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Volume 35, Number 2 |
Richardton, ND 58652 |
April 2007 |
My Trip to Bosnia-
September 11-
by Philip Vanderlin, O.S.B.
Fr. Philip is currently serving as a parish priest in Jackson, Wyoming.
He returned to this country last year after almost 40 years
in our priory in Bogotá, Colombia.
Three groups that I encountered on this trip fortified my faith in humanity: a community of Franciscans, a “Cenacolo” community that welcomes lost, unsatisfied, and desperate young people, and eleven pilgrims from Wyoming climbing a hill.
The Jackson-
We were a group of eleven on a pilgrimage from Wyoming heading for two towns and
two hills with a controversial quarter century history: Medjugorje and Bijakovici,
Cross Hill and Apparition Hill. We climbed them both. Two towns at the foot of hills
and the Church of St. James in between. Interesting setup. Fr. Jozo Zovko, O.F.M.,
who runs an orphanage, told us about the money-
As we walked through the tobacco fields and vineyards towards these two hills I was curious what has been happening here the past 25 years, since that day on June 24, 1981, when six children ran up a hill, now called Apparition Hill, and saw something or someone which changed their lives forever. Since then thousands have walked up barefooted, some on knees, to see what they saw. I climbed it three times with my boots on. I usually do things like this three times in case the first two don’t provide results.
They say Our Lady appears every Monday and Friday at 10 p.m. We went up at 6 on Sept. 15 to get a good view and a good stone to sit on! We waited. At 10 there were a few hundred people. Some were singing. Others were gazing. Some were praying. Others were looking for shelter from the rain. All were wondering. There was a soft breeze. We waited. We looked to the bushes in the darkness. We looked at each other. Some say She came in that breeze and left with it in a matter of seconds. A voice from a loud speaker announced that She came and said that Her message for today was a prayer for peace. Some of us walked down silently having seen or sensed nothing and looking at the bushes with our head lights. I looked at my rosary. It had not turned to gold. The next day I did not see the sun dance or an image of the Host in the middle of the sun, nor did I see the word “mir” (=peace) written in the sky. I’m still a believer. A little disappointed, but still a believer, still enchanted with the area and history, still looking at my rosary for a color change , and still have my shoes on.
The Franciscans have been here for centuries. Thirty of them formed a community
and built the Church of the Assumption in Siroki Brijeg, north of Medjugorje. That
fateful day, Feb. 7, 1945, lingers in my memory after reading about the tragedy.
I pray the novena to these martyrs. Their final words echo in my ears, “You are my
God and my All.” With those words they were slain and burned by the Communist partisans.
One soldier, surprised by their heroic conduct, converted and his son became a priest
and a daughter a nun. Viktor Kosir was a young 21-
I think of his mother. She later had another son and gave him the same name Viktor. She cried often and her second Viktor said one day, “Mom, don’t cry, one day you shall see I’ll become a friar too.” They say that Friar Viktor roams the streets of Medugorje today, frail and thoughtful and praying the novena to the martyrs, one of them being his own brother.
I was profoundly touched by the community “Cenacolo.” In 1983 Sister Elvira
Petrozzi had a vision for delusioned, desperate young people, lost because of drugs
and dysfunctional families and hoping to find a new life. Two of them shared their
stories with us, one from Atlanta and another from Zagreb. It sounds like a monastic
community, the type of community I come from. Eating and working and praying and
crying and hurting and laughing together. Thirty-
Medjugorje is at the foot of Cross Hill, Bijakovici at the foot of Apparition
Hill. Every time I was on the plaza between the confessionals and the church I would
look to the slope of Cross Hill about a thousand yards off and wonder if She would
appear. She didn’t. We climb Cross Hill praying the Way of the Cross. I wanted to
turn around because of inclement weather with rain, rocks, mud and difficult terrain.
I fell once. We climb. We pray. I continue. Station after station. We arrive. That’s
what pilgrims do. What a sight from the top! The valley. Medjugorje. Bijakovici.
Friars. Cenacolo. Croatia to the left, Bosnia-
I did not see an apparition but found the Gospel being lived with some friars
who care for the orphans, and a Cenacolo community who care for each other. Pilgrims
from Wyoming trying not to be tourists, who touch each other’s lives with different
stories to tell. Sorry, but Medjugorje is thirty Franciscan Friars over sixty years
ago, a few friars today trying to keep the spirit alive, Sister Elvira who gives
her life to God through helping drug addicts and lost youth, and eleven friends discovering
their strength by struggling to climb a hill in the rain, praying the Way of the
Cross. Medjugorje is millions of pilgrims who don’t see the friars and the orphans
and the Cenacolo community or the apparitions. Medjugorje is the Church of St. James,
where Masses are being celebrated every day on the hour, every hour, in many languages
and the Germans imploring the English-
Our final night finds us in a hotel on the Adriatic a few hours from the Split airport. We are sitting at a restaurant window looking out at the Adriatic. Somebody is passing a bottle of Dalmatian wine and another is asking for calamari stuffed with garlic. The Adriatic looks romantic and I tell someone I’d like to take a cruise across to Italy. I strike up a conversation with the waiter and he mentions that the Dalai Lama was here five years ago. The Dalmatian wine must have been working because I immediately asked him what room His Holiness stayed in, hoping it was number 12, where I was staying. It was number 17. Missed another apparition.
Jackson is at a distance in miles. Thirty friars are at a distance in time. I wonder about Bishop Peric, in whose diocese Medjugorje is located and who is against the whole Medjugorje story. I wonder about the six children who are now adults and called “visionaries.” I wonder about the apparitions and millions of pilgrims and street vendors. I am listening to time. My mind journeys to 1945, to 1983, to 1991, and to the present moment. I am wondering about two young people at Cenacolo community and ask aloud when they might be healed, return to their families and form their own. I think of the deceased and the displaced, not only in what was Yugoslavia, but what is Colombia. The last thing I said to our young guide was, “May the Serbs, Croats and Muslims live together for ever.” I wanted to say it in Croatian but the bus took off and all I could shout from the window was “mir” (peace) and “fala” (thanks). Then I remember reading a Bosnian curse that states, “May God make you live in interesting times.”
On returning to Jackson and discovering some of my parishioners were deported to Mexico in my absence, I went to the Teton Library and saw a book by Anthony Loyd entitled, “My War Gone By, I Miss it So” about the Bosnian war. I thought perhaps this remembrance of my recent trip to that area could be called “My Apparition Gone By, I Miss It So.”
