Medjugorje Message: October 25, 2017
Dear children! I am calling you to be prayer in this time of grace. You all have problems, afflictions, sufferings and lack of peace. May saints be models to you and an encouragement for holiness; God will be near you and you will be renewed in seeking through your personal conversion. Faith will be hope to you and joy will begin to reign in your hearts. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
November 2017
Our Lady’s message is timely and appropriate for this month of All Saints and All Souls. Each year as we move from All Hallow’s Eve into “Dia de los Muertos” and All Souls Day, the month of November with its shortening days and falling leaves reminds us not only of the current year’s “dying,” but of our own mortality, our beloved dead, and the impending death of all our dear ones. We are offered a keener awareness of the “last things”: the END of this life and the world as we know it. Yet Our Lady calls the autumn season “this time of grace” when we are to “BE prayer.” Indeed, anything that reminds us of the reality of death and the passage from time to eternity is a grace for which prayer is the best response.
The Rule of St. Benedict advised: “Keep death daily before your eyes.” This is a vital spiritual practice in the life of any Christian, for a daily “dying to self” is to be the cruciform pattern of our entire life, aided by a crucifix in our home to gaze upon often. Preparing for our physical death by this daily dying to the false self, St. Francis of Assisi tells us “the second death will do us no harm.” The rosary also keeps death in focus as we ask Mary (over 200 times!) to pray for us “now and at the hour of our death.”
Paradoxically, in “memento mori” —remembering our death—we are actually energized to LIVE daily life “now” in a fuller, richer, more liberated and detached way. St. Francis de Sales said, “Live every day as if it were your last.” When we do this, we are inevitably led to a feeling of deep gratitude for the life we’ve been given and the love we’ve been shown, by God loving us through other people and all creation. November is thus fittingly the month of Thanksgiving, too, as our increased meditative focus on death leads us to profound appreciation for the “time of grace” that is our fleeting human life on earth. In spite of the world’s present darkness and tragedy, we each have countless blessings for which to be thankful every day.
Yet Our Lady also acknowledges the sad truth of our human condition: “You all have problems, afflictions, sufferings and lack of peace.” If there is any doubt about heaven’s awareness of our condition on earth, here is the proof: our situation on this remote planetary outpost of the Milky Way galaxy is clearly seen and known by Our Lady and the Holy Trinity, for God is truly closer to us than our next breath. Not only did Jesus and Mary live a fully human life on earth themselves, experiencing its “problems, afflictions and sufferings“—but they remain intimately involved and connected with the daily life of each one of us, even now. We need never imagine ourselves alone or abandoned by God, despite how we sometimes feel. It’s a terrible fallacy to think of God as “up there,” far removed and separated from us “down here.” St. Teresa of Avila said “All our problems with prayer come from praying as if God is absent” (somewhere else, not here and now). Yet that is exactly how many of us pray—as if helplessly drifting in cold outer space, alone, untethered and disconnected from the “Mother-ship” of Divine Presence, light years away. But in reality, this “Mother-ship of Divine Love” indwells our very being at every moment, no matter where we are!
Our Lady continues: “May saints be models to you and an encouragement for holiness.” In this month, especially, we remember the “great cloud of witnesses” that surrounds us, which the Church calls the “Communion of Saints“—those holy men and women who’ve gone before us, leaving great example for living through the “problems, afflictions, sufferings and lack of peace” that we now experience on our earthly journey home to heaven. To spend time with the saints in both a study of their lives and in intercessory prayer asking for their spiritual help (just as we ask our friends on earth to pray for us), we are given the support of their exemplary handling of the trials and tribulations of their own lives. Their lives, like ours, always included the pain and suffering of our universal “fallen” humanity, riddled with the afflictions of selfish ego ever trying to block the flow of God’s grace and indwelling Presence. The saints are those who wrestled with and overcame “self”—the “False Self” of arrogant, egoic self-sufficiency—in order to OPEN fully to the grace and mercy of God, receiving Divine Assistance through their open-hearted humility. Consequently, the amazing “flow” of the Trinity streamed through their lives without impediment, and the Almighty could “do great things” through, with, and in them. Let us learn from them as models for holiness, following their practices and counsels.
Our Lady concludes her message by saying: “God will be near you and you will be renewed in seeking through your personal conversion. Faith will be hope to you and joy will begin to reign in your hearts.” Our Lady is tracing for us the outline of a NEW LIFE that is available to us “through our personal conversion.” If we accept her invitation to “be prayer in this time of grace,” and take advantage of the magnificent role models we have in the Communion of Saints, to be our guides and inspiration, we can indeed be “renewed in seeking,” so that we no longer seek the dead-end disappointments of our selfish ego’s “programs for happiness.” These are the ephemeral worldly values and cultural symbols that lead nowhere, landing us only in “problems, afflictions, sufferings and lack of peace.” Through the “personal conversion” born of PRAYER, Our Lady says that faith, hope and “joy will begin to reign in our hearts.” Life on earth will always have its difficulties and grief as our human condition brings sufferings, but we need not experience “lack of peace” because of them, if we place ourselves fully and willingly under the mantle of our Blessed Mother, the Queen of Peace. She guides us to a life of ongoing conversion through a daily dying to self. This leads inevitably to our experiencing the renewal of a lively faith, hope and joy as this daily “death” gives way to a “resurrection” of our innermost spirit, in conformity with the Paschal Mystery pattern laid down for us by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Welcome, Sister Death!
