Pentecost Sunday would be our final full day in Medjugorje. \u00a0There was no other opportunity to pray together on Apparition Hill, so at 6 AM, off we went.<\/p>\n
Soon after the first Apparition, Ivan and others erected a cross on Apparition Hill and painted it blue. There was \u00a0no religious significance to the color. They used blue\u00a0\u00a0because it was the only paint that\u00a0Ivan’s \u00a0father had.<\/p>\n
Getting up the hill was not easy\u00a0for me \u00a0because the\u00a0ground\u00a0 is rocky and uneven\u00a0and I felt hesitant about moving upward. Ours was not the only group that had intentions of praying on the hill that morning. Several\u00a0times, people I didn’t know extended a hand to help me. We all prayed the rosary together that morning under the blue cross on Apparition Hill.<\/p>\n
We walked back to Ivan’s for breakfast, followed by packing. Then we walked to town for the 11 o’clock English mass. Surprise! The 11 o’clock mass was in what seemed to be Haitian French, in a \u00a0huge \u00a0building that was set up like\u00a0a church. It reminded me of many years earlier\u00a0in my own parish when we had so many worshippers at Christmas that an “overflow” space was set up in the parish hall.<\/p>\n
We stayed for the Haitian mass because it was being followed by the English mass at noon, and we would be assured of getting seats. A priest from the local parish officiated at the English\u00a0mass. In addition, he said many \u00a0things of interest. He addressed the teenagers, telling\u00a0\u00a0them that \u00a0their jeans were inappropriate clothing for mass. In my opinion, he should have thanked\u00a0them for attending, jeans and all. \u00a0I remembered a little boy in my religious education class when I was a child who told our nun that he missed mass on Sunday because his mother didn’t have anything for him to wear but dungarees, which is what we called jeans then. My dear, sweet nun, Sister Mary Patrizio, told him, “If dungarees were all you had, God would have forgiven you for wearing them to mass.”<\/p>\n
The priest also told the congregation that we could bring our exorcism items to him at 2 PM to be blessed. Exorcism items?! What are they, and who has them? \u00a0 I knew I was in a different part of the world, but was\u00a0I in\u00a0a different century?\u00a0I was brought back to 2016 when an announcement was made that \u00a0everyone who had ciliac disease and \u00a0would therefore needed a special communion\u00a0wafer was asked to\u00a0\u00a0raise a hand so that they could prepare the appropriate\u00a0amount.<\/p>\n
After mass, we walked to the Hotel Regina for lunch. Surprise! I\u00a0didn’t order pizza. I was also surprised to find out that a \u00a0Greek salad in Medjugorje has no lettuce. It has everything else you would find in a Greek salad in Connecticut, such as peppers, cucumbers, carrots, olives, and feta, but no lettuce.<\/p>\n
Once back at our residence,\u00a0some in our group\u00a0expressed interest in going up Apparition Hill again, while others wanted to climb a mountain that was much higher and steeper, Mount Krizevac.\u00a0JoAnn had wanted to climb the higher mountain, but eventually thought better of it. She and I walked to\u00a0\u00a0some of the \u00a0local shops instead. We also saw a\u00a0car that was decorated for the wedding that was the reason for\u00a0the fireworks that had awakened \u00a0me the night before. Soon\u00a0\u00a0the bride and groom prepared to enter the car.\u00a0\u00a0We learned that the custom\u00a0in Bosnia was for the groom-to-be to get\u00a0his bride at her house and take\u00a0her to the church himself. They were both dressed in typical wedding attire for\u00a0\u00a0a bride and groom in our country: a tuxedo for him and a long embroidered white silk gown\u00a0and veil for her. \u00a0At least twenty cars followed them. JoAnn called “Congratulations!” and they responded with thanks in English.<\/p>\n
After dinner, Dianne came\u00a0to us, saying that\u00a0\u00a0she and John had heard\u00a0that someone had had \u00a0a difficult time with carsickness on the bus on the way there. She\u00a0 asked if we knew\u00a0who the person was, because she and John had plenty of room in their rental car and and they wanted to invite whoever it was, to join\u00a0them. What a relief! I was not feeling comfortable\u00a0about tomorrow’s\u00a0three hour bus ride\u00a0bus ride, so I was thrilled\u00a0to accept\u00a0her invitation.<\/p>\n
We all \u00a0gathered in the chapel. We played \u00a0a game from childhood called “Telephone.” Several people were chosen to wait outside while Ivanka told \u00a0the majority of the group \u00a0a story that had many parts. Next,\u00a0\u00a0someone who heard the story\u00a0 was chosen to tell it\u00a0to one of those who had not. Then\u00a0\u00a0that person had to repeat it to the next one, until there was one\u00a0person left. Just as in childhood, the story \u00a0the final person \u00a0told was completely\u00a0different from the one with which we started, and it was hilarious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pentecost Sunday would be our final full day in Medjugorje. \u00a0There was no other opportunity to pray together on Apparition Hill, so at 6 AM, off we went.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medjugorje-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}