Medjugorje Message: January 25, 2022
Dear children! Today I am calling you to return to personal prayer. Little children, do not forget that Satan is strong and that he wants to attract all the more souls to himself. That is why, you be vigilant in prayer and resolute in the good. I am with you and am blessing all of you with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
February 2022
This month Our Lady says, “I am calling you to return to personal prayer.” Her Medjugorje message was given on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, and her call to “RETURN” is a powerful reminder of our need for continual, ongoing, daily conversion. We must “return” to personal prayer over and over again. What is “personal prayer,” as distinct from group or liturgical prayer at Mass? “Personal prayer” is a dedicated time that each one of us sets aside, exercising our free will to consciously choose to be alone with God in silent listening communion, opening our hearts and minds to be fully “present to Presence” —available with heart, mind, soul, and strength at the complete disposal of our Creator, our Savior, our Indwelling Source of life, light and love.
This is “kairos” —sacred time—with only one intention: CONSENTING, with total openness, to the Presence and Action of God within our inmost being, who works in secret, hidden, unseen ways to bring about a healing wholeness far beyond what we even know how to request. “Personal prayer” is what Jesus meant when he said, “When you pray, go to your inner room and close the door” (Mt 6:6), assuring us that our Father God always sees what is hidden and rewards this time of one-on-One “personal prayer.” While the Mass and sacraments are inestimable blessings Christ bestows through the Church, they are no substitute for the “personal prayer” of the “inner room” that Jesus taught and practiced himself, withdrawing from all human company, often and regularly, to pray to his Father “in secret.”
Our Lady asks us to “RETURN to personal prayer” because we so often fall away from it. The old trifecta of “the world, the flesh, and the devil” always opposes and impedes “personal prayer.” Our worldly culture has no “USE” for such “inefficient and unproductive” blocks of time, whether they last 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour. What do we have to “show” for those moments with the Lord in prayer? Surely the time could be “better spent,” getting “something done,” a task “accomplished.”
Further, the WORLD around us bombards us with stimulating and addictive alternatives to “personal prayer” : beginning with our Smartphone or iPad and the ever-beckoning internet; television with its entertainment and commercials sucking us into consumerist oblivion and political rage; and social media poking and prodding us toward emotional reactions. Finally spent by these diversions, our worldly obligations to work and family provide valid excuses that seem to militate against “personal prayer.”
The FLESH has its own agenda: sometimes “fitness,” but mostly “ease and comfort” —both providing a thousand reasons why a nap, a snack, a relaxing worldly pastime, or even a vigorous workout is a much better use of time than “personal prayer,” which is perpetually put off until “later.” So often—as Jesus observed in Gethsemane when his drowsy apostles could not stay awake with him for one critical hour of prayer before his arrest—“the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26:40)
Finally—along with the “world” and the “flesh” —the “DEVIL” (who makes use of both of them!) is perhaps the most formidable enemy of our “personal prayer.” Our Lady says, “Little children, do not forget that Satan is strong and that he wants to attract all the more souls to himself.” In the parable of the sower, Jesus taught that often when the word of God is first presented to people, “as soon as they hear, Satan comes at once and takes away the word sown in them.” (Mk 4:15) The speed with which satanic ego can impede or destroy our “personal prayer” practice depends upon the state of our soul regarding “the world and the flesh” —i.e. how powerful a foothold those influences already have in our life. If our lifestyle is sloppy, lax, extravagant, and overly luxurious, lacking any bodily discipline and indulging every pleasure, satanic ego will be “strong” and “attractive” in us.
If our worldly culture‘s False Self programs for happiness obsess us with the needs for safety/security, affection/esteem, and power/control, then satanic ego will easily take the driver’s seat in our life, leaving ZERO time for “personal prayer.” Then, as Jesus taught, “worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things intrude and choke the word.” (Mk 4:19)
In “attracting souls to himself,” Satan succeeds primarily by DISTRACTION—distracting us all day, every day from our spiritual awareness and our good intentions of “personal prayer.” And when we are distracted away from prayer—those precious and vital moments that St. Teresa of Avila called “being many times alone with the One who we know loves us” —then we are also deprived of the fruit of “personal prayer.”
