Sharing Mary's messages

PERRYVILLE, Mo.

N eal Gramaud believes that he's been called out for a special purpose in life.

He's not a priest or a preacher, just a simple 44-year-old farmer from Perry County with a wife and children. But he feels led to help bring people to God.

A devout Catholic who once considered the priesthood as a youngster, Gramaud says he has been receiving messages from the Virgin Mary.

And when he shares those messages, hundreds of people come to hear and pray at the grotto at the Shrine of the Miraculous Medal on the former seminary grounds in Perryville.

What started as a personal prayer ritual for Gramaud has turned into a phenomenon.

At 9 a.m. Monday, 150 people gathered at the grotto on the grounds at St. Mary's of the Barrens seminary to recite the rosary and pray. Biting winds and cold temperatures didn't keep them away, nor has rain in earlier months. Some people come out of curiosity, others out of devotion to their faith or to seek healing in a physical or spiritual sense.

Gramaud can think of no other reason except faith for what would draw such a crowd on a cold December morning -- or any day, for that matter.

Obviously, the messages come from God, with Mary acting as the mediator, he said. When 400 people gathered on a Saturday in November, "it's not me doing that," he said.

But to be sure it's not his human nature coming through, Gramaud does speak to his spiritual director about the messages before sharing them publicly. A spiritual director helps hold a person accountable and acts as a neutral voice in deciphering the messages from the Holy Spirit or other saints in the Roman Catholic Church.

Gramaud remembers exactly the moment the Virgin Mary appeared to him and asked him for obedience.

It was 8:12 on a Friday morning when he was working in his fields. "At that moment I wasn't thinking of anything. Naturally, I'd been praying for a long time, but at that moment I wasn't asking for anything. She just came to me and asked me to pray the rosary, and so I did for three months by myself."

He would go to the grotto at 6 a.m. each day for prayers and finish by the time the 8 a.m. Mass began. Eventually, the Virgin Mary asked Gramaud to invite some close friends to join him in the prayers.

And later, she asked him to to open the prayer services to the public on the 13th of each month. The crowds have been gathering since July and will continue indefinitely.

There are countless places around the world where people -- both Catholic and Protestant -- gather for prayers because the site is believed to be a place where the Virgin Mary or another saint has appeared.

While such places do exist, the Catholic Church doesn't make proclamations about them. "God can appear to you whenever he wants to," said the Rev. J. Friedel, director of Catholic Campus Ministries at Southeast Missouri State University.

Gramaud's friend Charlie Malaway said the Virgin Mary hasn't appeared to him personally but that doesn't mean that what Gramaud sees or hears isn't real.

God can use normal, everyday people to bring his message to the world. That's exactly who the disciples were when Jesus called them, Malaway said.

Both men have visited Medjugorje, a small village in Bosnia-Herzegovina where believers say the Virgin Mary has been appearing and giving messages since 1981. That experience has given them strength and sustenance to know that now is the time to heed her messages.

This month, the message was about reconciliation and opening hearts to Jesus during the Christmas season. "She wants you to heal anything you may have as a family -- this brokenness," Gramaud told the gathering. The November message was about showing reverence for Jesus and the sacrifices he made.

Each month, Gramaud passes out sheets of paper with the previous month's message. At first, when he was praying alone, he was printing the messages anonymously as classified ads in area newspapers. Word spread slowly as people began to hear more about the apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

Lorna Aubuchon came from O'Fallon, Mo., to see what the service was all about Monday. She stayed for about an hour before the cold overtook her. Aubuchon had heard about the gatherings from a woman at her church who used to be from Perryville.

She said it's important for people to come out of "devotion to the Blessed Mother" and as a way of asking for special prayers.

Malawy believes that the rosary services are a sort of spiritual healing for many people. "We all have broken lives to some extent," he said. "The Blessed Mother is just an intercessor in that healing."

Gramaud said he just wants people to be touched through prayer. He said when people pray "things change, and it's always for the better."

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126