The Spirit of Medjugorje

"Dear children! In this time of the grace of expectation, I desire to call you to prayer for Advent to be prayer of the family. In a special way, little children whom I tenderly embrace, I encourage you to prayer for peace in the world; for peace to prevail over peacelessness and hatred. Thank you for having responded to my call. (With Ecclesiastical approval)"

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"Do You Believe in Miracles?"

     The following is excerpted from a testimony by Philip Donohue on Fruit of Medjugorje (Episode #579, aired on 10/21/24).
     My name is Philip Donohue and I'm from Hull, MA in the USA. I'm here in this beautiful holy place in Medjugorje to give my testimony about a miraculous event that I truly believe happened in 2019.
     But before I give that beautiful testimony, I want to share with you how my faith has been cemented by the grace of God through another miraculous event in 1999.
     I was admitted into the hospital, Beth Israel, which is in downtown Boston, MA. I had severe bleeding…and it was like a terrible amount of blood coming out, so they put me into the hospital for serious evaluation - MRIs, CAT scans, four days of testing and prodding and checking me out, and they weren't able to find where the bleeding was coming from. They were putting in extensive antibiotics and they were coming in every day and trying to do different tests, but they were struggling. Where was all this bleeding coming from? By the 4th night, my wife was sitting there with me at 7:00 at night, and a young doctor came in and said, "We're going to discharge you because we feel you'll be able to get better being home just as being here in the hospital." My wife Carol was kind of stunned. How can you send me home when I'm still bleeding badly? So she suggested I go into the bathroom and I tried to capture some of the bleeding, which I did, and when the doctor came back in with discharge papers, I directed him into the bathroom, showed him how bad I was bleeding. He was stunned. He said, "You're doing bleeding like that?" I said, "Yes, for the past four days, I've been bleeding horrible." ... So he called on the phone and a bunch of other doctors arrived right then and there. They determined I had an artery that was bleeding and they had to operate the next morning.

Philip giving his testimony in Medjugorje at the Mary TV studio

     After the doctors left, they scheduled me for 8:00 in the morning. My wife and I sat there for a few minutes. Then she left and I was all alone in a private room. The door was ajar in the hallway. I could see the nurse outside. The bathroom door was ajar. I started feeling really sorry for myself. I was 48 years old at the time. And I'm saying, "Woe with me. This shouldn't be happening to me. What did I do wrong to deserve this?" I was just feeling sorry for myself and I went on and on and on, probably for 10 minutes, 15 minutes in this sorrowful state - woe, woe with me. Then, all of a sudden, this absolutely beautiful, powerful male voice said to me (nobody's in the room now)…"So, Philip, how's it working for you relying on the doctors and the hospitals to get better?" I immediately thought somebody was pranking with me…and I'm looking around, under the bed. I'm looking around the room. There's nobody there. After about several seconds, it dawned on me - something's going on. So I answered, "It's not working." And then the voice said, "So when are you going to turn to your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for help?" Instantly it hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't realize that for the four days I was there, I had not made one single prayer! So I answered the voice that I was going to do it right now. Then I was waiting for the voice, and I haven't heard the voice since then. I never heard it before. I'm 75 years old next week, and it was the only time that I ever had a voice talking to me. I was pinching myself to find out if I was dreaming. I wasn't dreaming. It was an absolute voice.
     So I went into a really powerful, beautiful deep prayer, and I was in it for a while and then all of a sudden, I felt like I was a little baby and I'm being held in my mother's arms or in the Blessed Virgin Mary's arms. And I was snuggling with this shoulder (my left shoulder) and my head is rubbing against the holy being that was holding me and I was really feeling…I was saying, "Gosh, this feels so good. I feel great." It was just like a beautiful blue light. It was not a baby blue, not a dark blue, like a neon blue and it was pulsing. It just felt extraordinarily beautiful and peaceful. I fell asleep or passed out, whatever it was.
     I woke up in the morning and I had to go to the bathroom, because they were filling me with fluids and antibiotics. I went to the bathroom and there wasn't a drop of blood at 6:00 in the morning. Now for the past previous four days, every time I went, there was a huge amount of blood. So then I went again about 7:15 to 7:30, not a drop of blood. I know I was healed. And so when my wife arrived, I told her the story and shortly after, the doctors arrived. Beth Israel is a Jewish teaching hospital and it's a very, very good hospital. I'm proud that I knew that I've been healed through the grace of God and I told the doctors my story. As incredulous as it might have been to them, I insisted. I said, "Look guys, I know it's strange and I know just last night I was bleeding bad, but I'm 100% healed right this second and there will be no surgery. Thank you so much for your professionalism, but there will be no surgery." They argued with me and I absolutely, emphatically told them, "No. There is no surgery. I'm healed." That happened in 1999.

