Medjugorje Message: February 25, 2019
Dear children! Today, I am calling you to a new life. It is not important how old you are, open your heart to Jesus who will transform you in this time of grace and, like nature, you will be born into a new life in God’s love, and you will open your heart to Heaven and the things of Heaven. I am still with you, because God permitted me out of love for you. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
March 2019
This beautiful message from Our Lady was given just as we prepare to embark upon the holy season of Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday on March 6th. Many of us approach the penitential practices of Lent with a sense of reluctance or even dread, hesitant before the seeming “death” of our old habits of comfort and ease that must be renounced—feeling intimidated by the yawning 40-day “desert experience” that lies before us with its challenge to pray, fast, and give up more than we ordinarily do. For those who take the Church’s liturgical seasons seriously, Lent can seem a daunting prospect.
But Our Lady’s message reverses our assumptions about Lent by injecting them with joyful excitement, hope, and enthusiasm. She does not present this Lenten season in negative terms of a call to “die” to our old ways; rather, she focuses on the literal meaning of “Lent” as springtime and renewal: “Today, I am calling you to a new life. It is not important how old you are, open your heart to Jesus who will transform you in this time of grace and, like nature, you will be born into a new life in God’s love, and you will open your heart to Heaven and the things of Heaven.” Many of us are now Baby Boomers-turned-Senior Citizens: “over the hill” and well into retirement age or what we may consider our “final act” or “last chapter” of life. Similarly, our earth itself is no “spring chicken” at 4.5 BILLION years old. Yet every spring, it is created anew; it buds and blossoms afresh as the cycle of seasons takes another turn with our little blue planet’s rotation around the sun.
Using this fact of life from Nature, Our Lady says that within the span of our human years, “it is not important how old you are”—“I am calling you to a NEW LIFE.” We are never too old to begin a “new life” with God; we are never too old for conversion; we are never too old to start over, to change, to experience transformation in Christ. Just as the dry, inert seeds buried in the dark earth of winter open themselves to the warm rays of the spring sun and miraculously send forth shoots that begin to grow into big, brilliant flowering plants, Our Lady says, “Open your heart to Jesus who will transform you in this time of grace and, like nature, you will be born into a new life in God’s love.” When we, like the seeds of flowers, begin to convert, change, grow, transform, develop, and evolve in response to Jesus in the “time of grace” that is Lent—or indeed, any time throughout our life on earth—what OPENS in us is an awareness of the Indwelling Divine Presence in our soul. We become a “new creation” that is not only earthly and bodily, but ALSO spiritual and ensouled, with a lifespan that is not brief and limited, but eternal and never-ending, for we have “opened our heart to Heaven and the things of Heaven.”
And what are the “things of Heaven” ? Lent invites us to ponder this question. The Scriptures point to them continually and the Gospel calls us to follow Christ as the ultimate incarnation and manifestation of “heavenly things.” St. Paul urges us to focus on these things, keeping our minds and hearts trained upon them, rather than the “things of earth”: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, whatever is excellent and worthy of praise—think about these things.” (Phil 4:8) From heavenly thoughts shall spring heavenly behavior toward others: “Put on then…heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another….And over all these put on LOVE, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts….And be thankful….Persevere in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.” (Col 3-4)
In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born into a new life “from above.” But Nicodemus in his literal-minded way, worries that one “grown old” cannot be “born again.” Jesus says, “If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” (Jn 3:12) Growing into the fullness of our humanity must always mean spiritual development, a “willingness to grow along spiritual lines” (as 12-Step work describes it). This is why St. Paul asserts, “For neither does circumcision mean anything, nor does uncircumcision, but only a NEW CREATION.” (Gal 6:15) And, “Whoever is in Christ is a NEW CREATION: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Cor 5:17) This renewal is a dying to our “old self” (or False/egoic Self) and the birthing of our True Self created in the Divine Image. St. Paul says: “You have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in the image of its creator.” (Col 3:10)
Our Lady tells us that “it is not important how old we are” when this heart opening happens. No matter what our age—5, 25, or 95—Jesus “WILL transform” us and we “WILL be born into a new life in God’s love, open to Heaven and the things of Heaven.” We are never “too old” for the Ancient of Days; as St. Augustine famously wrote: “Late have I loved You, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new, late have I loved You!” May we all enter this “time of grace” that is the Lenten season with open hearts ready to receive the transformative power of Jesus Christ in joyful enthusiasm, glorying in Great Nature as she blossoms with new life, and anticipating our own spiritual birth into a “new life” through the wholehearted embrace of our penitential practices attuned to the glorious LOVE of “Heaven and the things of Heaven.”