And what is that fruit? Our Lady calls it simply “the good.” It becomes visible and apparent not in the moments of prayer itself, but afterward, in our everyday life and activity. Personal prayer enables us—after we leave our “inner room” of silent listening consent to God’s presence and action—to discern what is “the good” we must speak and do as we return to our everyday life. It “enlightens the eyes of our heart” (Eph 1:8) to DO in our ordinary daily life “what is good, pleasing and perfect” (Rom 12:2) according to God’s will, clinging not to our False Self emotional programs of satanic ego, but only to “the GOOD.” Personal prayer liberates us from bondage to our afflictive emotions of fear, anxiety, anger, mistrust, and hatred, as they are swallowed up in the surpassing Peace of Christ during our time of prayer.
After reminding us that “Satan is strong” in attracting souls, Our Lady says, “That is why, you be vigilant in prayer and resolute in the good. I am with you and am blessing all of you with my motherly blessing.” To be “vigilant in prayer” means to be watchful, alert, intensely aware, and paying careful attention. The Latin word “vigilans” means “keeping awake.” Many times Jesus called his disciples to “stay awake” for God’s Presence manifesting at any “unknown day and hour.” For us, this “vigilance” must be applied to our “personal prayer” practice every day.
First, we need to be “vigilant” in spotting the dangerous pitfalls of “the world, the flesh, and the devil” that are always trying to DISTRACT us away from our daily commitment to an “appointment with God” in solitary silence. We must guard and protect this sacred “kairos” time with our Lord as a non-negotiable part of each and every day, carefully planning the rest of life around this “golden interlude of intimacy” that we engrave into our schedule—perhaps 15-20 minutes in the morning and 15-20 minutes in the evening. This is the “First Vigilance“: guarding the time we will take for PRAYER each day, seeing it as vitally necessary for our “wellness routine,” like eating, drinking, bathing, grooming, and dressing—something we would never dream of skipping!
The “Second Vigilance” is the practice of trusting perseverance during the prayer period itself, when our normal human condition will bring to us a flood of distracting thoughts, feelings and images that might frustrate us with a sense of futility as we seemingly “wrestle with God” for 20 minutes of failed attempts at “silent listening” with “open heart and mind” for the Divine Indwelling Presence. The chatter of our “monkey mind” can sometimes feel overwhelming.
We will be tempted to quit, jump up, and go do something “useful” before our prayer appointment ends. Being “vigilant in prayer” now means that we KEEP OUR SEAT and remain with our Lord in the “inner room” where He is doing everything for us “in secret,” without our perception or knowledge. Our only job is to consent and surrender to His love as we gently let go of every random thought and distraction that flows through our mind, like boats floating by on a river—TRUSTING that “God is at work” in His own way within us, when we give God these precious moments of our day. If we experience 10,000 distracting thoughts, so much the better, as they are 10,000 opportunities for us to let go of self and “RETURN” again, in consent and surrender, to the Indwelling Presence and Action of God!
Our Lady says that along with being vigilant in prayer, we must be “resolute in the good.” This refers to our real-life hours in the world when we actually bear the FRUITS of our daily “personal prayer” in our ACTIONS. Acting upon the “exercise of Love“ (as St. Teresa called prayer), we will follow through with words and deeds that are only loving. While life will provide many temptations to fall into negativity, fear, anger, worry, and unkindness, we are to be “resolute in the good” —meaning constant, faithful, purposeful, loyal, steadfast, and unwavering. We are to enflesh the Love we encounter in the intimacy of our silent “personal prayer” by practicing “the GOOD” in our everyday life, in all our relationships and activities. To be “resolute” in our good works is to have what St. Teresa of Avila called “determined determination.”
Our world is weak and weary at this point, debilitated by toxic influences and heartbreaking division at every level, in addition to the pandemic beginning its third year. Many wonder how they can get back to a sense of inner peace, much less a joy in living. Our Lady’s message provides the perennial answer for our present troubled time, and for every age, past and future: “Return to personal prayer.” Heeding this reminder, we are so grateful to hear our Queen of Peace say: “I am with you and am blessing all of you with my motherly blessing.”
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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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I will let you act, Lord. May listening to your Word, who is Christ, enrich my life. There is nothing you cannot do, Lord. Silence! When you act, we must be silent and listen. When you are here, we must be silent, abandon our worries, and conquer our hesitation. The sign that God is at work is that the people of this world are reduced to silence. To act in me, Lord, you require that I be silent, like Mary and Joseph.
