Of Men and Mary Page 2

  My heartfelt thanks goes out to these extraordinary disciples: to Deacon Dave, Chris, and Fr. Rick, whom I befriended in the process, to Fr. Michael, and lastly to Jim Jennings and Fr. Paul, who have since passed into the next life. May God grant them eternal rest.

  Also deserving of my thanks and praise are the kind, generous, and faithful editors at Queen of Peace Media: Anne Manyak, Dan Osanna, and Laura Dayton, who have made this book beautiful.

  ONE

  FATHER MICHAEL LIGHTNER

  Tackled by the Blessed Mother

  WHEN I WAS EIGHT, I had a vivid dream. I was playing for the Philadelphia Eagles against the Phoenix Cardinals. I saw the faces around me, the colors, the moves, every play. By the time I woke up, my life’s aspirations had already been set on playing in the National Football League one day.

  I am the youngest of eleven children (God always saves the best for last). My mom had four miscarriages, and one of my brothers died at birth, so I have five siblings in heaven, interceding for me, and five in this world, for whom I intercede (if you knew my family, you’d understand what I’m talking about). My dad was a convert, and my mom a daily communicant for most of her life. Priests would come to our home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or simply to play Schmear, a popular card game in my home town of Oconto, Wisconsin. Catholicism was an expectation of my parents—“If you live in this home, you will go to church,” which I fought against. When I’d hear, “We’re going to go to church,” “We’re going to pray the Rosary,” or any other Catholic “to do,” my brow would lower, and my chest would clench. During our nightly family Rosary, I passive-aggressively dozed off, even as a young boy. The prayers were bringing me peace, but I could only think about how boring it all was, and how I wanted to sleep.

  My faith was influenced more by a sports rival than by family. When my mom would come home from a kooky place called Medjugorje, with packs of twenty-five brown scapulars, I refused to wear one because, like all things related to faith in the family, it was forced on me. But when I was in high school and saw my football opponent, Jim Flanigan, wearing a brown scapular underneath his uniform, I was intrigued. Jim was an awesome dude who would go on to play for the Bears and the Packers. I’d never seen someone wear a scapular who wasn’t—like, well—holy. I put one on and wouldn’t take it off. If it broke, I had plenty more. By the time I finished college, I’d given hundreds of scapulars away to people who thought they were cool, and I told them of its promise from Our Lady: “Whosoever dies wearing this scapular shall not suffer eternal fire.” I believed in the promise, so I believed in Mary. I just never felt her love.

  When I was a fourteen-year-old in the eighth grade, I was six feet, four inches tall and 286 pounds, and football scouts started looking my way. When a high school head coach came and talked to my parents about inviting their son to play varsity, I jumped at the chance. In a short time, I was successful in all the high-school athletics I undertook, and by the end of my freshman year, I had already lettered in three varsity sports. In my senior year, I started getting attention from collegiate football recruiters around the country and decided to go to Eastern Michigan University, an NCAA Division 1 school in Ypsilanti. I couldn’t turn down their offer of a full scholarship and graduated with a degree in sculpture—one of my passions.

  Within my first couple of days at college, I said to myself, “Wow, my faith is my own! I get to do what I want.” Church wasn’t on my list, so at eighteen, I pushed my Catholic upbringing aside, and during that first school year, I received two painful blows to the heart. First, I got red-shirted: the coach kept me on the shelf for a year, which meant that I wasn’t allowed to play in any football games, but I could practice with the team. And then I met a girl and fell in love. I gave her my heart, and when we broke up, my heart broke in two, as well.

  So, what did I do on weekends? Party. Without the discipline and structure of travelling with the college team, and ripe to drown my sorrows, I went out with friends and started womanizing, drinking copious amounts of beer, and generally getting myself into trouble. I also turned to marijuana, and within a short time, alcohol and drugs became such an intrinsic part of my life that they took control of it.

