Medjugorje Message: March 25, 2017
Dear children! In this time of grace, I am calling all of you to open your hearts to God’s mercy, to begin a new life through prayer, penance and a decision for holiness. This time of spring moves you to a new life, to a renewal, in your thoughts and hearts. Therefore, little children, I am with you to help you to say ‘yes’ to God and to God’s commandments with resoluteness. You are not alone; I am with you through the grace which the Most High gives me for you and your descendants. Thank you for having responded to my call.
Annual Apparition to Mirjana Dragicevic-Soldo: March 18, 2017
Dear children! My motherly desire is for your hearts to be filled with peace, and for your souls to be pure so that in the presence of my Son you could see His face. Because, my children, as a mother I know that you thirst for consolation, hope and protection. You, my children, consciously and unconsciously are seeking my Son. I also, as I passed the time on earth, rejoiced, suffered and patiently endured pains, until my Son, in all His glory, removed them. And that is why I am saying to my Son: help them always. You, my children, with true love, illuminate the darkness of selfishness which all the more envelops my children. Be generous. May both your hands and heart always be open. As you look towards Him, live life with love. To love means to give oneself, to endure, and never to judge. To love means to live the words of my Son. My children, as a mother I am speaking to you: only true love leads to eternal happiness. Thank you.
River of Light
April 2017
Our Lady’s monthly message to the world was given on March 25, Feast of the Annunciation, the day we celebrate Mary’s “fiat“–her “Yes” to Archangel Gabriel’s proposal that she become the Virgin Mother of God. Exactly nine months after the Annunciation we celebrate Christmas Day, the Feast of the Incarnation of our God in the birth of Jesus, Son of Mary, Savior of the world–thanks to Our Lady’s “yes” to Gabriel. In a clear reference to the Annunciation, this month Our Lady says, “I am with you to help you to say ‘yes’ to God and to God’s commandments with resoluteness.”
To say “yes” to God in our life is the central challenge we face. Mary’s “yes” to Gabriel set her upon a perilous path into totally uncharted territory, where the common wisdom of her culture could even lead to execution by stoning, once her pre-wedlock pregnancy was discovered. Mary voiced her great perplexity at how a virgin could possibly be with child, yet she answered the call of God by saying to Gabriel: “Let it be done to me according to your word.” Indeed, Our Lady’s teenaged “yes” to God was made with a “resoluteness” that never wavered in the frightening, anguished days that followed: amid the gossip and misunderstanding of people, the hardship of giving birth in a stable far from home, the sudden flight into Egypt as a refugee fleeing Herod’s genocide, and in the countless other trials and tribulations she suffered on the way to Calvary where she stood with her Son to the bitter end, once again saying “yes” to becoming our mother when entrusted with this task from the cross.
In our own life, how can we even begin to say “yes” to God with Our Lady’s “resoluteness“? Our “yes-es” tend to wobble and waver at the first slight breeze of discomfort or difficulty. Yet, like Mary at the Annunciation, we, too, are called “to begin a new life“–often in ways that involve dramatic change and reversals of our own personal will or expectations for our future. Such was the case with Mary when Gabriel showed up in her room! In Medjugorje, through divine grace Mary has been permitted to “mother” us in a special way for the past 36 years, giving us invaluable insight for living an ongoing “yes” to God’s will and daily call. She concludes this month’s message by saying: “You are not alone; I am with you through the grace which the Most High gives me for you and your descendants.” Wow–what a hopeful and uplifting statement for our future as a human family on this planet! Her “yes” to Jesus at Calvary has been at work for over 2,000 years, and still there is more to come!
And what has Our Lady taught us about giving our own “fiat” to God’s will in our life? She has taught us, again and again, as in this month’s Lenten/Easter message: “I am calling all of you to open your hearts to God’s mercy, to begin a new life through prayer, penance and a decision for holiness. This time of spring moves you to a new life, to a renewal, in your thoughts and hearts.” Returning to the teenage Mary’s room in Nazareth, just before Gabriel appeared, we would undoubtedly find a “Yes-in-the-making“–an enclosed garden with its ground prepared for the seed of God–a person with an OPEN HEART to God’s mercy, completely surrendered to whatever may come from the Father’s hand; a person of PRAYER who lived in the intimacy of ongoing relationship with her divine Source, whom she experienced as Love and Mercy; a person who had DECIDED FOR HOLINESS and a devout life, totally given to loving and pleasing God in every way possible; a person RENEWED DAILY by an unending conversion of thinking and feeling, through an open mind and heart wholly receptive to God’s presence and action. In our own life, to follow both Our Lady’s teaching and example is the surest way to “prepare our ground” for enabling ourselves to say “yes” to God’s call each day.
Lent means “Spring” and as Our Lady points out, in this season all of nature invites us, if we are sensitive and aware of our surroundings, to a new life: a renewal of heart-and-mind openness, receptivity, prayer, penance, and the decision for holiness. If only we will tend the inner garden of our selves as enthusiastically as our outer plots of dirt are being cleared, planted, fed and nurtured for the blossoming of Spring, we too will experience a Resurrection from the tomb of the false self with its death-dealing fears, needs and insecurities, and a glorious Risen Life with Christ–foretaste of the eternal Easter joy of heaven.
