Dear children! I am carrying my Son Jesus to you to fill your hearts with peace, because He is peace. Little children, seek Jesus in the silence of your heart that He be born anew. The world needs Jesus, therefore seek Him through prayer, because He gives Himself daily to each of you.

Annual Message to Visionary Jacov Colo:  December 25, 2023

Dear children, today with my Son in my arms, I desire to call all of you to pray to the little Jesus for the healing of your heart. Children, often in your hearts sin rules which destroys your life and you cannot feel God’s presence. That is why, on this day of grace, when grace is spreading throughout the whole world, surrender your life and your heart to the Lord, so that the Lord may heal them with His grace. Only with pure hearts will you be able to experience the birth of Jesus anew in you, and the light of His birth will illuminate your life. Thank you for having responded to my call.

River of Light

January 2024

In this, Our Lady’s monthly message to the world, as well as in her annual Christmas message to the visionary Jacov Colo, she conveys one common theme: that her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, must be “born anew” within each of our human hearts. In both of these apparitions on December 25th, Our Lady was holding Baby Jesus in her arms, just as she has appeared every Christmas Day since 1981 in Medjugorje.

She begins her brief monthly message to the world: “I am carrying my Son Jesus to you to fill your hearts with peace, because He is peace.” In our violent, war-torn world so desperately in need of peace, Our Lady clarifies that Jesus Himself “IS” PEACE, and that He must inhabit completely, or “fill,” our hearts if we are ever to experience the outward peace in our world for which we long, as we watch in helpless daily horror the mass slaughter that is “man’s inhumanity to man“—whether in Israel/Gaza, Ukraine, or a thousand other places. But how can the Baby Jesus who “IS PEACE” be transferred from Mary’s arms into our troubled, peaceless world?

Our Lady continues: “Little children, seek Jesus in the silence of your heart that He be born anew.” It is said that we seek God everywhere except the one, nearest and most obvious place where the Divine dwells: within our own heart, at the center of our inmost Being. Here, inside us, Our Lady says, God is waiting to be “born anew” while we are foolishly looking outward to a million external people, places and things—either for the “Big God” of our religious imagination (in adventurous attention to shrines, devotions, or pilgrimages to distant lands), or for the “small gods” of our false-self system (the culture’s many status symbols for safety/security, affection/esteem, power/control, and pleasure).

With our gaze ever fixed in an outward direction toward these things, we marvel, cluelessly, at the tragic unraveling of our civilization, the sad state of unending brutality and killing of innocents in armed conflict, and the degradation and destruction of our planet Earth. Feeling powerless to stop the unfolding tragedy “out there,” we distract ourselves with a nonstop bombardment of digital “entertainment” on our devices and screens, medicating our mounting anxiety and grief through the mind-numbing influence of social and mass media’s inane humor, petty drama, and mindless chatter.

In contrast, Our Lady tells us to “seek Jesus in the SILENCE of your heart.” Amidst all our pearl-clutching, hand-wringing, finger-pointing panic over the declining state of our world, do we ever stop to look inside, to seek “the SILENCE of our heart“? The “Silent Night/Holy Night“ WITHIN, that is the place of encounter with “peace on earth,” Jesus Christ? This peace must inhabit the individual human heart before it can ever appear on the bigger stage of “world peace.”

Our Lady ends her succinct Christmas message: “The world needs Jesus, therefore seek Him through prayer, because He gives Himself daily to each of you.” Based on her previous sentence, saying that Jesus “IS PEACE,” we could rephrase this closing line to read: “The world needs PEACE, therefore seek PEACE through prayer, because PEACE gives [itself] daily to each of you.” Our Lady is bluntly telling us that we already have all that is needed for “world peace”: it lies within the “silence of our heart” where the Divine Indwelling waits to be “born anew” each day. But sadly, even after 42 years of the Queen of Peace repeatedly calling us to “PRAYER OF THE HEART” as the pathway to PEACE, we still insist upon focusing our attention outward, toward external influences that condition our brains to seek our “Big” and “little” gods anywhere and everywhere but in the silent center of our inmost being where Christ our Peace dwells. He dwells within us, just as an unborn child dwells in the womb, waiting to be “born anew” if only we would willingly surrender ourselves (as a mother on the birthing bed must)—through our intention and attention—to the “labor” necessary to “deliver” Divine Peace into our broken and barren world.

Unlike Our Lady’s usual Christmas messages to the world, which are typically joyful, serene, and celebratory, this message is terse, clipped, and almost abrupt, omitting her familiar closing salutation: “Thank you for having responded to my call.” In fact, the visionary Marija who received this apparition noted: “Our Lady came solemnly dressed with little Jesus in her arms. Jesus extended His hand in a sign of blessing as Our Lady prayed over us in Aramaic.” These details provide much for us to “ponder” in “the silence of our hearts,” just as Mary herself pondered the divine mysteries of her own life. Why was she “solemnly dressed” rather than festively dressed on Christmas? (Was is a black garment of mourning for all who are dying?) And why was she praying over the people in Aramaic—the ancient semitic language of Israel at the time of Jesus, the mother-tongue of the Holy Family—rather than in a language the visionaries themselves speak and understand, like Croatian or Italian?

