Carl – Part 2

When I was dating my wife, she introduced me to the concept of the traveling statue of Our Lady of Fatima. A statue that’s normally owned by a parish, travels from one home within that parish to the next. For an entire week, the statue comes to your home and you have a regular nightly Rosary and you pray for the intentions of the people that go, your parish, His Holiness, and the Blessed Mother. I absolutely loved it. 

When I got back to the United States after my experience in Medjugorje, seeing that statue, and now feeling this interior calling from Her, I surrendered. It wasn’t any kind of vision. It was an interior thing. She basically said, “Do you remember Our Lady of Fatima traveling to homes? I want that for my message here. I want a traveling statue of Tihaljina. Reach out to my son in Rome.”

I said, “The pope?”

She said, “Yes. John Paul II.”

I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Writing to a pope and how that should look was far from anything that I had an awareness of. I said, “Dear Pope John Paul II,

“I know that you have said that if you weren’t pope, that you would visit Medjugorje. There’s a statue in Tihaljina, and through prayer, the Blessed Mother has made it very clear that She wants that state to be built somehow by you, shipped to me, and then for the rest of my life I will have her be a traveling statue. She will go to homes, people’s living rooms. She recognizes that not everybody can afford to come to Medjugorje, so She really wants Medjugorje to come to them. This is one way that can happen. My promise to you is, I will share her, I will deliver her to homes for the rest of my life, and I will report to you on a regular basis where she is at and who she is with.”

I included my phone number, added stamps, put it in the mail and forgot about it.

Nine months later, I received a phone call from a guy claiming to be a cardinal telling me that he was calling from Rome. I didn’t believe him. I told the guy to tell whoever put him up to calling me that it wasn’t funny, and I hung up on him. 

About six minutes later, my phone rang again, and this time it was a Vatican operator telling me His Eminence Cardinal Arinze wanted to speak with me and asked that this time I don’t hang up on him. 

I just about fell out of my chair. 

The first thing I did was apologize for hanging up on him. His Holiness had received the letter and wanted to move forward. He said, “Why wouldn’t His Holiness want to honor Our Lady?” 

That was about 60,000 homes ago. It’s been going on for 24 years. I live in the Archdiocese of Denver, but Colorado has three diocese so I’m able to go from one diocese to the next as far as homes go. 

In the years that we’ve had her, she’s been to somewhere between 60 and 70 thousand homes, not all Catholic. She’s found her way into Protestant homes and Muslim homes. We take her to abortion clinics. She’s been in hospital rooms and hospice places. 

There’s nothing like having her in your home. Statues like that are going to be found in Rome, in Tihaljina, or in a church, definitely not in somebody’s living room. 

There’s not enough time in the next week for me to tell you everything that has happened associated with that statue, but there is one last story I’m going to share with you that I think speaks volumes about timing and Our Lady’s plans. 

There are so many people on the waiting list to get the statue. It’s years to get her. It’s very rare that she’s at our home. 

I live in Littleton, Colorado. I live less than 100 yards from Columbine High School. On that terrible day in April, when two gunmen entered Columbine, she was home. 

As the two gunmen entered that building, there were probably 15 to 20 kids having lunch on the south soccer field which backs up to our home. When they shot at them, luckily none of them were hit, but they ran. They ran for cover, and somehow they found their way to my wife, and they were in our home for the next 13 hours. 

I had my wife, my children, 22 extremely scared Columbine kids, and one of the most beautiful statues of the Blessed Mother in the world. 

None of those 22 kids were Catholic. The first time they had ever gone face to face with a statue of the Blessed Mother was in my home just after being shot at. 

I can’t tell you how peaceful it was in that house. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. 

It wasn’t like they all of a sudden broke into Hail Mary’s, but there were a ton of Our Father’s and many of those kids did nothing but sit in our living room and stare into the eyes of that statue.

In the absolute hell of one of the worst shootings in the United States, Our Lady found a way to bring Her beauty.

iMedj note: Our new iMedjugorje book is open for pre-sale with delivery in March/April If you have enjoyed reading the stories we share from pilgrims we meet please consider supporting this work. The sales from these books help us to continue sharing Medjugorje with the world. https://medjugorje.us/…/pre-sale-imedjugorje-book-volume-2