In God's Company 2: Featured article from July's Spirit of Medjugorje

In God's Company 2: Featured article from July's Spirit of Medjugorje:



Featured article from July's Spirit of Medjugorje

My Special Rosary from Medjugorje

By Joe Kohler

     Last fall, I received a special grace through the love and mercy of Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother that I feel I am supposed to share.
     I was in a motorcycle accident on October 10, 2016 at 2:00 in the afternoon. I was hit by a Jeep Patriot, thrown in the air, and my head struck and destroyed the windshield. My head hit the windshield so hard that I was knocked out and unconscious for about 30 minutes. I did receive a mild concussion along with two cracked ribs and three fractured lumbar vertebrae. The only visible evidence was a contusion on my lower back and multiple bruises.
     I was carrying my rosary that day. I always carry my very special rosary in my pocket. I have had it for over 10 years and it was a gift from Medjugorje. In addition, I also wear a Miraculous Medal and a Brown Scapular around my neck. I have a very strong devotion to Mary, our Blessed Mother.
     I do not remember anything about the accident, but I was told my full face helmet saved my life. When I first came home from the hospital two days after my accident, I began to realize the miraculous nature of what had happened to me. My arms and legs were not broken and I sustained no crippling injuries. Although I had intense pain, I was alive and I could think clearly and reflect on the whole event. The nurses in the trauma unit at the hospital told me that they had never seen anyone walk out of the hospital two days after a motorcycle accident. This comment enabled me to reflect more. I could have easily died. If you ever doubt the power of Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother, ask me! My survival and lack of serious injuries were truly miraculous. I walked out of the hospital unassisted in less than 48 hours! I am thankful, and overwhelmed by the love, mercy, and goodness of God.
     As soon as I got home, I realized my special Medjugorje rosary was missing and I was depressed. My clothes had been cut off of me in the emergency room because they did not know if I was badly hurt. The rosary was in my pocket. I called the hospital immediately, and they told me they would look for it and call me back if they found it. This was Wednesday, October 12, 2016. They never called back. I began grieving for my rosary!
     The next day, October 13, 2016 was the 99th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun in Fatima. Although I did not realize the significance of that day then, a woman who I had been seeing for a couple of months broke off the relationship with a text message that day. The hurt, and pain from my accident and the fact that I was home alone recovering from injuries was only compounded, and I was getting depressed. I now realize that Mary through Jesus was ending a relationship that was comforting and seemed significant to me. As Paul Harvey used to say, "The rest of the story" was about to unfold.

Joe's Rosary

     On Sunday, October 16, 2016, I felt like washing some clothes. By this time, only six days after the accident, I had already mastered the stairs again in my home. Another miracle! I went to the laundry room downstairs, loaded the machine and went back upstairs. I had several loads to do. With the first load done, I went downstairs, opened the washing machine and to my utter amazement, there was my Medjugorje rosary lying on top of the spun clothes! As anyone knows, spun clothes cling to the sides of the washer. My rosary was lying in an open position, like you would see with a deceased person holding a rosary in a casket. It was clearly visible on top of all of my clothes. I did not have to separate my clothes to retrieve it.

     Tears welled up in my eyes! My thoughts were all over the place. I knew immediately that Mary through Jesus had saved my life on October 10, 2016. She also returned my rosary to me even after it was lost in the hospital's emergency room. I was immediately inspired that I was not to keep this miracle to myself, but to share it with others. Praise God and our Blessed Mother! Our God is an awesome God and HE can do the impossible!

     Today, I am back to work, and I am 100% recovered from my injuries. I have no physical limitations and I can do anything I did before my accident. I share this story because the blessings I have received for having gone to Medjugorje in June, 2016 are ongoing. I wake up every day and I am thankful for another day.

     I will close with these thoughts. If you have never been to Medjugorje, GO! It is a place of miracles, and not all of them happen while you are there. Go to Mass daily, if possible, and receive the Eucharist. Carry a blessed rosary with you at all times and pray it daily. Wear the Brown Scapular and the Miraculous Medal around your neck. Go to Confession monthly. Live a life being thankful to God, and love others in your daily walk. Finally, listen to the monthly messages from Medjugorje and live them. Miracles can and will happen in your life when you have the eyes of faith. When you need Our Lady's protection the most, She will love and guide you to Jesus when you are in most need of His grace and mercy.

     Editor's note: Joe is a local dentist who lives in Erie, PA. His injuries did not impair his ability to practice dentistry. He shared his story with me back when it happened, and I had asked him to write it up when he had time. One morning, Joe told me he could not sleep, so he got up, wrote the story and emailed it to me. We realized while talking that the day he wrote and sent it was a Marian feast day – the Feast of the Visitation!

Char Vance - Healed in Medjugorje

Spirit Daily

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After A Startling Vision Of Jesus On The Cross, Comedian Turned Into A Catholic

By Michael H. Brown

When life seems to be closing in on us, in a world that so often seems upside-down, there one way to exit, and that's through  humor. A sure cure for our ills is found in laughter!

