Medjugorje Message: September 25, 2021
Dear children! Pray, witness and rejoice with me because the Most High continues to send me to lead you on the way of holiness. Be aware, little children, that life is short and eternity is waiting for you to give glory to God with your being, with all the saints. Little children, do not worry about earthly things, but long for Heaven. Heaven will be your goal and joy will begin to reign in your heart. I am with you and bless all of you with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
October 2021
As our planet Earth continues its seeming downward spiral into chaos, greed-driven self-destruction, viral ignorance, and, in America, a suicidally prideful, death-dealing political rebellion, we indeed have cause to celebrate Our Lady’s ongoing presence in Medjugorje with gratitude that she remains with us in this 40th year. She begins her message: “Pray, witness and rejoice with me because the Most High continues to send me to lead you on the way of holiness.” Here we are reminded that Our Lady is SENT by God “Most High” —that she is coming to us from much higher realms than our “third rock from the sun” earth-plane. Therefore, her perspective is infinitely higher, broader, and more far-reaching than our own narrow vision and viewpoint. And she is SENT to us for a specific reason: “to lead you on the way of holiness.”
Why? Why should the “Most High” or this handmaiden-Mother of God who is “sent” here care about us and our following the “way of holiness”? Because GOD IS LOVE and the Incarnation of Divine Love in the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, gave all humankind the potential and possibility of divinization through the “way of holiness.” So Jesus, Mary, and the Most High care deeply that we take this path.
Our Lady continues: “Be aware, little children, that life is short and eternity is waiting for you to give glory to God with your being, with all the saints.” For the past few messages, Our Lady has emphasized our “BEING” rather than our “doing,” calling us to “BE” prayer, “BE” joy, “BE” peace, and “BE” love. In this way Our Lady is leading us to anticipate our eternal life—our ongoing existence after death in a transformed state where our fleshly bodies with their works will have been replaced by glorified bodies or subtle spiritual bodies that can “give glory to God” with our “BEING” at a far more refined level than our coarse, gross physical earthly level.
Our Lady’s 40 years in Medjugorje of “leading us on the way of holiness” have been dedicated to the gradual forming of this subtle “BEING”-body that will carry us into eternity when our moment of death arrives. Those whom we call “saints” are the ones who also—through faith, hope and love during their lives—traveled the “way of holiness” or WHOLENESS into the (often painful, difficult, suffering and sorrowful) formation of the “New Man,” whose body at death is not just flesh and bones, but has a subtler, finer, invisible dimension of pure “BEING” that easily slips from the earth-plane into the vast, loving realm of Heaven and Eternity when the bell tolls on this lifetime.
Our Lady says, “Be aware, little children, that life is short.” Here Our Lady is not giving us new information or intellectual knowledge. We all “know” that “life is short.” In fact, life expectancy for Americans is getting shorter and is now lower than most other countries. We all know that “time flies” and our little stint on earth is over in the blink of an eye. Isaiah says, “All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.” (Isa 40:6) Job says, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to an end.” (Jb 7:6) James says, “You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” (Ja 4:14)
To “know” our mortality and transitory status on earth is easy and obvious. Yet Our Lady calls us not to merely intellectual head-“knowing,” but to a “BEING”-awareness: “Be AWARE that life is short.” This is much harder, for it means staying AWAKE and alert, keeping the realization of our imminent death at the forefront of our consciousness, from moment to moment, throughout each day. To “be AWARE” that my life is short (it might end this hour), and that “eternity is waiting for me” (every moment) brings a fresh insight and new urgency of “BEING” to my quality of living.
“Eternity is waiting” —not just to usher me into the saints’ wedding banquet in Heaven where I can party with the Bridegroom forever. “Eternity is waiting” for me to “give glory to God with my being” NOW, in this earthly life—just as the saints did—so that when my hour of death comes, I will have the needed “wedding garment” (Mt 22) of a subtle, spiritual “BEING”-body or Holy Soul with which to cross the threshold from this life into the party gates of eternity. There, the ultimate, unending joy will be to “give glory to God with all our Being, with all the saints.” Our “BEING” in eternity will continue to unfold in endlessly new and wonderful ways of glorifying God/Love through both our uniqueness and our oneness with the All-in-all.
