Medjugorje Message: January 25, 2021
Dear children! I am calling you at this time to prayer, fasting and renunciation, that you may be stronger in faith. This is a time of awakening and of giving birth. As nature which gives itself, you also, little children, ponder how much you have received. Be joyful bearers of peace and love that it may be good for you on earth. Yearn for Heaven; and in Heaven there is no sorrow or hatred. That is why, little children, decide anew for conversion and let holiness begin to reign in your life. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
February 2021
This year, Ash Wednesday falls on February 17th, and our Lenten message from Medjugorje calls us to the classic spiritual practices of this penitential season: “prayer, fasting and renunciation.” Our Lady explains why we are called to these practices: “that you may be stronger in faith.” Indeed, the discipline of Lenten penance is not intended to chastise, punish, weaken, depress, or subjugate us. Rather, it is a beautiful yearly grace period for broadening, deepening and strengthening our spirituality and building up our “faith muscles” that can atrophy into flabbiness and fatigue—especially throughout the long siege of deadly pandemic and violently divisive national politics we have all been through.
FAITH is defined in sacred scripture as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1) It is the confident assurance of heart and certain conviction of mind about the ultimate reality of God and the Gospel promises of Christ—even when this Truth is not visibly apparent via our senses or the seemingly contradictory data of outward circumstances. Faith is an inner trust that Divine Providence is at work in its own way despite all appearances to the contrary. Faith is thus a complete counterpoint, opposite, and antidote to FEAR.
Yet in the past year, FEAR has crept into our hearts and minds like a stealth bomber, as we’ve suffered the ravages of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic and the relentless drama, chaos and hateful division within our “one nation under God.” Riddled with grief for the huge loss of life to coronavirus, anxiety for its ongoing threat (until widespread vaccination and “herd immunity” is achieved), and anger about the continuing intransigence of our political polarization with its exhausting daily battles—we are challenged by FEAR on so many levels: individually and communally; physically, emotionally and spiritually. But if FAITH is the antidote to fear, then the season of Lent is coming right on time—a season of welcome relief when “prayer, fasting and renunciation” enable us to “be stronger in the faith” that overcomes fear. How so?
PRAYER strengthens our faith through daily conscious contact with the Divine Indwelling Presence at our inmost soul-center, replacing our scary imaginings of dangerous “what-if’s” with the “peace that surpasses all understanding” as we surrender our fears by “letting go and letting God” through rosaries, Masses, Eucharistic adoration, silent meditation, litanies of gratitude, etc.
FASTING strengthens our faith by showing us how much we can actually “do without” to our great benefit, as God sustains us interiorly with more than enough to meet our needs while we passively leave untouched or unobtained such things as: excessive/unhealthy food, alcohol, nicotine, recreational drugs, negative/uncharitable influences in television, social media, reading material, internet surfing, unnecessary shopping/ consumeristic extras, and many other things outside of ourselves that “call to us” for engagement and participation—but to which we have the option of saying, fearlessly, “No thank you,” as we rely on God alone.
RENUNCIATION strengthens our faith through exerting our inner spiritual power to actively sacrifice self in union with the crucified, sacrificial love of Christ as we voluntarily relinquish and GIVE—from our own inner and outer resources—to others who are in need, thus building up the Body of Christ by our own deliberate self-emptying. We actively renounce sensory comfort and convenience by offering our willing presence and labor to those in need of physical help; we actively renounce greed and the fearful insecurity of hoarding by giving from our store of money, food and clothing; we actively renounce unloving attitudes of resentment, anger and bitterness by offering forgiveness, mercy and compassion to those who have hurt us; we actively renounce pride, jealousy and arrogant superiority by freely giving praise, supportive encouragement and gratitude for others’ success and good works.
Thus in fasting we passively abstain, declining to ADD to ourselves things that are superfluous or unnecessary, relying instead on God alone; while in renunciation we actively give, from our own supply of personal goods, what is needed by others for the common good of the Body of Christ—whether it be physical, emotional or spiritual “alms.”