Usually, we should be laughing at ourselves.

And one thing that should make us smile is how silly it is to worry when we have God. 

In the Light of His eternity and angels and watchfulness, there is nothing to fear but lack of prayer. We can even pray for a good sense of humor! 

Many of you have heard the experts talk about how laughter can help us recover from serious illnesses. That's because humor is a spiritual release and when we release something on that level, it goes to both our emotions and bodies. 

A great example of this -- of both healing and laughter -- is Char Vance, the television producer and comedian from New Orleans who is often out there speaking at conferences and causing people to roll in the aisles. Char had been in the radio business when she suffered a horrendous accident. It was on Halloween night at a farm she owned back in the 1980s. She and a group were riding on a tractor-pulled wagon when suddenly they caught sight of the barn on fire.

Char jumped off in hopes of running to the blaze but got caught underneath, injured so badly it looked like part of her leg would have to be amputated. The ankle was severely damaged.

Just crushed. No bone support at all. It looked like a lifelong handicap.

At the time, Char Vance was not a Catholic, but a friend got her to go to the apparition site of Medjugorje -- much besmirched these days by the devil. And for good reason: this is a place of enormous conversion. Ask Char. Her recounting of her trip and her conversion to the Catholic faith -- more importantly, to faith in Jesus -- is a hilarious excursion into deep spirituality. Finally, it has been captured on videotape.

At Medjugorje, where Char hobbled in a huge, lumbering cast, the Louisiana woman climbed the holy highland of Mount Krizevac despite those who thought it was crazy and despite her own skepticism. "I wondered why [after Apparition Hill], they wanted us to go up the mountain," she jokes. "I said, why do you have us climbing two hills, two mountains in one day? It's not like we're going to run out of fun things to do here!"

Here she was in a place with no TV and no hotels and no pools, drinking beer while everyone else was praying the Rosary in a way she saw as strange and obsessive.

But Char went up the "hill." As she walked a dirt road on the outskirts of the village, something had said to her, "You know, it will be just your luck if something big happens up there and you're gonna miss it." That's what had finally convinced her to go up. She and her companions caught a cab.  When they got to the mountain, many others were doing the same. 

"I didn't know a lot of prayers," says Char, who was not a Catholic at the time. "I knew 'Now I lay me down to sleep' and the Lord's Prayer, but that's the most wonderful thing you Catholics have: you have prayers for everything," she jokes. "You know, you got department heads. You lost something, you got St. Anthony. You got bad eyes you got St. Lucy..."

Heading up the mountain and praying at the Fourth Station of the Cross, Char propped up her cast on a boulder and here comes a monk -- a very unusual monk. "He had on this white robe and the hood up and he's carrying a tripod with nothing on it, no camera. And he's looking directly at me," says Char. "And coming to me. And he says, 'You know, when I was in Germany, I had the good fortune of meeting Theresa Neumann.' To me it was like saying, 'I met John Jones.' He said, 'You know who that is, don't you?' I said, 'No.' And he said, 'Well, she was a stigmatist.'"

Got me again, said Char.

"Don't you know what a stigmatist is?" the man asked.

Uh uh, replied Char.

He explained what a stigmatic was (someone who had received the wounds of Christ) and pulling out a rosary told her that he had put it on her stigmatic wounds and that it had since healed people of many problems, including cancer. "Here I am with this big cast on the rock, and he says, 'I would like your permission to put this on your head!'"

It's hard to convey how Char tells this story. Her inflections, her timing, her side comments are hilarious. The tape shows an audience in constant  stitches. But she was telling a serious story. "When something like this happens, you think 'somebody has tapped into your thoughts' -- and you better start thinking some holy pious thoughts QUICK!"

The mysterious stranger told Char to say seven Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and Glory Bes, and when she got to the top, the Creed. "When he left he would talk to others," she recounts. "If they were French he would begin talking in French. If you were Spanish he would start speaking Spanish. It was like he knew what you were before he got there."

At the seventh Station, the comedian noticed the "monk" was kind of winded. Char offered him a canteen of water. "He smiled a smile that went all the way through me," she says. 

Medjugorje is famous for the reports of mysterious strangers -- including monks or nuns in white. When Char got to the top, the seers were ready to have an apparition. Char didn't want to see anything -- afraid there would be hysteria and she would fall off the mountain! They were at the large cross there. "All of a sudden it's gets quiet, quiet, quiet. All of a sudden, that cross lit up, and it lit up, best I can describe it, like those old strobe lights, quick, and I see Jesus on the cross. I saw him like I have never seen a person before or since. He looked horrible -- horrible -- his nose was laying over, and He had this enormous crown, not this little crown like you see. This thing was like a big bird's nest. That quickly it lit up again and I saw it again."

