Of Men and Mary Page 6

  I believed the damning lie that simply because two people “consent” to a sexual act, it is therefore justified. With each encounter I had with a woman, I was fully responsible for my part and partially responsible for hers. The degrees of culpability and the far-ranging, rippling repercussions were different for each act and each person. Sometimes a woman wanted to please me because she had every intention of having a deep relationship that involved marriage, and I had no intention of that whatsoever. Sometimes I had better intentions, but my sin was still sin. I could never give back what I had taken from so many women, sometimes her virginity, which was crushingly serious—worse than beating her. Even if I had run after her and told her I was sorry a thousand times, her relationships with men throughout her life would still be affected, not to mention her eternal soul. Every one of my sexual sins, like all sin, involved pain and suffering, but I hadn’t allowed myself to see.

  My mother wanted me to behave differently toward women, but I appeared to be cavalier and uncaring about her feelings, which wasn’t the truth. In the illumination, I felt her pain within myself. She was so disappointed. Long before she moved into my home, she would visit and try her best to help me, but I continued to insist that she embrace my behavior in order to have a relationship with me. It was against her sensibilities, so she couldn’t accept it, but she loved me anyway. My response was to turn my back on her physically and emotionally. “I’m not coming over to your house. I’m not seeing you!” I bellowed. This was the woman who bore me into the world, who loved me, whom God had chosen as my mother. When reliving this moment, I felt the slicing pain of rejection that had stabbed my mother’s heart to its core.

  Even choices that didn’t seem serious to me, were, and my good intentions were never enough to cover them up. When someone passed me a joint at a rock concert, for instance, even if I didn’t intend to do drugs when I was there, I still bore the responsibility for my choice to take a hit, however disinterestedly. One particular scene that bore my fingerprints was profoundly disturbing. I had sold drugs to a certain guy on more than one occasion, then moved away and never saw him again. When I returned to that area, I was sitting in a local tavern where a man told me that the guy had committed suicide. In the illumination of conscience, I was shown the event of his death. It is still so hard for me to accept and to know that in certain and real ways, I was part of his decision-making process to end his life on Earth. In seeing the ripple effects of my sin, I learned that he was holding his family together. When he died in such a way, he crushed each one of his family members. Their suffering, in turn, afflicted every relationship they had with others, and so on, in a spiral of pain.

  All of the sinful events of my life passed before my eyes and through my emotions, in the eternal presence of God, where there could be no deception, no rewriting of history, no mitigation of circumstances. It was what it was. All my back stories were being erased and my guilt exposed. Like most human beings, I had rewritten the unconfessed sins of my past, creating skewed interpretations in my mind to downplay any personal culpability and disperse blame. I had decimated every one of the Ten Commandments. Intense remorse flooded my soul. I felt devastated by the heavy weight of truths about myself that I didn’t want to see, didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to own. People had died because of my actions. I witnessed moments in my life that made me incredulous it was even me. Mortified, I just wanted to go away, to curl up and die, but I couldn’t escape. I believe that had I seen the condition of my soul without the merciful support of God, I would have experienced a despair so great that I couldn’t have gone on living.

  When I came out of the illumination, I found myself kneeling and looking up at the miracle of the sun, still spinning and pulsating with color. Then I glanced downward to see the front of my shirt and the flagstones beneath me wet with tears. A few feet away, sitting on a bench, was my mother. I could see from her posture that she, too, could see this miracle of the sun, so I got up, walked behind her, wrapped my arms around her and rested my chin on her shoulder, cheek to cheek. Together we looked up at the most powerful energy source known to man, which God was manipulating at his discretion because he created it, and he isn’t bound by the laws he made. In the presence of such a miracle, we were like little kids cuddled up in innocent awe, observing the power of God.

  “How could it be,” I wondered, “that scarcely any time has passed?” It then occurred to me that I had just experienced the whole of my life in the same few short minutes that Mary, the Mother of God, had appeared on Earth.