Philip with fellow pilgrims in Medjugorje

     Now fast forward to 2018, the autumn of 2018, and I'm diagnosed with severe prostate cancer. This is at Dana- Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. Great group of people, fabulous doctors, great service. I was told that due to their testing and their methodology, that I was, on a scale of 1 to 10, a "9," which is very, very serious. So why I mentioned the miracle that happened 20 years earlier was because I really wasn't troubled whatsoever. I put my faith in Jesus. I really, truly believed that I was going to be healed, and also knew I was going to Medjugorje at the end of May. I scheduled it six months earlier before we even knew that I had the prostate cancer.
     So I went through all the radiation treatments, the hormonal treatments, radioactive isotopes…For like 6-8 weeks, we were in every day for all that period of time… The doctors in the hospital accommodated me because they knew I was going to Medjugorje around the 25th of May. They were finished with their treatment and my wife and I got on the plane and came over here to Medjugorje. I was so happy that I was going to Medjugorje because we had heard so many beautiful, magnificent stories about God's grace here in Medjugorje - the Blessed Mother appearing before so many people - so many beautiful, wonderful stories of healing and God's grace. So we spent, I think it was, eight or nine days, and it was absolutely wonderful. We had 40+ people on our pilgrimage, went to many of the beautiful sites in the area, many Masses, and we went up on Cross Mountain. We went to the Blue Cross Mountain. Apparition Hill is the middle hill and Cross Mountain is the high mountain. We did those and many other of those beautiful pilgrimage trips. I could actually honestly feel that I was being healed right here in Medjugorje. I don't know how to describe how that feeling was, but it was just this tremendous peace. It's almost like you're feeling God's grace.
     So anyway, we packed up and went back to Boston to do my MRIs and CAT scans, whatever they had to do just to see how the treatments they had just done were coming along. About a week later, they had the doctor in charge of radioactive treatments that they gave me - he called me in, sat me down and he asked me, "Do you believe in miracles?" I smiled and told him, "I absolutely do believe in miracles. I just came back from Medjugorje, where many, many miracles occur." He told me, in his words, that they believed that I had a miracle, that they were looking at my "before I went to Medjugorje" and my "after Medjugorje" X-rays and MRIs and there was NO TRACE, not even the slightest trace of those tumors. He said [that] why they find it is a miracle is tumors normally never disappear. In fact, he said, they never found that to happen before. I had two tumors, 9 mm and 7 mm, and it's very easy to video what I'm testifying to because it's a huge hospital, phenomenal record-keeping that they have. I absolutely was there and this all really absolutely happened. He said that they were convinced it was a miracle, and that they were very happy for me because I was completely healed.
     One of the beautiful things about coming to Medjugorje and then going back home is how we try to help all our family, our friends, our neighbors, and we give testimony to people of what we've experienced, what we've seen. In my case, I really believe truly it was a miracle, confirmed by the doctors, not me. I think it helps a lot of people, not just in our area, but now with MaryTV (which I watch all the time), we can reach countless, thousands and thousands of people throughout the world. It's so beautiful that we're trying to let people who are not sure whether God is real or Jesus can hear us, know that miracles can happen. I'm absolutely living testimony that miracles DO happen, that Jesus is real, that our Catholic Church is a beautiful Church, and that we have nothing to fear. We have to genuinely try to make our Blessed Virgin Mother part of our life on a daily basis. We have to talk to Jesus on a regular basis. It's such a beautiful thing to be able to have Him right there with you…
     I can understand that it sounds strange, as our beautiful priest here in Medjugorje, Fr. Leon, says. He really doesn't care whether you believe what his testimony is [see our May 2020 issue] - and I really don't care whether you believe my testimony or not. But I'm telling you on a stack of Bibles that everything I've told you is 100% true.
     Now, one of the beautiful things about Medjugorje…I had taken 10 or 12 of these beautiful Christmas Day Crucifixes from Medjugorje [see our December 2020 issue]. Fr. Leon blessed these crucifixes. I had heard the stories about Jim Browne and the healings that occurred with these crucifixes, so I specifically went to people, members of my family, who were sick. My own sister was in and out of a coma because of serious blood problems with her body. I gave several other people these holy Christmas crucifixes and every single one of them got better. One of the gentlemen that lived down in Florida with us in the wintertime, his doctor told him he had two weeks to a month to live…He had good faith. I asked him, "Please wear this crucifix, put it around your neck and put your faith in God. Put your faith in Jesus." He was blessed to have another five years added to his life expectancy! He recently died, close to 80, so I think it was a beautiful blessing from Medjugorje that helped him have his extra five years. My sister, I talk with her once a week. She's feisty as all get-out. She's strong as an ox and all her female sicknesses are gone!
     We all have our aging issues. We're not going to live forever. We know that…I handed them [the Christmas crucifixes] out to several people and all of them have gotten better…They all did. That's why I'm pretty excited about sharing my message to you folks about Medjugorje…It's real. In fact, if you come here, you'll see for yourself that these people from this region, Croatians, they're incredible people. They're so devout it's unbelievable. It just goes to show the Blessed Virgin Mary is working every single day here, helping our faith, come back to Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
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     Editor's note: Philip is working on obtaining the documentation from the medical professionals to substantiate the miracle, to be sent to the Apostolic Visitator in Medjugorje, Archbishop Aldo Cavalli. See page 7 for information on how to obtain a Christmas Day Crucifix.