“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” —John 12:24
Some form of suffering or death—psychological, spiritual, relational, or physical—is the only way we will loosen our ties to our small and separate false self. Only then does the larger Self appear, which we call the Risen Christ, the soul, or the True Self. In the physical process of dying, the ordinary mind (false self) and its delusions die in the “nearing-death experience.” As death carries us off, it is impossible to any longer pretend that who we are is our ego. The ego is transformed in the very carrying off. This is why so many spiritual teachers say we must die before we die.
The overly defended ego is where we reside before these much-needed deaths. The True Self (or “soul”) becomes real to us only after we have walked through death and come out much larger and wiser. This is what we mean by transformation, conversion, or enlightenment. Anything less than the death of the false self is useless religion. We do not need any more “super Catholic” false selves. The manufactured false self must die for the True Self to live. As Jesus puts it, “Unless I go, the Spirit cannot come.” (Jn 16:7) This is clear but devastating news. Theologically speaking, Jesus (individual person) had to die for the Christ (the universal presence) to arise. This is the universal pattern of transformation.
Your True Self is that part of you that sees truthfully and will live forever. It is divine breath passing through you. Your false self is that part of you that is constantly changing and will eventually die. It is in the world of passing forms and yet it sees itself as a central reference point—which is never really true. The false self is passing, tentative, or “empty.” Mature religion helps us speed up the process of dying to the false self—or at least to stop fighting its eventual demise. This is why saints live in such a countercultural way. Dying is a gradual free-fall anyway, so we might as well jump in and cooperate. It is much easier to offer a conscious, free YES to death ahead of time before it is finally forced upon us on our deathbed or in some tragedy. St. Francis said: “Welcome, Sister Death!” Only the false self sees death as an enemy or an ending. For the True Self, death is an expanding. — Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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The more we love God here, the more we shall enjoy God there. Therefore, love God much in this life, and you shall enjoy him much in the next; let the love of God increase in you now, so that you may have then the fullness of his joy. This is the truth to be pondered in your mind, proclaimed by your tongue, loved in your heart, expressed by your lips. Your soul should hunger, your body thirst, your whole substance crave for nothing but this until you enter the joy of your God, until you are clasped in your Lover’s arms, until you are led into the chamber of your beloved Spouse who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. — St. Bonaventure
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Stop trying to think out a solution for the moment: there isn’t one. One day there may be; God will then show it to you. In the meantime, accept it all as being the big thing for God and his Church that he asks of you. You will find the relief of merely accepting, instead of struggling, wonderful; and I include in this accepting anything in yourself, during the crisis, which seems to you a failure or fault. Don’t exonerate yourself, but just say you are sorry, briefly, to God, and add that your name is dirt—that’s what is to be expected from you—but you’re sorry, you are forgiven, and it is over. — Caryll Houselander
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If you are humble enough to put on Christ, then you begin to live and work in the power of Christ, and according to the will of Christ. You begin to have the obedience and docility to use all your energy in the service, not of selfishness, but of the Other; to sow, and to leave it to God to do the reaping; to live in the present, and leave the future to his good pleasure. To be meek, then, is first of all to be obedient; to be obedient with the loving obedience which expresses an identity of will like the identity of the deep personal will between lovers. That is the obedience which is the highest form of freedom, the freedom of the children of God. It is thus that we should think of our obedience to the Church, to our vocation, to our conscience: an obedience which sometimes implies a struggle within the mind, sometimes demands much labor and care, but always ends in tranquility and peace…for the resulting action is seen in the context of the total struggle between good and evil…the total divine strategy of love: you take always the long view. — Fr. Gerald Vann, OP
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Do you not know that utter dying to self, to live only in God and for God, can only take place by degrees, through a persistent fidelity in making the sacrifice of the intelligence, of the will, of all our passions and caprices, of our feelings and affections; and finally, the sacrifice that comes of a complete submission in all trials, sometimes painful indeed, through which God lets us pass in order to change us completely into him? God wishes us to glorify him by a self-abandonment full of faith and love. — Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, SJ
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The divine action in daily life and prayer is working with incredible wisdom. It provides us with the same situations over and over again, until we are completely detached all the way down to the soles of our feet. We can postpone this process by disregarding it, but the vocation we have and which we’re trying to transmit to others is a desire for a state of mind that does not get discouraged by difficulties. It allows the Spirit to join us in our difficulties, which is a much greater grace than for the Spirit to take them all away. This life is not heaven. We seem to be caught up in an adventure in which God wants to feel what it is like to be human in each of us. Our gift is to provide him with our humanity in which the mysteries of Christ’s life can be manifested again according to his will. This is a key aspect of the contemplative movement toward transformation in Christ. God manifested is the God we know in ritual, sacrament, scripture, and in generous service to others—in short, in showing compassion and exercising the works of mercy. It is not doing everything, but doing what we can do in the light of our talents and duties in life. It is offering ourselves as a living cell to the Body of Christ, to contribute to the health of the particular system that we are called to build up. — Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
Proselytism is solemn nonsense. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others. There are so many who speak badly about other religions. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Practicing charity is the best way to evangelize.
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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
