So from that day to this the aches, the
pains, the vomiting, the diarrhea with the Crohn's disease had instantly
disappeared. First time I heard about Međugorje was
in 1989. I heard about it because I was extremely ill at the time and the
prognosis wasn't good. And we had a benefit concert to help the family
financially and two people were at the concert who ran a travel agency and they
invited my wife Anne and myself to come to a place called Međugorje. Yet I didn't
want to come because God and I were not partners and the reason for that was that my
eldest boy Ken was born with an incurable illness called cystic fibrosis.
And then I was struck down with an illness called Crohn's disease, so I got
angry with God and didn't really want to come but as it turned out it was
supposed to be my last holiday with my wife Anne. Not really believing I
came with a very special priest from Chicago called father Peter Mary Rookey
and when I met father Peter Rookey, father Peter reminded me of the old
ministers in the cowboy movies, being very loud: Do I hear an 'Amen'? And everybody would
say 'Amen' and I was cringing because I'm quite private and, you know, I just
thought this was a little bit American. In 1989 Međugorje was
just a one - street town to be really honest with you. The street started from the
bridge in Međugorje and ended at the roundabout which, subsequently I learned,
were the ruins of the old Catholic Church. And road left and road right were dirt
roads so that impression I didn't want. I wanted to go back to Dubrovnik, I spent my
honeymoon in Cavtat so I wanted action, I wanted plenty of action. But for
every reason that I had to leave Međugorje my wife Anne always had one
reason as to why we should stay a little bit longer. And the ruse was that father
Peter Mary Rookey was supposed to be celebrating Mass in the Church of St.
James which was a lie. He wasn't even on the altar and as I left
the church of St. James, Anne and I got lost and then I heard Anne
scream out:'David David wait, wait' and as I turned around, I saw her coming, running from
the door of the church. She said: 'David, father Rookey is having a healing
service in the graveyard.' Now, I turned to her and said:'Well, I hope he has
more luck than we had of him supposedly saying Mass this morning. I said: I'm
going, I'm too sick, I was in excruciating pain because of Crohn's disease and
she said to me: Look, David, on our children's lives,
if you come with me to the healing service, as soon as it's over I'll go
back to the house and I'll pack the bags and we head off to Dubrovnik.
So, there were the words I wanted to hear so we walked around the side of the
church down through the vineyards because the vineyard was right up, close
to the church. Down through the lovely grove of trees where the statue of the Risen
Lord is and then down to the graveyard. It was jammed. There were about seven or eight
hundred people because father Rookey was so well known that whenever people said
he'd be around, people came because he had an extremely beautiful gift of
prayer for healing, so we arrived. The place was packed and in the graveyard
there's a little paved area in front of the little burial chapel and in the
middle of the burial chapel was father Rookey and three Irish priests and he was
blessing them as he always did. And then they dispersed, blessed people and
father Rookey came over close to where I was and there was a young adult in a
wheelchair and he said, I also remember, he said: Are you prepared to take a step
in faith for Jesus? That's stuck with me to this very day and the young adult said
'yes', so he he anointed him and then he went to the next person and he laid
hands and then they fainted. And that's what I would call it. I subsequently found
out, it's called resting in the spirit. But I'd never seen this, I thought this
was the hocus-pocus pastor doing his thing and he went to the next six people.
They all went down and of course, me being cynical, I turned to Anne and said: Ann, this
is histeria! Once one does it they're all going to
do it, nobody wants to be left standing, they all have to be seen, to be getting
what they're getting on the ground and if they don't, they're going to feel:
What's wrong? So, Ann told me to shut up and I went off.
I couldn't stand and watch this thing happening, so I came back about 15
minutes later and then she turned and said to me David: Why won't you have a
blessing? And I said: Whoa, remember I'm the atheist!" But you said, it'll do you good,
you've been extremely ill! So I left again and I came back and this thing
happened over a period of two hours coming backwards and forwards. And then I
eventually said: Listen, you're an idiot, you should have had the blessing two
hours ago and you could have been off somewhere else, so I stood in line with
about 60 people; three Irish priests were now working in front of father Rookey, they
blessed me in turn. Nothing happened and I'm looking at the watch thinking how long more
am I going to be here and I looked up for my watch and father Rookey, he called
himself the rookie priest, he said: I'm just a rookie priest and he smiled at me.
He said to me: David, there's something you want to tell me and I said: Father, I
don't wish to speak with you. I said: I'm extremely ill, the pain is
excruciating and the doctors say I maybe have two weeks to live so with that he
reached into his pocket and took out a crucifix about the size of my span.