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“I have come to set a fire on the earth.” The fire is Christ’s own passion of love, a fire that is to be handed on. Whoever comes close to him must be prepared to be burned. This is a fire that makes things bright and pure and free and grand. Being a Christian, then, is daring to entrust oneself to this burning fire. The message of the Church is there precisely in order to conflict with our behavior, to tear man out of his life of lies and to bring clarity and truth. Truth makes demands, and it also burns.
—Pope Benedict XVI
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I want the tree of the cross to be planted in your heart and soul. Conform yourself with Christ crucified. Hide yourself in the wounds of Christ crucified. Bathe in the blood of Christ crucified. Get drunk on Christ crucified and clothe yourself in him. As Paul says, glory in the cross of Christ crucified. Eat your fill of disgrace and shame and dishonor by suffering for love of Christ crucified. Fasten your heart and affection to the cross with Christ, for the cross has been made a ship for you to the ultimate port of your salvation. And the nails have been made keys for you to open the kingdom of heaven.
—St. Catherine of Siena
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A Lenten Examen
We shall reflect on our habitual voluntary sins. These can be classified under the various forms of egoism: proud, arrogant, self-sufficient, vain egoism; and sensual, overly sensitive, lazy, indolent egoism.
To sins of pride belong all our desires to try to cut a figure, our strategies to push ourselves forward: ostentation, lying, trifling excuses, exaggerations, indiscretions, refusals to admit our faults, stubbornness, obstinacy, impatience, ruffled self-love, voluntary anxiety; harshness in words, in judgments, lack of charity either through frivolity or partiality.
Sins of sensuality include all that is related to sloth, negligence, gluttony, excessive affection, uncontrolled imagination, random reading, daydreams, discouragement, jealousy and envy, resistance to grace, fear of goodness….Such is the sad spectacle of the self that has not risen again or been refashioned in the image of Christ, transformed by his grace, configured to the Lord Jesus.
—Fr. Leonce de Grandmaison, S.J.
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The purpose of mature religion or spirituality is to cultivate in us the ability to accept “the sacrament of the present moment” just as it is, including the good and the bad, and to find God in it. Our human minds are prone to dividing the field of the moment and to focusing on the parts rather than the whole, thus missing what the eyes of the Spirit see. The seven “deadly sins” are pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony (lack of moderation), and lust. Two additional temptations, deceit and fear, are perhaps the most pervasive sins.
We only have the courage to face our deep illusions when we are entirely loved and accepted by God or by someone who acts as God toward us. So, ironically, our faults are the crack that lets grace in, exactly as the Gospel teaches. We must bring our root sin to consciousness rather than deny or repress it. We can only heal our wound with kindness and compassion, not judgment and condemnation. This is how Jesus treated sinners. Teresa of Avila said that the sinner is one who does not love herself enough. We do not see the whole self; we split and try to love the good self and reject the bad self. But Jesus told us to let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest. We need to be allowed to see and embrace our shadow, the part of us that most carried our shame, holding imperfection and beauty together in what Merton called “a hidden wholeness.”
Sin is its own punishment. For our own transformation, we must recognize that we tend to have a primary set of blinders, a primary delusion, a capital sin. There is a key dilemma, a habitual trap in each of us. We must notice how we block ourselves by our preferred style of perception. This way of perceiving reality doesn’t reflect the True Self, but it gives us false energy and purpose.
Our deepest sin and greatest gift are two sides of the same coin. When we are excessively fixated on our supposed gift it becomes a sin. Maintaining this “false self” becomes more important than anything else. We need to recognize this game for what it is and disarm ourselves—abandon the defense of the false self that we have created and return to the garden of the Divine Presence in us and around us. This leaving and returning happens many times in a healthy life; each time it is both a self-revelation and a divine-revelation.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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Sacred Scripture in Perspective
There is only one absolute truth and that is GOD. We believe that scripture is inspired by God, but that does not mean that God agrees with everything that is said in there. Contemplation is essential for understanding the deeper meaning of scripture. Scripture should be read on a regular basis as lectio divina with great dependence on the Spirit, who breathes through the sacred text. To give to scripture an absolute authority and the final moral voice in everything is a form of idolatry. It is to worship words rather than the God who inspired them.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
The Church, our Mother and Teacher, along with the often bitter medicine of the truth, offers us in the Lenten season the soothing remedy of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
In prayer, we enable our hearts to root out our secret lies and forms of self-deception, and find the consolation God offers. Fasting weakens our tendency to violence; it disarms us and becomes an opportunity for growth. It wakes us up and makes us more attentive to God and our neighbor. Almsgiving sets us free from greed and helps us regard our neighbor as a brother or sister; what I possess is never mine alone.
I urge the Church to take up the Lenten journey with enthusiasm, sustained by almsgiving, fasting and prayer. If, at times, the flame of charity seems to die in our own hearts, know that this is never the case in the heart of God! He constantly gives us a chance to begin loving anew.
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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