It seems that Our Lady was giving a “live demonstration” of the truth she was teaching: As she prayed, the Indwelling Christ-child, now visibly present in her arms—just as He is present within each of our hearts that open, like a dilating womb, to His newborn emergence into fleshly manifestation—was “extending His hand in a sign of blessing.” The Divine Christ-Presence within us will also bestow the blessing of peace upon the world around us—if only we will “get out of His way” and enable Him to do so by opening our hearts to the “Silent Night/Holy Night” within, where, through PRAYER in SILENCE, Jesus our Peace is waiting and yearning to be “born anew” each day! 

+       +       +       +       +       +       +       +       +

In Our Lady’s annual Christmas Day message to Jacov (the youngest of the Medjugorje visionaries), she gives a similar message to Marija’s, but with gently added explanation and the warm maternal closing: “I bless you with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call.” We can see that Our Lady always addresses her audience appropriately. With Jacov and his group, she was speaking not to “the whole world” but to those who are clearly committed to following the Queen of Peace’s “School of Prayer” at Medjugorje. And so she begins: “Dear children, today with my Son in my arms, I desire to call all of you to pray to little Jesus for the healing of your heart. Children, often in your heart sin rules which destroys your life and you cannot feel God’s presence.” Ouch. This is a hard teaching to hear, yet our Mother knows us through and through.

How many people today on our tragically injured planet have become so enslaved by sin that their lives and hearts are “destroyed” and now incapable of “feeling God’s presence“? By inviting Jacov’s group to “pray for the healing of your heart,” Our Lady acknowledges that an INJURED HEART is part of the HUMAN CONDITION—even for those of us already committed to the spiritual journey, following a religious path, and desiring daily conversion. An injured heart in need of healing is our common inheritance and universal human predicament, also known as “original sin.” Because of it, there is no one among us who is completely free of psychic pain, emotional damage, and hurtful memories that were sown into our personality through early childhood experiences. Because of our human condition (“original sin“), ALL parents are, at best, imperfect—making conscious and unconscious mistakes with their children. Sadly, depending on the state of their own “unhealed hearts,” many parents inflict terrible damage on their children through neglect and abuse. So by the time we reach adulthood, it becomes obvious that EVERY HUMAN BEING without exception is in need of “heart healing.”

Much help can come through the healing arts like psychotherapy/professional counseling/12-Step recovery; indeed, God works through all kinds of human healers to address our ailments of body, mind and spirit. But the most accessible healing help for anyone who suffers (that is, ALL of us!) is turning directly to Jesus in PRAYER. The call to “prayer of the heart” in Medjugorje has been Our Lady’s keynote message for 42 years. She knows that “often in our hearts SIN RULES which destroys our life.” How true this is! “Sin rules” when there is any sort of addiction in our life: drugs, alcohol, sex/pornography, shopping/hoarding, gambling/gaming, screens: cell phone/internet/television, etc. “Sin rules” when there is any sort of adulterous, disordered, compulsive, or codependent relationship in our life. “Sin rules” in our hearts when anything or anyone becomes an “idol” replacing God rather than an “icon” reflecting God in our life. If we search our hearts and examine our conscience, we know that Our Lady is correct in saying: “Often in your hearts sin rules.” 

When this happens, she says, “you cannot feel God’s presence.” This is because we are filling the innate “God-sized hole” in our heart with lesser “stuff” that pushes out any God-awareness. To be unable to feel God’s presence (the Spirit of Life) is the WORST HUMAN TRAGEDY of all, for Our Lady says it means that sin has now “destroyed our life.” We are lost in a pit of deepening darkness. 

Our Lady concludes her Christmas message to Jacov: “That is why, on this day of grace, when grace is spreading throughout the whole world, surrender your life and your heart to the Lord, so that the Lord may heal them with His grace. Only with pure hearts will you be able to experience the birth of Jesus anew in you, and the light of His birth will illuminate your life.” Our Lady clearly refers to Christmas as that “day of grace“—the day when children focus on Santa and his sleigh-full of gifts as “grace spreading throughout the whole world.” But the real “GRACE” of which Our Lady speaks is the grace of God poured into this small, far-flung planet in a remote galaxy of the universe when Jesus Christ took on our weak, vulnerable flesh and showed us how to be fully human in spite of our disabled human condition, hobbled by original sin.

As adults, we still fixate childishly upon the external gifts of an idolatrous culture’s materialism and consumerism. Instead, Our Lady calls us to “surrender your life and your heart to the Lord, so that the Lord may heal them with His grace.” How do we do this? By giving time each day to seeking Jesus in the silence of our hearts, emptying out our own thoughts, ideas, agendas, plans, fantasies, worries, fears, and grievances…listening only for His voice within…watching attentively for His movements in our body, mind and spirit…following our breath, heartbeat, muscle sensations—all given by Him in each moment. Focusing only upon the Lord and what He is doing within our inmost being, here and now. This is “PRAYER OF THE HEART”—a “heart healing” practice through which Jesus purifies our heart. All the vain, deceptive, phony, useless, and toxic idols of our life are cast out in these moments of surrendering and resting in the Lord, delightfully “letting go and letting God” purify us. Our Lady says: “Only with pure hearts will you be able to experience the birth of Jesus anew in you, and the light of His birth will illuminate your life.” Indeed our illuminated life will shine as “the true light that enlightens everyone [is again] coming into the world.” (John 1:9)

+       +       +       +       +       +       +       +

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

If God is the center of your life, no words are necessary. Your mere presence will touch hearts.

