Medjugorje Message: October 25, 2020
Dear children! At this time, I am calling you to return to God and to prayer. Invoke the help of all the saints, for them to be an example and a help to you. Satan is strong and is fighting to draw all the more hearts to himself. He wants war and hatred. That is why I am with you for this long, to lead you to the way of salvation, to Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Little children, return to the love for God and He will be your strength and refuge. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
November 2020
As we enter the month of All Saints and All Souls, now in the twilight of the year when nature’s cycle returns to the waning light of shorter days, falling leaves, a cold, darkened earth, and the season of death and endings, Our Lady’s message also sounds this cyclical note of “return.” She begins by saying: “At this time, I am calling you to return to God and to prayer.”
Indeed, for this whole past year we have been on a long, hard, involuntary voyage, tossed about in a perilous sea of illness, tragic loss, grief, violence, and bitter conflict within our country as we’ve tried to weather the Covid-19 pandemic which continues to rage in the spikes and surges of the oncoming winter. All are suffering from “Covid fatigue” coupled with the “election anxiety” of an extremely contentious chapter in our presidential politics that has put tremendous strain on relationships and ratcheted up the levels of stress, low morale, unrest, and overall malaise we’re feeling.
But what relief and solace we can find if only we “return to God and to prayer” —even while remaining in the midst of this stormy ocean of difficult external circumstances. For we know that neither the pandemic nor the election will be resolved anytime soon. We could be many months away from a vaccine for coronavirus or respite from its ravaging effects, and the deep divisions in our political landscape will surely not disappear with the election, for the many ideological conflicts plaguing our nation will linger, no matter who “wins” the races this month. The key to our inner peace, therefore, cannot lie in any outward circumstances, but must be grounded and rooted from within by a “return to God and to prayer” —daily conscious contact and connection to our Source within, our Indwelling God present in the Holy Spirit who calms, consoles, nurtures, refreshes, empowers, and renews our strength for weathering every outward storm.
Acknowledging this memorial month of November, Our Lady says, “Invoke the help of all the saints, for them to be an example and a help to you.” One of the greatest benefits of Catholic Christianity is the awareness of and love for the “Communion of Saints” (also known as the “Church Triumphant“)—that great branch of our spiritual family, our ancestors in the faith who are gloriously alive in heaven and able to intercede for us on earth as we continue to struggle here as the “Church Militant.”
The saints are our Catholic “ascended masters” who lived exemplary lives of faith, hope, and sacrificial love, following closely and perseveringly in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. We honor them in our “Day of the Dead” celebrations of ALL Saints and ALL Souls, revering both the canonized saints on the Church’s calendar and the “everyday saints” of our own lives—the friends and relatives who have gone before us, enlightening our own paths through their loving example of a life well-lived from that higher level of their True Self in God.
We surely need the saints’ help, now more than ever. The “Church Militant” here on earth is called so because of the endlessly combative relationship in which we are locked with the satanic ego of our own fallen nature, often characterized as “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” Our Lady says: “Satan is strong and is fighting to draw all the more hearts to himself. He wants war and hatred. That is why I am with you for this long, to lead you to the way of salvation, to Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Our Lady is clearly saying that satanic attacks on our humanity are the compelling reason for her presence in Medjugorje for almost forty years now.
In our own tragically divided country, we can easily attest that satanic ego “wants war and hatred.” We have witnessed daily the escalating rhetoric of incivility, personal attack, slander, exaggeration, distortion of facts, and outright, unabashed LYING through “fake news” and disinformation propaganda that has “brainwashed” millions of Americans into a cult-like following and believing grossly outrageous UNtruths (aka “alternative facts“).
Thus, the idea that Satan “wants war and hatred” is easily verified by this blatant, brutal “WAR ON TRUTH” that has been waged in our culture for the past few years, fueled primarily by social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and cable television. For example, multiple fact-checking operations have revealed that even the President of the United States has told some 20,000 lies since taking the oath of office, including many deadly misleading claims about Covid-19.