Little black crucifix and that crucifix contained seven relics of the seven
founders of the Servite Order of the Servants of Mary. That's where they get
the father Peter Mary Rookie, all Servite priests have Mary in their name,
so he struck the cross in my right hand, then he dipped his thumb in the oil and
he anointed my forehead. Then he put his hands on my head and started to pray and
then I remember him going to take the crucifix from my hand and the next thing
I remember is lying flat on my back and I had been in that state for 20 minutes.
When I got up off the ground, there was a politician with us from
Ireland, not a senior politician, but, we have two Parliaments - we have the
senior and the junior one. And they are senators, they're not politicians,
so he uses that to great extent in America because a senator in America is
high-profile. So, when I opened my eyes and I'm looking up who's standing over
me, only the senator Donie Cassidy. And I met him because he was involved in the
music business and the first thought when I opened my eyes is: Oh, God,
back in Dublin what is he going to tell all the hard - drinking
musicians about Parkes lying on his back in a graveyard? So, when I got up, when I
dusted my clothes down, he said to me: Parks, he said, the Spirit is with you
very strongly, you've been out for 20 minutes. But I didn't realize anything
that happened except there was a burning heat in my body that went from the top
of my head to the tips of my toes. I've never experienced that since Međugorje
or ever before Međugorje, so from that day to this the aches, the pains the
vomiting, the diarrhea with the Crohn's disease had instantly disappeared. I was
very fortunate to experience a spiritual healing, the greatest of the two miracles,
as most people call them, was the spiritual healing.
I'd been very troubled I had no peace in my life, my eldest boy
Ken, as I mentioned, was born with cystic fibrosis, I couldn't come to terms with
it. When he was born, I was playing soccer professionally, I had the
great honour of playing against Pele, George Best, a representative of my country and
the thoughts of a highly trained slim, trim, brimful energy soccer player having
a child, an imperfect child. Because, that's what I called him. I used to call Ken my cross,
I just couldn't come to terms with it. And that drove a wedge between Anna
and myself, so I left Anne twice, but Anne has an incredible ability to forgive, so
she forgave me on both occasions and invited me back to the family home. Thank God
we are still together. As we speak we celebrated 46 years of marriage and
we're still holding hands because if we let go, we'll kill one another.
But what happened after the physical healing was that the desire to leave Međugorje
had gone. Međugorje was just on fire within me and the church of st. James
was like a magnet, I could not stop going to the church of St. James. So, we used
to go to Mass at 7:30 in Croatian, then we go and have breakfast and then we come
back for the the German Mass and then of course we had the English mass and then
sometimes we would stay for the Italian Mass.That's how serious things were and
we were sitting one afternoon outside the front of St. James, just sitting
but not right, we were not talking, I was just reflecting the few days that
had gone passed and a lot of people were going past of different nationalities.
The English people talking about the peace and we could hear some Croatian
people saying about "mir" and some people were saying, they experienced this
incredible peace upon the hill of apparitions. So I turned to Ann, even
though I was still very weak after the two surgeries and convalescent, and I
said to her: Would you have me to climb this apparition hill where these
people are experiencing this peace, not realizing it was Sunday and we would
call it now Divine Mercy Sunday. So we set off in the afternoon and when we got
up to the hill, it was packed because the parish of Međugorje climbed the
apparition hill. So when we got to the place where Our Lady is reputed to
have appeared for the first time, it was full. So Anne and I sort of came back down
the mountain and she found this huge big rock and sat on it. And I just stood
there with my back to the hill, but looking directly down into the beautiful
twin spire church of St. James and I didn't know what to do. I wanted to pray but I
couldn't, I'd forgotten how to pray and I remember saying to myself, you know, I'll say
Our Father and that's as far as I could get. And then I tried to
say the Hail Mary and all I could get was this Hail Mary and then Anne, who was
sitting on the rock, she told me after that she was looking at me and she saw
me getting a bit agitated, because I did get agitated, because I
couldn't pray and so she jumped down off the rock and when she hit the ground I
instinctively turned from looking at the church to her, I extended my arms and I
embraced her and I apologized to her for all the hurt that I'd caused her, all the
pain that I had caused our children, our family members and our friends and she
started to cry and then she threw her arms around my neck and then, because of
that little gesture of love, I started to cry. So we cried in one another's arms for about ten minutes, but when I stopped crying, I had this most incredible inner peace,
inner peace that seemed to allow David Parkes to live with David Parkes. I did not want to
leave Međugorje. As the days got closer to departure I didn't want to leave, I was getting too
much, I was getting closer to God every minute; my glasses were new now. I could
see what the Lord wanted me to see through my eyes and glasses. So we
went to the airport on the day of departure and the flight was canceled. So, I
went, I wanted to come back but everybody else, the 165 religious maniacs, as I thought,
they would have got a hold of the guide if she hadn't been in for the
departure. She would have been dismembered. And I wanted to go back to Međugorje. And people said: I can't believe her
husband wants to go back to Međugorje. At that point in my life I wouldn't be very private especially about the religion and most people
knew that I'd been angry because of Ken, but I remember it took six months
for my stomach muscles to heal after I had the two surgeries. So when I went
back home I still couldn't sing, my muscles weren't strong enough so three days
after coming back from Međugorje I went into the band to see them all.
