Medjugorje Message: January 25, 2018
Dear children! May this time be for you a time of prayer, so that the Holy Spirit, through prayer, may descend upon you and give you conversion. Open your hearts and read the Sacred Scripture, that through the testimonies you also may be closer to God. Above everything, little children, seek God and the things of God and leave earthly ones to the earth, because Satan is attracting you to the dust and sin. You are called to holiness and created for Heaven: therefore, seek Heaven and the things of Heaven. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
February 2018
Our Lady’s message this month is a sobering “reality check” as we head into the penitential season of Lent on February 14th. The 40-day discipline of Lent, modeled upon our Lord’s 40 days in the desert confronting the Satanic temptations of our ego-ridden human condition, is aimed above all at “conversion“—a change of direction. This means transformation from our merely human animal instincts and egocentricity to the love and compassion that form the “Divine DNA” of the children of God and of those who are “in Christ,” created in his image.
The primary means through which we may come to experience this radical, much-needed change in our lives is PRAYER. Our Lady says: “May this time be for you a time of prayer, so that the Holy Spirit, through prayer, may descend upon you and give you conversion.” This image of the Holy Spirit “descending” upon us hearkens back to the Feast of Pentecost when Mary and the apostles were praying in the Upper Room. Today, just as on that Pentecost day, the Holy Spirit still “descends” upon us when we PRAY, for PRAYER brings help from “above,” from higher realms of higher energy and higher power for change than our human abilities alone can possibly accomplish.
Like everything else, conversion is a GIFT of God through the Holy Spirit, whom Our Lady says “gives“ it to us when we pray. What sort of prayer is best for inviting this power of the Holy Spirit to “descend” upon us and “give” us conversion? Our prayer may take many different forms, but above all, it needs to include an ATTITUDE of passive openness and receptivity animated by deep desire for God. Fr. Donald Haggerty writes: “This genuine passivity is an active inward disposition of receptive attentiveness and love toward God…an expectant yearning present in the soul…and patient expectation that accompanies a receptive disposition. Desire in the soul for God remains poised and taut…without satiation….The passivity consists in remaining still, waiting, anticipating the unseen presence that will draw our soul and incline us to want nothing but to give ourselves to him…actively receptive to the desire to love in return for love.”
This is a description of our ATTITUDE in prayer and how it draws down from heaven the gift of conversion: the transformation from wanting our own “self-will run riot“ to wanting God’s will above all else. The qualities of attentive receptivity and patiently expectant yearning for God are those of Christ in the desert of temptation. These traits of alert, wakeful, attentive, expectant openness and receptivity, patiently waiting upon and anticipating God’s own Presence and Action within our soul, are dispositions we can bring to ANY type of prayer: the rosary, the Mass, Eucharistic adoration, Lectio Divina with scripture, charismatic praise and worship, spontaneous exclamations to God throughout the day, or silent meditation and contemplation.
Our Lady’s message continues: “Open your hearts and read the Sacred Scripture, that through the testimonies you also may be closer to God.” Notice that Our Lady underscores the “heart,” not the “head,” focusing upon our approach to Bible reading with an “open heart” rather than merely an academic or intellectual mastery of its text. For the purposes of conversion, our reading of Sacred Scripture needs to be not merely “informational,” but “transformational.” “Informational” reading tries to cover a quantity of material in order to conquer the data—to grasp, control, and master the text with a problem-solving or solution-seeking mentality of “having the right answers,” with the biblical text as the object of our analysis, historical-critical method, or moral judgment-making. This is NOT the approach to which Our Lady is calling us today!
She is inviting us to a “transformational” reading of Sacred Scripture through an “open heart” that is humble, detached, receptive and loving—ready to read a few brief lines in great depth, and be CHANGED BY THEM. This means allowing the “testimonies” of the biblical authors’ own experience to reveal multiple layers of meaning to us. Instead of “mastering” the text as an object, we allow the text as subject to master us; we are the “object” being shaped and formed by its truth. By referring to the Sacred Scripture as “testimonies” (rather than documents, writings, or reports), Our Lady reminds us that each person’s LIVED HUMAN EXPERIENCE is the primary meeting place with God, and from the scriptural writers who gave “testimony” to their lived experience, we may also benefit (“be closer to God”) from hearing their witness.
As important as Sacred Scripture is, Our Lady’s call in Medjugorje is not “Read, read, read!” but “Pray, pray, pray!” This call to prayer is a call to experience God and Jesus Christ for ourselves, through a personal, intimate encounter. It is a call to the primacy of the INNER AUTHORITY of experience that will lead to conversion, along with the OUTER AUTHORITIES of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition given by God to the Church for the same purpose. Thus, Our Lady’s call to PRAYER is a call to the Inner Authority of Experiencing the Divine Indwelling Presence of God at our center.
