"When I find myself in times of troubles Jesus Christ will comfort me, speaking words of wisdom let it be." To me that just rings truer. I sing this to myself as I think about my mother who returned not long ago from Medjugorje in Bosnia. Its a pilgrimage site where the virgin Mary appeared (and still appears today to select few). Although only a few can actually see Mary, my mom saw the person as she was seeing Mary. She described the lady as "gently trembling, serene". Now mom's arrived in Poland with her church to visit her priest's hometown and sing with the choir. Could they stop at one of Poland's three Mary apparition sites too? I know, mom you read all my e-mails so I look express what I experienced about these places. Not what you get out of them.
So I've got 2 stars on the Marian (places of the virgin Mary's apparition) map. Fatima, Portugal and Lourdes France. These two sites were investigated by the vatican team of investigators and found to be true apparitions by them. Those apparitions happened a long time ago and yet these places have become like shrines to gather around and pray to Mary. A carnival atmosphere for its boutiques, and large gatherings. However this ain't no vacation: people scooting on their knees around the enormous center courtyard praying the rosary in a hot hot heat. Crying out and wounded in the knees -beside themselves. Mass is daily held in six different languages. Its not like you go on a pilgrimage to relax, yet it isn't a missions trip either because the works that happen isn't for evangelization or hard work to bless others by. Its more like an extended and expensive retreat.
As a visiting boy scout from France, I got to carry the official glass encased statue of "our lady of Fatima" on my shoulders with three other lucky scouts for Friday night's station of the cross service. So there we were walking the statue of Mary through thousands of worshippers, the carrying system was much like how the arc of the covenant was carried. So picture a claustrophobic mess, and little me trying to walk through clusters of worshippers who's hands are trying to touch me because i was carrying the statue around the stations. There was a spotlight beaming on the cased Mary. Chaotic cries in my ears and I'm just trying to hold the statue steady. I didn't know it until after but that's a great honor to do what I did. I was 13 at the time.
Lourdes was so very different. It wasn't because the vendors thought this place to be holy. Believe me I got my souvenir water bottle shaped like "Our Lady of Lourdes" too. The main draw to this place is the mysterious water that appeared after St. Bernadette obeyed what Mary asked her to do when she appeared in a cave high on a cliff. This water source comes fourth from the cliff and has been know to heal many people. So it was all too fitting that I go there chaperoning a group of mentally and physically handicapped Catholics. I was 12 then.
Although I did not come to saving faith in Jesus Christ there. I came to see people using faith in a real way: unified in hope and prayer. Maybe it was the many candlelight services singing Ave Maria that moved me. Or that I never understood the need for religion until I saw thousands of handicaps needing it. No one got healed, casts didn't crumble into sawdust. But I was a kid who was so self centered and angry that this trip spoke to me. The Virgin Mary was not the great evangelist that showed herself to me so that Jesus could come into my heart. Many Catholics give Mary that title of helping them come to the Lord. I like to think that there was a seed planted that day that opened my life to becoming a strong Catholic during my High School years.
I think God is angry and jealous when people seek out spiritual holiness through Mary and pilgrimage the Marian Map. Praying to Mary, as virtuous as it seems to those who do it is in violation of worshiping God alone. There is such a constipation of tradition and assumption surrounding Mary. The Bible it calls her blessed among women. That doesn't mean water bottles and statues need to be circulated. I do believe in miracles as clarifying and conducive to the workings of the Holy Spirit: They must glorify God. So all this leaves me wondering if these are miracles of God, in light of what a convoluted locale Lourdes and Fatima are.
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