Medjugorje Message: September 25, 2019
Dear children! Today I am calling you to pray for my intentions so that I may help you. Little children, pray the Rosary and meditate the mysteries of the Rosary because, in your life, you are also passing through joys and sorrows. In this way, you are transforming the mysteries into your life, because life is a mystery until you place it into God’s hands. In this way, you will have the experience of faith like Peter who met Jesus and the Holy Spirit filled his heart. Little children, you are also called to witness by living the love with which, day by day, God wraps you with my presence. Therefore, little children, be open and pray with the heart in faith. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
October 2019
In this month of October, traditionally dedicated to the Holy Rosary, Our Lady calls us anew to the practice of this special form of prayer that, as she says, is truly TRANSFORMATIVE for our lives. She begins her invitation to the Rosary by saying, “Today I am calling you to pray for my intentions so that I may help you.” In Medjugorje, Our Lady has often indicated that our prayer is a vital component in her ability to render aid to our suffering humanity on earth—almost as if it’s the “fuel” needed to power her interventions on our behalf. Perhaps because the Rosary is so heavily-weighted with the beautiful “Hail Mary” prayer taken from Luke 1:28, it is the most powerful and efficacious prayer we can offer for Our Lady’s intentions. So, as we begin every Rosary, let us try to remember this conscious affirmation of “Mary’s Intentions” —even if we include many other personal intentions of our own, as well.
While Our Lady has requested the prayer of the Rosary numerous times throughout history and in various apparitions around the world, this month she focuses more strongly than ever on the MYSTERIES of the Rosary: “Little children, pray the Rosary and meditate the mysteries of the Rosary because, in your life, you are also passing through joys and sorrows. In this way, you are transforming the mysteries into your life, because life is a mystery until you place it into God’s hands.”
Thirty years ago, another (less famous) “Madonna” —the iconic pop singer and recording artist—wrote a legendary song called “Like A Prayer” which became her biggest hit ever. The opening line of the song is found in Our Lady’s current message: “Life is a mystery.” The song’s music video—featuring the 1980’s crucifix-and-rosary-wearing Madonna dancing before burning KKK crosses and kissing a St. Martin de Porres statue, along with themes of stigmata and transubstantiation—sparked controversy and outrage. Madonna—a cradle Catholic—said that she “wrote the song from my heart….a very spiritual song….about a passionate young girl so in love with God that it’s almost as though He were the male figure in her life.”
Indeed, the love language of “betrothal” and the “spiritual marriage” of a Beloved Soul to the Divine Bridegroom is found throughout Christian literature, beginning in the scriptural Song of Songs and continuing with many great saints and mystics of the Church, like Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena. In Madonna’s song, “Like A Prayer,” the joys and sorrows of a life are viewed as “a mystery,” but clearly one that is looking in the direction of GOD for answers and meaning: “I hear You call my name and it feels like home….In the midnight hour I can feel Your power; just like a prayer, Your voice can take me there.“
As Our Lady says, “Life is a mystery until you place it into God’s hands.” Then, when we begin to view our life’s mysteries—its joyful, sorrowful, luminous, and glorious events—in the light of God’s indwelling Presence in every moment, we OPEN to the Divine Will and purpose in these life events, and are gifted with insights, surrender, acceptance, and serenity where before we may have felt only confusion, doubt, anxiety, bewilderment, astonishment, or depression.
Our Lady says, “In this way, you will have the experience of faith like Peter who met Jesus and the Holy Spirit filled his heart.” As we pray the Rosary and enter deeply into a meditation on the mysteries, linking them to the “joys and sorrows” that we are also “passing through” in our own life—thereby “transforming the mysteries [of Jesus and Mary’s life] into our life” —we will be “like Peter who met Jesus and the Holy Spirit filled his heart”; we “will have the experience of faith” like Peter’s.
Our Lady is talking about the moment we suddenly see and realize the concrete, lived CONNECTION between God’s Presence and Action in our life and our own. How tangible, practical, and “down-to-earth” was that moment when Peter, the expert professional fisherman, was directed by Jesus—who, unsolicited, knew nothing about fishing!—to lower his nets in a certain spot and then pulled in an impossibly huge (net-breaking, boat-sinking) miraculous catch. Indeed, at that moment, “the Holy Spirit filled his heart,” and Peter was overwhelmed by his own weakness and arrogance, saying, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8)
As we “meditate the mysteries of the Rosary,” we, too, will have this humbling “experience of faith like Peter” as we begin to “transform the mysteries into our life” while placing our “joys and sorrows” into God’s hands as we pray. Above all, the Rosary Mysteries, when deeply meditated, bring us into a new awareness of our False Self in action through the events of our daily life, and call us to conversion and a vocation of loving service, just as Peter was assured of his call—despite his failings—to become a “fisher of men.” This new False-Self awareness that comes from the Rosary mysteries will lead us on the necessary spiritual journey from the “head” to the “heart” of transformative prayer.
Finally, Our Lady says, “Little children, you are also called to witness by living the LOVE with which, day by day, God wraps you with my presence. Therefore…be open, and pray with the heart in faith.” What a beautiful image of God wrapping us lovingly in Our Lady’s presence day by day: her presence in Medjugorje, her presence in her monthly messages, her presence in the Holy Rosary’s mysteries of her life, re-lived and re-capitulated in our own life through prayer.
