Core Chronicles Volume 2

Who am I? John Baglow My eyes opened. It was morning time, in the little town of Medjugorje, and my body was covered in sweat. The air conditioning in the inn where I stayed was selective about where it was sending cool, precious bursts of air, which was irksome. Usually, my eyes weep ever so slightly when I rise, mostly from sleepiness. This time, they were suffocated by the suctioning feeling of my brand-new contacts. Amateur. I peeled them off, the tears in my eyes running like a waterfall. I did not expect that. Nor did I expect my roommate on the pilgrimage to body me brutally into the wall once I got up, causing me to drop the pair of contacts. I brought two pairs, and I only had them for a week. What a waste.

My roommate, a twenty-two-year-old from Florida, apologized, saying, “Well man, I’ll venmo you.” He never did. And so, the day began.

Medjugorje is a town no outsiders would know existed.

It sits in a large valley, surrounded by green mountains that are sprinkled with rocks, and is located in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a place where supposedly the Virgin Mother of Christ, Mary, has appeared to several visionaries over the past forty years, bringing news of urgency to convert, as well as general reminders of God’s love for the world, and her intercession for the faithful. It’s the typical, devout-Catholic grandma type of place, where a large gathering of around one million devoted pilgrims come annually to hear the voice of Our Lady and her messages through the visionaries. My own grandmother still recounts memories of when she was an avid attendee on these pilgrimages, having gone with a group from New Orleans several times. My mom told me I should go one day, having been forever changed by the experience she had there when she was seventeen. Now I was also seventeen, and I was in the place where my mother’s life had been transformed. Oh, the irony…

It was time for me to move, and my eyes were killing me.

However, I didn’t let that stop me from bringing the backup contacts as I ran to the front of the building and met up with my crew.

The man leading the trip was the son of two veteran pilgrims who worked in Medjugorje and who knew my grandmother back in the day. I just so happened to go to the same high school in South Bend that his daughters attended, so I ended up meeting 96