The word “Lent” means “Spring,” and Our Lady goes on to illuminate how the spiritual season of Lent reflects the earthly season of Spring in nature. Indeed, as part of Great Nature, our lives as human beings are truly lived in tandem and parallel to the movements of the cycle of earth’s seasons, from birth to death. Referring to both “Lent” and “Spring,” Our Lady says: “This is a time of awakening and of giving birth. As nature gives itself, you also, little children, ponder how much you have received.“
In these first few months of 2021, as we await the return of grasses, flowers and fruits, the “greening” of our brown winter landscape, we know that a lot is invisibly happening underground, in the darkness of the earth’s soil germinating new life that will soon break through the surface when the warm spring sun beckons the buds out of their hibernation—much as a beautiful human baby emerges after nine months’ gestation in the dark womb to finally and joyfully be seen by the world.
Just as nature prepares throughout winter, in its dark silent way, for the coming burst of spring, Our Lady says that we, also, should “ponder how much we have received.” This “pondering” —like Mary’s “pondering these things in her heart” for 30 years while raising her son Jesus toward his public ministry—is also our essential spiritual journey during Lent and throughout our whole life as Christians.
The winter earth is now “pondering” the hidden seeds within its womb, preparing for their coming emergence into new life in March and April. All that will soon burst forth in abundant manifestation and glory was first “received” into the earth by a seed falling to the ground in death. “For unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain. But if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (Jn 12:24) Likewise, during the penitential season of Lent, we “ponder” the death that will bear the fruit of new life at Easter—both in the resurrection of Jesus and in our own rising to eternal life after the necessary dying to self that must take place on our spiritual journey.
“Pondering how much we have received” in the Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ; in the Gospel (Good News) of our own eternal life and its never-ending spring in Heaven, beyond the reach of suffering and death; and in the sacraments of the Church through which the forgiveness of sin (the canceling of our karmic debt) is transmitted to us and realized in daily life—all of these many gifts are a generous outpouring of Divine peace and love that we experience during Lent as “a time of awakening” to “how much we have received.”
In response, during Lent we practice the “prayer, fasting and renunciation” that is a conscious “dying to self” so that these generous seeds “received” can “fall to the ground” like a grain of wheat, thus bearing much fruit in what we celebrate at Easter: the resurrection to Heaven’s eternity of BOTH Jesus and ourselves.
Our Lady says, “Be joyful bearers of peace and love that it may be good for you on earth. Yearn for Heaven; and in Heaven there is no sorrow or hatred. That is why, little children, decide anew for conversion and let holiness begin to reign in your life.” In these closing lines of Our Lady’s message, she lays out the Divine Logic of our life: First, we have “received” the generous seed of God’s providence that—through our self-emptying practice of “ego death” in prayer, fasting and renunciation—germinates and bears the good fruits of “peace and love.”
Our Lady reminds us to “be joyful bearers” of this peace and love in our daily life, “that it may be good for you on earth.” Here she is reminding us that a follower of Jesus Christ is repelled by all discord, fighting, and hatred, and seeks to bring only the light of “peace and love” into the darkness of division and conflicting factions that now plague our world in even more damaging ways than the viral plague of Covid.
Secondly, we are to “yearn for Heaven” —keeping our eyes fixed on the prize of Easter resurrection and eternal life—and this goal is ultimate LIBERATION from our earthly bondage, for “in Heaven there is no sorrow or hatred.” Finally, Our Lady concludes, “That is why” we must “decide anew for conversion and let holiness begin to reign in our life.” If we truly “yearn for Heaven” and deeply understand, in both heart and mind, that Heaven holds NO sorrow or hatred, then our earthly life must reflect this yearning for “peace and love” by our bearing them joyfully in our daily life, as we bring this “Heaven” to our little corner of the world in every way possible, moment by moment. Then, as St. Catherine of Siena said, “All the way to heaven is heaven.”