Vance wasn't alone. Others in her group were astonished to witness the same thing. The mountain is known for a wide array of phenomena -- although this particular type we had not previously encountered. It is the cross where the Blessed Mother says she prays each day.

A woman next to Char said, "Did you just see Christ on that cross?"

Char felt "totally zapped." She now knew without a doubt that God and the Blessed Mother existed. When she got back, she had to go to the doctor for x-rays. She went in the waiting room "and all of a sudden the technician comes out with all these x-rays and he says [in a loud voice], 'Charlene Vance, you've been healed, you've been healed!'"

"You should have seen the people in there with their People magazines!" she jokes.

But it was true: the nurse ran in too, and then the doctor arrived -- gracing them with his "presence." "When's the last time you saw a doctor come into the waiting room!" she recalls with a roll of her eyes. "The nurse said, 'Did you hear about?'" The doctor said he had to take a look at it. It looked like there was bone growth! He asked Char to slowly try to see if she could move her toes. She could do more than that. She could rotate her whole ankle! She was with her mother. "I started dancing around and saying, 'Ma, ma, I can walk, praise God I can walk!' He runs out and brings out another doctor and they look at the x-rays and my mother says, 'Doctor, doctor, what is it,' and he says -- direct quote -- 'There's absolutely no correlation in her x-rays before she went and when she got back. There's total bone growth everywhere.'"

Jesus is the same as He was 2,000 years ago, she tells those who see her. "Miracles do happen. Believe in miracles. Expect a miracle. Miracles do happen," says Char, who now helps produce videos for Focus International, headed by retired Archbishop Phillip Hannan. "The real miracle was when God healed my head with the gift of faith. Miracles do happen, but they happen in God's time and in His way."

Char had some medals from Medjugorje and started walking all around and passing them out to the people in the waiting room. "Have a medal! Have a medal!" She walked out of that office and never needed crutches like they said she would need crutches and never received a day of therapy. 

And of yes: Charlene Vance became a Catholic six months to the day that she had climbed the mountain.

[Footnote: she also was to learn that Theresa Neumann, the stigmatic, had been born on Friday, April 8, which is Char's birthday -- in fact she too was born on a Friday -- and was injured trying to put out a fire in a barn. It was her ankle that was injured, and the mystic was healed a year later!]

[Resources in the Spiritdaily Bookstore: Char's video is No Phones in Medjugorje; see also Our Lady Speaks From Medjugorje, Medjugorje and the Church, and Queen of the Cosmos]
http://www.spiritdaily.net/char.htm

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Vatican hears Ivan & Jakov and two more visionaries of Medjugorje

http://www.medjugorjetoday.tv/4773/guide-vatican-hears-the-male-seers-now/
Rome hears Ivan, Jakov and two more

Vatican Comitee hears four Medjugorje visionaries | MEDJUGORJE TODAY

By Jakob Marschner on Feb 19, 2012

Experienced Medjugorje guide Anita Pehar says the Vatican Commission has called visionaries Ivan Dragicevic and Jakov Colo to be questioned on Monday. Bosnian news portal confirms this, adding that Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti and Mirjana Dragicvevic-Soldo will join them, in line with the guide’s report that more of the seers are in Rome.

“The Medjugorje Commission is to meet tomorrow, February 20 in Rome. The meeting was postponed for a couple days due to the Cardinal consistory meeting held since Friday” she writes on her blog, Medjugorje Web Journal.The testimonies of visionaries Ivan Dragicevic and Jakov Colo form part of the agenda when the Vatican Commission on Medjugorje meets on February 20 in Rome, pilgrim official guide Anita Pehar informs from Medjugorje.
“We do know that Jakov and Ivan are to give their testimonies but they are not the only Medjugorje visionary in Rome for the same period of time” Anita Pehar also reports.
Early on February 20, Bosnian news portal Dnevnik likewise reported to have learned that Ivan and Jakov were to testify later on Monday, and that visionaries Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti and Mirjana Dragicevic-Soldo had also been called.
For both Marija and Mirjana, a meeting on Monday will be their second audience with the international Commission headed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini. Both visionaries first gave their testimony in Rome in late November 2011.
After the audiences of Jakov and Ivan, all six Medjugorje visionaries will have appeared before the Commission. Ivanka Ivankovic-Elez opened in early June 2011, followed by Vicka Ivankovic-Mijatovic in early October.
The Commission will report its findings to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) before the end of 2012, Commission member Cardinal Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo told a press conference in Rome on February 14. It will be for CDF to issue a final report to Pope Benedict XVI who initiated the investigation on March 17th 2010.
Anita Pehar notes that, like everyone else involved with the Commission, the visionaries have taken an oath of silence. But from watching the seers, Anita Pehar thinks to have a good feeling of how work is moving forward in Rome:
“As I look at them, how they smile, I guess it must be all well.”