A Walk In The Dark (Part 2)

My adult years were consumed by the need to demonstrate material success.

I was driven by the need to be just as, or even more successful, than my peer group contemporaries. I rose to be a director of a number of companies, and had the requisite big car and big house in one of England's prettiest and most expensive 'stockbroker belt' villages. Unfortunately, for me, I also had the big head that went with the Jaguars, Mercedes and BMW's!

Whereas, when I was I child, I was a likeable lad (excuse me if I do say it myself) my happy even temperament was, all too often, no longer disguising the darker side of my personality. I was too frequently succumbing to displays of boorish arrogance and bad temper. As a priest told me recently, 'the theme song of hell is 'My Way' the popular Frank Sinatra song'. I wasn't listening so I couldn't do it 'God's Way'.

Whilst I had an innate feeling of God's presence in my life and had always felt a sense of his protection I was not really an active Christian. At the time of my first visit to Medjugorje I had been married to a heart-stoppingly beautiful girl of Italian extraction named Carla, with classic Sophia Loren looks, for about fifteen years.

When I first met my wife I instinctively knew that God meant her for me, don't ask me how, I just did!

The problem was that she didn't initially want to fall-in with God's plan. Understandable really, with her looks and gentle nature she could have courted just about anybody she wanted. Through a strategy of relentless attrition and a continuous barrage of debatable humour she was eventually worn down into agreeing to marry me. Poor girl, she should have trusted her instincts!

What really instantly attracted me to her was not her stunning good looks, though I cannot deny that they helped, it was more the overwhelming aura of grace that she exuded. I'm sorry but I can't explain it any other way. With the benefit of hindsight I now know that the source of that grace was her great spirituality, her love of Jesus and devotion to Mary, perhaps the legacy of receiving the 'last rites' on three separate occasions as a small child.

My wife was a Catholic and I was a non-practising Protestant. Whilst this may have caused very real problems for my wife and for the priest who married us it was not a problem for me. Indeed, I quite envied my wife for the depth of her faith, it just wasn't for me! I was totally happy to be married in a Catholic Church and for our daughter Camilla, when she came along, to be brought up in the Catholic faith. I reasoned that at least the Catholic Church took religion seriously and that my daughter would be brought up exposed to Christian values.

It has to be said though that I was only playing little more than lip service to my own spiritual life. I used to accompany my wife and daughter to church once a month or so to provide moral if not spiritual support and, if I was in my wife's bad books, I might volunteer or agree to chauffeur her to the occasional Christian meeting, though I wouldn't normally get involved. Once, I remember, I even bought her a leather-bound family bible as a birthday present, I was back in the good books for a few weeks after that!

It got to the point that, to all intents and purposes, we were leading separate lives.

We were living mutually exclusive parallel lives. I had become impossible to live with, drinking too much, coming and going as I pleased and living life to a totally different agenda. My wife would have had every reason to divorce me but for the fact she was a good practising Catholic. Instead we settled for the phoney war of relentless carping and sniping at each other.

Then began a pretty miserable and unhappy experience for the both of us though I have to confess it was overwhelmingly a situation of my own making. I had broken the essential bond of trust and the trouble was that it became a vicious circle. The more unhappy we became the more we vented our anger on each other, and what I originally thought of as my fun sense of humour was deployed in making hurtful and sarcastic jokes at my wife's expense. In my stressed-out unhappiness, I had lost the patience and love to show kindness.

I had become an arrogant foul-mouthed and overbearing male chauvinist, I didn't like myself at all.

After years of unhappiness and continuous marital strife I knew that I was light years away from the likeable young boy I used to be. The only thing that kept me going was pride. I had enjoyed an unreasonable degree of financial success by most people's standards in my earlier years and I was desperately trying to recapture those halcyon days. I knew I was good at my job, I just needed the opportunity to demonstrate it again.

