Medjugorje Message: April 25, 2016
Dear children! My Immaculate Heart bleeds as I look at you in sin and sinful habits. I am calling you: return to God and to prayer that it may be good for you on earth. God is calling you through me for your hearts to be hope and joy for all those who are far away. May my call be for you a balm for the soul and heart so that you may glorify God, the Creator, who loves you and is calling you to eternity. Little children, life is short: you, make good use of this time and do what is good. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
May 2016
In this “Mary” month of May dedicated to mothers, the Medjugorje message reminds us of Our Lady’s maternal role in the life of every human being. As the mortal bridge between heaven and earth who cooperated with God’s plan to knit the divine and human natures together in the Incarnation, Mary is the chosen instrument of God through whom our eternal salvation became possible. She is the mortal bridge to our immortality. From the cross on Calvary Jesus made this explicit when he said, “Behold your mother.” While each of us has a different earthly, biological mother, we all share one spiritual mother, the Mother of our eternal Soul–the Blessed Virgin Mary whose maternity of Jesus, in a collaborative partnership with the Divine will, plan, and providence, made possible the resurrection of our bodies and our eternal life in heaven. Thus, Our Lady has an ancient “vested interest” in our life–both here and hereafter. The first half of her message this month addresses the “here“; the second half, the “hereafter.”
Our Lady says, “My Immaculate Heart bleeds as I look at you in sin and sinful habits. I am calling you: return to God and to prayer that it may be good for you on earth. God is calling you through me for your hearts to be hope and joy for all those who are far away.” Here is Our Lady’s affirmation of the goodness of earthly life to which we are called, here and now. There is an ancient gnostic heresy that teaches a grim and erroneous dualism between heaven and earth, spirit and matter, painting our world and earthly life as totally corrupt, evil and worthless, without any redeeming value–strictly a place from which to escape into the ether of heaven. While often espoused by biblical fundamentalists, this un-Catholic, anti-Incarnational form of Christianity is deeply flawed and unscriptural. From the beginning we learn in Genesis that God created our planet Earth and everything in it, pronouncing it “very good.” Quite simply, God the Creator “does not make junk.” To neglect or abuse the created world–including the magnificent ecology of our human bodies, temples of the indwelling Holy Spirit–is to disrespect God’s own creation as “junk” unworthy of care. St. Paul taught (against the gnostic heresy) that we are to “glorify God in our bodies“; St. John Paul II taught the “Theology of the Body” to emphasize the inherently great dignity of the human person created in the image and likeness of God; and Pope Francis has tried to awaken our collective consciousness to earthly goodness through his encyclical, Laudato Si, on care for the created world.
Our Lady’s first four words–“My Immaculate Heart bleeds“–are an affirmation of the integral union of Spirit (which is “Immaculate“) and flesh (which “bleeds“), joined together at the center of our human life (“Heart“). Our Lady never runs away from the fleshly, earthy reality of our human life or hides in ethereal abstractions. She is always wholly REAL; thus she bluntly confronts the truth she sees in us–our “sin and sinful habits.” The Greek word for “sin” is “hamartia“–“missing the mark“–and refers to the ways we are disconnected from the conscious awareness or contact with God’s Presence in our own essence, here and now. These sinful ways develop in youth when our False Self (egoic) programs form, and they harden into habitual patterns. When we thus fall out of God-awareness and live in a disconnected way, according to our own feeble lights and self-will, life on earth is not good; it is filled with sickness, sadness, fear, anger and negativity. Sin is self-defeating, destructive behavior. The seven “deadly” or capital sins are: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. Fear and deceit also tempt us into sinful behavior.
