Medjugorje: Sister Emmanuel "I had a foot in hell and I didn't know it"
May 1991: I HAD A FOOT IN HELL AND I DID NOT KNOW IT
MESSAGE of 25 May 1991. “Dear children, today I invite all of you who have heard my message of peace to carry it out with seriousness and love in life. There are many who think they are doing a lot because they talk about messages; but they don't live them. I invite you, dear children, to life and to change all that is negative in you, so that everything turns into positive and in life. Dear children, I am with you and I want to help each of you to live and, with life, to witness the good news. Dear children, I am with you to help you and to lead you to Heaven. In Heaven there is joy: through it you can already experience Heaven right now. Thanks for answering my call. "
All those who live in Medjugorje know Patrick, the English-speaking Canadian who takes part in the three hours of prayer every day in church with his wife Nancy and who, during the long homilies in Croatian, recites the rosary of Divine Mercy like an angel or the prayers of Santa Brigida. I also thought I knew him until the day he told me his clash ... - I am fifty-six years old. I got married three times. I divorced twice (each time because of my adulterers). Before reading the Medjugorje messages, I didn't even have the Bible. I worked in the automotive industry in Canada and in thirty years my only God has been money. I knew every trick to increase my loot.
When my son asked me, "Dad, what is God?", I gave him a $ 20 note and said, "Here's your God! The more you have, the closer you will be to God. ” I had no contact with the Church and had never had faith, even though I was a baptized Catholic. I used to live with Nancy without being married, but this seemed normal to us, since everyone did. Seven years later we decided to get married. I organized a super mountain wedding. I had hired a helicopter ... civil ceremony, while an orchestra played New Age music ...
Six weeks later Nancy said to me, "I don't feel like I'm married!" As I waved our marriage certificate in front of her, she said: - No, I don't really feel married. My mom didn't come and we didn't go to church. - All right, - I told her - if you can please us, we will go to church. - I only discovered then that my first wife had requested and obtained the annulment of our marriage, twenty years earlier ... There were no obstacles for me to marry Nancy in church. The ceremony took place some time later in the church of the "Immaculate Heart of Mary", the only one with this name in all of Canada!
Slowly but surely Our Lady was coming to meet me ... I had to confess before the wedding and it was a confession without a heart. Nancy and I didn't pray, we didn't go to mass, we didn't do anything religious, but we had a Catholic marriage certificate ... My four children (three boys and a girl) had difficult, or rather catastrophic, lives (alcohol, drugs, even divorces) ...) but this didn't bother me too much ... Who doesn't have problems with their children? During a move, I find a package that had sent us from Croatia (a long time ago!), Nancy's brother, who is Croatian. To tell the truth, no one had ever fully opened this package. Nancy put it in my hand saying: “My dear pagan of a husband, if someone has to throw it, that's you! It will weigh on your conscience! " It was Saturday evening.
I remember very well the moment I opened the package. It contained the first messages of Medjugoije which Nancy's brother had carefully translated into English and kept for us. I took a sheet of paper from the package and read a message from Medjugorje for the first time. And the first message I read in my life was: "I came to call the world to conversion for the last time."
Just in that precise moment something has changed in my heart. It didn't take an hour, not ten minutes, it happened in an instant. My heart melted and I started to cry; I could not stop and the tears were pouring down my face in an uninterrupted flow. I had never read anything like this message. I didn't know anything about Medjugorje, not even that it existed! I ignored all the messages. All I could read was: "I came to call the world to conversion for the last time" and I knew it was for me, I knew that Our Lady was speaking to me! The second message I read was: "I came to tell you that God exists!" and I don't think I've ever believed in God in my life before reading this message. It made all things real! All the Catholic teaching I had received as a child was TRUE! It was no longer a fairy tale or a beautiful fairy tale completely invented!
The Bible was true! There was no longer any need to question the messages; I started to read them one by one, until the last. I could no longer detach myself from that book and during the week I kept it handy, despite the general conflict due to the move. I read and reread and the messages penetrated more and more deeply into my heart, into my soul. I had the treasure of treasures!
During the move I heard about a weekend for couples in Eugene (USA), two days away from us. - Let's go - I said to Nancy. - It's the house …? - Don't worry! - There I saw thousands of people who felt the same thing I felt for Our Lady, on her way of speaking to the world today. Everyone had books on Medjugoije, Fatima, Don Gobbi ... I had never seen such a thing! During the mass there was a healing prayer: Father Ken Robert said: - Consecrate your children to the Immaculate Heart of Mary! -I stood up, still in tears, because I hadn't stopped crying since my first message from Medjugorje, and I said to Mary: - Blessed mother, take my children! I beg you because I was a bad father! I know you will do better than I. - And I consecrated my children: this upset me, because I didn't really know what to do with them anymore. Their lives had gone beyond every possible stage of moral degradation. But after that weekend, everything started to change in our family.
Father Ken Robert said: - Give up what you like best! -I really liked Nancy and the coffee…. I decided to give up coffee! The messages of Medjugorje were the great grace of my life: they completely transformed me. I could have continued the cycle of divorces, I had a lot of money. Now, the idea of adultery is simply excluded from my thoughts. A love that Our Lady has put between me and Nancy is incredible, it is a grace of God. My son, who took drugs and was expelled from school at sixteen years of age, converted, got baptized and thinks about the priesthood. "If someone in a family takes the first step, I will do the rest." That's it! If a message from Medjugorje touches the member of a family, gradually the whole family is converted.
As for my other son, a non-practicing practitioner, came to Medjugorje last year and found faith (confession, first communion.) My other children and parents are also on their way, although this it is not always easy. Eight days after discovering the messages of Medjugorje I said to Nancy: - Let's leave for Medjugorje! - We have lived here since 1993. We arrived without anything. Within three days, Our Lady found us a roof and a task. Nancy translates for Father Jozo. As far as I am concerned, my life now consists in helping pilgrims and making the messages known in all possible ways. Our Lady, I love her enormously, saved my life. I had a foot in hell and I didn't know!
Source: Sister Emmanuel