The Sixth Day
It’s an astonishing story. It involves
an agnostic psychologist who went to a remote village in what was then
Communist Yugoslavia — the Hercegovinan sector — to evaluate what on
earth was transpiring with six children there who claimed that five days
before, on June 24, 1981, they had begun seeing the Virgin Mary.
She was certain, was Dr. Darinka
Glamuzina, a pediatrician with psychiatric training, that it was a
psychological circumstance — if not a simple game orchestrated by the
youngsters who each day were falling to their knees on a stony hillside
in perfect synchronization, their eyes fixed on an invisible something (or as they insisted, someone).
And
so it was, that Monday, June 30, in Bijakovići — a village in the
parish of Medjugorje — that Dr. Glamuzina, working in nearby Citluk,
arrived, at the behest of Communist authorities, to evaluate what was
transpiring — alerted initially to the circumstance by an ambulance
driver who worked at her clinic and had driven the children there.
“I had a Catholic education when I was
very young, but then I went to school and was on the faculty of a
college in Zagreb and thought I knew everything because I read so many
books,” she told Spirit Daily. “I was twenty-five at the time. I had education in psychology at that time and I was agnostic. Very skeptical.
“When I heard about it, it was very
funny to me and I did not believe. I knew it was a primitive territory,
Medjugorje, and I thought it was some sort of mass hysteria because they
were primitive.”
The children had been brought to the
clinic for evaluation by another medical professional, Dr. Ante Vujevic,
who would later announce that he could no longer call himself a
nonbeliever.
But at this point, skepticism — if not outright rejection of such a claim — still ruled the thoughts of Dr. Glamuzina, however.
“I got very excited,” she says. “The
manager of the clinic said to me to go with them the next day to
Medjugorje as a medical worker, that as medical workers they should be
in Medjugorje to observe what was going on. I agreed and went to
Medjugorje.
“My desire was to question them. I
remember everything clearly because of the emotions I had at that time. I
questioned them on how old they were, what grade of education they were
in, what sort of students they were.
“I
asked about the apparitions of Our Lady and the answers they gave me
were so clear and intelligible (though some of them were below-average
students). I was impressed with the shortness of their answers and the
speed at which they were giving the answers. And that they were so
convinced. It was unbelievable, how convinced they were. I was very
impressed. I found out that what they knew they really knew. The youngest, Jakov Colo [at the time just ten] said, “You may kill me, but I do see her.”
Indeed, soon they would be detained by Communist police and interrogated — never backing down despite the stated threat of jail.
Though
raised Catholics, and though in a devout part of Yugoslavia (culturally
Croatian), the children, under the informational blackout of Communism,
had not even heard of places such as Lourdes and Fatima. They knew only
that they were seeing the Blessed Virgin spoken about by their elders
when they recited a Rosary.
“Everything about it was unbelievable,” says the pediatrician.
“Thousands of people were on the streets.
The manager knew [seer] Vicka’s family and so we went to her house.
There were many people, and all of them were praying the Rosary. That
was unbelievable to me, the atmosphere. The place was packed with
energy. I did not want to stick out from the crowd so I asked for a
rosary even though I did not know how to pray it.
“In one moment, Vicka said, ‘Let’s go,’
and she started going up the hill and I don’t know how we climbed the
apparition hill. The crowd was going up and all of a sudden the other
visionaries were there — they just showed up — and formed a line, all
six of them.
“I was next to Vicka.
I wanted to use my position next to her for my medical evaluation. I
was convinced that maybe it was some kind of manipulation or hypnosis —
somebody using them, and I would be able to see that.
“Another surprise for me was that they
were praying for a long time, and at the same moment, all six said — at
the very same moment! — ‘There she comes.’ I was watching them
and all six said it at the same time and I saw that all six of them were
looking at the same spot at the same time. They were talking and
sharing with us what the image was telling them.
“And all of a sudden
I got the idea to interfere with the happening. I asked Vicka, ‘May I
ask that vision a question?’ And this was very interesting to me — how
Vicka said, ‘I am going to ask Our Lady.’ So I realized there was a
dialogue. I heard Vicka say, ‘Our Lady, can she ask you something.’ And
she waited for answer and said, ‘Yes, you can.’
The dialogue as recorded by a priest there: “Dear Madonna! Could this lady [Dr. Glamuzina] touch you?”
The Virgin reportedly replied, “There have always been unfaithful Judases. Let her come.”
Was that reported accurately — or did Mary say that there always had been Thomases.
“I was a little upset, disturbed,” says
Dr. Glamuzina, who later testified before a Vatican Commission which
authenticated the first week of apparitions — in all, at least seven,
meaning one more than the official apparitions at Fatima. (In both
cases, more apparitions occurred after the initial ones.) “I was
thinking in a medical way. Vicka said to the vision, ‘This lady is
asking who you are’ and then Vicka [quoting Mary] replied, ‘She said she
is Queen of Peace.’
“How can we have peace when we have so
many religions, I asked? I saw Vicka’s lips move and she told me, ‘Our
Lady said, there is only one Faith, One God, and One Spirit.’ I was
shaken by the answer, because I knew this wasn’t a child’s answer and I
saw that there was a dialogue going on.
“This was such a rural area. I asked
‘Why here? Why not at Notre Dame in Paris? Why here in the middle of
nowhere?’ I saw Vicka asking that question, and the answer [from Our
Lady] was, ‘Because the Faith is firm here.’ I knew it was true because I never saw people pray so much. I knew the answer was true, that it was right.
“I got the answer but also thought I
should have an experience, so I said to Vicka, ‘May I touch her?’ and
Vicka asked Our Lady and the answer came back, ‘Yes, you can.’ So Vicka
was indicating to me where to kneel down, and I knelt down and I raised
my hand and my personality split. All of a sudden I knew that what I
touched was God. I felt the presence with my entire being. I knew. I
knew that I was not worthy of what I touched.” Witnesses said Dr.
Glamuzina looked, on her descent from the hill, like she was in a state
of shock.
Why did the apparition occur, and why has she now been there so long?
“Because we are completely illiterate
spiritually,” says the doctor, whose husband’s specialty is chemistry.
“The world is in a spiritual crisis. She comes as a teacher and a
healer.”
According to a report by a BBC reporter, the pediatrician, guided by
Vicka, touched the Blessed Mother on her left shoulder “and later
publicly admitted that she felt a violent tremor along the whole length
of her arm. When she eventually stumbled down the hill, she was in a
state of shock.”
Dr. Glamuzina mentioned no such feeling to Spirit Daily but rather an overwhelming feeling in the depths of her agnostic soul. “I knew it was something beyond our comprehension,” she says.
When, after the apparition, she spoke
with a second seer, Mirjana Soldo, with whom she walked down the hill,
this second seer quoted Mary as saying precisely what Vicka had related.
“I asked Mirjana the same questions I asked Our Lady and she gave the
same answers,” says Dr. Glamuzina. “I questioned them individually and
they all heard the same words. I knew that they saw her.”
“I was so shaken
that I was crying all night long, holding the rosary, and asking Our
Lady to forgive me. I knew God really exists and I realized I knew
nothing about Him.”
https://spiritdailyblog.com/apparitions/the-sixth-day
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