  For three years, I careened downhill. While any homegrown values I’d learned were slipping away, I started working in security for rock bands in different venues throughout Detroit. At 315 pounds, I was an asset to several security companies, so I decided to throw my “weight” around. Leveraging the security companies, I boasted, “I know where to get you seven three-hundred-pounders. Just give me more money.” At concerts for heavy metal bands, such as Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Suicidal Tendencies, and Nine Inch Nails, I was usually front stage, grabbing people and pulling them away from proximity to the musicians. I was protecting the guys who were raising their voices to a screaming pitch against God. Later in life, I would find out how long the nails were that pierced Christ’s hands and feet: nine inches.

  In my sophomore year, my coach had me playing in games and was throwing me kudos. During video replays, he was making comments, such as, “Watch Lightner on this block. This is how you run it.” Because of my growing size and skills, it wasn’t long before I was playing Division 1 American college football in big stadiums, supported by big money. I was well on my way to the National Football League.

  While I was running up and down football fields, my mother had been running all the way to Yugoslavia (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) and back to see the Virgin Mary in a little town called Medjugorje. For this uncouth and screwball behavior, everyone in the family had given her a decisive diagnosis of “cuckoo.” In the middle of my senior year, I went home for Thanksgiving, where my immediate and extended family were gathered, and before going to bed one night, I shoved a small hip sack of mine (I refuse to call it a “fanny pack”) underneath the couch. My three-year-old niece found my sack the next morning and opened it up to look for a pencil. Pulling out a cellophane bag of something, she asked my mother, “Grandma, what’s this?”

  Asleep in a bedroom, I opened my eyes to see a cellophane bag of marijuana dangling above my head, and through the clear plastic, my mother’s tear-streaked face. I froze. My sister, who was sitting at the edge of the bed—a substance-abuse counselor for the VA, at the time—razzed, “Ah, ha, ha, now you’ve gotta go to Medjugorje.”

  “That’s a good idea,” announced my mom. “You’re going to Medjugorje with me this Christmas.”

  “God, no,” I protested. Over the next couple of days, I thought of and threw out every excuse not to go that my creativity could muster. But my mom is a persistent woman. She asked me to go—she told me to go—she forced me to go. Although I believed she was absolutely insane, in order to get her off my back and stop her from crying, I finally surrendered.

  That Christmas, we jumped on a plane in Detroit and flew to Zurich, Switzerland, where I arrived groggy and tired. “Oh, yeah,” I sighed, “Finally, we’re here.”

  My mom said, “No, we’ve got a four-hour layover, and then we get on our next flight.”

  Deflated, I imagined my plight of being squished, again, into a small seat, surrounded by none-too-happy people forced to sit next to the big, grumpy guy. When our next flight landed in Zagreb, Croatia, I exhaled, “Finally, we’re here.”

  Mom said, “We’ve got an hour layover, and then we’re on our next flight.”

  “Another flight?”

  “We’re flying to Split.”

  Once we landed, I exclaimed, “Finally, we’re here!”

  She said, “Get on the bus.”

  Pilgrims piled on the bus and started saying the Rosary. I went into sleep mode, like I always had. When I woke up, I looked out the window and saw a drop about four hundred feet down off a sheer cliff and heard myself saying, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

  We finally arrived in Medjugorje, and I was plumb exhausted. It had been a twenty-seven-hour trip. We settled into a
home near Mount Krizevac (Cross Mountain), which pilgrims were climbing in droves in order to pray and do penance. Before we settled into a long and deep sleep, my mother looked at me and said with earnestness, “I only ask for one thing when you’re here, that you to go to Confession—if not for you, then for me.” I told her I would.

  In the morning, all the “blue-hairs” looked overjoyed to be there, and I wondered, “What am I doing here? I’m not fitting in.”

  “Get in the car,” Mom announced, “we’re going to church.”

  I shot back, “I’ll walk.” I could see St. James Church about a mile and a quarter from the house where we were staying, and I wanted to make the trek alone. As I walked through a vineyard, I said my first real prayer: “God, if you exist, I do not know you. I have never seen you or heard you. I’ve never felt you or had an experience of you. You could be the biggest con that twelve drunk men ever started over 2,000 years ago. You’ve got seven days to prove yourself to me, otherwise I’m living my life the way I want to.”

