Medjugorje Message: May 25, 2021
Dear children! I am looking at you and calling: return to God because He is love and out of love has sent me to you to lead you on the way of conversion. Leave sin and evil, decide for holiness and joy will begin to reign; and you will be my extended hands in this lost world. I desire that you be prayer and hope to those who have not come to know the God of love. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
June 2021
As we approach the 40th anniversary of Our Lady’s apparitions in Medjugorje, the Queen of Peace begins her message by recapping her entire mission over these past four decades: “I am looking at you and calling: return to God because He is love and out of love has sent me to you to lead you on the way of conversion.” Our Lady’s message is in the present tense—as fresh, vital and urgent as it was in 1981: “I am looking at you and calling.” Do I feel my Mother’s gaze upon me, “looking,” as I go about my day? Do I hear her call? Do I have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that is open to Heaven’s plea upon my life?
This is Our Lady’s call: “Return to God because He is love and out of love has sent me to you to lead you on the way of conversion.” Our Lady’s keynote message in Medjugorje for almost 40 years may be summed up in the one word, “CONVERSION.” The Greek root of the word is “metanoia,” which means to “change the direction in which we’re looking for happiness.” Mary has been “sent” by God, “out of love,” to “lead us on the way” of this change-of-direction. We know our direction must change, for Our Lady says, “Return to God because He is love.” The word “RETURN” means “go back to where you came from”—so it’s the perfect companion for the word “conversion.” Together they tell us everything about Our Lady’s meaning and purpose in Medjugorje.
She is leading us to CHANGE our direction by RETURNING to the LOVE from which we came: GOD. “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.” (1 Jn 4:16) To RETURN to love must mean that we are not currently living in love now, despite our loving emotions. If love is more than warm, fuzzy feelings, then—on a practical, concrete level—what does this “conversion” and “return to God/Love” look like?
Our Lady explains: “Leave sin and evil, decide for holiness and joy will begin to reign.” In this movement of “conversion” and “return,” she instructs us to “LEAVE” some things and “DECIDE FOR” others, for love is an act of the will. This is the momentum of transformation, where our life undergoes authentic CHANGE. But we may ask, “Do I really live in ‘sin and evil’ now? What exactly am I supposed to ‘leave’ or change?” If we are being asked to “change the direction in which we look for happiness” (metanoia), then our present direction must include “sin and evil,” lurking in our old, habitual, unconverted “programs for happiness”—the ones we’re now called to “LEAVE.” Let’s look at what these are:
For most humans, the “direction in which we look for happiness” revolves around a few programs or energy centers that were formed in early childhood, based on instinctual needs that were somehow frustrated and not fully satisfied. These centers gradually become the hardened, guarded and defended “home turf” of the False Self or satanic ego, and through their exaggerated importance in our lives, lead us into various forms of “sin and evil.” They are:
- Safety and Security
- Affection and Esteem
- Power and Control
- Pleasure, Comfort and Ease
- Mythic Membership in a Group
How do these programs land us in “sin and evil”? The normal childhood need for Safety and Security, if thwarted, can grow into paranoid fear, suspicions, overblown “safety” measures, greed, materialism, and hoarding. The normal childhood need for Affection and Esteem, if thwarted, can grow into emotional insecurity, neediness, codependency, promiscuity, sexual abuse and addiction. The normal childhood need for Power and Control, if thwarted, can grow into manipulative, angry, aggressive, violent, domineering, tyrannical “control freak” behaviors. The normal childhood need for sensory Pleasure, Comfort and Ease, if thwarted, can grow into all sorts of addictions—food, alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, etc.—that give the brain a medicating or pain-numbing “hit” of dopamine. The normal childhood need for a Family Group, if thwarted, can grow into an exaggerated “tribal” or “mob mentality,” cultic over-identification with an “in-group” that with prejudice or bigotry excludes or persecutes all “others” outside. Examples are fixations upon one’s own nation, race, gender, religion, or political party.
In their exaggerated forms, all of these emotional programs for happiness or energy centers can foster and breed sinful behaviors in individuals, which become communal or systemic evil in groups such as corporations, governments or popular culture. All of them may be classified finally as forms of idolatry, in which substances, behaviors or relationships reflecting our dominant energy center become the “gods” we worship and serve, rather than the Most High God of Love who took flesh in Jesus Christ.