When factual truth is relentlessly undermined for the sake of maintaining power and control, we lose the COMMON GROUND upon which a society can meet to work through its differences and disputes. When the most fundamental undergirding basis of dialogue—a few simple, agreed-upon statements of factual reality—no longer exists, we have kicked the foundational structural supports out from beneath our common home as diverse citizens of one nation who can live together in peace and mutual respect.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus says that Satan “is a liar and the father of lies”—the one who “was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. Lying is his native language.” (Jn 8:44) But Our Lady proposes that we meet the “lying, cheating and stealing” of today’s satanic assaults with “the Way, the Truth and the Life” who is her Son, Jesus Christ. This means answering satanic HATRED with the God who is LOVE, and answering satanic WAR-mongering with the Prince of PEACE. Our Lady calls this the “way of salvation” upon which she is leading us.
She also says that Satan is “fighting to draw all the more hearts to himself.” Indeed we cannot stand in finger-pointing judgment of any one politician, celebrity figure, or political party as the sole embodiment of satanic ego, for this all-pervasive feature of our human condition (once called “original sin”) affects and infects every person alive. Every human being must inevitably confront “the world, the flesh and the devil” in whatever unique ways they manifest satanic ego in each person’s life. No one escapes the skirmish, which for many becomes a lifelong battle with addictions, compulsions, obsessions, etc.
In a time such as this, our egoic impulses toward anger, hate, judgment, criticism, violence, condemnation, and countless forms of negativity are “triggered” when under stress—even if we have previously transcended False Self programs and been graced with “higher levels of consciousness.” Regression to prior, lower states and stages of our spiritual journey is always possible, as we learn every time we “fall” from the grace of Love into the “hell” of rage or hatred when “triggered”! Hence, Our Lady continues to call us, month after month, to conversion of heart and life.
This month, as we enter into the season of “return” when all things go back to their Source and origin through the natural cycle of diminishment, dissolution and death, Our Lady shows us how to handle our ongoing challenges: “Little children, return to the love for God and He will be your strength and refuge.” Our spiritual practices of LOVE may take the form of these “Seven S’s” of prayer, in alignment with Mary’s Seven Sorrows:
- Silence—God’s first language, the root source of both rest and action, where God is Present
- Solitude—Conscious awareness without any particular content; resting in God alone
- Simplicity—Flowing in oneness with whatever IS; living in the midst of duality without losing the non-dual perspective of unity
- Surrender—Pure faith beyond thoughts, feelings, reflections; moving from union to unity
- Stillness—Harmonious balance of opposites; beyond conceptual thoughts or desires
- Solidarity—A growing oneness and compassionate unity of feeling with all life forms
- Service—“Being for others” unhampered by egoism or the False Self as a “fixed point of reference”
These seven spiritual practices will take us to an “8th S” —the sublime gift of SERENITY. This month, let us incorporate them all into our daily response to Our Lady’s autumn call: a “RETURN” to God who is Love.
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Choose to perceive in every event today the Presence of transforming grace.
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Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.
—Brene Brown
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A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
—Albert Einstein
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When Jesus walked the roads of Palestine, a wondrous grace came to all who touched him. To touch Jesus was to be healed, converted….It also gave that person a place inside the community of life. But Jesus didn’t take this grace away when he ascended. He left it with the community of believers, which is now his body on earth. Jesus’ body is not just the historical church in its scriptures, sacraments, gatherings, institutional structures, and hierarchy. Rather, all of us together and each of us individually, make up the body of Christ on earth. Therefore, when we touch someone or someone touches us in love and sincerity, that other person is touching the body of Christ, just as surely as people at the time of Jesus were able to touch him.
We are the body of Christ on earth, and like Jesus, have the power to bind and loose. This means that when our loved ones no longer walk the path of explicit faith and church with us, we can connect them to the faith, the church, the body of Christ, and heaven itself simply by remaining bonded with them in love and community. By being connected with us, they are connected to the church. Moreover, when we forgive them anything, they are forgiven by the church and forgiven in heaven, Jesus assures us.
