Medjugorje Message: May 25, 2018
Dear children! In this peaceless time, I am calling you to have more trust in God who is your Father in Heaven and who has sent me to lead you to Him. You, open your hearts to the gifts which He desires to give you and, in the silence of your heart, adore my Son Jesus who has given His life so that you may live in eternity—where He desires to lead you. May your hope be the joy of a meeting with the Most High in everyday life. Therefore, I am calling you: do not neglect prayer because prayer works miracles. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
June 2018
In this beautiful message from Our Lady, she highlights yet another brilliant facet of the multifaceted “diamond of prayer” to which she has been calling us for 37 years in Medjugorje. Fully acknowledging the present situation of our world, riddled with violence, unrest and corruption, Our Lady begins: “In this peaceless time, I am calling you to have more trust in God who is your Father in Heaven….” Indeed, TRUST IN GOD is the greatest antidote to this “peaceless time” in which we live—both as individuals and as families, communities, and nations.
For what anxiety, fear, distress, anguish or conflict exists in my personal life that could not be pacified, calmed or healed by a deeper, genuine “trust in God my Father in Heaven“? To those harbingers of doom who stand about wringing their hands in worry and despair, Our Lord’s gospel words ring out powerfully: “Fear is useless. What is needed is TRUST!” (Mk 5:36; Lk 8:50) Trust and faith were always the dispositions Our Lord looked for in the people He met and wanted to help and heal. Their lack or absence of trust was always a cause of sorrow when Jesus could not succeed in reaching them with a miraculous remedy, for they were stuck in their “peacelessness“—their state of untrusting unrest.
Yes, indeed this is a “peaceless time” in which we live, with the vast majority of our world “hopped up” and “strung out.” HOPPED UP on the 24/7 overstimulation of constant technology—the myriad screens and attached devices overloading our psyche with internet information and social media garbage. STRUNG OUT on some form of self-medicating behavior with which to cope in this unhealthy and abnormal environment: opioid drugs, anti-anxiety/anti-depressant pharmaceuticals, alcohol, marijuana, excess food, the “retail therapy” of compulsive shopping (leading to crippling debt), gambling, porn and other sexual addictions, etc. Our 21st century culture seems the very definition of “peaceless“—driven to distraction by our unmanageable lifestyle that keeps us stuck in a deadly shallowness and superficiality of consciousness that is clearly fueling the macabre three-ring circus that now constitutes our national and international politics. Seemingly “the inmates are in charge of the asylum” and chaos reigns. Fear is a natural human response to the instability of “this peaceless time.”
Yet Our Lady, in calling us “to have more trust in God,” reminds us of how this can be changed: “You, open your hearts to the gifts which He desires to give you and, in the silence of your heart, adore my Son Jesus who has given His life so that you may live in eternity—where He desires to lead you.” Today, just as in the time of Christ, the solution to our peaceless, violent, insecure, insanely unstable condition is to step out of our self-protective walls of defensiveness and fear, and “OPEN OUR HEARTS to the gifts which God desires to give us.” Notice that the positive initiative and active role are always God’s; our job is simply to OPEN in receptivity to His giving, to His desire for us. To TRUST God our Father means we feel safe opening to Him, knowing and believing that we open only to Divine love, mercy, and goodness waiting to be poured upon us. As Jesus said, “Would you give your child a stone instead of bread? A snake instead of a fish? A scorpion instead of an egg? If you, then, who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give to those who ask Him!” (i.e. to those who open their hearts to His bountiful grace).
We may wonder HOW to go about this heart-opening prayer? Our Lady instructs us: “In the silence of your heart, adore my Son Jesus who has given His life so that you may live in eternity.” First we are to “unplug“—to turn away from the hyperactive overstimulation of our constant technology and enter into SILENCE. This “silence of our heart” may be a complete external, physical, sensory silence to aid in “hearing” our interior depths, or perhaps there can be some minimal amount of sound, such as soft, wordless music or chant. But clearly Our Lady is encouraging us to silence the noise and chatter of our “peaceless” world—both exteriorly and interiorly—during the time that we spend in this prayer of “opening the heart to God in TRUST.”
Our human brain never stops thinking, so toward what can we guide its restless “spinning” during the silence? Our Lady says, “Adore my Son Jesus,” recognizing what He has done for us, dying on the cross to open for us eternal life in heaven with Him forever. This gaze of love that is ADORATION—whether we look upon a crucifix, a holy icon, the Sacred Host in a monstrance, a flickering candle, or nothing material at all, with eyes closed to everything external—can fill our heart with renewed TRUST and CONFIDENCE in the presence of our loving God whose relationship with us is far higher, broader, deeper and longer than our short lifetime on earth. We can “taste” our heavenly future in this silent gaze of adoring Jesus.