—St. Vincent de Paul

+       +       +       +       +       +       +      

WE CANNOT SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS WITH THE SAME THINKING THAT WE USED WHEN WE CREATED THEM.

—Albert Einstein

+       +       +       +       +       +       +

—St. Elizabeth of the Trinity

+       +       +       +       +       +       +

—Caryll Houselander 

+       +       +       +       +       +       +

—Bishop Jacques Bossuet 

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—St. Augustine

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—Mary Healy

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—Fr. Bonaventure Perquin, OP

+       +       +       +       +       +       +

—Msgr. Edward Betowski

+       +       +       +       +       +       +

—Servant of God Luis Maria Martinez

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—St. John of the Cross

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—Pope Benedict XVI

+       +       +       +       +       +       +       +

Wisdom from Pope Francis

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

Dear children! I am carrying my Son Jesus to you to fill your hearts with peace, because He is peace. Little children, seek Jesus in the silence of your heart that He be born anew. The world needs Jesus, therefore seek Him through prayer, because He gives Himself daily to each of you.

Annual Message to Visionary Jacov Colo:  December 25, 2023

Dear children, today with my Son in my arms, I desire to call all of you to pray to the little Jesus for the healing of your heart. Children, often in your hearts sin rules which destroys your life and you cannot feel God’s presence. That is why, on this day of grace, when grace is spreading throughout the whole world, surrender your life and your heart to the Lord, so that the Lord may heal them with His grace. Only with pure hearts will you be able to experience the birth of Jesus anew in you, and the light of His birth will illuminate your life. Thank you for having responded to my call.

River of Light

January 2024

In this, Our Lady’s monthly message to the world, as well as in her annual Christmas message to the visionary Jacov Colo, she conveys one common theme: that her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, must be “born anew” within each of our human hearts. In both of these apparitions on December 25th, Our Lady was holding Baby Jesus in her arms, just as she has appeared every Christmas Day since 1981 in Medjugorje.

She begins her brief monthly message to the world: “I am carrying my Son Jesus to you to fill your hearts with peace, because He is peace.” In our violent, war-torn world so desperately in need of peace, Our Lady clarifies that Jesus Himself “IS” PEACE, and that He must inhabit completely, or “fill,” our hearts if we are ever to experience the outward peace in our world for which we long, as we watch in helpless daily horror the mass slaughter that is “man’s inhumanity to man“—whether in Israel/Gaza, Ukraine, or a thousand other places. But how can the Baby Jesus who “IS PEACE” be transferred from Mary’s arms into our troubled, peaceless world?

Our Lady continues: “Little children, seek Jesus in the silence of your heart that He be born anew.” It is said that we seek God everywhere except the one, nearest and most obvious place where the Divine dwells: within our own heart, at the center of our inmost Being. Here, inside us, Our Lady says, God is waiting to be “born anew” while we are foolishly looking outward to a million external people, places and things—either for the “Big God” of our religious imagination (in adventurous attention to shrines, devotions, or pilgrimages to distant lands), or for the “small gods” of our false-self system (the culture’s many status symbols for safety/security, affection/esteem, power/control, and pleasure).

With our gaze ever fixed in an outward direction toward these things, we marvel, cluelessly, at the tragic unraveling of our civilization, the sad state of unending brutality and killing of innocents in armed conflict, and the degradation and destruction of our planet Earth. Feeling powerless to stop the unfolding tragedy “out there,” we distract ourselves with a nonstop bombardment of digital “entertainment” on our devices and screens, medicating our mounting anxiety and grief through the mind-numbing influence of social and mass media’s inane humor, petty drama, and mindless chatter.

In contrast, Our Lady tells us to “seek Jesus in the SILENCE of your heart.” Amidst all our pearl-clutching, hand-wringing, finger-pointing panic over the declining state of our world, do we ever stop to look inside, to seek “the SILENCE of our heart“? The “Silent Night/Holy Night“ WITHIN, that is the place of encounter with “peace on earth,” Jesus Christ? This peace must inhabit the individual human heart before it can ever appear on the bigger stage of “world peace.”

Our Lady ends her succinct Christmas message: “The world needs Jesus, therefore seek Him through prayer, because He gives Himself daily to each of you.” Based on her previous sentence, saying that Jesus “IS PEACE,” we could rephrase this closing line to read: “The world needs PEACE, therefore seek PEACE through prayer, because PEACE gives [itself] daily to each of you.” Our Lady is bluntly telling us that we already have all that is needed for “world peace”: it lies within the “silence of our heart” where the Divine Indwelling waits to be “born anew” each day. But sadly, even after 42 years of the Queen of Peace repeatedly calling us to “PRAYER OF THE HEART” as the pathway to PEACE, we still insist upon focusing our attention outward, toward external influences that condition our brains to seek our “Big” and “little” gods anywhere and everywhere but in the silent center of our inmost being where Christ our Peace dwells. He dwells within us, just as an unborn child dwells in the womb, waiting to be “born anew” if only we would willingly surrender ourselves (as a mother on the birthing bed must)—through our intention and attention—to the “labor” necessary to “deliver” Divine Peace into our broken and barren world.

