Fiaich, aged 66 and 6 months (666), during his first episode of illness, which signalled the beginning of his troubles. Those troubles began not long after a mysterious experience during which he discovered that Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley's names came out at 666 on the same numeric alphabet.
My Miracle in Medjugorje is a unique insight into the ways of God and a journey of reflection for the pilgrim that is a fascinating, absorbing and often breathtaking pilgrimage through his life from his earliest experiences of God to, and beyond, the point when he becomes aware that God has chosen him for a special life.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Miraculous healing
On Monday 28th August 2006, in the middle of my weeklong first stay in Medjugorje, something unusual happened to me. A feeling of profound irritation and anxiety, which badly affected my concentration, at the top of my head left me in what seemed to be a miraculous cure.
The feeling had been there for over six years and had been extremely bothersome to the extent that I was at pains to restrain myself from responding to its unrelenting requests to be angry and aggressive in dealing with those around me. I had become exceedingly disciplined as a consequence.
I had gone to Medjugorje with Belfast man Reggie Donnelly's group out of Belfast International Airport after answering an advert in the local parish bulletin which led me to Adele McCauley, Reggie's informal agent in Derry.
I had thought that Medjugorje was just another Lourdes or Fatima, even though I had read a fair bit about it in the past. It was strange that when I sat reading the magazine about Medjugorje in an accountancy office in Strabane, county Tyrone, where I worked as a part-qualified accountant, my eyes kept becoming fuzzy so that I couldn't actually read properly. That was in or around 1996. I actually assumed that there was something wrong in Medjugorje as if there was a demon at the heart of all the fuss about the visions and the spirituality that went along with the Marian devotion.
When I got there eventually in August 2006, I was amazed by what I found. It was far from demonic and my eyes, which had been fuzzy when thinking of the village, could now see very clearly. These visions had begun in the 1980's, which meant that they were linked to many of the things that I was going through, which also began in the 1980's and, like the visions in Medjugorje, are ongoing as I write.
I couldn't believe the state of Apparition Hill, where the first vision took place in 1981, when I climbed it. It was treacherous, and Cross Mountain, where other visions had taken place, and which was regularly climbed by the pilgrims, was supposed to be even more treacherous.
Only God could have selected this rugged, rocky little valley, I said to myself. No-one, only God, would have seen the infinite beauty of this little place, and the beauty and innocence of the local children he selected for the visions. This was a Christian paradise because of the natural beauty that would only have attracted the most Christian of families, families that knew all about poverty and need. These were not resort people who had gone to the resorts to make big money. These were simple people, who had the love of God in their hearts and the ability to live on little.
God was rewarding them as he had done the people of Lourdes, Fatima and Knock where visions of Our Lady had been seen and where miracles had been claimed.
Yet Medjugorje was set apart because the visions were still happening, and the now not-so-youthful visionaries were still getting their messages. The visionaries were mostly in their late thirties and early forties, like me, and they were so beautiful to listen to.
As I sat listening to Marija, one of the most eloquent visionaries just back from Italy where she had gone to live with her Italian husband, I was amazed at the commitment she had. She had a simple message concerning prayer, confession and not becoming attached to worldly things, and she was a beacon of light, as she spoke Italian, which was not her native tongue, and as I listened to the remarkably fluent translation of one of the guides.
I was totally overawed by the experience, and I think that it wasn't long after listening to Marija in the great yellow parish hall in the village that I had my own interaction with the forces of good that dominated the choice of the village and the happenings there.
I was sitting outside my digs just off the main street in Medjugorje, complimenting God on his choice of village and valley and rocky hills to other people I had got to know there, when I heard the distinct sound of a trumpet in the distance.
I had no reason to assume that it was the trumpet of the angels, so hailed in the Book of Revelation. In fact, it just seemed like a sound some musician was making in the village further up the street and nearer to St James' chapel. Though it also seemed as if it was just in my head. But it caught my attention immediately.
Then, almost instantly after the trumpet had sounded, a long finger from God knows where was pushed into the top of my head. It was like something that was being gently but firmly pushed into my head so that it penetrated my skull and went directly into my brain. It was like an angel had just penetrated my skull.
"That's that gone," I simply said straight away to myself, smiling. I was referring to the feeling in my head that had absolutely plagued me for over six years.
I had not been expecting anything. I was not sufficiently tuned into the Medjugorje experience to believe that it would result in a cure, or that I would get a cure.
I congratulated myself afterwards that I was very positive about the shrine, and that I was a bit like Crocodile Dundee in New York, like a fish out of water, and that I was totally in love with what I had found there. God must have sensed my love of the place and my enthusiasm, I mused, and he must have given me a cure as a consequence.