Still, Our Lady hastens to affirm that our encounter with God through Jesus is not limited to the heavenly realms we will enter after death, but that it is very much a matter of “here and now,“ as well: “May your hope be the joy of a meeting with the Most High in everyday life. Therefore, I am calling you: do not neglect prayer because prayer works miracles.” Of course, to whatever extent we make this silence a daily practice, we WILL meet God in the “everyday” of our period of Heart-Opening Prayer filled with adoration. But Our Lady’s closing remark about “prayer working miracles” and “a meeting in everyday life” points to something more: something beyond and aside from our silent adoration prayer-period itself.
It is said that the fruits of contemplative prayer are rarely if ever “felt” during the actual period of meditative silence. On the contrary, often one experiences nothing but dry, empty tedium or the continual wrestling with distracting thoughts, even feeling the time has been a “waste” or a “failure.” But nothing could be further from the truth!
Just as the senses are “defective” in recognizing anything other than “plain bread and wine” in the Eucharist, but FAITH ALONE supplies our assurance of the Real Presence of Christ in the sacred species—so also our weak human senses often register “nothing special” happening during our silent Heart-Opening Prayer time of adoring Jesus. But in reality, His Presence and Action are proceeding powerfully within us, just as they are at the consecration of the bread and wine at the Mass. Indeed, God is at work in His own way when we allow Him, through our “opening,” and “miracles” of transformation are taking place far “below the radar” of our gross physical senses. It is only later, “in everyday life,” that our “hope may be the joy of a meeting with the Most High.” Prayer works these “miracles,” according to Our Lady. What form do they take?
While “miracles” do take a spectacular or sensational form sometimes, we are not to fixate upon seeking out such phenomenal gifts; rather, we stand in awe, wonder, and unspeakable gratitude for the true interior miracles of deeper peace, greater charity, patience, lovingkindness and merciful forgiveness of wrongs as these begin to gradually replace our “peaceless time” through the greatest miracle of all: a CONVERSION OF HEART that “prayer works” in us—first individually, and then, like Gospel salt and yeast, throughout the whole world.
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Contemplative prayer does not fully do its job unless we are also working on our shadow side: that is, unloading the undigested material of our psychological unconscious. Practicing regular periods of prayer and then allowing the gifts we have received to be challenged by the reality of our community, other people, circumstances, the news of the day, opposition, financial worries, or personal illness: all of these are necessary aspects of the spiritual journey and are not obstacles. It is our attitude toward them that has to change.
Contemplation provides the interior freedom to allow God to change us. A regular practice over time provides you with the space to access the unconscious motivation that arises out of your instinctual needs. This is the most transformative kind of combination: cultivating interior silence in prayer and facing the ruthless challenges of everyday life. As the presence of God infuses itself into your consciousness, you have an increased capacity to trust God and let go of your attachments.
It’s not that you no longer feel the same difficulties or your baggage suddenly goes away, but the difficulties do not have the same dominating effect they had in earlier periods of your spiritual journey. Your false self is being undermined and gradually dismantled by your twofold practice. Feelings in response to emotional situations are still alive. The yearning for God has no limits, but every other desire needs to be moderated or better, relinquished.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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In many ways prayer—certainly contemplative prayer or meditation—is planned and organized failure. If you’re not prepared for failure, you’ll avoid prayer, and that’s what most people do. Prayer is typically not an experience of immediate union, satisfaction, or joy; in fact, quite the opposite. Usually you meet your own incapacity for and resistance to union. You encounter your thinking, judging, controlling, accusing, blaming, fearing mind.
So why pray? What we’re doing in prayer is letting our self-made foundation crumble so that God’s foundation can be our reality. Prayer is a practice of failure that overcomes our resistance to union with Love.
Although the majority of religions remain at the first stage of creating meaning for the separate self, there are people inside every religion who are on the true further journey. These are the ones who have “died before they die,” who have let great love, suffering, or prayer lead them beyond their small self into the Big Self. They have let go of who they thought they were, or needed to be, to discover who they always were in God.