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Mirjana was the first visionary of Medjugorje to receive all ten secrets and stop seeing Our Lady daily, back in 1982. In our Blessed Mother’s annual birthday apparition and message to Mirjana on March 18, we are given lots of practical, concrete advice for living in this world. The first half of the message summarizes our human condition: the constant situation of “seeking” and “thirsting” for what we LACK–the healing and fulfilling conscious indwelling presence of Jesus Christ. Because our restless hearts are not at peace and our souls are impure from unrepented sin, we’re unable to “see the face of Jesus” in ourselves or others, though He is truly present everywhere. So Our Lady says, “My motherly desire is for your hearts to be filled with peace, and for your souls to be pure so that in the presence of my Son you could see His face.”
In so many erroneous and misguided ways, driven by the False Self, we seek the happiness and security that God alone can give. Our Lady says, “I know that you thirst for consolation, hope and protection. You, my children, consciously and unconsciously are seeking my Son.” As a mother, Our Lady knows us so thoroughly that she sees through our looking “in all the wrong places” to fill our unconscious programs for happiness based on instinctual egoic needs for safety and security, affection and esteem, power and control. She understands that in all our desperate and foolish obsessions–with material things, money, social status, power over others, personal prestige, addictive and unhealthy relationships, substance abuse, defensive armor and armaments, etc.–we are really seeking our one and only Ultimate Good, God’s indwelling Presence in our inmost “empty” center through the Spirit of the Risen Christ that is infused in all of creation.
Our Lady encourages us in our humanity, which she shared, assuring us: “I also, as I passed the time on earth, rejoiced, suffered and patiently endured pains, until my Son, in all His glory, removed them. And that is why I am saying to my Son: help them always.” Our Lady knows very well about all the forces and influences in our everyday life that bring us both joy and the afflictions of sorrow, grief, anxiety, worry, depression and anger. She felt and suffered these things with patient endurance until her resurrected and glorified Son “removed them.” In the same way, He will also remove them from us.
In the second half of Mirjana’s annual birthday message from Our Lady, we’re given a teaching on “true love” which alone “leads to eternal happiness.” Mary says, “You, my children, with true love illuminate the darkness of selfishness which all the more envelops my children.” Nothing dispels darkness except light–and we are to be this “illuminating” brightness in the midst of a world darkened by selfishness, egoism and narcissism that has forgotten how to give, to care, or to serve others. How are we to shine the light of TRUE LOVE in the world? Our Lady gives us 5 specific instructions:
- “Be generous.”
- “May both your hands and heart always be open.” (Ready to receive from God and give to all, both physically and emotionally)
- “Do not be afraid.” (“There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear.” 1 Jn 4:18)
- “Abandon yourselves to my Son with trust and hope.” (Total confidence in God!)
- “As you look towards Him, live life with LOVE,” which means to:
a) “Give oneself.”
b) “Endure.”
c) “Never judge.”
d) “Live the words of Jesus.” (Enflesh/incarnate the Gospel teaching; love even enemies)
As we move through Lent into the joy of Easter, with sincere gratitude let us receive and reflect deeply upon these two rich messages given to the world this month by Our Lady Queen of Peace in Medjugorje.
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The rational, calculating mind can never fully understand the mystery of the cross. The crucifixion of the God-Man is at the same moment the worst thing in human history and the best thing in human history. Life has a cruciform pattern. All of life is a “coincidence of opposites” (St. Bonaventure), a collision of cross-purposes; we are all filled with contradictions needing to be reconciled. The price we pay for holding together these opposites is invariably some form of “crucifixion.” Jesus himself was hung between a good thief and a bad thief, between heaven and earth, holding together both his humanity and his divinity, a male body with a feminine soul. He “reconciled all things in himself.” (Eph 2:14) Jesus is an icon of the “whole-making instinct.” Following him is not a “salvation scheme” or a means of creating some ideal social order as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world, and to love the way that God loves–which we cannot do by ourselves. The doctrine, folly and image of the cross is the great clarifier and truth-speaker for all of human history. Jesus crucified and resurrected is the whole pattern revealed, named, effected and promised for human history. The cosmic Christ is no threat to anything but separateness, illusion, domination and the imperial ego. Jesus the Christ is the ultimate threat, but first of all to Christians themselves. In the mind of Christ, all creation is divinely conceived, beloved of God, crucified, and finally reborn. In the Paschal Mystery, Jesus models the full journey and final direction of consciousness. Discover how this pattern is fulfilled in your life. — Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
“Do not be afraid. Go and tell my disciples to return to Galilee; there they will see me.“ (Matthew 28)
To return to Galilee means to re-read everything on the basis of the cross and its victory, fearlessly: Do not be afraid. To re-read everything–Jesus’ preaching, his miracles, the new community, the excitement and the defections, even the betrayal–to re-read everything starting from the end, which is a new beginning, from this supreme act of love….Today, each of us can ask: What is my Galilee? I need to remind myself, to go back and remember. Where is my Galilee?…Have I gone off on roads and paths which made me forget it? Lord, help me: tell me what my Galilee is; for you know that I want to return there to encounter you and to let myself be embraced by your mercy. Do not be afraid, do not fear, return to Galilee! The Gospel is very clear: we need to go back there, to see Jesus risen, and to become witnesses of his Resurrection. This is not to go back in time; it is not a kind of nostalgia. It is returning to our first love in order to receive the fire which Jesus has kindled in the world and to bring that fire to all people, to the very ends of the earth. Go back to Galilee, without fear!
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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