Unlike Our Lady’s usual Christmas messages to the world, which are typically joyful, serene, and celebratory, this message is terse, clipped, and almost abrupt, omitting her familiar closing salutation: “Thank you for having responded to my call.” In fact, the visionary Marija who received this apparition noted: “Our Lady came solemnly dressed with little Jesus in her arms. Jesus extended His hand in a sign of blessing as Our Lady prayed over us in Aramaic.” These details provide much for us to “ponder” in “the silence of our hearts,” just as Mary herself pondered the divine mysteries of her own life. Why was she “solemnly dressed” rather than festively dressed on Christmas? (Was is a black garment of mourning for all who are dying?) And why was she praying over the people in Aramaic—the ancient semitic language of Israel at the time of Jesus, the mother-tongue of the Holy Family—rather than in a language the visionaries themselves speak and understand, like Croatian or Italian?

It seems that Our Lady was giving a “live demonstration” of the truth she was teaching: As she prayed, the Indwelling Christ-child, now visibly present in her arms—just as He is present within each of our hearts that open, like a dilating womb, to His newborn emergence into fleshly manifestation—was “extending His hand in a sign of blessing.” The Divine Christ-Presence within us will also bestow the blessing of peace upon the world around us—if only we will “get out of His way” and enable Him to do so by opening our hearts to the “Silent Night/Holy Night” within, where, through PRAYER in SILENCE, Jesus our Peace is waiting and yearning to be “born anew” each day! 

+       +       +       +       +       +       +       +       +

In Our Lady’s annual Christmas Day message to Jacov (the youngest of the Medjugorje visionaries), she gives a similar message to Marija’s, but with gently added explanation and the warm maternal closing: “I bless you with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call.” We can see that Our Lady always addresses her audience appropriately. With Jacov and his group, she was speaking not to “the whole world” but to those who are clearly committed to following the Queen of Peace’s “School of Prayer” at Medjugorje. And so she begins: “Dear children, today with my Son in my arms, I desire to call all of you to pray to little Jesus for the healing of your heart. Children, often in your heart sin rules which destroys your life and you cannot feel God’s presence.” Ouch. This is a hard teaching to hear, yet our Mother knows us through and through.

How many people today on our tragically injured planet have become so enslaved by sin that their lives and hearts are “destroyed” and now incapable of “feeling God’s presence“? By inviting Jacov’s group to “pray for the healing of your heart,” Our Lady acknowledges that an INJURED HEART is part of the HUMAN CONDITION—even for those of us already committed to the spiritual journey, following a religious path, and desiring daily conversion. An injured heart in need of healing is our common inheritance and universal human predicament, also known as “original sin.” Because of it, there is no one among us who is completely free of psychic pain, emotional damage, and hurtful memories that were sown into our personality through early childhood experiences. Because of our human condition (“original sin“), ALL parents are, at best, imperfect—making conscious and unconscious mistakes with their children. Sadly, depending on the state of their own “unhealed hearts,” many parents inflict terrible damage on their children through neglect and abuse. So by the time we reach adulthood, it becomes obvious that EVERY HUMAN BEING without exception is in need of “heart healing.”

Much help can come through the healing arts like psychotherapy/professional counseling/12-Step recovery; indeed, God works through all kinds of human healers to address our ailments of body, mind and spirit. But the most accessible healing help for anyone who suffers (that is, ALL of us!) is turning directly to Jesus in PRAYER. The call to “prayer of the heart” in Medjugorje has been Our Lady’s keynote message for 42 years. She knows that “often in our hearts SIN RULES which destroys our life.” How true this is! “Sin rules” when there is any sort of addiction in our life: drugs, alcohol, sex/pornography, shopping/hoarding, gambling/gaming, screens: cell phone/internet/television, etc. “Sin rules” when there is any sort of adulterous, disordered, compulsive, or codependent relationship in our life. “Sin rules” in our hearts when anything or anyone becomes an “idol” replacing God rather than an “icon” reflecting God in our life. If we search our hearts and examine our conscience, we know that Our Lady is correct in saying: “Often in your hearts sin rules.” 

When this happens, she says, “you cannot feel God’s presence.” This is because we are filling the innate “God-sized hole” in our heart with lesser “stuff” that pushes out any God-awareness. To be unable to feel God’s presence (the Spirit of Life) is the WORST HUMAN TRAGEDY of all, for Our Lady says it means that sin has now “destroyed our life.” We are lost in a pit of deepening darkness. 

Our Lady concludes her Christmas message to Jacov: “That is why, on this day of grace, when grace is spreading throughout the whole world, surrender your life and your heart to the Lord, so that the Lord may heal them with His grace. Only with pure hearts will you be able to experience the birth of Jesus anew in you, and the light of His birth will illuminate your life.” Our Lady clearly refers to Christmas as that “day of grace“—the day when children focus on Santa and his sleigh-full of gifts as “grace spreading throughout the whole world.” But the real “GRACE” of which Our Lady speaks is the grace of God poured into this small, far-flung planet in a remote galaxy of the universe when Jesus Christ took on our weak, vulnerable flesh and showed us how to be fully human in spite of our disabled human condition, hobbled by original sin.