This idea is so wild and wonderful that it is hard to believe….Pope Pius XII said, “When you are teaching about the Body of Christ, don’t be afraid to exaggerate, because it is impossible to exaggerate so great a mystery!“
—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
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Both Jesus and St. Paul invite us to live a vulnerable human life in communal solidarity with both sin and salvation. Neither sin nor salvation can be exclusively “mine,” but both are collectively “ours”! Universal solidarity is the important lesson, not private salvation. We all hold responsibility for all instead of blaming one or the other. Human solidarity is the goal—not “my” moral superiority.
This is a “hidden mystery” that only the wise discover…the hidden, cruciform shape to reality revealed in the geometry of the cross. (Eph 2:13-22) The world is filled with contradictions, false alternatives, paradoxes, and unresolvable evils. It is foundationally unjust, yet we must work for justice to find our own freedom and create it for others. We must surrender to this reality before we try to think we can repair the world with freedom and love.
Symbolized in the scandalous image of the Crucified God who fully accepts and transforms this tragic human situation through love, surely we must do the same. By giving ourselves to this primary human absurdity which shows itself in patience, love, and forgiveness toward all things, we find a positive way through “the world, the flesh, and the devil“—not by resolving it or fully changing it, but by recognizing that we are all complicit in this mixed moral universe.
This humility needed in social reform is “carrying the cross” with Jesus. We often do evil by thinking we can and must eliminate all evil, instead of holding and suffering it ourselves, learning from it as Jesus does. This gives us the active compassion we need to work for social change—accepting a cruciform world by accepting a cruciform me. Forgiving love is the only way forward, and the only answer is our ability to draw endlessly on God’s infinite Love.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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We have a natural bond of intimacy with all living forms which must be recovered at this “convulsive” moment in history to which we are awakening. Everything and everyone has an inner identity that is bonded to everything and everyone else. Differences increase our capacity for communion. We need a celebration of differences that the universe teaches us. We can learn to see all difference within unity; there is a comprehensive coherence. If sharing is blocked, diversity is defeated. Opposing elements are necessary to contain us, and our difficulties in relationships can be seen as a discipline to evoke creativity. Difference is of real value in relationships.
If we could really accept that we are not ourselves without everything and everyone else, we could not continue to destroy one another and the earth. We would finally realize that we are one sacred community that lives or dies together. I felt the overwhelming difficulty of accomplishing the inward shift that would be necessary until I remembered from the universe story that there is constant transformation always going on around and within us; we are always in the process of changing and becoming in an emergent universe. The challenge is to continually align oneself in the direction of life’s purposefulness.
—Fr. Thomas Berry / Carolyn Toben
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Even the things you do in the flesh are spiritual, for you do all things in union with Jesus Christ….You all are God-bearers and temple-bearers, Christ-bearers and bearers of holiness, with the commandments of Jesus Christ for festal attire….Pray unceasingly for the rest of humanity….Give them an opportunity, at least by your conduct, of learning from you. Meet their angry outbursts with your own gentleness, their boastfulness with your humility, their revilings with your prayers, their error with your constancy in the faith, their harshness with your meekness….Thus no weed of the devil will be found among you.
—St. Ignatius of Antioch
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
If everything is connected, it is hard to imagine that this global disaster is unrelated to our way of approaching reality, our claim to be absolute masters of our own lives and of all that exists. Once this health crisis passes, our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism and new forms of egotistic self-preservation. If only this may prove not to be just another tragedy from which we learned nothing. If only we might keep in mind all those persons who died…partly as a result of the dismantling of health care systems. If only we might rediscover once and for all that we need one another. God willing, after all this, we will think no longer in terms of “them” and “those,” but only “us.”
—Fratelli Tutti “All Brothers and Sisters” (newest encyclical)
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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