  So that was my first day in Medjugorje. The next day, I woke up with an all-consuming desire to go to Confession. Donning a light jacket, I walked through the mist and rain drops, underneath scattered clouds toward St. James church. Sitting down on a wet bench, I thought to myself, “I would have liked to have gone to confession to Fr. Mike Canary”—a priest from Ireland I had met the night before, who was a late vocation. I had sensed from his demeanor that he would understand the gravity of the sins I had committed and give me a harder penance than simply five “Hail Mary’s.”

  I didn’t think of my ponderings as prayer, but no more had I finished my thought than Fr. Mike walked into my peripheral vision. For the next three hours, we sat together on that bench, huddled under his umbrella, while I told him my sins. Like St. Padre Pio, he could read into my soul; he knew the details of my sins before I said them. When I had trouble voicing my most shameful and embarrassing moments, he would help me by reminding me of particulars: “. . . and this is what you were doing . . . but this is what you were thinking . . .” When I finally finished, he gave me my penance: “You go to the mountain, the Mountain of the Cross. You take your shoes off, not as a penance, but an equalizer for all the infirm and elderly, the sick and the less able who come here. You are young and strong, and you climb that mountain in your bare feet, and you pray for every person you’ve ever hurt.” Then he laid his hands on my head for absolution, and heat came out of them and into me. I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that it was.

  As I climbed the mountain, I could remember the name of every person I’d hurt. I could remember the lies, the seductions, the cheating, the thefts. I sobbed all the way to the top, and since I left my shoes at the bottom, I sobbed even more all the way down. At the base of the mountain, where a crucifix stood, I prostrated myself and begged Jesus for my life. I knew that I could walk this life perfectly from that moment on, and I would never be able to make up for all the harm I had done.

  When I finally stood back up, I felt truly forgiven. I had never felt that way before in my life. I put my tennis shoes on and thanked God for his extravagant mercy. Then I walked back to the church, where I ran into Fr. Mike again. He said, “Come with me,” and I followed him into a room with rows of metal folding chairs and people singing hymns. He called it a healing service. I didn’t know what that meant and didn’t think I necessarily needed one. I was happy because I felt forgiven. But, “What could it hurt?” Fr. Mike pulled out a purple stole, creased from being folded in his pocket, placed it around his neck, and walked to the front of the room. People stood up one at a time and walked over to him. When it came my turn, and I was standing about three feet in front of Fr. Mike, my mouth opened involuntarily, and I heard my voice say, “I have many scars on my heart, and what I want is the Holy Spirit.” Putting my hand over my mouth incredulously, I thought, “Okay, that was weird. I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

  Fr. Mike didn’t utter a word. He picked up a small vial of holy oil, made the sign of the cross on my forehead, put his right hand on my head and then on my heart. All of a sudden, the Holy Spirit descended with great force, and I was afraid, not from fear, but awe. The Spirit stopped right above my heart. The experience wasn’t merely psychological, physical, spiritual, or emotional, and it dwarfed any human drug or sexual sensation. What I underwent was the most explosively powerful event of my life. For those who know the original Star Trek series, I liken it to putting one’s head i
nto the “anti-matter.” Fr. Mike said, “Let there be no more doubt. Let there be no more fear,” and in that moment, my spirit expanded, as though taking in the biggest breath of air possible. The more I opened myself, the more he filled me, until there was no distinction between God and me. When I finally came back to consciousness of my surroundings, I found myself lying on the floor. Fr. Mike had his hand on my heart and was praying over me along with an eighteen-year-old young man named Bill Curry, who only six months earlier, had been a face-down drunk; but God delivered him from his addiction in Medjugorje.