I will let you speak, Lord, for as long as you wish, in the way you wish, and at the hour you wish, because, Lord Jesus, you are the Word itself. You will speak when your hour has come. But the last word, Lord, will be yours.
—Venerable Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan
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What shall I do during prayer? How eagerly people long to be told the answer! But the answer is of the usual appalling simplicity: Stand before God unprotected, and you will know yourself what to do. I mean this in utter earnestness. We cannot sufficiently emphasize to ourselves that prayer is God’s concern and his one desire is to come and make his home in us. Do you believe Him or not?
—Sr. Wendy Beckett, OCD
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In silent prayer, your intention is to consent to God, the Ultimate Mystery, who dwells within you. Throughout the prayer period, you renew your intention to open yourself to God and to accept Him as He is. By consenting to God, you are implicitly praying for everyone past, present, and future. You are embracing the whole of creation. You are accepting all of reality beginning with God and with…the spiritual level of your being. This enables you to unite with your Source.
Human beings were made for boundless happiness and peace, and when we see that we are starting to move in that direction, we don’t have to push ourselves. The difficulty is that we are going in the opposite direction most of the time. We tend to attach and identify ourselves with our concerns and preoccupations and with the world that stimulates and reinforces them.
But our spiritual faculties are attracted to interior silence. To move spontaneously in that direction does not require effort. It only requires the willingness to let go of our ordinary preoccupations. Since the will is designed for infinite love and the mind for infinite truth, if there is nothing to stop them, they tend to move in that direction. It is because they are wrapped up in other directions that their freedom to go where they are naturally inclined is limited.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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In silent prayer, the Spirit places us in a position where we are at rest and disinclined to fight. By His secret anointing the Spirit heals the wounds of our fragile human nature at a level beyond our perception. Interior silence is the perfect seedbed for divine love to take root. Divine love has the power to grow and to transform us. Silent prayer facilitates this process of inner transformation.
Some people find it especially helpful to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. They usually keep their eyes closed and are simply aware of the presence in which they are praying. Noticing one’s breathing can also serve as a sacred symbol of one’s consent to God’s presence and action within. The purpose is not simply to let go of all thoughts, but to deepen our contact with the Divine Indwelling. The intentionality of faith is fundamental. It presupposes a personal relationship; there must be a movement of self-surrender.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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Silence can be surprisingly fruitful in its revelations. Listening is silence. Silence is not a lack of noise, but a Presence. When we enter into silence, wounds may arise clamorously, but they are met with the healing balm of his Presence. Transformative mercy emanates from our open-hearted abandonment to a friendship with Christ, that place of light-filled silence which listens—and speaks.
—Suzanne Tanzi
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Our very suffering now, our condensed presence in this common nest that we have largely fouled, will soon be the one thing that we finally share in common. It might be the one thing that will bring us together politically and religiously. The earth and its life systems, on which we all entirely depend, might soon become the very things that will convert us to a simple lifestyle, to necessary community, and to a universal sense of reverence for the Holy. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. This earth is indeed the Body of God, and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. God is not “out there,” but God is in all, through all, and with all.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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The world is a living being to which we belong. We are a part of its suffering wholeness. This wholeness is calling to us now, and needs our response. It needs us to return to our own root and rootedness: our relationship to the sacred within creation. Only from sacred wholeness and reverence can we begin the work of healing, bringing the world back into balance.
—Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
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If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. We must develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.
—Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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There is so much fear and distraction these days over the state of the world—there is sadness in…articles, in letters, in all endeavors. And yet surely, “All times,” as St. Teresa said, “are dangerous times.” We may be living on the verge of eternity—but that should not make us dismal. The early Christians rejoiced to hope that the end of the world was near, as they thought. Over and over again people have been expecting the end of the world. Are we so unready to face God? Are we so avid for joys here, that we perceive so darkly those to come?
—Servant of God Dorothy Day
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
There is only one great call in the Gospel, and it is that of following Jesus on the way of love. This is the pinnacle and center of everything….Charity and contemplation are synonymous, they say the same thing. What is born of prayer and not from the presumption of our ego, what is purified by humility, even if it is a hidden and silent act of love, is the greatest miracle that a Christian can accomplish. And this is the path of contemplative prayer: “I look at him, he looks at me.” This act of love in silent dialogue with Jesus does so much good for the Church.
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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