For this to happen, each day we must “decide anew for conversion” —turning away from every unpeaceful, unloving, disrespectful, discordant, negative, judgmental, critical, divisive, separating, alienating, resentful, angry, domineering, controlling, envious, arrogant, and sadly hurtful thing that we think, say, and do. Instead, we must “let holiness begin to reign” in our daily life as we stop “taking the bait” of dualistic divisiveness and factionalism offered to us constantly in our politics and other arenas of violent conflict. Instead, we must permit the nondual consciousness of the ONENESS of our shared life as human beings—each made in the image of the same God/Source/Creator/ Parent—to overshadow and transcend all of our differences and distinctions. May the overriding “holiness” of PEACE and LOVE “begin to reign” on Planet Earth this Lenten season!
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We “possess” God in proportion as we realize ourselves to be possessed by God in the inmost depths of our being. Meditation or “prayer of the heart” is the active effort we make to keep our hearts open so that we may be enlightened by God and filled with this realization of our true relation to God. The classic form of meditation is invocation of the name of Jesus in the heart emptied of images and cares.
—Thomas Merton
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The less you understand, the closer you get to God. Prayer will teach you that God is nearer to you than you are to yourself. After stepping through the narrow doorway where you can bring nothing with you, enter the cave of your heart that contains God, whom the universe cannot hold. In prayer, then, you will find peace, light, and joy. Prayer will be the source of your love and the strength of your life. To enlighten your mind, pray. To discern your path, pray. To unify your being, pray. To be incorporated into Christ, pray; you no longer live but Christ lives in you.
—Fr. Pierre-Marie Delfieux, FMJ
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Deep in us all is the will to power, the will to control the world, to control people in order to serve our own ends….The way to God for all of us requires on our part an unselfish generosity in the efforts we must make towards accepting the work of God, who reaches down to our entrails to wrest us from our selfish selves…to bring us to an awareness and acceptance of our poverty, which is the essential condition of our being able to receive God, and the petty frustrations, restrictions, humiliations of not being in control of our world are God’s chosen channel into the soul. The one who has learned to bow his head, to accept the yoke, knows what freedom is. No one who has read the Gospel seriously can think that this counsel of Jesus means a passive, cowardly “I’m a doormat-walk over me” attitude. He always remains our example. He accepted as none other the essential poverty of the human condition. Only living faith can see this. It means really embracing Jesus.
—Sr. Ruth Burrows, OCD
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What all asceticism aims at is the destruction of the obsessive concentration on self. It aims at letting us be seized, invaded, and carried away by the generosity of God’s life, the life which is love. It is the conflict between this love and the tendency in all of us which has caused our own flesh, and the world with it, to curve inwards. It is this tendency that brought death into the world and all the pangs leading up to it….Asceticism only seems to break us in order to raise us up and open our hearts. In everything the Christian life will be marked by a continually expanding rhythm. When in one sense the Christian no longer has anything, in another he has everything. But as long as one lives, everything must continually be given up again, only to be found once more. The process goes on until we are ready for the total abandonment of death—that is, for the fullness of the resurrection.
—Fr. Louis Bouyer
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The blessing which begins and closes the Eucharist takes the form of a cross. Can the cross be a blessing? “Cursed be the one who hangs from a tree,” says the Law. (Dt 21:23) The cross in itself is not a blessing but an awful torture. But the sacrifice for love is fruitful. For this reason the cross of Christ is the fountain or riverbed of blessing. The form of the cross given as blessing reminds us that the fruitfulness that springs from the Eucharist passes through the sacrifice of egoism, that the service of others is the source of fruitfulness blessed by God.
—Fr. Luis Alonso-Schoekel, SJ
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February 11: Our Lady of Lourdes
Divine love unites the child of Mary to Jesus, and their two hearts make but one—to love, suffer and obey. Always love what God wills. Will it always. Desire it always. Do it always. It is the greatest secret of perfection, the key of paradise, the foretaste of the saints’ peace! When your will is only the will of God, then your heart and mine will form but one and the same heart. Each day, learn to say… “Behold your servant, O my God, ready to undertake all, to give all, as long as your holy will is done in me, and everywhere on earth.” Oh, may it be done to me according to your word. Oh Mother, may I begin here below, a soul united to your soul, glorifying the Lord by this homage of perfect submission. Yes to God. In everything and everywhere, yes.