And when I left to go to Međugorje, they had been told that I had two weeks to
live so they'd never thought they'd see me well enough. So, when I walked into the room, I was standing up straight now
because prior to all this I was crooked over, the pain was excruciating. And there
were seven hard - drinking musicians. Most musicians, you know, if
they're fully professional, they sustain their life by drinking, it takes
away a lot of pain and so forth. So, when I went in there, they just stood there
with their mouths open and just asked what happened. So I told them, they said: Listen,
this is a miracle, there's no way, when you left here a week
and a half ago, there's no way we would ever think that you would walk in here.
So they went around spreading, I mean, within three days the Musicians
Federation were calling me from their office in Dublin. We had the great news,
the great story but it's like as if the Lord decided when I was here that he
wanted me to do something for him. Well, when I went back singing roughly
six months after; it was all rock and roll music and I did it until September of 1993, but in the whole of September I felt that I had lost the
buzz. That's probably the only way I can describe it and I always said to the band:
Look whenever I lose the buzz, you know, there's no point in coming because there
were seven of us. And I decided I'd like to do something for the Lord, I just felt
that he was, you know, putting little things in my heart that he wanted me to do but
how does it manifest itself? So in June of 1993 this lady, Heather
Parsons, who was also a journalist, she wanted to come to Međugorje during the
war to do a documentary on Međugorje during the war and she was looking for a
volunteer, of course. Here I am, Lord. And my family were
distraught at the thought of going to a war zone to do with a thing on a holy place. So
we came anyway and we were shooting outside the sacristy door and
at that time father Philip Pavić was coordinating the english-speaking pilgrims.
Father Philip, I remember when I was here in 1989, he was the coordinator, he had
a lovely voice, always sang, he could have had a Sistine choir here and he didn't
matter, he led the music. So we were doing the piece to camera and right behind was
the sacristy door. It opened and of course he came out and with his Chicago
accent he says: Can anybody sing here? I should hope so, but the crew said: Oh, father, he can, he can. I said: I'm sorry, father, I can't sing.
I didn't bring my backing tracks with me. Well, he was a little stoop, but he
sort of stood up and said: You don't need backing tracks to sing for
Our Lady, so I didn't walk through the door, I went under the door.
I felt so small, but at the communion time I sang the Ave Maria a capella and I sat
back down and was heading back out to do the shooting when this big tall man
about six foot six approached, thin like a rake, and he said to me: Yeah, what are
you doing in September? And I said: Who wants to know? And he said: My name is Dr. Sam Worley, he said. I run a Marian conference in
Pittsburgh and I'd like you to come and sing the Ave Maria for us. So that's how
the Lord put this whole thing together. So I was invited in September, I sang the
Ave Maria, I think probably about twenty four times in three days because
whenever there was a break, they'd say: Sing Ave Maria. But there were ten people there who ran
ten of the largest Marian conferences around America so I was invited and then
over the next couple of years it went from just being a speaker to MC
on all of these conferences. So the Lord had it all planned, you know, all he was
looking for was a 'yes' from me to do it. God, I was so delighted, so
delighted. I've been working here in Medjugorje since 2001, it was a rather
strange episode. I'd been touring America and the world doing Christian concerts
from 1993 as I mentioned. At the same time my son Ken was extremely ill, Ken
has cystic fibrosis so his lungs were deteriorating over a
period of time and there were many times over the years that I would have to
abandon the tour and come back because Ken was quite ill. But there was a
gentleman who ran a pilgrimage company, the company I work with now called
Marian pilgrimages. And I used to be a group leader so he was to bring groups
once or twice a year. And for four years prior to 2001 we would meet every
January because he was going to use this new thing called the Internet to promote
his business so I would meet him in January and he would say to me: Listen, David,
you're going to be in America, is there any possibility you might be able to
promote by putting the website, the website never went up so in 2001 in
January I got a phone call from Tom to say: When are you off to America? I said: Tom,
next... - Oh I need to meet with you before you go. And he said: This is what I'd like
you to do. I said: Wait, Tom, I can't do anything for you
apart from promoting your website. I said: I have a career. - I know, but you would be able to
when you come home, you'd be able to. I said: Tom, I can't do that when I come home.