Through PRAYER and sacraments, as we become more aware of this False Self/egoic “operating system” that’s running our life and determining the “direction in which we look for happiness,” we can take action, with God’s help, to “LEAVE SIN AND EVIL”—realizing that GOD ALONE can meet every need of our “emotional programs for happiness” rooted in an imperfect childhood—healing and restoring the WHOLENESS that unmet childhood needs left as “HOLES” within us. In this way we LEAVE the “holes” and instead “DECIDE FOR HOLINESS”: the wholeness that God/Love offers us every moment if our hearts are open. As we do this, Our Lady tells us, “JOY will begin to reign” —something much deeper and more authentic than the weak, transient, momentary “happiness” we sought through our emotional programs that could never ultimately “work.”
To those of us who experience this healing conversion accomplished by our “God who is love” within the depths of our heart through the “Divine Therapy” of silent prayer, Our Lady says, “You will be my extended hands in this lost world.” She is preparing us for the role we must take when the Medjugorje messages end; she needs for those who are experiencing “CONVERSION”—the transformative “LEAVING” of our False Self “sin and evil” on the dung heap of the old, useless egoic emotional programs for happiness—to not only carry its message to the “lost world,” but to “BE” the message in our very essence, in a way that others can see, hear, touch, feel, and experience as Real.
Because of our human condition (aka “original sin“), we live in a “lost world” where most people are looking for meaning and happiness in all the wrong places: Safety/Security, Affection/Esteem, Power/Control, Pleasure, Group Identity. To “change the direction in which they look for happiness” will require “CONVERSION.” But how will they get the call? The “JOY” they see “REIGNING” in our life will be Mary’s “extended hands” reaching out to them and drawing them into the embrace of GOD/LOVE.
Our Lady concludes her message with this profound commission: “I desire that you BE prayer and hope to those who have not come to know the God of love.” For several years in Medjugorje, Our Lady gave a message on the 2nd of each month, specifically for “non-believers” whom she defined as “those who have not yet experienced the love of God.” It is significant that today she switches the final three words, from “love of God” to “God of love.” Indeed, this is a Big Commission that transcends all dogmatic or doctrinal “correctness” between religions or denominations. It is about who we say—from our own experience—the Great “I AM” is.
Sadly, it seems that millions of people worldwide—even those who call themselves “Christians” and “Catholics,” many in our own country and Church—have, in fact, “NOT come to know the God of love.” Instead, the majority of Christ’s followers, like everyone else on planet Earth, grow from infancy into old age with deeply-ingrained but mostly unconscious negative perceptions of God. At worst, God is seen as a fearful judge, punishing prosecutor, and vengeful executioner, waiting for our next misstep, recording every screw-up while the fires of hell are being stoked for the hour of our death.
At best, God is simply ABSENT—an all-knowing, all-powerful but far-removed Creator from whom we are separated by an unfathomable abyss of distance and division. Both of these God-images are ultimately terrifying, intimidating and traumatic, causing existential anxiety and neurotic guilt rather than a sense of comfort or confident assurance. Reaching adulthood without knowing the all-encompassing, ever-pervasive PRESENCE of DIVINE LOVE residing in our inmost being and as the essence of all Creation (all Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Wisdom, Mercy)—IS IT ANY WONDER that we carry our childhood emotional programs for happiness, like a baby’s pacifier or a toddler’s blanket, into adulthood and cling to them for support and solace throughout our whole life?
The tragic reality of our “lost world” is that the vast majority of human beings grow from infancy into full reflective self-consciousness WITHOUT ever experiencing the Indwelling Presence of “THE GOD OF LOVE.” This experience, Our Lady has taught tirelessly for 40 years, we enjoy through PRAYER—especially silent, contemplative “Prayer of the Heart“ where we unfailingly come to know the “God of love” whose “perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn 4:18), setting our minds at ease and filling us with peace, “joy,” and “hope” (rather than dread!) for our eternal soul. This experience of the “God of love” in prayer gives us an inner knowing, a “blessed assurance,” that no amount of catechesis, theological study, or magisterial teaching can convey. For this is a holistic love, not of the intellect alone, but of “heart and mind and soul and strength.”
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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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You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me: The First Commandment
The first commandment is the most difficult to keep. We are forever worshipping strange gods. Idolatry is what is natural to us. How do we have strange gods?…It has to do with false images of God to which we give obeisance. 10 such false gods:
- The arbitrary god of fear.