—St. Bernadette Soubirous, visionary of Lourdes, France
(d. 1879, her body remains incorrupt)
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In Luke’s Gospel we are told that on the night before his death Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples. There he invited them to pray with him as he struggled to find strength to face his death; but, as Luke adds, while he sweated blood, he was “a stone’s throw away” from them. How far is a stone’s throw? It’s distance enough to leave you in a place where no one can reach you. Just as we come out of the womb alone, we leave this earth alone. Jesus faced his death knowing that he was loved by others but also knowing that in the face of death he was entering a place where he was deeply and utterly alone.
And this emphasis on aloneness is in fact one of the major points within the Passion narratives. In describing Jesus’ death, perhaps more than anything else, the Gospels want us to focus on his aloneness, his abandonment, his being a stone’s throw away from everyone. Many of us have seen the famous film by Mel Gibson, The Passion of the Christ. While the film is a worthy piece of art, it is more distracting than beneficial in terms of helping us understand Jesus’ passion. Why? Because the film so strongly emphasizes the physical suffering of Jesus, which is precisely what the Gospel accounts don’t do. Rather the Gospels deliberately understate what Jesus had to endure physically because they want us to focus on something else—namely, his moral and emotional suffering, particularly his sense of abandonment, aloneness, the absence of any deep human support, intensified by the seeming absence of God.
And it is within that utter aloneness that Jesus has to continue to give himself over in trust, love, forgiveness, and faith. It’s easy to believe in love when we feel loved; to forgive others when they are gracious towards us; and to believe in God when we feel strongly God’s presence. The “test” comes when human love and divine consolation collapse, when we are surrounded by misunderstanding, abandonment, distrust, hatred, and doubt. How do we respond then? Can we forgive someone who is hurting us when they believe we are the problem? Can we continue to love when someone hates us? Can we continue to believe in trust when we are experiencing betrayal? Where are our hearts when we are “a stone’s throw away” from everyone?
That, and not the capacity to physically endure scourging and nails, was the real test inside of Jesus’ passion. The question for him was not if he was going to die, but how he would die. Could he continue to trust? What kind of spirit would he hand over at the end? Gracious or bitter? Forgiving or vengeful? Loving or hate-filled? Trusting or paranoid? Hope-filled or despairing? That will be our test too in the end. Will our hearts be warm or bitter?
—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
If you thought being happy is having a sky without storms, a road without accidents, work without fatigue, relationships without disappointment, you were wrong. Being happy is not only enjoying the smiles, but also reflecting on the sadness. It’s not only celebrating successes, but learning lessons from failures. It’s not just feeling happy with the applause, but being happy in anonymity. Life is worth living despite all the challenges, misunderstandings, periods of crisis. Being happy is not a destination of destiny, but the achievement of those who manage to travel within themselves. Being happy is to stop feeling a victim of problems and become the author of the story itself. It means you cross deserts outside of yourself, but manage to find an oasis at the bottom of your soul.
To be happy is to give thanks for every morning, for the miracle of life. Being happy is not being afraid of your own feelings, how to talk about “you.” It’s having the courage to hear a “no.” It’s feeling safe when receiving a criticism, even if it’s unfair. To be happy is to let live the creature that lives in each of us, free, happy and simple. It’s having the maturity to say, “I was wrong.” It’s having the courage to say, “I’m sorry.” It’s having the sensitivity to say, “I need you.” It means having the ability to say, “I love you.”
You will find that being happy is not having a perfect life. But use tears to water tolerance. Use losses to train patience. Use mistakes to sculpt serenity. Use pain to polish pleasure. Use obstacles to open windows of intelligence. Never give up.
—November 2020 Homily
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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
