Medjugorje Message: November 25, 2021
Dear children! I am with you in this time of mercy and I am calling all of you to be carriers of peace and love in this world where, through me, little children, God is calling you to be prayer and love, and an expression of Heaven here on earth. May your hearts be filled with joy and faith in God; that, little children, you may have complete trust in His holy will. That is why I am with you, because He, the Most High, is sending me among you to encourage you to hope; and you will be peacemakers in this peaceless world. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
December 2021
As we enter into the “liminal space-time” of Advent and Our Lady’s message, it may be helpful to recall what Mary herself was experiencing in the weeks preceding the Bethlehem manger event, in the months before she bore the Christ, our Divine Savior, into the world. “Liminal” refers to a “threshold” experience: being on the cusp of a big change or transition, entering into a different dimension of space or time; standing on one or both sides of a borderline into newness. “Liminal” refers to an often ambiguous or disorienting state where imminent future happenings and ways of being are only partially understood or intuited; when things are unclear and filled with mystery, yet also charged with hope and anticipation as one lives in the tension of paradox between the “already” and the “not-yet.” Pregnancy is always “liminal.”
We experience Advent as “liminal space-time” through the interplay of winter’s darkness and light in the natural world of shorter days, longer night hours, and the slow, gradual lighting of our four Advent candles during these “preparation” weeks of December as we, groping in the dark, inch toward the illumination of Christmas and “the light that enlightens every person coming into the world.” (John 1:9)
We can perceive that, 2,000 years ago, having lived through this frightening ultimate “liminality” of being unwed, virginal and inexplicably pregnant with the Word made flesh, Our Lady must now profoundly and deeply understand the anxiety, disorientation, and confusion of our own predicament in the present time—grasping only partially, as we do, that we are at the threshold of a new era of unavoidable change (of uncertain success) as a human species mired in a deadly mix of greed, hatred, violence and division which will need to be transcended and overcome in order for us to survive on our planet earth.
And this is precisely WHY Our Lady has come to Medjugorje for these past 40 years. Like the Advent season itself, she says, “I am with you in this time of mercy and I am calling all of you to be carriers of peace and love in this world where, through me, little children, God is calling you to be prayer and love, and an expression of Heaven here on earth.” Indeed, Advent is a “time of mercy” —a period of wakefulness, silent stillness, introspective contemplation, and seeking the LIGHT of Truth and Reality amidst the obscuring darkness of our “peaceless world” of sinful selfishness and culture wars.
Just as Our Lady was called through Gabriel’s Annunciation to CARRY the Christ child in her womb, we are now being called through Mary “to be CARRIERS of peace and love in this world.” Pregnant with the Christ-child of today—the Holy Spirit of peace and love to be born into our dark, degraded, disintegrating civilization—we are told by Our Lady: “God is calling you to BE prayer and love, and an expression of Heaven here on earth.” Again using the verb “to BE,” Our Lady makes it clear that our call is from GOD: an urgent summons to our sonship/daughterhood; to step into our full identity and total personhood as the Mystical Body of Christ—“an expression of Heaven here on earth” —each one of us functioning as another “Incarnate Word of God” in our world. What a high and lofty calling, far beyond our comprehension and ability! How can I possibly “BE” the peace, prayer and love which is “an expression of Heaven here on earth” ?
Next, Our Lady tells us exactly what Heaven is like, as she reveals how we can in fact BE its “expression” here and now: “May your hearts be filled with joy and faith in God; that you may have complete trust in His holy will.” This is HEAVEN in a nutshell! Just as Jesus slept peacefully in the storm-tossed boat at sea while the apostles panicked in extreme fear and doubt, we are to live our days with “hearts filled with joy and faith in God” and with “complete trust in His holy will”—even in the midst of worldly chaos and fear-driven misbehavior all around us. We are to “BE” Jesus relaxing in the boat, completely trusting Divine Providence!
In other words, we are called to live as if we are already in Heaven, where “joy, faith in God, and complete trust in His holy will” are foregone conclusions and “no-brainers.” In Heaven, there will be no question of our “safety and security,” of our being “loved and esteemed,” or of our having some sort of “power and control.” These three driving forces of our fallen human condition—fueling our fears, anxieties, conflicts, distress, and neurotic psychology—will be completely NON-EXISTENT!
