Medjugorje Message: August 25, 2016
Dear children! Today I desire to share Heavenly joy with you. You, little children, open the door of your heart so that hope, peace and love, which only God gives, may grow in your heart. Little children, you are too bound to the earth and earthly things, that is why, Satan is rolling you like the wind rolls the waves of the sea. Therefore, may the chain of your life be prayer with the heart and Adoration of my Son Jesus. Give over your future to Him so that, in Him, you may be joy and an example with your lives to others. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
September 2016
Following up on last month’s message to the world about our lack of joy in the heart, this month Our Lady continues her teaching, saying: “Today I desire to share Heavenly joy with you.” Clearly there is a vast difference between “Heavenly joy” and “worldly joy”–the fleeting and illusory human happiness that’s rooted in the passing, superficial pleasures of feeding our sensory/bodily appetites and egoic needs for safety/security, affection/esteem, and power/control. In contrast to these worldly pleasures by which we usually measure “joy,” Our Lady shares the “Heavenly joy” of “hope, peace and love” in the heart–something that our false self emotional programs for happiness can never attain in any authentic or lasting way, though we spend a lifetime fruitlessly trying.
Our Lady says, “You, little children, open the door of your heart so that hope, peace and love, which only God gives, may grow in your heart.” As always, Our Lady speaks of the “heart,” for unlike pleasure and happiness, which are pursued through our bodily senses and our mind, “JOY” is centered and focused in our “heart“–a word that expresses our innermost existential BEING, the seat of our SOUL, where the Holy Spirit is enthroned and the Divine Indwelling presence of God resides. This spiritual center is beyond the purview of our senses or of our intellect, beyond the merely physical or mental aspects of our being. It is a place beyond words or thoughts.
Our Lady calls us to “open the door” of this spiritual center of our being, indicating that–unlike the sensory and thinking centers that seem to operate 24/7 on “automatic pilot”–this innermost chamber of our “interior castle” is closed until a deliberate act of consciousness “opens” it by our own volition. She says that the “hope, peace and love” that make up this “Heavenly joy” are only given by God, who resides in the heart, and there they “may grow“–indicating that we are on a journey of evolving or developing consciousness, a path of growing, just as a seed grows through stages into a plant, a flower, a tree. This path is sometimes called “evolutionary spirituality” and the future of humanity and our planet depend upon our continued “growing” of “hope, peace and love” in the spiritual “heart” center. Without further evolution of the human heart, we as a species are on a course of mass self-destruction and eventual extinction.
This is especially evident in the present moment of our history as we witness the decline of civilizations and degradation of cultures globally and within our own country, where basic civility that respects the simple human dignity of all persons has practically vanished from our social and political discourse. The pervasive low-level consciousness and sub-human behavior on public display around the clock through the mass media, accessed on the ubiquitous electronic devices in the hands of the whole population, has led to a collective “PTSD” mash-up of anger, depression and anxiety. This emotional malaise now riddles our society with escalating daily outbursts of boiling-over rage, frustration and violence. Tragically, those in the celebrity spotlight of “leadership” positions often provide the worst models of behavior for a civilized nation.
This sad situation is summarized by Our Lady, who says, “Little children, you are too bound to the earth and earthly things; that is why, Satan is rolling you like the wind rolls the waves of the sea.” Indeed we are in a time of turbulence and unrest–precipitous climbs of escalating passion and fury, followed by devastating crashes of destruction–much like the breaking waves of a stormy ocean. To say that “Satan is rolling” us through these wave-like crashes of our daily life because of our over-attachment to earthly things means that the demonic ego, completely enslaved to the false self emotional programs for safety/security, affection/esteem, and power/control, has “taken the steering wheel” or “grabbed the rudder” of our life and set us upon a path to annihilation. We are functioning only through our senses and thoughts, while our spiritual heart center remains closed and locked up tight. With only these devices, our future is bleak and filled with dread as we project nothing but fear in all of our choices, decisions and behavior. How can we possibly change course?
Our Lady provides the answer: “Therefore, may the chain of your life be prayer with the heart and Adoration of my Son Jesus. Give over your future to Him so that, in Him, you may be joy and an example with your lives to others.” Mary’s perennial teaching at Medjugorje is PRAYER WITH THE HEART. This is the prayer of SILENCE, the language God speaks in our inmost center. As St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “The fruit of silence is prayer….in the silence of the heart God speaks. The first requirement for prayer is SILENCE. People of prayer are people of silence.” As Our Lady suggests, within the Church, the most classic practice of silent prayer in a communal setting is Adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. In fact, Mother Teresa insisted upon three hours per day of silent adoration before the Eucharistic Lord’s sacramental presence for all of her sisters, which gave them the spiritual heart energy to minister tirelessly to the poorest of the poor. They did this with visible and evident JOY, even in the midst of terrible suffering, hardship and abject poverty. The Missionaries of Charity gave over their future to Christ, and in Him, exuded exemplary joy to the world.
Our Lady affirms that we, too, are called to live with NO FEAR OF THE FUTURE for Jesus Christ is our future. In this way, we can “BE JOY,” giving example to all we meet–not with words but with our LIVES. May we all, in imitation of the Church’s newest saint, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, find time each and every day (even if it’s only 15-20 minutes) for SILENT prayer of the heart in which we consent to the Presence and action of God indwelling our inmost center, forming us into exemplary humans who can be Light for the world.