  When I came to St. James, I found a sign on the door of a confessional inside the church that read, “English, Spanish, Italian.” “I guess this is where I’m supposed to go,” I thought, parking myself at the end of the line. When my turn came, I entered a cramped space (albeit, many spaces are tight for me) and I knelt down. My mind pictured an eighty-year-old priest behind the screen in front me, and I intended to shock the old man, causing blood to run from his ears.

  I told him that I didn’t remember the formula for Confession, so he walked me through it. Then for thirty-five minutes, I gave him everything. I poured out every grizzly detail of my wayward adventures: drugs, alcohol, beating people up for a living, womanizing, stealing, lying—all ten of the broken commandments. When I finished confessing my sins, the priest sounded “unshocked,” and I was shocked. He gave me some very simple advice and a penance of five “Our Fathers.”

  I was taken aback. Five “Our Fathers” wasn’t enough. I did not feel worthy of God’s love and imagined I’d be climbing Mount Krizevac thirty-three times.

  The priest continued, “During each ‘Our Father,’ meditate on one of the five major wounds of Jesus: His hands, feet, and side. Can you do this?”

  I said, “Of course,” and he helped me to say an act of contrition, which I did not know.

  As with any Confession, the priest then began to say the words of absolution: “God, the Father of mercies, through the death and Resurrection of His Son, reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit . . .” Upon hearing those words, I became aware of a physical Presence with me in the confessional. Then, all of a sudden, my body from the knees up was pushed far backward to a 30-degree angle, knocking my head on the back wall of the confessional, while my calves and feet were pinned underneath me. I was a six-foot-five, 325-pound man, who squatted over 600 pounds and benched well over 400, and I couldn’t sit up or move my body in any direction, not even one inch.

  The priest continued, “. . . And I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” With those words, I felt an intense pain in my heart, as if a spear were plunging into my chest, and a fierce internal struggle ensued. Screaming aloud in agony, I felt the “spear” get yanked out, and with it, my sins. Seconds later, my soul and body experienced a great release, and I was no longer immobilized.

  “Oh, my God,” I said to myself. “He’s real.”

  Flabbergasted, I left the confessional and exited the church. It took me forty-five minutes to say five “Our Fathers,” as I wept on my knees before a large cross, watching a puddle of tears form on the ground. Pictures of people I had hurt—especially women I’d used, flashed through my mind. I saw what my sin had done in their lives, and for the very first time, I felt deeply sorry. Those five “Our Fathers” were the hardest penance I have ever done.

  Holy Mass had begun in the church, but I didn’t know it. I was re-experiencing my confession, like a flashback to a tragedy, and when my senses finally entered into reality, I noticed that a priest was in the middle of his homily. His name was Fr. Stan Fortuna, and he had brought his guitar up to the pulpit, which I thought was pretty cool, so I said to Jesus, “Lord, help me hear what this priest has to say.”

  At that very moment, God gave me a mystical experience. I received an anointing so sublime that it was better than any drug, better than any sex, better than winning the big game. All of those feelings combined could be multiplied by a million and not touch what God was doing in my heart. I felt as though I were levitating and was afraid to open my eyes because I literally believed I was on the ceiling. It was my Pentecost. God’s Spirit, with its divine gifts and blessings, entered my heart.

  After twenty minutes of suspension in utter ecstasy, I slowly felt my normal senses return. When Mass ended, I stood up and walked outside in a daze. A woman, who had apparently witnessed what had happened to me, approached me and asked if I might pray over her. Never having done such a thing before, I reluctantly laid my hands on her head, and she immediately went limp, overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. Shaken, I didn’t understand what had happened and quickly fled the scene, like a criminal trying not to get caught.