Life was painfully bleak, but I had always said to my wife that I would only get married once and I meant it. Besides, after my up bringing, the last thing I wanted to do was to abandon my daughter, she was my pride and joy, and the best thing that had ever happened to me.

The start of the turning point came as a result of my most spectacular attempt to curry favour.

My wife had for many years been reading about the apparitions of Our Lady Queen of Peace in Medjugorge and was desperate to go. Seizing my chance for a week of peace and quiet, and hopefully an extended period of being in her 'good books', I offered to pay for her to go.

In due course I found myself chauffeuring my wife and another couple, Lydia and Bernard Camacho, to the airport and went home to face a quiet peaceful week with my daughter. When I returned a week later the people who I met were a revelation. My wife and her friend were bubbly with happiness but her friend's husband, Bernard, was totally transformed. On the initial trip to the airport he had been uncommunicative, pre-occupied, almost sullen, it was as though he was going under duress, but now he was a totally different person. He was wreathed in great smiles and he had a gentle strength that overcame his natural shyness. I was subsequently told that he had been brought up a Catholic but had renounced his faith for twenty or thirty years, virtually all his adult life. Now his faith had been re-lit and it literally shone out of him.

From that moment on I knew I had to take Medjugorje seriously.

Marital life had returned to it's spirit-sapping war of attrition, but in the mean time I went to listen to talks being given by the American evangelists Wayne Weible and Richard Bingold and both were compelling advocates for Our Lady and Medjugorje. As far as my wife was concerned I gave low-key reactions to the effect the talks had on me, I just didn't have the humility to admit the truth I guess, but in my heart I knew I wanted to go.

My wife offered to return the favour and pay for me to go to Medjugorje as my birthday present. It was to be the greatest present she could ever give me, she gave me back my life!

For months and weeks before leaving she expected me to back out, but I knew I genuinely wanted to go, besides, marital life was intolerable, something had to change, and that something was me.

I wasn't sure what to expect; sure I'd heard all the stories and seen the pictures, but I wasn't sure how I would react. If people asked what I was doing I said I was off on holiday or, if pushed, I was going on a trip with 'the church'. I couldn't bring myself to admit I was going on a pilgrimage. My over weaning arrogance wouldn't allow me to accept that I was subject to a higher power.

It was bizarre, I accepted there was a God subconsciously but denied him consciously.

The saving grace for me was that Bernard, the person who had found his faith so powerfully re-lit on the previous year's trip had, in the interim period, become a good friend, and accompanied me on the pilgrimage. Also, God had a sense of humour because my friend had an I.Q. of Einstein-like proportions. There was no way I could shelter behind a blanket of intellectual arrogance. If my friend was humble enough to believe, notwithstanding his infinitely superior intelligence, whom did I think I was trying to kid by thinking I was above it all?

Nonetheless, there was no denying that I was full of apprehension when I got on the plane; how was I going to cope for a whole week with a group of religious fanatics? The funny thing was that as soon as the party got onto the coach to take us the remaining part of the journey from the airport to Medjugorje, it felt natural to be joining in with them in saying the Rosary and other prayers. You have to remember that I had never been a Catholic so the rites and rituals were largely foreign to me.

Almost from the very beginning I felt a sense of the Holy Spirit descending on us.

It was strange, a coach load of pilgrims of all age groups, classes and backgrounds came together at Our Lady's invitation, and we all felt like instant family! It wasn't just my imagination because everyone felt the same. It seemed to me that we were like the different ingredients you need to make the perfect cake or indeed, the perfect apostle. On my return I was moved to compose a prayer in which I asked the Lord to give me the various blessings that I felt each of my friends on the pilgrimage had brought to the party. Words such as growth, love, teaching, spirit-filled, service, passionate, insight, determination, welcoming, graceful, faith, strength, courage, charitable, accepting, enthusiastic, humour, evangelise and devotion sprang to mind as core characteristics. I hope you see what I mean by perfect ingredients!