But how can one possibly live this way, here and now? In his earthly life, Jesus constantly affirmed—and the saints’ lives have proven—that even in this fallen world, we CAN daily experience the Gospel truth that our “FAITH will save us.” By the same token, Christ constantly rebuked his disciples and others for being “ye of little faith,” repeatedly teaching that “Fear is useless; what is needed is TRUST,” and that “faith the size of a mustard seed” can move mountains and do miracles. This radical, uncompromising TRUST in God’s holy will as it manifests each moment will be our EXPRESSION OF HEAVEN HERE ON EARTH.
Our Lady concludes her Advent message by saying: “That is why I am with you, because He, the Most High, is sending me among you to encourage you to hope; and you will be peacemakers in this peaceless world.” Truly this is a “time of mercy” as the Most High God sees our weariness and distress of these past years of deadly pandemic, global ecological crisis, the polarization of our whole culture into the regressive “us vs. them” dualistic conflicts of low-level consciousness, driven by egoic greed, fueled by media manipulation, and the utter tyranny of technology over us. Seeing all this, the “Most High” has sent Our Lady, Queen of Peace, “to encourage us to hope.” How desperately we need this HOPE today! With it, we can begin afresh to answer the Divine calling to inhabit our full identity as children of God and “expressions of Heaven here on earth.”
In our doing so—by BEING peace, love, prayer, joy, faith in God, and trust in the Divine will—Our Lady promises that the world will actually be changed, for “you will be peacemakers in this peaceless world.” This is her end-game: the Queen of Peace was indeed sent, in Medjugorje, to bring to our peaceless world “Peace, peace, peace! Only peace!”—just as she proclaimed in her very first words to us in 1981. Like the dawning light gradually breaking through the darkness of our 21st century “liminal space-time,” the advent of this heavenly miracle of transformation happens one converted heart at a time. The four candles on our Advent wreath symbolize Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace—all of which are highlighted in Our Lady’s Advent message. May we take each sacred symbol deeply into our heart as we light each week’s holy candle.
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Empty yourself. Sit quietly, content with the grace of God.
—St. Romuald
The purpose of silence is to break through the crust of the false self.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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The season of Advent has a way of drawing us inward, attuned to a deeper listening, more vigilant with contemplative seeing. Advent is a season of the human spirit and the human heart. It’s as though the journey of the Earth in her rotation around the Sun kindles in our consciousness deeply embedded embers of memory and longing. The Advent season, situated between the Fall equinox and the Winter Solstice, is a time when Earth is genuflecting to the shadow cast by her star, and we too must be willing to bend and enter the shadows cast by the lengthening darkness, abiding in the “thin places” pregnant with grace and God, wondering and awaiting what is yet to emerge. Advent is a journey into “the thin places” where we are called to encounter the Divine in ways that are illuminative, spacious, mystical, and new.
—Sr. Arlene Flaherty, OP
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December 8: MARY, the Immaculate Conception
Vatican II describes Mary as embracing God’s will with a “full heart and impeded by no sin.” The fullness of her sinless heart enabled her to offer a fully available YES to the angel, and the grace of her Immaculate Conception reveals God’s desire to engage our freedom and propose a true relationship of love to each of us. The communion God offers through the Incarnation of Jesus easily encounters resistance through pride, shame, or fear. We hesitate to admit our poverty, or acknowledge our sin, or entrust ourselves to the love revealed in Christ. Our reticence is like Adam and Eve hiding from God in the garden.
But Mary, unhindered by the suspicion of love which comes from sin, is enabled by God to respond to his invitation with a YES which is totally pure and completely free. And her YES allows the Word to take flesh and dwell among us. Mary, our Mother, allows Jesus to enter into our space and time so that he can accompany us with merciful patience. He offers us the time we need for our hearts to be purified and to approximate the free YES of our Mother, and, with her, to bear Jesus to the world.
—Fr. Richard Veras
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The world desperately needs people, free of cultural illusions, who are undertaking a dedicated exploration of true reality, not just to know the material nature of things, but also to know the very Source of everything that exists. An unfolding contemplative practice eventually becomes total receptivity. In that receptivity, one is aware of silence that is becoming an irresistible attraction. Silence leads to stillness; stillness leads to surrender. While this doesn’t happen every time we sit down to pray, interior silence gradually opens to an inner spaciousness that is alive….emptiness that is beginning to be filled with a Presence. Contemplation occurs when interior silence morphs into Presence. This Presence, once established in our inmost being, might be called spaciousness…a certain vibrancy and aliveness. You’re awake. But awake to what, you don’t know…something which is absolutely marvelous, totally generous, with increasing tenderness, sweetness, and intimacy.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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Western civilization appears to be in a state of spiritual emergency. Religion must create a hopeful, symbolic universe that settles and liberates the human soul, holding many parts together in one Totality. But we no longer live in such a world. The cosmic egg has broken. The result is polarization at every level. The rifts and chasms between good people seem impossible to bridge. Groups are unable to respect one another, engage in civil dialogue, act in justice for the common good, or honor the human struggle and tragic nature of life.