All of these sins can become “sinful habits,” for there is an addictive quality to the emotional programs for happiness devised by our fallen ego (false self), apart from God-awareness. The sin of sloth (laziness) easily becomes a lifestyle of apathetic couch-sitting and mindless screen-watching; the sin of greed easily becomes a lifestyle of uncontrolled consumerism and debt or rampant workaholism to fund obsessive saving or extravagant spending; the sin of lust easily becomes a lifestyle of pernicious addiction to pornography, “sexting,” promiscuity and illicit sex; the sin of gluttony easily becomes a lifestyle of bodily self-destruction in morbid obesity, alcoholism, Type-2 diabetes, and various food-fueled cancers. The sins of pride, envy and anger easily become a lifestyle of judgmental blame, arrogant fault-finding, gossip, and aggressive, vindictive conduct. Every capital sin can easily become, as Mary says, a “sinful habit” tearing apart the moral fabric of our life. Our Lady says, “My Immaculate Heart bleeds as I look at you” doing these things. All of these sinful habits form a flagrant rejection, violation and pollution of God’s extravagantly “GOOD” creation–the blessings of our health and the integrity of His masterpiece of design, our human Body-Mind-Spirit.
Our Lady continues: “I am calling you: return to God and to prayer that it may be good for you on earth.” This “return to God and prayer” is first of all an honest facing of ourselves and our selfish illusions, bogus excuses, and rationalizations of our sinful behavior. It is the perception and naming of our own “deadly” sins in deep acceptance that no longer denies or represses the TRUTH of our condition. This prayerful return to God in the form of “a humbled, contrite heart” opens us to the healing and mercy of our compassionate Lord Jesus Christ, who heals not through judgment or condemnation, but by transforming LOVE. In this Gospel love we experience, with St. Paul, that “where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.” (Rom 5:20) Healed and transformed by God in prayer, sinful habits recede and our conversion of life radiates “hope and joy for all those who are far away.” Through Our Lady, God is calling us to be “a light to the nations” by our own clearly manifested conversion of heart.
After teaching us the importance of our present life here “on earth,” the last half of Our Lady’s message deals with the reality of the “hereafter.” She says, “May my call be for you a balm for the soul and heart so that you may glorify God, the Creator, who loves you and is calling you to eternity. Little children, life is short; you, make good use of this time and do what is good.” Here is the twofold mission of Our Lady, given from the cross on Calvary when her Son entrusted all of us to her maternal care: first, to oversee our earthly journey as Gospel witnesses to Christ in our manner of living who draw many other children to God by the example of our lives lived HERE and NOW; and second, to oversee our spiritual journey as a conscious preparation for heaven and the gift of eternal life, readying us for what is yet to come, beyond this earthly experience, when our physical body dies. Seeing this twofold mission of Our Lady, we understand more clearly why we say to her in the Holy Rosary: “Pray for us sinners NOW (here on earth) and AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH (hereafter).” From the moment of Mary’s “yes” at the Annunciation until today, ours is an incarnational faith that is always “both/and” rather than “either/or“: both human and divine; both bodily and spiritual; both earthly and heavenly. Our Lady calls us to recognize and make our life (both temporal and eternal) “ALL GOOD.”
Mother Love
Miriam has a tiny rhinestone in her nose
and a full-sleeve tat of roses climbing her arm
from small sturdy hands with Tequila Sunrise
nail polish fidget-chipped away in places.
She pushes a buggy with an active baby,
beautiful and boisterous;
on her back, peeking out from a peasant blouse
are sun-rays of the Guadalupe
(whom she met one night in the post-
partum blue blind light of sleep deprivation,
breasts run dry amidst her baby’s cries).
On Miriam’s feet are cowboy boots over bare
brown legs and short skirt;
she walks for miles or rides the bus to
visit shrines of Mary.
Poor but strong, quiet but friendly,
groping toward a new life laborious and lovely
to honor this sudden pure intense affection
born the day she gave birth to Pedrito
(littlest vicar of Christ).
Well-coiffed soccer moms in the SUV lineup
(unstudded noses, impeccable nails) look her
askance at times, unaware that in days to come
many will flock to her counsel.
Finished with shallow living and casual connection,
marked now forever with a heart tattoo
of life-giving death to self:
wound of sacrifice, scar of love, the
Mother’s stigmata of Miriam.
~ m.m.
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Anyone who fails to see that Christ Jesus was at once true God and truly man is blind to his own life: to deny Christ Jesus, or God the Spirit, or our own flesh, is equally perilous.