  My feet were sticking straight out and my body lay stiff, as though it had been jolted with a million volts. I could have easily served as a plank between any two of those folding chairs. Gradually, as my body began to relax, a delightful warmth I’d never known entered my soul. I had felt happiness before when winning the big game, falling in love, achieving success, and celebrating Christmas, but I’d never known what true joy really was. When I got up, I immediately embraced Fr. Mike, who said I almost broke his back I hugged him so hard. But I couldn’t help it. I loved him! I loved everybody! It was sappy, and didn’t care. The experience so filled me with the Spirit of God that I could feel my heart beating with love for all of his creatures; it so cleansed my soul that I could almost feel people’s bad thoughts. I walked outside into the cold outdoor air wearing a T-shirt and a smile, with no need of my sweater because I was emanating intense heat.

  So that was only my second day in Medjugorje. The following day was the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. At dawn, as I lay in bed, I experienced another mystical event. This time, I found myself standing in a field of tall grass, about six to eight-inches high, with a wooden fence on my left, which travelled down a slope before me. A soft wind blew waves through the grass, making the underside of the blades appear silver in the sunlight. Then Jesus came. He walked up the slope in my direction and stopped a few feet in front of me, off to the left. He looked exactly like I would have expected him to. The only image I’ve seen that resembles his face was captured by a young artist named Akiane Kramarik,1 a girl who could miraculously paint like a master, as a child, without any training whatsoever. She was allegedly transported to heaven and recorded on canvas what she witnessed. The face of Jesus she painted was the face that I saw. He appeared to me wearing a soft, cream-colored, inner garment flecked with brown, and over it, a dark brown outer robe with banded strands of four or five threads woven in a checkered pattern. I could clearly make out his bearded face and his intense, but inviting eyes.

  Then without speaking, Jesus communicated to me, “I want you to be a priest.”

  I was completely taken aback. “You’ve got to be kidding. I am the worst sinner, ever, and we’ve just been through this!”

  “Yes,” he responded.

  “But I’m engaged to be married. I love my fiancée. I’ve named my kids. The dress is bought. The country club is rented. Critical mass has been achieved. And sorry to say it, but I’ve been treating her like my wife already.” I had never, ever, ever, ever thought of being a priest—never had a moment of altar boy fervor—no inclination—nothing—not once.

  “Yes.”

  “C’mon. This isn’t for guys like me. That’s for someone else. You create those guys. You know from beyond time that they’re going to be priests. You put them into a wonderful family, they come out the altar boy chute, and then—boom—they’re priests.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” he said, and then he turned and walked away.

  Jesus had just laid waste to my greatest desires in life, but I couldn’t deny what had just happened. Seeing Jesus was not the realization of a dream; it was the destruction of every dream I had. I felt worse than ruined. Getting out of bed, I reached over, shook my mother awake, and told her what happened. She looked me straight in the face and said, “I can’t help you.”

  “What!?” Despondent and desperately seeking comfort, I wondered, “What do I do now?”

  Not knowing where to turn, I got up and went to St. James Church for the 11 o’clock Mass. I must have been a pretty picture with my shoulder-length hair, funky mustache, and my baggy, ballooning Zubaz® pants that looked like pajama bottoms. The World Wrestling Federation had somehow gotten the NFL to wear them, and no one had been smart enough to say, “Hey, those are really ugly.” My Zubaz® had red and orange flames traveling up my legs. The company’s slogan is “Embrace the Awesome.” I walked into the church looking like that, and a priest named Fr. Philip Pavich, who was in charge of the English-speaking Mass, asked me to do the readings.

  Startled, I began to prepare, completely forgetting that I’d had a fear of public speaking. It seemed to have vanished with the old me when I was baptized in the Spirit. When I walked forward and stood behind the ambo, everything from my waist up was absolutely calm. Oddly, everything from the waist down was still shaking and knocking together, like it used to in speech class, even though I didn’t feel scared anymore. The ambo hid this sorry view from the congregation, but it was in clear view of the many English-speaking priests sitting in the sanctuary. When Mass was over, I walked out of the church past the door to the sacristy to join my mother and a woman named Lynn. “Mom,” I said, “wasn’t that really cool that I did the readings?”

  She said, “I was behind a pillar. That wasn’t your voice.”