Catholic Christianity proclaimed this symbolic pattern as the Paschal Mystery: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!” The Eucharistic ritual continues to name this pattern as THE mystery of faith, but a people obsessed with progress, consumption, and the quick-fix no longer has the software to decode the message. Now it is our responsibility together to mend the breach. But mere creedal religion blocks the journey into grief, into the Mystery, the Paradox, ecstasy, universal compassion, and the Universal Christ.
Jesus the Christ still stands as the perfect mediator of all that is human and good. The cross stands as the intersection of opposites between heaven and earth, divine and human, inner and outer. The price of that intersection—that something must always die in order for something else to live—feels tragic, but such is the pattern that connects all things.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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We are living at a critical moment of history. Will we truly awaken to the sacredness of every person regardless of gender, race, or religion? Holders of power, both political and religious, are obstructing this work, and some are even denying the need for it. But they cannot destroy the vision of sacredness that has welled up again and again over the centuries and is now demanding our attention. There is hope. It is based on our deepest knowing, that every human being is sacred, body and soul.
We need courage, strength of heart, if we are to be part of the holy work of reawakening to the sacredness of matter…often in the more humble and unnoticed realms of family life and work, in how we personally behave with one another, how we heat our houses, or how we resource and prepare our food. Many of us today in the Western world are aware that the old order is not working—politically, socially, environmentally, religiously. Countless numbers have already lifted anchor and are sailing out of the harbor of our homeland…leaving the comfort of the familiar in order to seek resurrection, new beginnings.
—John Philip Newell
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The Christian sets his eyes on a single point—God—and lets everything else assume a peripheral place in life. There is no concentration on self or what is going on in our ticker-tape heads; we do not even concentrate on getting rid of things in ourselves. Somehow the single focus on God takes care of all that, dumps out what does not fit and what is incompatible. This works not only in times of prayer but also in the whole of our daily affairs.
—Bernadette Roberts
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To make our way toward our eternal home with God, the spiritual task of the second half of life is to shed many of the things we legitimately acquired and attached ourselves to during the first half of life. From what do we need to detach ourselves?
First and most importantly, from our wounds and anger. The foremost spiritual task is to forgive—others, ourselves, life, God. By midlife we are all wounded, with disappointment and anger inside. We must not die bitter, unready for the heavenly banquet.
Second, we need to detach ourselves from the need to possess, achieve, and be the center of attention. The task is now to become the quiet, blessing elder who is happy simply watching the young grow.
Third, we need to learn how to say goodbye to the earth and our loved ones, so that, just as we gave our lives for those we love in our youthful strength, we can now give our deaths, too, as a final gift.
Fourth, we need to let go of sophistication to become simple, holy old fools, whose only message is God’s love for all.
Finally, we need to immerse ourselves increasingly in the language of silence, the language of heaven, beginning to understand and enter that language.
—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
Advent: the period which every year introduces us to Christmas and its Mystery. This year too its lights will be subdued due to the consequences of the pandemic, which still weighs on our time. All the more reason we are called to examine ourselves and not to lose hope. The feast of the Birth of Christ does not clash with the trial we are experiencing, because it is the feast of compassion, of tenderness par excellence. Its beauty is humble and full of human warmth.
I like to repeat the words of St. Paul VI: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to fall into despair.” What kind of beauty? Not the false one made up of appearance and earthly wealth, which is empty and generates emptiness. No. But that beauty of a God who became flesh, that of faces, of stories; that of the creatures who form our common home and who—as St. Francis teaches us—participate in the praise of the Most High.
The beauty of Christmas shines through in the sharing of small gestures of concrete love. It is not alienating, not superficial, not evasive; on the contrary, it widens the heart, opens it to give freely the gift of self.
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Mark Your Calendar [ai1ec view=”agenda”]
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
