Medjugorje Message: January 25, 2019
Dear children! Today, as a mother, I am calling you to conversion. This time is for you, little children, a time of silence and prayer. Therefore, in the warmth of your heart, may a grain of hope and faith grow and you, little children, will from day to day feel the need to pray more. Your life will become orderly and responsible. You will comprehend, little children, that you are passing here on earth and you will feel the need to be closer to God, and with love you will witness the experience of your encounter with God, which you will share with others. I am with you and am praying for you but I cannot without your ‘yes.’ Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
February 2019
Very appropriately, on the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, January 25th, Our Lady gave this beautiful message that outlines what “conversion” looks like. She begins: “Today, as a mother, I am calling you to conversion.” Our Lady does not call us to conversion as a disinterested historical figure thousands of years and miles away from us, remote in both time and space from our lived reality. No, she calls us to conversion “TODAY”—in the midst of our present life situation in the “now,” with all its particularity—its specific dramas and difficulties. And she calls us to conversion “as a mother” —as one who knows us intimately, inside and out, and who cares more deeply than anyone else about our well-being and eternal destiny. (For who cares more for any human being, in every facet and detail of their life, than the person’s mother?) That is the context of Our Lady’s call to us in Medjugorje—deeply personal and intimately involved.
She continues: “This time is for you, little children, a time of silence and prayer.” What “time” does Our Lady mean by “this time” is for us? Does she mean “this time” when she gives the monthly message and we take some moments or days to listen and reflect upon it? Does she mean “this time” as the period of 38 years (so far) when she has been appearing in Medjugorje as Queen of Peace? Does she mean “this time” as our whole lifetime on earth—the era in which we were born and are living out our span of years until death? Perhaps she means all of the above, for ALL time is ripe for conversion. And any time of conversion means “a time of silence and prayer,” for only in silent prayer can we confront the tyranny of our false self that must be dismantled for conversion of heart to happen. In January, we return to “Ordinary Time” in the liturgical calendar of the Church, after the great seasons of Advent and Christmas. Our Blessed Mother, like all mothers, is just as concerned about our conversion in “Ordinary Time” as at any other season of the year. For Our Lady, every moment of our life is “a time for us, a time of silence and prayer,” merely by the fact that, at “this time” we are ALIVE and held in existence by the grace of God who chooses to keep our hearts beating!
Our Lady continues: “Therefore, in the warmth of your heart, may a grain of hope and faith grow and you, little children, will from day to day feel the need to pray more.” Once we begin to use “this time for us” as “a time of silence and prayer,” the conversion process begins. Sitting for a few minutes each day in silent receptivity and openness to the presence and action of God, following our breath in and out, or feeling the inner beat of our pulse, we begin to experience a “warmth of our heart” in which, indeed, a “grain of hope and faith grow” —perhaps no bigger than the Gospel mustard seed—and with this comes a felt “need to pray more.” We are experiencing the Divine Indwelling Presence of God at our innermost center, the Holy Spirit of Christ residing in our soul, and we naturally want MORE of this experience “from day to day.”
What happens next in the conversion process? If we in fact give ourselves this time of prayerful silence “from day to day,” Our Lady says: “Your life will become orderly and responsible.” Wow—that’s quite a leap for most of us! And such “motherly” or “parental” language: “orderly and responsible” —the two adjectives that all mothers would like to apply to their children (or the traits they nag them to develop!). Perhaps not the two most “glamorous” or “fun” characteristics to cultivate, but who among us cannot use more “order” and “responsibility” in our life? All of us can think of areas that suffer from a lack of “order” —aspects of our character that clearly need to be more “orderly.” Whether we live in the external chaos of cluttered, jumbled, confused messiness without material order in our belongings, or in the distressing inner chaos caused by addiction to substances or relationships that wreak emotional turmoil—we SUFFER when our life is out of balance and disorderly. St. Augustine said, “Peace is the tranquility of order.” Similarly, Mary, Queen of Peace promises that conversion will make our life “orderly.”
She also says our life will become “responsible.” To be “responsible” means to be “ABLE TO RESPOND”—just as “responsibility” is the “ABILITY TO RESPOND.” At the end of each monthly message in Medjugorje, Our Lady says, “Thank you for having responded to my call.” (Apparently her call to conversion receives a response from some of us!) What about me? Do I have the right view of “responsibility“? I might pay my bills and taxes, and keep myself and family housed, clothed and fed—all good signs of “responsibility.” But am I able to respond—fully and open-heartedly—to Our Lady’s call to conversion and to the needs of the suffering world around me?
Our Lady gives us further elaboration on these traits of being “orderly” and “responsible”: “You will comprehend, little children, that you are passing here on earth and you will feel the need to be closer to God.” Here our life becomes more ORDERLY, as we begin, through “silence and prayer,” to “comprehend” our own mortality—the shortness of our life and the need to prioritize what is of ultimate importance: closeness to God above all the chaotic disorder of our lesser concerns, preoccupations and obsessions. We “comprehend” our quick and transient “passing here on earth” and take action to clean up, straighten up, organize and prioritize what really matters in our life, both externally and internally—bringing “order” to our physical, emotional and spiritual environments.