As adults, we still fixate childishly upon the external gifts of an idolatrous culture’s materialism and consumerism. Instead, Our Lady calls us to “surrender your life and your heart to the Lord, so that the Lord may heal them with His grace.” How do we do this? By giving time each day to seeking Jesus in the silence of our hearts, emptying out our own thoughts, ideas, agendas, plans, fantasies, worries, fears, and grievances…listening only for His voice within…watching attentively for His movements in our body, mind and spirit…following our breath, heartbeat, muscle sensations—all given by Him in each moment. Focusing only upon the Lord and what He is doing within our inmost being, here and now. This is “PRAYER OF THE HEART”—a “heart healing” practice through which Jesus purifies our heart. All the vain, deceptive, phony, useless, and toxic idols of our life are cast out in these moments of surrendering and resting in the Lord, delightfully “letting go and letting God” purify us. Our Lady says: “Only with pure hearts will you be able to experience the birth of Jesus anew in you, and the light of His birth will illuminate your life.” Indeed our illuminated life will shine as “the true light that enlightens everyone [is again] coming into the world.” (John 1:9)

+       +       +       +       +       +       +       +

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

If God is the center of your life, no words are necessary. Your mere presence will touch hearts.

—St. Vincent de Paul

+       +       +       +       +       +       +      

WE CANNOT SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS WITH THE SAME THINKING THAT WE USED WHEN WE CREATED THEM.

—Albert Einstein

+       +       +       +       +       +       +

—St. Elizabeth of the Trinity

+       +       +       +       +       +       +

—Caryll Houselander 

+       +       +       +       +       +       +

—Bishop Jacques Bossuet 

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—St. Augustine

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—Mary Healy

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—Fr. Bonaventure Perquin, OP

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—Msgr. Edward Betowski

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—Servant of God Luis Maria Martinez

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—St. John of the Cross

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—Pope Benedict XVI

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Wisdom from Pope Francis

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

Dear children! My call for you is prayer. May prayer be a joy for you and a wreath which binds you to God. Little children, trials will come and you will not be strong, and sin will reign but, if you are mine, you will win, because your refuge will be the Heart of my Son Jesus. Therefore, little children, return to prayer until prayer becomes life for you in the day and the night. Thank you for having responded to my call.

River of Light

   August 2019

Once again Our Lady makes clear her primary message to the world at Medjugorje: “My call for you is prayer.” After 38 years of daily apparitions, we would expect this call to be exhausted, but Our Lady finds yet another fresh approach in this month’s message—using a new word and opening up a new metaphorical pathway into her call to prayer: “May prayer be a joy for you and a wreath which binds you to God.” Prayer as a “wreath which binds us to God“: this unusual word and image merits our reflection.

As something which “binds” us to God, we may envision a wreath encircling our neck, in the way Jesus used the image of a “yoke,” saying: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (MT 11:29-30) In this Gospel image, we are to be “yoked” to Jesus as two oxen are yoked together, side by side, to plow a field.

But in Our Lady’s metaphor, the “yoke” becomes a “wreath,” which invites fresh symbolic references. First of all, the word “wreath” summons up a sense of JOY—as Our Lady begins by saying, “May prayer be a joy for you“—for a living green wreath surely sounds more “joyful” than a big wooden “yoke” binding farm animals together as beasts of burden for heavy labor. In contrast, the wreath’s form—an unending circle made of evergreens or flowers—symbolizes eternity, growth, unity, everlasting life, completion, and perfection. For almost 3,000 years, a wreath has been the winner’s prize at the Greek Olympic games, so it also symbolizes athletic strength and endurance.

The pagan use of wreaths to honor nature’s changing seasons and fertility, and the Roman use of wreaths to mark honor and virtue, were “baptized” in the third century as Christians began to view wreaths as the ultimate sign of victory in the form of the “martyr’s crown” for those who suffered persecution and death by following Christ. The “wreath” that most symbolized this sort of triumph was the crown of thorns worn by Jesus on the cross, and early Christians longed to win the “martyr’s crown” which bestowed an immediate “ticket to heaven.”

Our Lady’s message also mentions “winning,” so clearly she is using the word “wreath” much as St. Paul did in his letters. He says, “Every athlete exercises self-control….They do it to receive a perishable wreath [or crown], but we an imperishable.” (1 Cor 9:25)…”Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:14) ….”Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win.” (1 Cor 9:24)

Our Lady coaches us toward this “win” through PRAYER as our “crowning victory wreath” which binds us to God in a way that is unbeatable: “Little children, trials will come and you will not be strong, and sin will reign but, if you are mine, you will win, because your refuge will be the Heart of my Son Jesus.” Here Our Lady seems to be describing prophetically what our future holds—and it’s not pretty; it looks neither easy nor particularly pleasant. In fact, Our Lady sounds brutally honest and realistic about our human condition in this fallen world of E-G-O: “Edging God Out.” The bad news is: 1) Trials will come; 2) We will NOT be strong; 3) Sin will reign. So—we can dispense with any illusion that our prayerful piety will “spare us” from trials of faith and the tragic setbacks of normal life on earth, OR that our spirituality will render us superheroes of self-will and strength in the face of temptation. No—quite the contrary: Our Lady says bluntly, “Sin will reign.”

She is supported in this assertion, again, by St. Paul: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom 3:23) “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold into slavery to sin. What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate….The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.” (Rom 7:14-19) And our Lord Jesus said himself: “The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26:41) So the truth of the matter is, we live in a fallen world dominated by demonic EGO as weak creatures who will often fail the test of our worldly trials and daily temptations by choosing selfishness over the Divine Will. This will result in continual death on all sides. Wow—not seeing any “victory wreaths” here!

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Choose to perceive in every event today the Presence of transforming grace.