  Then, as the thirty-seven priests who were on the altar left the sacristy, they walked up to the three of us, one after the other. They had to have seen me proclaiming the Word of God with my flaming Zubaz®, my wavy, long hair, my groovy mustache, and my reverberating knees, yet every single one of them asked me, “Are you a priest?”

  “No,” I responded to each one. “I’m engaged to be married.” But no matter my response, each would reply, “We need you,” and then turn and walk away. Every single priest said the exact same words to me. My mother and Lynn and I began to find this equally astounding as amusing.

  One English-speaking cleric visiting Medjugorje, who was the chaplain for Lynn’s pilgrimage group, was missing. “You should talk to him,” Lynn urged. He’s a great priest.” I thought perhaps he might be able offer some consolation; but the day passed, and I couldn’t find him.

  Night came, and with it, the loss of hope that I would find any relief from my inner torment. As I sat next to the statue of Our Lady that adorns the front courtyard of St. James Church, I sighed, “Give me a sign, Lord, please—some kind of consolation. Help me!” Then I looked up at the sky and saw a green beam of light, like a meteorite, hit the large cross atop Cross Mountain; and at the moment of impact, it appeared to burst into flame. That cross, made of nothing but cement, began to “burn.” But the miracle didn’t make me feel one bit better. A few minutes later, the priest walked up. Relieved, I said that I wanted to speak with him, so we walked side-by-side through a cemetery in the direction of Cross Mountain. As I poured out my soul, he started to laugh. “Hey, I’m being serious here,” I said to him, which only made him laugh all the more.

  “What do you think I do at home?” he asked.

  I paused to think for a moment. “You’re not in vocations to the priesthood, are you?”

  “Yep.” I felt like the joke was on me, and I wasn’t finding it at all funny. We came to a fork in the dirt road: one direction led to Mt. Krisevac, the other to Podbrdo. “It is said that the Hill of the Apparitions is the spiritual path, and Cross Mountain is the path of the world,” he said. “Our mission is to bring those two mountains together in our lives.” And then he took his leave of me. I stood there alone at the crossroads, inconsolable.

  As night fell, I turned and walked toward the Hill of the Apparitions. In the ambient light of the moon, I began to climb, looking for any kind of human consolation. A man came toward me, carrying a flashlight. I engaged him with small talk and said, “I’ll follow behind you.” But following his flashlight seemed more difficult than climbing under the moonlight. He ended up getting us profoundly lost. I was feeling a b
it perturbed when I heard a small voice within me say, “I made you to lead, not to follow.” So I took leave of him and walked only twenty to thirty feet to find myself at the sight of the first apparition of the Mother of God. Sitting down on a comfortable rock, I stared out over the town. Bright flames of orange and yellow were still “consuming” the cement cross atop Mt. Krisevac, and it remained on “fire” throughout the entire night. As midnight approached, I heard something that I never had before. The birds began to sing—not chirp or call, but sing, like canaries, with more and more of them blending their voices together across the whole valley. It was beautiful, incredibly beautiful. And yet it didn’t comfort me. I simply sat on the hill and cried.

  After spending a week in Medjugorje, my mother didn’t want to leave and suggested that we set up a shop and sell religious souvenirs, staying there for the rest of our lives. But Our Lady tells the pilgrims through the visionaries that we need to come down off the mountain, go home to our people, and tell them about the love of God. For the very first time, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my fiancée. In fact, I was dreading it. When the plane landed, I felt my stomach twist into a knot. “Welcome home, honey!” she exclaimed at the airport with open arms. I knew what those open arms would lead to, and I also knew I had to somehow avoid them.

  “I’m tired,” was the excuse I repeated for a few days. When Sunday came, she and my mother and I went to Mass and stopped afterward at a Farm and Fleet store. While we were standing in the checkout line, a guy in front of me, whom I knew from daily Mass, turned around to say, “So, when are you going to go talk to the bishop about priesthood?”