A Pilgrimage to Medjugorje

The Statue of our Lady on the Apparition Hill

During the semester vacation in May Fr. Jose accompanied a group of pilgrims from the Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau to Medjugorje, in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Chinese flag fluttering in Bosnia!

A view from the Apparition Hill

The sixteen member group with four from the Mainland, four from Macau and the rest from Hong Kong reached Medjugorje for a ten-days pilgrimage on 1 May. Medjugorje is about 3 hours by bus south of Sarajevo Airport.

Pilgrims on the Cross Mountain, after praying
the "Way of the Cross"

Medjugorje

Međugorje or Medjugorje (Croatian pronunciation: [ˈmɛdʑuɡɔːrjɛ]) is a town located in western Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Herzegovina region around 25 km southwest of Mostar and close to the border of Croatia. Since 1981, it has become a popular site of religious pilgrimage due to reports of apparitions of the Virgin Mary to six local Catholics.

The name Međugorje literally means "an area between mountains". At an altitude of 200 meters above sea level it has a mild Mediterranean climate. The town consists of an ethnically-homogeneous Croat population of over 4,000. The Roman Catholic parish (local administrative and religious area) consists of five neighboring villages, Međugorje, Bijakovići, Vionica, Miletina and Šurmanci.

In March 2010, the Holy See announced that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was forming an investigative commission, composed of bishops, theologians, and other experts, under the leadership of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope's former Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome.

While a large number of faithful believe that the apparitions of Our Lady in Medjugorje to six "visionaries" from 24 June 1981 are true and the messages of Peace for the world for the past 30 long years are indeed from our Lady, there are also skeptics who doubt its truthfulness.

Fr. Jose and two of his companions with Bishop
Everhardus Johannes de Jong of the Diocese of Roermond,
Netherlands on the Cross Mountain

The one important argument they put forward is that the Vatican has not yet approved the developments in Medjugorje. An Irish priest whom I met in Medjugorje phrased it well when he said, "if Medjugorje were a work of the devil, he has done a big mistake, because people come here to pray the Rosary, go to confession, participate in the Eucharist and adore the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. They go home, with a conversion of heart and a spiritual renewal. If it were the work of devil, he had huge miscalculation!"

During a Eucharistic Celebration in Chinese,
in the Adoration Chapel

I found a blog, answering most of the oft-repeated questions on Medjugorje.

Click the link for further reading: http://www.markmallett.com/blog/2008/06/medjugorje-just-the-facts-maam/

The Official webpage of Medjugorje is available in the following link: http://www.medjugorje.ws/

The Parish Church of St. James, Medjugorje

What impressed me most in Medjugorje was the spiritual renewal that takes place in the Parish of St. James. To be frank, my primary intention of going there was to see the place and to "know" what is happening there! But once you are there, you realize that there is nothing much that fascinates the tourists there.

The place of Apparition. See the number stones around!

Except for the Apparition Hill and the Cross Mountain, both of which are 'nothing but heaps of stones', tourists will have nothing to see there. If the purpose of visit is tourism, one can finish seeing the whole area in less than a day's time. But what is amazing is, people who come here, stays here for four to five days or even more!

Statue of the Risen Christ

The focal point of the parish of St. James is to promote the devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin. Thousands of people attend the three-hour long liturgy in the parish, every day. A couple of dozens of priests concelebrate the Eucharist everyday. And hundreds of people come to the confessional everyday. When we realize the peculiar socio-political background of Bosnia and the struggles of the faithful for the sake of their faith in this part of the world, the very life of the Church, so active and lively, itself is a big miracle. Indeed, I had a beautiful pilgrimage!
On return, I visited the Claretian Communities in Wurzburg and Frankfurt, Germany. Here, with Fr. James Patteril, CMF [in the left] in Wurzburg...

and with my brother Fr. Tomy Cherukara [in the middle row], in Aschaffenburg