  Six months later, when I was close to finishing college, my mother asked if I wanted to travel again to Medjugorje for the fourteenth anniversary of the apparitions. Without hesitation, I said yes. On the third day of this pilgrimage, I took a day trip outside Medjugorje and traveled along a winding road to the Franciscan monastery of Široki Brijeg, about an hour’s ride away. This time, I was more than willing to pray the Rosary on the bus. I was curious to see a priest with the gift of healing, named Fr. Jozo Zovko, who offered a program for pilgrims, at that time, consisting of Mass, talks, and healing prayers. Fr. Jozo had been the pastor of St. James when the alleged Medjugorje apparitions began. At first, he didn’t believe the young visionaries and questioned them relentlessly. Then God spoke to him one day in the church while he was agonizing over what to believe regarding the “apparition fanaticism” of his parishioners. God said clearly, “Come out and protect the children.” Obeying the voice without hesitation, he opened a side door to St. James, and in that very moment, the visionaries ran toward him, escaping persecution from the pursuing police. The moment was a decisive turning point and a personal revelation for Fr. Jozo, who now believed that the children were, indeed, seeing the Mother of God.

  At Široki Brijeg, I took a small detour with a friend of mine, Rick Wendell, who later became a priest. Together, we walked around the right side of the monastery and came upon an unmarked stone cave. Descending several stone steps toward it, I grew overwhelmed by a stark feeling of sadness and pain. Compelled to pray, I knelt down with Rick in the blackness of the cave’s hollow, where we said the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. There, each of us, unbeknownst to the other, experienced the exact same staggering vision. Suddenly my heart began beating wildly with terror. I was no longer myself, but a Franciscan seminarian dressed in a brown habit. Soldiers aimed their rifles at me, and I trembled in fear for my life. At that moment, in real time, I fully believed that I was going to die alongside Rick in that cave. In the vision, I was shot by automatic weapon fire, dragged out by my ankles, and piled on top of my Franciscan brothers in the cave. Then gasoline was poured over the top of me, and I was lit on fire to the mocking sound of the soldiers’ laughter.

  Only later did Rick and I learn the following story. On February 7, 1945, during World War II, Communist soldiers arrived at the Široki Brijeg monastery and announced to the thirty Franciscan seminarians and priests who lived there, “God is dead. There is no God, there is no Pope, there is no Church, there is no need of you. Go out into the world and work” (notwithstanding that most of the Franciscans were teaching at the adjoining school, and some of them were well-known professors and authors). The soldiers then ordered the Franciscans to remove their brown habits. But they refused. One angry cadet took a crucifix off the wall, threw it at their feet an
d said, “This is your last chance. Now you can choose either life or death.” One by one, each of the Franciscans knelt down, embraced Jesus on the crucifix and said, “You are my God and my all.” Then all thirty of them, six of whom were only twenty years old, went forth to their death in song, some of them singing Salve Regina, others the Litany of Our Lady—all of them blessing their executioners and forgiving them. Then the soldiers shot them point blank and set them on fire in the cave.

  At the time of our concurrent vision, Rick and I knew none of this. Shaken and confused by what had overcome us, we rushed to get a priest who blessed us and threw holy water and holy salt into the darkness of the cave. Instinctively, I clutched my brown scapular, and I thanked Mary for her protection and her love, which I was no longer taking for granted. That harrowing vision has never left me and gave me a lasting impression that to some, human life is not the slightest bit important.

  Rick and I walked back into the church sanctuary of the monastery. There, we witnessed Fr. Jozo laying his hands on the priests who were present, in preparation for them to lay their hands on the many pilgrims who had formed a circle around the inside of the large stone church. As the priests dispersed to pray over the people, I instinctively followed a little Capuchin who reminded me of St. Padre Pio. When that priest began laying his hands on the pilgrims’ heads to impart his blessing, they started falling down one after another. Figuring I should use my size and strength to be of help, I began to catch the people collapsing like ragdolls underneath his touch. Within fifteen minutes, he must have knocked down over 200 pilgrims, and I was getting tired. “Lord,” I begged. “Slow it down. Let me catch up.”