Medjugorje Message: June 25, 2019
Dear children! I am thanking God for each of you. In a special way, little children, thank you for having responded to my call. I am preparing you for the new times that you may be firm in faith and persevering in prayer, so that the Holy Spirit may work through you and renew the face of the earth. I am praying with you for peace which is the most precious gift, even though Satan wants war and hatred. You, little children, be my extended hands and proudly go with God. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
July 2019
In this monthly message to the world, given on the 38th anniversary of Our Lady’s apparitions as the Queen of Peace in Medjugorje, she begins by expressing gratitude for us, and using her signature closing line—this time repeated at both the start and finish of her message: “I am thanking God for each of you. In a special way, little children, thank you for having responded to my call.” Every word that Our Lady says is instructive, inspiring, and edifying for us if we are listening attentively, with open mind and heart. This one, same, small, humble statement of gratitude has closed every message to the world she’s given in these many years of apparitions—repeated hundreds of times! “Thank you for having responded to my call.”
To be honest, there have been many months in the past 38 years when we have not “responded” fully, adequately, or at all to Our Lady’s call to conversion in Medjugorje. And yet she thanks us. She carefully chooses her words, grateful for our “having responded” —even once—perhaps long ago, back in the early days of the apparitions, in the ’80’s or ’90’s, when our spiritual zeal was fresh, and our fervor for “conversion of heart” strong. Even if our passion for Our Lady’s call has cooled or grown cold over the years, she still remembers; she recalls our once-upon-a-time open and loving “responding” to her, and she expresses her gratefulness to us anew, every single 25th of the month.
With this consistently repeated closing sentence, Our Lady demonstrates for us a vital spiritual practice: the “attitude of gratitude.” How gracious, humble, gentle, sincere, merciful and forgiving is this constant, unconditional expression of thanks we receive from the Mother of God each and every month! Without any extraordinary or meritorious “responses” on our part from month to month, still, Our Lady continually thanks us. She is, as always, “full of grace.” This gratefulness practice is exemplary of how we, too, should approach God and others in our life. Mary, Queen of Peace models for us a foundation stone of peaceful relationship with anyone and everyone: GRATEFULNESS and its frequent EXPRESSION.
We have no idea how powerful a conscious gratefulness practice would be in building PEACE in our troubled world. If each of us as an individual were to intentionally focus on at least five things per day for which we are thankful—starting each morning with a grateful heart and ending each night with thanksgiving for blessings received—it would initiate a radical transformation in our own individual sense of personal, inner peace. As we raise our own daily awareness and sensitivity to the multitude of “good things” pouring into our life, we will begin to live like “Mary, full of grace“—having the “Magnificat-Mind” of her gospel song that bubbles up in gratitude: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior….God who is mighty has done great things for me…has filled the hungry with good things.” (Lk 1:46-55) What are the “great things” and the “good things” for which I am thankful today? There are an infinite number on any given day, if we have “eyes to see and ears to hear.”
Like a pebble cast into water with the ripples gently spreading, our gratefulness practice can then radiate outward from our personal sense of daily appreciation for Life’s gifts to us individually, to an active EXPRESSION OF GRATITUDE TOWARD OTHERS in open acknowledgment of the gifts we see, observe, intuit, or sense (however obscurely) in them. Again, what tremendous transformative power for peacemaking, reconciliation, and relationship-building might lay in our simple and humble expressions of gratitude for the good qualities we see in one another? To frequently and easily verbalize our appreciation for whatever positive values or beneficial characteristics we perceive in another person—particularly in those with whom we disagree—could truly be a “game changer” in the contentious, conflict-ridden world we now inhabit, where the “Gotcha!” of cheap shots and nasty tweets has so drastically lowered the level of civility and respectful discourse between people.
In countercultural contrast to this “way of the world,” let us follow Our Lady’s lead by actively searching out the good and commendable in every person and situation we encounter—rather than the unpleasant or disagreeable aspects—and, in gracious dialogue, praise that good with sincere gratefulness. This “attitude of gratitude” is a spiritual wisdom practice that we glean directly from Our Lady’s own example given in every Medjugorje message these past 38 years!
Our Lady continues: “I am preparing you for the new times that you may be firm in faith and persevering in prayer, so that the Holy Spirit may work through you and renew the face of the earth.” Here Our Lady summarizes the purpose of her apparitions in Medjugorje for these (almost) four decades: “preparing [us] for the new times that [we] may be firm in faith and persevering in prayer.” What are “the new times”? Heaven knows. We don’t know what the future holds, but we know “who” holds the future, and Our Lady’s “school of prayer” at Medjugorje is our “prep school” for whatever lies ahead on planet Earth in the “new times.”
Many believe that our current period of darkness—greed, hatred, violence, bigotry, corporate crime, political corruption, and environmental destruction—is the final chapter or dying era of a diabolical regime of satanic human ego that is blinded by the illusion of separation from God and creation. And that this dark epoch of our history will soon give way to the “new times” of the Triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart, through which Satan will be defeated—chained and bound—and the earth renewed in an era of peace, refreshed and liberated from the bondage of our collective tyranny by the selfish ego that plagues our world now. Many believe that Our Lady’s long period of apparitions in Medjugorje (which she says will be her last on earth) is a preparation for and prelude to this coming Reign of the Immaculate Heart which will constitute the “new times” (of interconnectedness vs. egoic separation): a big paradigm shift and evolutionary step forward in humanity’s spiritual consciousness.
That we are “firm in faith and persevering in prayer” is key to this massive shift and step! Our Lady bluntly states that our faith and prayer are needed so “that the Holy Spirit may work through you and renew the face of the earth.” Here she is clearly quoting from the “Veni Sancte Spiritus,” an ancient traditional prayer of the Church: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth.” Again, let us follow Our Lady’s lead and incorporate this beautiful prayer into our spiritual practice, daily inviting the Holy Spirit to work through us, to renew the face of the earth and to usher in the “new times” of Our Lady’s triumph over satanic evil in our world.
Our Lady concludes her 38th anniversary message by saying: “I am praying with you for peace which is the most precious gift, even though Satan wants war and hatred. You, little children, be my extended hands and proudly go with God.” The Queen of Peace, as Mary has identified herself at Medjugorje, calls peace “the most precious gift.” She has begged us to pray for it since her very first message in 1981. As children of Mary, we are to value PEACE—which is an attribute of God, of the Holy Spirit, and of the True Self that holds the Divine Indwelling Presence in creation—“even though Satan wants war and hatred.”
Here Our Lady provides for us an acid test: any call or action toward “war and hatred” is a movement aligned with Satan—with what satanic ego “wants.” We need not doubt or question our own response to any talk, tweet, text, theory, suggestion, plan, gesture, effort, venture, move, speech, conduct, behavior, reaction or maneuver: If it is either HATEFUL or WARLIKE, we are in a confrontation with Satan. Rather than “going along,” we are, rather, to “proudly go with God” by being Our Lady’s “extended hands” in the world—holding forth ONLY grace, love, and peace.
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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