And then he came back at me four or five times and I always had an excuse and
the only way I thought that I was really going to shake him off as I said:
Look, Tom, Ken is on a transplant list for new lungs and if he gets a
transplant, I am gone. It doesn't matter what I'm doing and I don't know how long I
would be away. I said: We'll cross that bridge when it comes. So I left him and I
drove back home, five minutes drive and when I arrived Anne said: What
happened to you? I was so perturbed by it all, overwhelmed and she said: What do you
mean? She said: Did you have an accident? I said 'no', I said: I think I'm about to be
off for the job. And she said: Where? And I said: In Međugorje. Well, she
jumped up off the seat in the kitchen, it was like as if she'd won the lotto. Now,
in the family room Ken had just come out of hospital on the Friday and he
was sort of immobile, he could only maybe get from the sofa to the bathroom if he
needed. When he heard all this excitement, he came out to
the kitchen and he said: What's going on, what's going on? Anne said to him: Your dad
is after being offered a job. Ken said: Where? And she said: In Međugorje.
So he walked over to me and stood right in front of me, he looked me straight in
the eyes and he said: And you are taking it, aren't you? I often question myself: Why are
you here? I love to sing, I would really love to do a concert every night because
I felt that I was healed here in Međugorje, because of the gift of the
voice that the Lord gave me and particularly one beautiful song which
started my whole ministry, a beautiful song called 'Let me live'. And there are
times... Working with the public is different, really, it's difficult because particularly nowadays where they're very, very demanding, as a group of people we want everything
instantly and there's no tolerance. The one thing that I would find from working
here is that people arrive here with no hope, absolutely no hope. What was right
when we were young is now totally wrong. What's black is now white and so it's
very difficult. And the reason I think that the Lord has me here is that
I'm very vocal about how generous He is and very vocal about His forgiveness to
us and I'm very vocal that we need to stand up for the Lord. We can't be
passive anymore, we really need to be his footsoldiers, we really need to walk the
walk, no longer talk about it, there's no point, talk is cheap.
So we have to nail our colors to the cross and say: Listen, I'm a Catholic!
Because you go to any other faith whether it be Muslim or Baptist and whatever churches around the world and they are vocal, they're in your face. And yet we Catholics, we have
everything and yet we don't tell people. Now, I wouldn't be one that would be
knocking on everybody's door, but I would let, I would always try and let people
see that the Lord is present in me. Because I do think that we have the
ability to entice people to the faith but equally we've got this
ability to turn people away just by what we say or what way we do it. So, for me it's
just the greatest gift that I could ever be given, to be part of this amazing
place that has changed millions of people's lives, millions of people's
lives. And just to be able to see, as I would often say, when we meet with the
pilgrims I see me every week coming. I'm always in the front seat and angry
and disruptive and then within two days I see a blessed Mother has taken them
along, taken them along as she took me so gently to be with her son
Jesus. I think people return to Međugorje because they experience the peace
of the Lord, they also experience the love of the Lord. As I said I'm 68 years
of age, when I was young all we were hit with in school was the fear of the Lord.
We were terrified of the Lord but when I came in '89, one of the first things I
learned was the love of the Lord, how much he loves us and it doesn't matter how
far you've been away from him. It doesn't matter what you've done against him.
Because I often felt I was a bit like St. Paul.
When I was growing up I was a choir boy in a church called the Church of St.
Paul in Arran Quay and as a 11 - year old right behind the high altar was this
huge big mural of St. Paul falling off the steed and never realizing that for a
couple of years I was like him. I persecuted people and then when I came
here, I realized what love of the Lord can do for you and I really think
that's why people come back. We would have to hear people saying: You know, I'm
coming back for a fill-up of peace, I'm coming back to to get the peace that the Lord can give me and I suppose that's the greatest
compliment that we could pay. One of the wonderful things that, it presses the wrong word to use, but there's nobody here in Međugorje who pushes it upon you. There's nobody who says this or that
asking one: Do you believe me? And I always remember the guides when I came
here first. I remember talking the story about young Jakov coming to father Jozo
and telling him what Our Lady said but he didn't say to father Jozo: You do
believe me?! And that I think is the greatest testimony, you know, I'm telling
you this, you do what you want with it. And my youngest son Gary, when he came, he
was terrified coming in here because he thought it was some sort of a machine
that you're put in and you are zapped. He came over, I call it the medji - heights,
but it's just that you feel loved here. And the friends that you make
here in Međugorje if you're on a pilgrimage, even though you might not meet
them again, but it's a friendship that's true. You remember what they said, you
remember the hurt, you remember the pain that they had and I suppose most of the
miracles that would take place in Međugorje would be around the dinner tables
in the houses. You know, there could be the quietness of people sitting.
They've been quiet all week and then maybe the day before you go home they relate a
story that's just so mind-boggling and you realize that she's the reason that
you're here. You never met her before, but she has the answer that you've been
looking for from the Lord. So, Međugorje never ceases to amaze me every day. There's something new, there's an extra increase of grace and blessings from here.