Our Lady concludes by saying: “Above everything, little children, seek God and the things of God and leave earthly ones to the earth, because Satan is attracting you to the dust and sin. You are called to holiness and created for Heaven; therefore seek Heaven and the things of Heaven.” Again we may see parallels here with the Gospel account of Jesus in the 40-day desert of temptation, confronting the Satanic attraction “to the dust and sin.” (The very word “dust” reminds us of Ash Wednesday and the ominous declaration of our impending return to the dust of the earth through physical death.) Indeed, the season of Lent in its disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving is geared to our “seeking God and the things of God, Heaven and the things of Heaven” and “leaving earthly things to the earth.”
But how are we to understand the distinction? The created earth itself is beautiful and blessed by God, but the “earthly things” that must be “left to the earth” as dead and lifeless are the parts of ourselves that are not “real”—not part of what God created in His own image. This means that the things of our human ego or False Self must be left behind. We can consciously leave them behind now through conversion and transformation of life, for when we die they will surely be left in the DUST as unfit for the afterlife of Heaven.
In order to make a good and spiritually fruitful Lent, we need to take a personal “inventory” of discerning how, in our own life, “Satan is attracting us to the dust and sin.” The classic desert temptations that Our Lord confronted are a universal starting-place: the three Satanic appeals to our egoic/False Self “programs for happiness” based on Safety and Security, Affection and Esteem, and Power and Control. These three centers form the “operating system” of our fallen human condition; they rely upon the “things of the earth” and our own self-sufficiency to get them, rather than relying on “God and the things of God, Heaven and the things of Heaven” for our happiness.
As Lent approaches, we each might take some time to ask: 1) How does a fearful drive for “safety and security” manifest in my life, rather than a radical trust and faith in God to keep me safe and sound? 2) How does a desperate grasping for the “affection and esteem” of other people manifest in my life, rather than an openness of love and compassion for all with confidence in God’s great love for me? 3) How does an extreme need for “power and control” manifest in my life, rather than a peaceful acceptance of Reality as within the providential hands of a loving God who works all things toward our highest good?
In answering these three questions honestly, with concrete examples from our personal life, we will—like Jesus in the Judean desert—confront the Satanic temptations that are “attracting us to the dust and sin.” But, Our Lady says, “You are called to holiness and created for Heaven.” After taking our personal inventory, we turn to PRAYER in an attitude of humble, patient, trusting, open receptivity to the Divine Presence and action in our soul—allowing and consenting to the formation provided by the Holy Spirit who conforms us, even now, to the wholeness and holiness of eternal life with God.
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A Lenten “Set-Aside” Prayer
God, please help me SET ASIDE everything I think I know
about myself, the Bible, the Church, the world, and You—
that I may have an OPEN MIND and a NEW EXPERIENCE
of all these things.
Please let me see Your Heart and Your Truth
through the power of the Holy Spirit.
In Christ Jesus our Lord, amen.
—adapted from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
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The price for real transformation is high. It means that we have to change our loyalties from power, success, money, ego, and control to the imitation of a Vulnerable God where servanthood, surrender, and simplicity reign.
When we say, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev 22:20) or “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:3), we are actually announcing our commitment to Jesus’ upside-down world where “the last are first and the first are last” (Mt 20:16) over any other power system or frame of reference. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not! If Jesus is Lord, then the economy and stock market are not! If Jesus is Lord, then my house, possessions, country, and job are not! If Jesus is Lord, then I am not!
The implication was obvious to first-century members of the Roman Empire because the phrase “Caesar is Lord” was the empire’s loyalty test and political bumper sticker. Early Christians changed “parties” when they welcomed Jesus as Lord instead of the Roman emperor as their savior. A lot of us have still not changed parties.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space and the acquisition of things becomes our sole concern. —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Many an individual has turned from the mean, personal, acquisitive point of view to one that sees society as a whole and works for its benefit. If there has been such a change in one person, there can be the same change in many. —Mahatma Gandhi
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Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. —Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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With ideologies clashing and nihilism on the rise, the time is coming for a creative Christianity. Christianity is not an ideology. Jesus did not bring a “message” but rather the good news of a connection that connects us directly to the power of life-transformation available in every now-moment. We need a renewal, a new kind of holiness—universal, Spirit-driven, but free of divisive ideologies. Any hell is always our own human construction, man-made. Christianity cannot idolize institutions or hierarchies of power, which are only temporary instruments of a greater cause, at best. At worst, they are just projections of collective egoism. Egoism clings to differences rather than embracing shared ground. —Oliver Clement
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
To be attracted by power, by grandeur, by appearances, is tragically human. It is a great temptation that tries to insinuate itself everywhere. But to give oneself to others, eliminating distances, dwelling in littleness and living the reality of one’s everyday life: this is exquisitely divine.
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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
