My Conversion

15 June 2000 10:38

Mary from Australia has just sent this testimony – about six months late! Vassula now has a dossier of abstracts from the testimonies she requested last year. The arrival of this testimony prompts the idea to forward to this list.selected testimonies from those received last year. So here is the first of a series of testimonies which will be interspersed with the ‘Orthodox’ mailings.

My name is Mary.

My conversion has been a gradual one and evolved out of reading the messages of Medjugore, Maria Valtorta, Vassula and Fr Gobbi.

After leading an immoral life in my young adulthood, trying to toss religion out of my life as it stood between me and my ambitions and subsequently marrying outside the church, I then became very unhappy due to intensifying difficulties with my „husband“ and I eventually decided I had to end my marriage.

Whilst trying to sort out material matters in relation to the breakup I sought refuge in reading the bible. I had always envied members of the Protestant Christian religions for their knowledge of the bible to the point where they could always quote sections of the Old and New Testaments. I decided to read the whole bible from cover to cover. I began and read about the first 6 or so books but kept skipping through to the New Testament impatient to have to read the whole of the old testament first as it was taking me so long.

I decided after a while that I could not make sufficient sense of it all by myself. Various people suggested enrolling in one of the local Catholic Universities but I abhorred the idea – there were too many trendies or as we now call many of them „New Agers“ and the last thing I wanted was to fulfil the aims of a lecturer wanting to concentrate on his area of expertise and interest and then being assessed according to some arbitrary standards. I just wanted to read and understand the MESSAGE of the bible.

I think that my one of my sisters, Gabrielle, first introduced all of my family to one of the first publications about Medjugore which I felt issued a valid message but I wasn’t quite ready for it, still trying to seek my material life’s ambitions at that stage. Later on she gave out to mother a copy of The Poem of the Man-God Volume 1.

There was on going debate after I heard about Medjugore and other visionaries including the „Little Pebble“. Not surprisingly the presence of „The Little Pebble“ amongst other apparitions/locutions gave serious cause for concern about the validity of ANY messages emanating from any of these sources. However, I felt casually confident that Medjugore’s messages appeared to be OK but not really pursuing the idea of conversion. It was asking just a bit more than I was prepared to give at the time.

In the course of my conversion from an aberrant marriage to a state where I could really be forgiven – after all, I knew what I was tossing away when I tried to blot out my faith – I felt I had to be forgiven ever so much more than my partners in crime who had not had the gift of faith to begin with. I had not only to turn back to God but to make sure that I did it well enough so as not to turn away again. This was the big challenge. I knew I could not handle it on my own. I needed a huge amount of help from above.

So the answer to my prayer for studying the bible I felt was reading the five volumes of the Poem which I did while my daughter was very young and I remained home to look after her till she was school age. I think the biggest part of my conversion came through reading these volumes in conjunction with „Our Lady Speaks to her Beloved Priests“ per Fr Gobbi and finally also reading Vassula whom I had seen in person in the Parish where I am now employed. In a way accepting Vassula’s messages was a big challenge. The Poem was also a challenge as digesting Volume 1 without deserting was not easy especially the part on original sin. However the depth of these readings really shook me through and I was very sad when I finished, they had a profound effect on my own faith.

Even close members of the family who had accepted Medjugore did not accept Vassula. Her apparent invalidity was heightened by the notification which my mother and a student priest friend of mine read of in L’Osservatore Romano. Even though a few issues later the condemnation of Vassula was withdrawn this was not enough for either my mother or my student priest friend and many others. However unlike The Little Pebble which I did find very easy to reject I kept on reading Vassula with an open mind and a burning heart hungry for the truth which has inevitably brought me closer to Mary and Jesus. It was the 5 volumes of the Poem which impacted most on my appreciation of the events of the new testament. I am now able to attend Mass nearly every day. At every Mass during the liturgy of the Word I reap the benefits bestowed by having read the Poem. It also has turned the other parts of the Mass into what I sometimes describe as a „slice of heaven“.

I am not sure if you are still looking for testimonies but I noticed this is my draft box. Not sure why I didn’t get round to sending it earlier.

God bless all!
Mary