Mystic Post
By Stephen Ryan
“Then I discovered Medjugorje. With Medjugorje the world of faith defeated my secular, skeptic, Wall Street sensibilities.”
I had been working as a financial advisor since the early 90′s. Then the banking crisis hit. During the depths of the 2008-2009 financial crisis and the shocking near collapse of the stock market I found myself in a serious career crisis which spilled over into a personal crisis.
With questions about my professional life unanswered, like so many others, I turned to faith to look for deeper meaning in my life. I soon discovered that I found solace in reading and writing about the mysterious world of Catholic miracles and unexplained supernatural events. As I explored the mysteries of faith, I stumbled onto some special words that changed my life forever. They came from Saint John Paul II and he said: “To Christ through Mary.” Find Christ through the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I asked myself – Who is this “Mother of God”, and why is She so important?
Having spent most of my career working on Wall Street this was not an easy question to answer. I was a trained skeptic and religion was basically a superstition. There is much wisdom behind the old adage: “A fool and his money are soon parted”.
I was certain I would find a secular answer to the supernatural world that the Catholic Church alone believes in. And I was sure the strange world of Marian apparitions would be revealed as a fairy tale for old ladies with blue hair. But as I dug deeper into the world of miracles and apparitions of the Virgin Mary, including researching the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the events of Fatima, rather than finding answers, I found myself asking more questions – big questions like: “Is this stuff for real?” Does the Virgin Mary appear to visionaries on earth bringing messages for the world? It seemed impossible.
Then I discovered Medjugorje. With Medjugorje the world of faith defeated my secular, skeptic, Wall Street sensibilities. With Medjugorje, it is not one thing, it is a million things. All of it – the fruits, the peace, the impossibility of the visionaries – teenagers for crying out loud who took on the Catholic Church and communism and created an epic spiritual phenomena with the simple words of “We see what we see.”
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Looking for serious answers to serious questions, I soon discovered it was the skeptics, not the religious, who were shallow and closed minded. Randall Sullivan, author of The Miracle Detectives (a book about Catholic miracles) and former contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine describes religious skeptics as “curiously mute”.
The common characteristic of religious doubters, I found is – ignorance – they don’t bother to seek answers about unexplained, supernatural events because their minds are already made up.
With questions about Medjugore unanswered I turned to the internet (I am not shy about saying the internet played a role in my conversion and I am not the first) There I found some like minded people. I also started to write about the spiritual events that were changing my life and soon my efforts turned into a blog and thanks to contributions from amazing people like Daniel Klimek and Christine Watkins my internet news magazine became somewhat well known in the world of Catholic media.
Right from the start it seemed we were alone in covering news events of a supernatural origin. Miraculous events are very important to millions of faithful – they converrt people – but to our surprise they are very much under-reported by religious news outlets. The events at Medjugorje were a particular interest. The alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary are all but ignored by news organizations despite the fact that millions of faithful Catholics follow the events closely.
Now the world awaits what could be a momentous announcement by the Vatican regarding the status of Medjugorje.
One last thing, an eternally important thing, the real blessing that began with my career crisis is that all of my efforts to find meaning in my life led me back to the Catholic Church after being away for many years. I truly believe if the Virgin Mary can help a grizzled Wall Street veteran find his way back to the Catholic Church She can help just about anybody.
Stephen Ryan runs the blog Mystic Post on Patheos.com and is the author of The Madonna Files.
I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and revealed them to little children”. Jesus – Matthew 11:25
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