She explained this phenomenon in her September 2nd message to Mirjana, saying: “Pray the Rosary every day—that wreath of flowers which, as a mother, DIRECTLY CONNECTS me with your pains, sufferings, desires, and hopes….You, with your prayer pronounced from a pure and open heart…will make even the hardest hearts open….The strength of prayer pronounced from the heart—a powerful prayer full of LOVE—changes the world.” Wow! Here, Our Lady clearly articulates the full impact of what she has implied over the years: that our prayer “full of love” and offered “from a pure and open heart” has the POWER to “make even the hardest hearts open” and the STRENGTH to “change the world.”
So if we are concerned about the state of our country and our planet at this moment of history, the solution is not to wring our hands in worry or to argue politics on social media, but to pick up the Holy Rosary and “pray, pray, pray!“ with conscious intercession for Our Lady’s intentions, a heart full of love, openness to the Divine Will in all things, and meditation upon the MYSTERIES that link our life to God’s life within us. Let us take up a daily Rosary practice during this month of October!
[For short “Connecting Prayers” to each of the 20 Mysteries of the Rosary, please click on “Rosary Intentions” on the side bar (or bottom) of this newsletter.]
A Second Edition of the 2009 book, Mary, Matrix of Change: Personal and Global Transformation Through the Rosary was published in 2017. Written by Michele Maxwell (River of Light editor and co-founder of the Marian Center of San Antonio), it is centered on the Mysteries of the Rosary, ideal for both private reflection and use in prayer groups. The book is available on Amazon, or—in limited supply, for the discounted price of $10—from the Marian Center. If you would like to purchase a copy, please send your $10 donation (check or money order) to:
Marian Center of San Antonio
P.O. Box 831001
San Antonio, TX 78283-1001
+ + + + + + + +
Choose to perceive in every event today the Presence of transforming grace.
+ + + + + + + +
October 7: Our Lady of the Rosary
It could be said that each mystery of the rosary, carefully meditated, sheds light on the mystery of man. “Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you.” (Ps 55:23) To pray the rosary is to hand over our burdens to the merciful hearts of Christ and his Mother. The rosary does indeed “mark the rhythm of human life,” bringing it into harmony with the “rhythm” of God’s own life, in the joyful communion of the Holy Trinity, our life’s destiny and deepest longing. Through the rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.
—St. John Paul II
+ + + + + + + +
After holy Mass, the Rosary is one of the most beautiful and efficacious forms of prayer. The mysteries recall the whole life of Jesus and Mary and their glory in heaven. The mysteries of the Rosary are different aspects of the great mysteries of our salvation: the Incarnation, the Redemption, Eternal Life….The Rosary is a credo: not an abstract one, but one concretized in the life of Jesus who came from the Father and who ascended to bring us with himself back to the Father. It is the whole of Christian dogma in all its splendor and elevation, brought to us to fill our minds and nourish our souls. This makes the Rosary a true school of contemplation. It raises us gradually above vocal prayer and discursive meditation. The joyful mysteries lead to the Passion, and the Passion to the door of heaven. The Rosary well understood is, therefore, a very elevated form of prayer which makes the whole of dogma accessible to all.
—Fr. Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, O.P.
+ + + + + + + +
Dying, Jesus had given us all the secrets of the Son. But he also surrendered to us the secret of his Mother, her love and her transparency. Jesus gave us his Mother, not to keep but to look at, because seeing her, we shall know how she saw God. In his Servant, God offers us the model of humility; in the Virgin the model of abandonment. And she who brought God into the world received the mission of bringing us into the world of God and of forming in us the child she was, and the Child she bore. Without doubt we shall never see Jesus more clearly than through the eyes of her who called him “my Son.”
—Fr. Victor de la Vierge, O.C.D.
+ + + + + + + +
When Christian hearts begin to beat, they know that Mary is theirs because she is the Mother of Christ, the firstborn of many brothers and sisters, and us. There is something stupendous in the profusion of human petitions expressed in the Hail Mary: that she may intercede for us “now and at the hour of our death.” There is no naming of details. Every human need is included, and we all employ the same words to portray our misery. Only at two instants can we grasp this human need—instants that are decisive for our lives. One is “NOW,” the hour in which we have to fulfill the will of God, to choose between good and evil, and so decide the course of our destiny. The other is “THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH,” which terminates our life, giving to all deeds and past happenings the character that will count for them in eternity.
—Servant of God Msgr. Romano Guardini
+ + + + + + + +
OCTOBER: Respect Life Month—
Pray a “Seamless Garment” Rosary of Respect for All LIFE
1st Respect-Life Mystery:
Protection of Life in its Natural Beginning and Ending by fostering conditions of compassionate care to prevent Abortion & Euthanasia
2nd Respect-Life Mystery:
Protection of innocent lives from mass shootings and criminal lives for the chance of conversion: Abolition of the Death Penalty & of Legal Access to military-grade assault weapons
3rd Respect-Life Mystery:
Fostering of peaceful diplomacy and conflict resolution as a means to settle disputes between nations: Universal Rejection of WAR; total nuclear disarmament
4th Respect-Life Mystery:
For Socioeconomic Justice to alleviate poverty, hunger, discrimination, and all inequalities that threaten life.
5th Respect-Life Mystery:
For the Care of Creation through prompt, thorough Environmental Stewardship to halt/reverse climate change and other threats to life on Planet Earth.
+ + + + + + + +
Wisdom from Pope Francis
Mary is the woman of faith, who lives and advances in faith, and her exceptional pilgrimage of faith represents a constant point of reference for the Church. Mary let herself be guided by the Holy Spirit on a journey of faith towards a destiny of service and fruitfulness. Today we look to her and ask her to help us proclaim the message of salvation to all….This is the way that Mary lived in intimacy with the mystery of her Son, and went forward in her pilgrimage of faith.
+ + + + + + + +
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
