Our Lady of Medigorje Reappears

 

You wanted more Jersey City Catholic esoterica, you got it. Okay, maybe nobody really wanted but I keep finding these stories. This odd but true tale you will only read here.

The statue of Our Lady of Medigorje. Mysteriously missing from Saint Mary’s on Second Street was just mysteriously returned two weeks ago.

Saint Mary’s church is home base for the annual downtownSanta Cruzan festival in May. As its name might indicate, the church, which has a large Filipino contingent amongst her parishioners, has a diverse devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, aka, Mother of Our Lord, aka, Mother Mary.  Dozens of different Mary icons are featured along the walls of the church, most of which get paraded around downtown during the Santa Cruzan procession.  The church houses one of the largest collections of different Marian Icons to be found in the state of New Jersey.

 For more than 20 years, every Monday at St Mary’s, a special devotion to Our Lady of Medigorje is held, following the 7:15 PM mass.  A simple service, a Rosary is recited – the Joyful Mysteries, because it is Monday – followed by the Magnificat and the Litany to Our Blessed Mother. Apparently, Our Lady of Medigorje has no special prayers – is held in a special side altar. The statuette – it’s maybe twelve inches tall – was there for all that time, until two years ago, when it suddenly and inexplicably went missing.

Two weeks ago, somebody had left the statue in the rectory of St. Mary.  The speculation was that a parishioner had borrowed the statue and maybe his or her petition was granted, or maybe he or she passed on. The icon vanished and just reappeared.

Like every Monday, the rosary and other Marian prayers were recited. Our Lady of Medigorje was always there, but now her likeness had returned home.

 

Who is she? Well, do your own googling but here’s some Wiki highlights: Our Lady of Međugorje (also called Queen of Peace) is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary by those who believe that she appeared to six Herzegovinian Croat children in Međugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina (at the time Yugoslavia). The apparition first appeared on June 24, 1981. The children describe her “as 18 to 20 years old, slender. Her face is long and oval with black hair. Her eyes are blue with delicate eyelashes and thin black eyebrows. She has a nice, little nose and rosy cheeks. She has beautiful reddish thin lips and her smile is more like some indescribable gentleness. It’s visible as if somehow under her skin. Her simple dress is bluish-grey and falls freely all the way down to the little whitish cloud on which she is standing. Her veil is pure white and covers her head and shoulders.”