- The insecure, defensive, threatened god.
- The dumb, non-understanding god.
- The exotic god of special “holy” places.
- The ascetic god whose Christ does not feast.
- The emasculated god of unbalanced piety.
- The orthodox god of strict theological formulation.
- The unholy god in our own image and likeness.
- The overly intense, wired god of our own neuroses.
- The anti-erotic, anti-enjoyment god of our guilt.
Iconoclasm, smashing false gods, is never a gentle business. Whenever we conceive of God as somehow being defensive, exotic, anti-enjoyment, less forgiving and intelligent than ourselves, and preferring orthodoxy to compassion, we are breaking the first commandment. Such is idolatry.
—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
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Jesus, as one who was fully conscious of God in his life, opened up to the pain and darkness of the human experience. Only by entering into the darkness of suffering and rejection could Jesus fully know (and reveal) the depths of God’s love. For the fullness of Godly life requires that the realm of the unconscious be brought to the level of conscious acceptance. Only then is the self released from the ego and fully united with God.
The Godliness of Jesus is not found in his human works but in his ecstatic pain of love. For love to be true requires that one become vulnerable, in order to attain wholeness. The “yes” of Jesus, like Mary’s, reflects a profound consciousness of God’s presence, the very source of life within. God seeks to become whole in us, but such wholeness requires a death of the ego and a rebirth of the self in God. God suffers with us the conflict of life, for love longs for union, the reconciliation of opposites, for a wholeness which self-sufficiency contradicts. Christ-love is sacrificial love.
–Sr. Ilia Delio, OSF
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New tactics for raising spiritual awareness of God’s Love Within are paramount. Consider America’s history regarding religion. People coming to America were vastly Christian believers, people of “faith.” Yet there were not only inequities; there was essentially genocide from these “faithful believers,” followed by slavery and “neo” post-Civil War slavery. Inequities and violence have continued into present day American affairs for people of color, of different cultures, genders, and sexual orientation—those inequities brought on or ignored by vast numbers of “people of faith.” Why?
Certainly there were, and are, conflicting beliefs, attitudes, prejudices. Yet underlying that, there is the core problem: people have not found the Love of God…and the guidance of that Love…from WITHIN. Religious institutions have paid little attention to practices that foster that “Knowing.” Instead they have emphasized following written directives from history. But how are those directives in direct and current relationship with the Creator’s Love Within…NOW? Practices that facilitate that Knowing have been rare. Missing is a sustained practice toward Knowing and Feeling…Love Within —and projects that move this Love Within…Outward to others and All Life/Creation.
—Jim Foreman
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As we consciously let God within us flow and as we interconnect with God in others, we experience ourselves as bonded, not only to each other but in the divine relationship. We experience the “is-ness” of the whole, thus extending the flow of eternal life—the eternal realm—into this realm.
—Gordon Cosby
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Corpus Christi: Feast of the Holy Eucharist
Jesus’ death was the sacrifice which perfectly summed up his whole life. At the Last Supper Christ instituted the wondrous sacrament of the Eucharist, which was to enshrine and give to his members for all time, both himself and his sacrifice. The moment of his death is the center of all history. It stands in juxtaposition with every moment of history, and with every event of each person’s life. The sacramental system extends, like the pole of true North, a line to every point on the surface of the globe; it “extends” Christ, and also his sacrifice, so that he is in contact with every point of space and time.
One can take any single moment or event in one’s own life and place it in vital contact with any single moment or event in the human life of Christ. Every event of Christ’s life on earth takes place in vital contact with the events in the lives of every member of his Mystical Body. It is especially true of his sacrificial death on the cross. There we were one with him. There is a deep mystery here. In some way, we were present and united to him on Calvary, in his death and in his resurrection.
—Dom M. Eugene Boylan, OCR
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
The month of June is traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the highest human expression of divine love. The Heart of Jesus is the ultimate symbol of God’s mercy, representing the center, the source from which salvation for all humanity gushed forth.
Let us turn to the Virgin Mary: her Immaculate Heart—a mother’s heart—that has shared the compassion of God to the full, especially at the hour of the passion and death of Jesus. May Mary help us to be meek, humble and compassionate with all.
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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
