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Pilgrims from the Marian shrine of Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, pray in the church of Santiago. Around 1 million pilgrims stop at the shrine each year. (Photo: GSR/Chris Herlinger)
Editor’s note: This is part of an occasional series of stories and chronicles about Marian shrines and devotions and how Catholic sisters are linked to them.
Sisters Adriana Galić, left, and Jelena Hrkuc, sisters of the School of St. Francis of Christ the King, pray in the Church of St. James of the Marian Shrine in Medjugorje. (Photo: GSR/Chris Herlinger)
They come from all over the world to pay homage to Our Lady of Medjugorje: apparitions, according to witnesses, of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, which began in June 1981.
Six young people, now adults, say they have seen the apparitions. Since then, nearly one million pilgrims have gathered each year to enjoy the special quality of this Marian shrine, located in a village 26 km southwest of the city of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Herzegovina.
When I went to Medjugorje at the beginning of December, accompanied by Sisters Adriana Galić and Jelena Hrkuc, sisters of the St. Francis of Christ King School in Mostar, the day was humid and cloudy, which created a gray impression. Only a few pilgrims wandered the grounds.
To spend an afternoon in Medjugorje, however, is to feel connected to the spirit and probabilities of God’s presence—anything to celebrate as Easter approaches for Christians.
The religious, men and women, speak of the special quality of what they call the spirituality of Medjugorje.
“Medjugorje here has a primordial importance for the life of the Church,” Franciscan Father Svetozar Kraljević said in Mostar. “This means a lot to Catholics in many ways. There’s a spark of what could be: the preference of human beings to their dreams. “
“We are in a new way,” Galić said.
The Vatican has neither shown nor rejected reports of apparitions or miracles in Medjugorje. In 2019, Pope Francis allowed Catholic organizations to make pilgrimages there, but said the alleged apparitions required further investigation. The effects of a Vatican commission set up by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 to investigate the allegations have been made public.
St. Francis of Christ the King School Sisters Janja Boras, left, and Ljilja Pehar, at the Congregation’s convent in Mostar, say their lives have been replaced through the reports and spirituality of Medjugorje. (GSR Photo/Chris Herlinger )
One sister who speaks of the many dimensions of the Medjugorje experience is Sister Janja Boras, 75, who is also a sister at St. Francis of Christ the King School in Mostar.
She believes that pilgrimages to Medjugorje are largely marked by “miracles that are more religious than physical,” as the place is a place of confession and renewal for the many pilgrims who visit the hilltop village.
She describes the spirituality of Medjugorje as based on fasting, prayer, the preference for reconciliation and the search for peace.
In the seminars she leads for the parishioners of Mostar, Sister Ljilja Pehar, also of the Sisters of the School of St. Francis of Christ the King, affirmed that the links between spirituality, fasting, prayer and silence are established with the awareness “that a fullness of joy is what God can provide. “
This is echoed in the life stories of the sisters who live and live in the surroundings of Medjugorje.
The Marian shrine in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, a village 26 km southwest of the city of Mostar, includes this public space. (GSR Photo/Chris Herlinger)
This is indeed the case for Boras, who said that his own sense of vocation deepened through his reports in Medjugorje.
“Although I am devout and a Christian, I have been transformed and am in a position to surrender my life to Christ,” she said, though she feels more fully now than before the visions were reported in 1981.
Still, those incidents affected her personally, she said.
The testimony of Mary’s sighting “was like thunder” for her and others, amid growing discontent at first with the communist regime in the former Yugoslavia.
“Communism oppressed those who believed,” he said.
Visitors to the Marian shrine in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, pay homage to a statue of the crucified Christ near a contemplative area depicting the Stations of the Cross. (GSR Photo/Chris Herlinger)
The six young people – two children and 4 women – who recounted experiencing the apparitions said that the person they were addressing spoke of being “the queen of peace” and also spoke of coming to bear witness that “God exists,” a balm for Catholics. It had irritated under the communist regime.
Intrigued by these testimonies, Boras met the young men in the 1980s. One of them, a child, told her that the character had told him to “tell Janja that her mom is with me. “Boras’ mother had died while giving birth to her daughter. .