— St. Hilary, “On the Trinity”
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The Church as Our Mother
“Truly, O Catholic Church, you are the mother of Christians. You teach us how to worship God in a pure way, and you tell us that a holy life consists in returning to your dwelling place. In fact, you show us that there exists no creature to which we should bow in a submissive attitude of adoration.” — St. Augustine
“You are flesh born of flesh of his human nature, harbor of his divine nature….You alone have become the help of man–of God himself who is your help. He is your concern: you teach, you proclaim, you baptize, you convert, you procure everything for Him since He is the light in the darkness and shadow of death. Constantly you generate, you rear your children on the bread, you give them the cup to drink. You always flourish anew, you bear fruit, you sprout new branches, fresh and green. Every day you feed the flocks of your children with the fruit of your garden and your vines.” — St. Anastasius
“In the Spirit the Church generates sons for God, in the Spirit she nurses the children with the milk of her teaching and she instructs the young in holy wisdom. To men she gives vigorous strength in the battle against Satan. For people who have reached maturity she is wise. She makes the elderly venerable again. She sets erring sons on the right road once more. She weeps tears for the dead. As a shepherd, she is unceasing in her protection of her whole flock of faithful.” — Quodvultdeus of Carthage
“Here is the woman, mother of all living souls. Here is the spiritual home. Here is the city which endures in eternity because it is loosed from death.” — St. Ambrose
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Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe. Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places to God through the features of human faces. Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all. Amen. — Rabbi Abraham Heschel
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To obtain the protection of our Blessed Lady in our most urgent wants, it is very useful to say…”Virgin Mary, Mother of God, pray to Jesus for me.” When we make this prayer to our Blessed Lady, we give her every possible praise in the least possible compass, because we call her by her name of MARY, and give her those two great titles of Virgin and Mother of God, and then name JESUS, the fruit of her womb. The things of this world do not remain constantly with us, for if we do not leave them before we actually die, in death at least we all infallibly depart as empty-handed as we came. To pray well requires the whole man. — St. Philip Neri
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May 15: Pentecost Sunday–“Space to Be”
To know ourselves, to understand and get ourselves and our problems in perspective, we simply must make contact with our spirit. All self-understanding arises from understanding ourselves as spiritual beings, and it is only contact with the universal Holy Spirit that can give us the depth and the breadth to understand. The way to this is not difficult. It is very simple. But it does require serious commitment. The way of meditation is very simple. All we have to do is be as still as possible in body and in spirit. Learning to meditate is learning to let go of your thoughts, ideas and imagination and to rest in the depths of your own being. Always remember that. Don’t think, don’t use any words other than your own word, don’t imagine anything. Just sound the word in the depths of your spirit and listen to it with all your attention. Why is this so powerful? Because it gives us the space that our spirit needs to breathe. It gives each of us the space to be ourselves. When you are meditating you don’t need to apologize for yourself and you don’t need to justify yourself. All you need to do is to be yourself, to accept the gift of your own being. And in that acceptance you will begin to live your life in harmony, because everything in your life will come into harmony with all creation, because you will have found your place. Your place is nothing less than to be rooted and founded in God. — Fr. John Main, OSB
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour out upon us the mystery of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.
Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor, help us to rescue
the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,
so precious in your eyes.
Bring healing to our lives,
that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.
Touch the hearts of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognize that we are profoundly united
with every creature as we journey toward your infinite light.
We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle
for justice, love and peace.
(Laudato Si)
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Mark Your Calendar
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To reject the contemplative dimension of any religion is to reject the religion itself, however loyal one may be to its externals and rituals. This is because the contemplative dimension is the heart and soul of every religion. It initiates the movement into higher states of consciousness. The great wisdom teachings of the Vedas, Upanishads, Buddhist Sutras, Old and New Testaments, and the Koran bear witness to this truth. Right now there are about two billion Christians on the planet. If a significant portion of them were to embrace the contemplative dimension of the gospel, the emerging global society would experience a powerful surge toward enduring peace. If this contemplative dimension of the Christian religion is not presented, the Gospel is not being adequately preached.
– Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