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Unity consciousness is the “Big Mind“—a moment-to-moment practice of joyfully expressing the original grace of enlightenment that is already there. Spiritual activity in its fullest sphere is not trying to “attain” enlightenment; rather our spiritual practice is itself only expressing our true Christ nature, already present. So our practice is already the goal—not a “seeking” but an appropriate expression of unity consciousness.

  —Ken Wilber

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Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence….The world to come is not only a hereafter, but also a here-now.

—Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Wisdom begins when we stop wanting to fight the reality of the present as if it should not exist, and start to accept it as it is. The Spirit will give us tomorrow what he wants us to live tomorrow, but we must not waste time worrying about it. We should live the beauties of the relationship we have with Jesus, the Spirit, and each other in the now. We must rejoice at all times, in what he is giving us now—the joys, the sufferings, the peace, the hope. This is his gift to us today. It is only when we learn not to fear, but to trust God’s love, to surrender ourselves, that we learn to relax. God likes relaxed children. He doesn’t want us to strive to be perfect. He wants us to be confident that he will give us strength. —Jean Vanier

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Since Christ has given himself to us, our lives have the redemptive quality of his, and our relationships with one another are a communion in him…with an impact of unimaginable love. We live our Christ-life by natural means. We give him with our hands and eyes and ears, with the words we speak, the journeys we make, by our human friendships and loves. We see through his eyes, listen with his ears, speak with his words, work with his hands, suffer with his suffering, rejoice with his joy, love with his heart. If we surrender our will to God’s will, we will make our lives the echo of Our Lady’s prayer, “Be it done to me according to thy word.” That is to say, may Christ live in me the life he wants to live in me—where, with whom, and how he wants to live it. Christ in us attracts to us those whom we can truly love; he radiates from those in whom he abides.

—Caryll Houselander

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We would like to unmask a temptation very common in the Christian life—to believe that in our situation we lack something essential…that all would go better if our circumstances would change. But this is often an error. It is not the exterior circumstances that must change; it is above all our hearts that must change. They must be purified of their withdrawal into themselves, of their sadness and lack of hope. Happy are those whose hearts are purified by faith and hope, animated by the certitude that, beyond all appearances to the contrary, God is present, providing for their essential needs and that they lack nothing…. Many of the circumstances that they thought negative and damaging are, in fact, in God’s pedagogy, powerful means for helping them to progress and grow. —Fr. Jacques Philippe

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Wisdom from Pope Francis

  Theology begins with sincere dialogue, not a conquering spirit or aggressive defense of doctrine that seeks to impose its belief on others. Fidelity to the gospel implies a style of life and of proclamation without a spirit of conquest, without a desire to proselytize and without an aggressive intent to refute. Rather than using defensive apologetics closed in a manual or reciting formulas by rote, theologians must be men and women of compassion who are touched by the social ills of war, violence, slavery and forced migration and who are nourished by prayer. When theologians lack compassion and prayer, theology loses its soul, its intelligence, and its ability to interpret reality in a Christian way. Without compassion drawn from the heart of Christ, theologians risk being swallowed up in the condition of privilege of those who share nothing of risk with the majority of humanity. Mercy is the backbone of the gospel message and it must be a focal point in theological studies. Theology must be an expression of a church that is a field hospital that lives out its mission of salvation and healing in the world. Bureaucratic pettiness and ideology want to tame the mystery. Theology, through the path of mercy, defends itself from taming the mystery.

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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

Dear children! Today I am calling all of you: pray for my intentions. Peace is in danger; therefore, little children, pray and be carriers of peace and hope in this restless world where Satan is attacking and tempting in every way. Little children, be firm in prayer and courageous in faith. I am with you and intercede before my Son Jesus for all of you. Thank you for having responded to my call.

River of Light

December 2015

Our Lady’s message has the urgency and seriousness of an “S.O.S.” call. Gone are the pleasantries of her usual Advent or Thanksgiving messages. Instead, she cuts directly to the chase: “Today I am calling all of you: pray for my intentions. Peace is in danger; therefore, little children, pray and be carriers of peace and hope in this restless world where Satan is attacking and tempting in every way.” She seems to be sounding the alarm for us to wake up and “do” something to help her. Our planetary house is on fire, and she is ringing the bell, hoping its deafening noise will stir us from our lethargic sleep. At the same moment of her message in Medjugorje, our own State Department was issuing a “worldwide travel alert,” advising everyone to be aware and attentive to our surroundings, avoid crowds, and stay abreast of breaking news bulletins regarding terrorist activities across the planet, in any place we might be traveling. The attacks of ISIS and other extremist organizations have reached a critical threshold and unprecedented success, finally capturing the attention of all the nations of the world. Countries that formerly were at odds and wary of each other are now beginning to join forces to fight a common enemy.