“It’s like a greeting,” Boras said in an interview at the congregation’s convent in Mostar. “It gave me a lot of satisfaction, because my mother wasn’t there in my life. “He hadn’t even visited his mother’s grave until she was 15. ” I felt that Our Lady was repaying me. “
Boras spent 14 years in Medjugorje, five years in a parish and 8 years in a convent. He still feels “with my soul, my body and my spirit that my whole being is still there. “
“I left Medjugorje and it never left me,” he said.
She feels the strength of the position – and of Mary – as she recalls the wars of the 1990s in Bosnia and neighboring countries, saying that Our Lady “cried out” and “begged us to help her” in her efforts to combat evil in those countries. Wars.
“Satan is never at peace,” he said. But on the other hand, “Our Lady will overcome, because she is the bride of the Holy Spirit. “
But Our Lady also draws attention for the veneration of the functionality of acts of mercy. Without being aware of it, Pehar said, “Prayer and fasting are in vain. It’s all related. ” And from that connection is “helping those in need. “
Sister Romana Hutnyk, right, a Ukrainian sister and member of the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil the Great, appears here in February with Sister Lucia Murashko at a congregational monastery in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. (Photo: GSR/Chris Herlinger)
This awareness underlies all kinds of encounters and pilgrimages to Medjugorje. Sister Romana Hutnyk, 54, a Ukrainian sister and member of the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil the Great, visited the site for the first time at Christmas 2019 as a gift from a friend.
Although he says that he “pays a lot of attention to visions,” in the sense that he does not accept them as true, after a few days in Medjugorje he felt that he was in a special place, and “after that, I saw another world. “
“To my surprise, it opened up globally for me,” Hutnyk said of the days of prayer, rest and contemplation. Finding the delight of prayer and devotion as comfortable and comforting, “he discovered parts of me that I had never realized before,” he told me in a recent interview at a congregational monastery in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
The era of 2019 laid the foundation for an upcoming experience: a sabbatical year in 2023, in which he went to Medjugorje to pray and keep silence in March and then returned in December. What she discovered, particularly gratifying, was to be one of those practicing devotions, not only sisters but all pilgrims.
Although he also visited the Marian shrines of Lourdes and Fatima, Hutnyk said he prefers the sense of calm and nature he discovered in Medjugorje, at least during the months of his visit. In summer, Medjugorje can also be crowded, he noted, as can Lourdes and Fatima much of the year.
For her, the bond with Mary is paramount, and Hutnyk told Medjugorje that she wishes to be “where the mother is,” she said. “Everybody wants a mom. “
Hutnyk told me that he didn’t want to have a vision of Mary because “I’m faithful to her. When I was younger, I only prayed to Jesus, but now to Jesus and the Mother of God, as well as to the saints. “
This position of peace has long been a position of pilgrimage for many Ukrainians, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion. But now, he said, given the existing circumstances in the country, Medjugorje promotes “prayer, spirit and faith. “
Kristina Pehar works as a therapist at a shelter and home for single mothers and women experiencing domestic violence, supported by the sisters of St. Peter’s School. Francis of Christ the King in Medjugorje. (GSR Photo/Chris Herlinger)
And he added: “‘Pray, pray, pray!'” asks the Mother of God. When we actually pray, we pray deeply, we have a greater understanding of what we want to do and how we want to do it.
Prayer is the cornerstone of Medjugorje, but other practices are born from it. This is the explanation why the sisters of the school also strive to help others: Medjugorje is not only a sacred position, but also a position where there is a genuine need.
The sisters provide a shelter and home for single mothers and women experiencing domestic violence. The space was born during the war of the 1990s, with the development of desires to help those affected by the generalized violence at the time.
“I think Our Lady would have a space like this here,” Kristina Pehar, the space therapist, told me.
There are now six housewives; There is space for 15 people. One of the cornerstones of the task is for the women to earn a small source of income by making handicrafts that they will sell to the many pilgrims who visit Medjugorje.
“When other people hear about our work, they think it’s a miracle,” Pehar said. “We believe Our Lady is here. “
In words, “With God,” Boras said, “all things are possible. “
Note: The name and history have been updated to explain the location of Medjugorje.