Our Lady concludes with a deeper instruction on “becoming responsible“: “With love you will witness the experience of your encounter with God, which you will share with others. I am with you and am praying for you but I cannot without your ‘yes.‘” To be “able to respond” means to witness with love our encounter with God indwelling our soul; this is the first profound “response” we express: love for God present and active within our own being—keeping us alive at this and every moment. The next movement of this “response” is: “You will share it with others” —that is, we will be able to respond to God’s loving presence by sharing that love with others. This is the truest meaning of “becoming responsible” : becoming ABLE TO RESPOND WITH SHARING LOVE.” Our lesser, superficial definitions of “responsibility” often include prescribed actions that can be done without love or care for others, in a legalistic, begrudging or obligatory way. We “do our duty” coldly, our hearts untouched by the fiery warmth of merciful compassion and lovingkindness.
But when we encounter the God who is Love in silent prayer, our response must be a “YES” —even as Our Lady said “YES” at the Annunciation, “Yes” to the overshadowing encounter with the “Spirit of the Most High” that left her pregnant with the Incarnate Word. Even as Jesus said “YES” to the Father’s will: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was not ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ but ‘yes’ has been in him. For however many are the promises of God, their Yes is in him.” (2 Cor 1:19) In the same way, Our Lady concludes, with regard to her help in our conversion: “I cannot without your ‘yes.‘” In 2019, may we renew our commitment to daily conversion of heart through silent prayer that brings us to the loving expression of an orderly and responsible “YES” to God and Our Lady in every aspect of our life.
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Our culture and society have so successfully numbed us to the truth that the contemplative life is not a luxury or quaint pastime but a matter of grave spiritual, social, and now even planetary urgency….The prayer of silence that confronts the tyranny of the false self and opens us to the transforming power of the Spirit is a moral imperative.
—Fr. Vincent Pizzuto
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God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the center of my life, and therefore I could see God in everything.
—Fr. Bede Griffiths, OSB
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Being converted is simply meeting yourself for the purpose of going to the very end of your being. Conversion means a willingness to see the truth of things and conform one’s conduct to it.
—Antonin Sertillanges, O.P.
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February 11: Our Lady of Lourdes
One of the most sure signs of a true, strong, and faithful love is to compassionate and assist the beloved in all his difficulties, labors, dangers and sicknesses of mind or body. What is there a mother will not do if her child is in need? She will spare no labor to free him….The love which Mary has for us is greater than that of all the mothers and wives in the world. With what emotions, then, of tenderest mercy will she not regard and pity our miseries, and hasten to our assistance. St. Bridget heard Christ pressing his Mother to ask some favor of him. Her heart full of compassion for us, she prayed for mercy—not however, for the chosen people alone, but for all that might ever have need of it. This request was granted her, Christ assuring her that whoever should ask mercy through her intercession should obtain it. She is the Treasurer and Dispenser of the mercies of God: they are all placed in her hands. She is the Queen and Mother of Mercy; she is mercy itself.
—Dom Roberto, Er. Cam.
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February 14: St. Valentine’s Day
Saints satisfy our human need for particular people who move us and become very important to us. It is as if something in us knows that we are ultimately made for one person, that all of our expectations are centered on one person. If I place these expectations on mother or father or spouse or friend, and realize that they cannot fulfill them, life requires that I mourn the necessary deaths of my unrealistic images of the saints and souls in my life. My hope for all whom I have loved, and who have loved me, is that we find healing for our inevitable wounds of mutual disappointment, as we joyfully cast our crowns before the One whom we were seeking from the beginning, and who, through souls we hold dear, was always seeking us.
—Fr. Richard Veras
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Pro-Life Reflection
It astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies. We cannot uncritically ally ourselves with someone with whom we share the policy goal of ending abortion. The pro-life movement began with peace activists who saw their opposition to abortion as a natural extension of opposition to all forms of violence. While the Church’s opposition to abortion has been steadfast, it has become a stand-alone issue for many and has become disconnected to other life issues of human dignity. For example, the recent bishops’ pastoral letter on racism describes racism as a “life” issue: that insight should enter school curriculums. The pro-life movement must resist aligning itself with movements that include a politics of hate. The pro-life movement claims that it wants more than the policy change of making abortion illegal, and aims to make it unthinkable. The association of our young people with racist acts and a politics of hate must also become unthinkable.
—Bishop John Stowe, OFM (Lexington, Kentucky)
You have heard that it was said “You shall not kill; and whoever kills is liable to judgment.” But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment….and whoever says “You fool” [disrespects, derides, denounces or denigrates others] will be liable to fiery Gehenna.”
—Jesus (Mt 5:21)
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
We know that the father of lies, the devil, prefers a community divided and bickering. This is the criteria to divide people: The builders of bridges and the builders of walls; those builders of walls sow fear and look to divide people. What do you want to be? Building walls to decrease crime–such measures are driven by fear. It is the fear that makes us crazy, drives divisions and creates an us-versus-them mentality. Overcoming these fears will require the church to do more than just welcome immigrants. The bishops must create dialogue to help overcome fears and suspicions that live in the imaginations of people. Division creates an invisible wall. This attitude spoils everything, because it erects an invisible wall that makes people think that, if we marginalize, separate and isolate others, all our problems will magically be solved. Instead of the cycle of backbiting and fighting on the issue, communities should work to create opportunities and change.
(from recent remarks to World Youth Day in Panama)
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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