 This might actually be one “amazing grace” that emerges from a horrible situation of extreme danger and rampant violence—the uniting of nations beyond their ideological and political differences to affirm a common commitment to basic goodness over evil. This recalls what happened during WW II in the face of the evil of Nazi totalitarianism—the formation of “Allied Forces,” most of whom were not Jews, rallying to the defense of their Jewish brothers and sisters suffering the genocide of the Holocaust. The vitally important role our Muslim brothers and sisters must take now in resisting the terrible distortion of Islam has come to the forefront of our consciousness as we seek to aid and assist those Muslim believers who must lead the fight against terrorist Islamic extremism. The terrorists say they want a “Jihad” (holy war) of Islam vs. other religions, but the world is coming to see that this is not what the conflict is about; rather we need to support Islam—in its pure practice and devout belief in one God—to resist the hijacking of the faith that has taken place through the terrorist perpetrators. In Medjugorje, Our Lady has said that the division of peoples into Muslims, Jews and Christians is a manmade division; in the eyes of God all human beings are equally beloved children. To devout Muslims, the outer Jihad of an exterior “holy war” is by far the “lesser” Jihad. The “greater” Jihad is the individual, interior war against the “nafs”—the inner evil impulses of our lower nature, the egoic False Self. This is the “Jihad” to which Our Lady has constantly called us in Medjugorje: an inner Jihad conducted through prayer of the heart.

 And so today we must take very seriously Our Lady’s urgent call to “pray for my intentions.” She does not spell out for us what those intentions are, but we know that as Queen of Peace she is surely centered upon the peace of our planet. Throughout this Advent season—a time meant to be intensely reflective, quiet, prayerful and penitential—let us join forces as “Allies” of Our Blessed Lady in this holy war against the Satanic evil of the egoic false self, and offer thousands of “Hail Mary’s, Our Father’s, and Glory Be’s for “her intentions”—whatever they may be. Let us offer our daily or weekly Eucharists, our liturgical prayer during Mass, our rosaries, our litanies and chaplets of mercy, our small impromptu pleas, our Centering and meditative prayer, our Lectio Divina upon scripture, and any other forms of prayer we make at random moments throughout the day for Our Lady’s intentions. In some hidden and mysterious way that we cannot comprehend, heaven can make use of our prayers, however poor and weak they are in our eyes. Our Lady has often expressed that she NEEDS our participation through prayer in order to achieve the goals for which she was allowed by the Divine Will to come to Medjugorje. This need has now reached a critical “tipping” point.

 Along with prayer, Our Lady calls us to “be carriers of peace and hope in this restless world.” How?  Fr.Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. prophetically stated more than 60 years ago: “The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the Earth.” Today we see the dire need to move past ideological differences between the world’s countries and cultures, to discover and focus upon the common provenance of basic human values shared by all—our inherent dignity, hopes, dreams, rights and responsibilities as members of the same species. All of our recent popes have warned of the dangers of ideologies that become obsessive and idolatrous, spawning only division, hatred and war. This human propensity toward ideology rears its head most hatefully in the realm of politics, whether domestic or international, as “we impersonalize and demonize each other through labels.”

 Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI (President of our Oblate School of Theology) writes: “It is a terrible scourge, a moral failure, this labeling. A label renders another faceless, an amorphous category and usually, a hated one as well. Through labels we set up faceless demons through which we can give full vent to paranoia.…Thus we could justify building nuclear bombs and could hate in the name of God. Why? Because we were not hating actual persons, with faces, feelings, dreams, pains, families and children. We were hating a faceless monster without eyes…. All wars, ultimately, come about because we no longer look at persons, but rather at ideology and then create the appropriate labels by which to demonize people. Many soldiers, for instance, find it almost impossible to kill someone if they are close enough to see that person’s face. Killing is more easily done from a distance—with mortar shells, bombings and long-range weapons that strike a faceless ‘enemy’ who is not actually seen….

 But this isn’t just true for war; it is just as true within our churches and civic circles: Here we disrespect, justify paranoia, and rationalize lack of elementary charity because we are, in the end, not dealing with real persons, but with faceless liberals, conservatives, feminists, male chauvinists, reactionaries, old fogies, New Agers, good-for-nothings on welfare, valueless yuppies, out-of-date patriarchal bullies, fanatical pro-lifers, family-value-destroying radicals, and uptight fundamentalists….We need not give these persons the love and understanding the Gospel asks for because, thanks to the labels we have given them, they are not persons at all but demons to be exorcised. We live in a time of paranoia and hysteria, both of the right and of the left, within society at large. Simply put, there is a lot of hatred, disrespect, slander of others and distortion of the truth all around. Moreover, on all sides, it is rationalized on the highest moral grounds….Through labels we demonize each other, strip the faces off of each other, and…kill each other. It is time to say, enough!” Let us keep in mind this common way that “Satan is attacking and tempting us” every day. Our refusal to label and demonize fellow human beings according to ideological stereotyping is one profound, important way that we can answer Our Lady’s call to “be carriers of peace and hope in this restless world.” Blessed Advent to all!

December Musings . . . Advent: Season of Silent Reflection & Prayer of Preparation for Celebrating the Incarnation of God-with-Us

The first Sunday of Advent addresses the theme of divine light. We know that light is a form of energy. This energy is invisible to the naked eye….Faith is the receptive apparatus that perceives the divine energy. Advent is a refining of our receptive apparatus. One of the best ways of doing this is to watch and pray.

The Spirit of Advent is the realization that we cannot be happy without a relationship with this immense Mysterythat vastly transcends all categories and yet deals with us in an incredibly personal way. The grace of Advent, through the Spirit’s gift of Knowledge, penetrates the inadequacy of all distorted values and programs for happiness. We know that we cannot save ourselves. Hence, out of our inmost being comes the cry for help. The realization comes that there is nothing we can do to change the existential situation except to wait and to offer this longing, too deep for words, to God’s infinite compassion.