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Sept. 4, 2016: Canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Pearls of Wisdom from the Church’s New Saint:
Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love…..Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. We shall never know all the good a simple smile can do.
Love, to be real, must cost–it must hurt–it must empty us of self.
I have found this paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world….We are all pencils in the hand of God.
What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.
We can do no great things, only small things with great love.
I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.
We know that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.
I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot. Together we can do something beautiful for God.
We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much!
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless.
Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depths of our hearts.
God does not require that we be successful, only that we be faithful.
Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
Intense love does not measure, it just gives.
Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.
If you are humble, nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.
Work without love is slavery.
I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness.
Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness.
Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.
In the silence of the heart God speaks….It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.
Love is a fruit in season at all times and within the reach of every hand.
The greatest science in the world, in heaven and on earth, is love.
Never be so busy as not to think of others.
Some people come into our life as blessings. Some come into our life as lessons.
One filled with joy preaches without preaching.
We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully.
I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.
You can find Calcutta anywhere in the world. You only need two eyes to see. Everywhere in the world there are people who are not loved, people who are not wanted, people that no one will help, people who are pushed away or forgotten. And this is the greatest poverty.
If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.
Give that child to me. I want it. I will care for it. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child.
I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me.
We must never be afraid to be a sign of contradiction for the world.
Poverty was not created by God. It is we who have caused it, you and I through our egotism.
As soon as we take the enfleshment of God, the incarnation which, for Christians, is represented by the person of Jesus Christ, then we start taking things seriously.
If you are discouraged, it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own powers.
I accept whatever He gives and I give whatever He takes.
Do not let a chance pass you by. It is so easy to be proud, harsh, moody and selfish, but we have been created for greater things. Why stoop down to things that will spoil the beauty of our hearts?
We must become holy not because we want to feel holy, but because Christ must be able to live His life fully in us.
You will never truly realize God is all you need until He becomes all you have.
Whether one is Hindu or Muslim or Christian, how you live your life is proof that you are, or not, fully His. We cannot condemn or judge or pass words that will hurt people. We don’t know in what way God is appearing to that soul and what God is drawing that soul to. Therefore, who are we to condemn anybody?
Please choose the way of peace. In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, nor never will, justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause. (Letter to U.S. President George Bush)
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People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you.
Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.
Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today will often be forgotten.
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
Our teaching on marriage and the family cannot fail to be inspired and transformed by the message of love and tenderness; otherwise, it becomes nothing more than the defense of a dry and lifeless doctrine….Contrary to those who rejected marriage as evil, the New Testament teaches that “everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected.” (1 Tim 4:4) This divine gift includes sexuality….The indissolubility of marriage should not be viewed as a “yoke” imposed on humanity, but as a “gift” granted to those who are joined in marriage….Pope Benedict XVI… stressed that “marriage based on an exclusive and definitive love becomes an icon of the relationship between God and his people. God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love”….The family is the image of God, who is a communion of persons….The sacrament of marriage is not a social convention, an empty ritual or merely the outward sign of a commitment. The sacrament is a gift given for the sanctification and salvation of the spouses, since “their mutual belonging is a real representation, through the sacramental sign, of the same relationship between Christ and the Church. The married couple are therefore a permanent reminder for the Church of what took place on the cross….By becoming one flesh, they embody the espousal of our human nature by the Son of God….he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb….
Canon Law also recognizes the validity of certain unions celebrated without the presence of an ordained minister. The natural order has been so imbued with the redemptive grace of Jesus that “a valid matrimonial contract cannot exist between the baptized without it being by that fact a sacrament ….the couple who marry are the ministers of the sacrament…the consent given by the man and the woman itself establishes the sacramental bond….Only in contemplating Christ does a person come to know the deepest truth about human relationships. “Only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light”…. Seeing things with the eyes of Christ inspires the Church’s pastoral care for the faithful who are living together, or are only married civilly, or are divorced and remarried….the Church turns with love to those who participate in her life in an imperfect manner: she seeks the grace of conversion for them; she encourages them to do good, to take loving care of each other and to serve the community in which they live….
When faced with difficult situations and wounded families, it is always necessary to recall this general principle: “Pastors must know that, for the sake of truth, they are obliged to exercise careful discernment of situations. The degree of responsibility is not equal in all cases and factors may exist which limit the ability to make a decision. Therefore, while clearly stating the Church’s teaching, pastors are to avoid judgments that do not take into account the complexity of various situations, and they are to be attentive, by necessity, to how people experience and endure distress because of their condition“….The family protects human life in all its stages, including its last….the Church not only feels the urgency to assert the right to a natural death, without aggressive treatment and euthanasia, but likewise firmly rejects the death penalty….One of the fundamental challenges facing families today is undoubtedly that of raising children, made all the more difficult and complex by today’s cultural reality and the powerful influence of the media….The unitive end of marriage is a constant summons to make this love grow and deepen.”
(from Amoris Laetitia—Apostolic Exhortation on the Synod on the Family, ch. 3)
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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