The mind of Christ is not binary, either/or thinking. The mind of Christ can live with paradox, uncertainty, and mystery. This way of knowing is Biblical faith. In the first half of our lives, we are largely not ready to understand what faith is, because we still cling to naive beliefs and false certainties. We are still afraid of darkness and the cross. In time, through trials, suffering and prayer, we allow ourselves to be broken open to the Larger Knowing that can hold everything in love, grace, and freedom. Then we move from mere religion to beginning a spiritual journey that will help us and the world.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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June 3: Feast of Corpus Christi—the Body and Blood of Christ
We come to the essence of mysticism: religion is life, and life is religion. When I experience the fact that my rising in the morning and putting on my slippers is a profoundly religious act, then I have recognized what religion is. But this is not possible without deep experience. In the Eucharist we solemnly proclaim that this is not just bread (not just form) but the essence of divinity appearing in this form. In the Eucharist we solemnly proclaim that nothing exists that is not God, which means that we ought to experience even our breakfast as one more way the Divine expresses itself. It is a sacred action to live one’s life here and now. The sacrament of the moment is “living in the will of God.”
The communion host: this bread signifies the reality of life that hides itself from our bodily eyes. It is supposed to shine forth for us in the bread. And just as it does so, it is to shine forth in everything that exists. There is nothing that the Divine doesn’t illumine. All this emphasis is placed on bread so that we can realize how God shines forth in all things. Everything is only the sparkle of the Eternal. Anyone who experiences that will go through life with great reverence and will deal very reverently with life. We no longer prevent God from taking form in us and through us. We experience Him in us and in all things. We keep celebrating the Eucharist so that we may become aware that just as God exists in the bread, he exists in every one of us, in every step, in every breath. And he exists this way in everything. In order to understand that, we keep celebrating this meal.
—Fr. Willigis Jager, OSB
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June 8-9: Feasts of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus & the Immaculate Heart of Mary
O my beloved Lord Jesus Christ, I consecrate myself to you and offer you my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—your own saving act on Calvary—for the intentions of your Most Sacred Heart, in a union of love with all creation. Amen.
O Blessed Mother Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to you and to your Immaculate Heart. Please use me as you wish to accomplish your designs upon our world. I am all yours and all that I have is yours, my Mother and my Queen. Amen.
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June 29: Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Apostles
The constant human tendency away from God can only be counteracted by a return to this living tradition, a renewal and a deepening of the one unchanging life that was infused into the Church at the beginning. And yet this tradition must always be a revolution because by its very nature it denies the values and standards to which human passion is so powerfully attached.
To those who love money and pleasure and reputation and power, this tradition says: “Be poor, go down into the far end of society, take the last place among men, live with those who are despised, love others and serve them instead of making them serve you. Do not fight them when they push you around, but pray for those that hurt you. Do not look for pleasure, but turn away from things that satisfy your senses and your mind and look for God in hunger and thirst and darkness, through deserts of the spirit in which it is madness to travel. Take upon yourself the burden of Christ’s cross—that is, Christ’s humility and poverty and obedience and renunciation, and you will find peace for your souls.”
This is the most complete revolution that has ever been preached; in fact, it is the only true revolution, because all the others demand the extermination of somebody else, but this one means the death of the man who you have come to think of as your own self.
—Fr. Thomas Merton, OCSO
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
One cannot know the Lord without being in the habit of adoring, of adoring in silence. Yet I believe that this prayer of adoration is the least known among us; it is the one we engage in the least. To waste time—if I may say it—before the Lord, before the mystery of Jesus Christ. To adore, there in the silence, in the silence of adoration. He is the Lord, and I adore Him. Here is the heart and center.
How can we come to know Christ? Christ is present in the Gospel, and we come to know Christ by reading the Gospel. We also come to know Christ by studying the Catechism. But this is not enough. In order to understand the breadth and length and height and depth of Jesus Christ we need to enter into prayer. Like St. Paul, we need to pray. But he does not only pray; he adores this mystery which surpasses all knowledge, and it is within the context of adoration that he asks this grace to know Jesus. Thirdly, to come to know Christ we need to know ourselves; we need to be in the habit of accusing ourselves, of calling ourselves “sinners.” One cannot adore without accusing oneself. To enter into this bottomless and boundless sea, which is the mystery of Christ, these things are needed: Prayer, Adoration, and Accusing oneself: “I am a man of unclean lips.” May the Lord grant us this grace of coming to know Christ.
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Mark Your Calendar
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To reject the contemplative dimension of any religion is to reject the religion itself, however loyal one may be to its externals and rituals. This is because the contemplative dimension is the heart and soul of every religion. It initiates the movement into higher states of consciousness. The great wisdom teachings of the Vedas, Upanishads, Buddhist Sutras, Old and New Testaments, and the Koran bear witness to this truth. Right now there are about two billion Christians on the planet. If a significant portion of them were to embrace the contemplative dimension of the gospel, the emerging global society would experience a powerful surge toward enduring peace. If this contemplative dimension of the Christian religion is not presented, the Gospel is not being adequately preached.
– Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