Advent is not just waiting for a feast. It is waiting for God, waiting to be reborn, waiting to be transformed.  – Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO

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The joy of Advent is a joy born of eager expectation and waiting: waiting for something good—in fact, something wonderful. It is waiting for something sure. And what is sure? That God, the God who once came in Jesus, will come to us again. The joy of Advent springs from expecting him who came before “to build his tent in our midst” as one of us, and who will come again and again. It is a joy that springs from hope.  – Jaime L. Cardinal Sin of Manila

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God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. – Annie Dillard

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 For the good of all humankind Jesus Christ became human in a Bethlehem stable. Rejoice, O Christendom. All who at the manger finally lay down all power and honor, all prestige, all vanity, all arrogance and self-will; all who take their place among the lowly and let God alone be high; all who see the glory of God in the lowliness of the child in the manger: these are the ones who will truly celebrate Christmas.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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 Where will God go to touch the world? Look deep inside Mary for an answer. Better still—look deep within yourself. “Christ in you, the hope of glory!” the scripture says. (Col 1:27) Christ grew in Mary until He had to come out. Christ will grow in you until the same occurs. He will come out in your speech, in your actions, in your decisions. Every place you live will be a Bethlehem. And every day you live will be a Christmas. Deliver Christ into the world…your world. – Max Lucado   

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According to an ancient poem, if you’re walking down the roads of life these days and looking for God, you should be looking down. If God is going to be found these days, it’s going to be in small things, it’s going to be close to the ground, it may even be below the ground, or, perhaps more likely, in the face of a baby sleeping in a crib. May Christmas draw us to the crib! – Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI

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 It is not over, this birthing. There are always newer skies into which God can throw stars. When we begin to think that we can predict the Advent of God, that we can box the Christ in a stable in Bethlehem, that’s just the time that God will be born in a place we can’t imagine and won’t believe. Those who wait for God watch with their hearts and not their eyes, listening, always listening for angel words. – Ann Weems

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 Humanly speaking, the time of Advent must have been the happiest time in Our Lady’s life. The world about her must have been informed with more than its habitual loveliness, for she was gathering it all to the making of her son. But sometimes a pang of grief must have shot through her; for example, when the young wheat grew and she saw it pierce the earth with little swords. Perhaps the first sword to pierce her heart was a blade of green wheat. For was not her precious burden a grain of wheat sown in a field? Was He not bread? The world’s bread that must be broken? Everything must have spoken to her of Him…creation itself is simply God’s meditation on Christ.

The seed in the earth is the unborn child. The snow on the field is the Virgin Mother’s purity. The bloom on the black thorn, flowering through the land, His birth. The falling of the red rose leaves foretells His passion, the wheat is bound in sheaves because He was bound, it is threshed because He was scourged. The fruit is red on the bough because He was crucified; because He rose from the dead, spring returns to us again.

If such is the beauty of the world to ordinary children, what must it have been to the Mother of God, when her whole being was folded upon the unborn Christ within her? He was completely her own, utterly dependent upon her; she was His food and warmth and rest. His shelter from the world, His shade in the sun. She was the shrine of the Sacrament, the four walls and the roof of His home. Yet she must have longed to hold Him between her hands and to look into His human face and to see in it, in the face of God, a family likeness to herself! Think of that! It must have been a season of joy, and she must have longed for His birth, but at the same time she knew that every step that she took, took her little son nearer to the grave. Each work of her hands prepared His hands a little more for the nails; each breath that she drew counted one more to His last.

In giving life to Him she was giving Him death….In fact, unless Mary would give Him death, He could not die. Unless she would give Him the capacity for suffering, He could not suffer. He could only feel cold and hunger and thirst if she gave Him her vulnerability to cold and hunger and thirst. He could not know the indifference of friends or treachery or the bitterness of being betrayed unless she gave Him a human mind and a human heart. That is what it meant to Mary to give human nature to God.

He was invulnerable; He asked her for a body to be wounded. He was joy itself; He asked her to give Him tears. He was God; He asked her to make Him man. He asked for hands and feet to be nailed. He asked for blood to be shed. He asked for a heart to be broken. The stable at Bethlehem was the first Calvary. The wooden manger was the first Cross. The swaddling bands were the first burial bands. The Passion had begun. Christ was man.    – Caryll Houselander                 

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The helpless and piercing cry of a baby. Majesty in the midst of the mundane. Holiness in the filth of sheep manure and sweat. Divinity entering the world on the floor of a stable, through the womb of a teenager and in the presence of a carpenter. – Max Lucado

 God became man so that man might become God.
   – St. Athanasius

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 December 8:  The Immaculate Conception of Mary

Immaculate Conception, Mary my Mother, live in me, act in me, speak in and through me, think your thoughts in my mind, love through my heart, give me your dispositions and feelings. Teach, lead and guide me to Jesus! Correct, enlighten, and expand my thoughts and behavior, possess my soul, take over my entire personality and life, replace it with yourself! Incline me to constant adoration, pray in me and through me; let me live in you and keep me in this union always. – Mother Immaculata, OCD

Wisdom of Pope Francis

This Christmas, there will be lights, parties, bright trees, and even Nativity scenes while the world continues to wage war. And what will remain after this war? Ruins, thousands of children without education, countless innocent victims, and lots of money in the pockets of arms dealers. God weeps for a world that has not understood the way of peace.

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