Our Lady continues: “Little children, do not worry about earthly things, but long for Heaven. Heaven will be your goal and joy will begin to reign in your heart.” Is Our Lady giving us a pass on the kingdom-building needed here on planet Earth? While we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” are we now allowed to forget about working for the peace and justice of God’s creation here and now on our beautiful, suffering blue globe? NOT AT ALL! Our Lady does not say, “Do not care…” but “Do not WORRY about earthly things.” She sees that our world is riddled with worry, anxiety and stress, leading many into desperate acts of fear, rage, and violence. Throughout sacred scripture, “WORRY” is a hallmark of weak faith and a sign of not trusting God. It is born of FEAR, another red flag of lacking faith.
In a Gospel passage that Our Lady in Medjugorje has asked us to read every week, Jesus says: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them….Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?…If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the fire tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.” (Mt 6: 25-34)
In this Gospel, “earthly things” refer to all that fundamentally affects our physical survival and well-being: food, drink, clothing, shelter. Today this might extend to “worries” about the pandemic health crisis, the refugee crisis, the climate crisis, and the tragic, lie-driven political polarization that prevents us from working together to heal these deadly crises. Truly we must “care” about our suffering planet Earth, lifting up these concerns in prayer to God for healing—but not “worry about earthly things,” for WORRY breeds the fearful anxiety and pressure that says “we” alone must fix the problems ourselves, unaided by God. This stress leads us into anger, impatience, intolerance, judging, condemnation, conflict, ill-health, futility, depression and despair. Thus “worry” is useless, counterproductive, and harmful, finally destroying us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Our Lady offers the saving alternative to worry—redirecting our attention and awareness: “Do not worry about earthly things, but long for Heaven. Heaven will be your goal and joy will begin to reign in your heart.” Like all mothers, Our Lady knows that you cannot simply tell a child, “Don’t think about elephants.” Instead, you must replace “elephants” with another image or thought to focus the child’s attention and awareness. Jesus knew that saying, “Don’t worry about your life” was not enough to stop our fretting; so he said, “SEEK FIRST the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and ALL THESE THINGS will be given you besides.”
Likewise, Our Lady now tells us, “Long for Heaven.” With Heaven as our “goal” —the uppermost thing in our minds as we keep “AWARE that life is short and eternity is waiting”—“joy will begin to reign in our heart.” With “JOY” reigning in our hearts—instead of the worry, stress, anxiety, fear, anger, sadness and despair about so many “earthly things” in disarray—we will not only experience greater peace and serenity, but the “earthly” problems can begin to be healed as the negative, counterproductive forces of fear and anger are removed as obstacles to our progress. With “Heaven” as our focus and GOAL, we bring the positive force of LOVE—“giving glory to God” —to the table of our many “earthly” problems for solving. Indeed “all these (earthly) things will be given us besides” if we place our focused AWARENESS into “SEEKING FIRST” and “LONGING,” as our “GOAL,” for Heaven, which is right around the corner from this “short” life. In this way, as St. Catherine of Siena said, “All the way to heaven is heaven.”
Is it difficult to shift our “awareness” from earth to Heaven? Of course. Our minds’ thoughts run in long-trodden, deeply-entrenched tracks of “worry about earthly things.” We have no idea how to even think about “Heaven” or “eternity,” for they seem light-years beyond our human experience. Even our earthly emotion of “happiness” is just a pale shadow of Heaven’s “joy,” which we cannot really fathom. Yet our faith, our scriptures, and our own indwelling Holy Spirit give us light to creatively visualize and redirect our minds and hearts into the “way of holiness” that SEES “Heaven” as our “goal.”
Quoting Isaiah, St. Paul wrote, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Cor 2:9) In Luke’s gospel, Jesus says of heaven, “People will come from the east and the west and the north and the south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.” (Lk 13:29-30) And in John’s gospel: “My Father’s house has many mansions; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me….You know the way to the place where I am going….I AM the way.” (Jn 14: 2-4,6)
Of heaven, the book of Revelation says: “Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb…will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain; for the old order of things has passed away….There will be no more night…the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.” (Rev 7, 22)
While all these human descriptions of heaven are limited by the constraints of metaphorical language and our ignorance of the ineffable, unknowable Mystery of God, we can be sure of the general tenor and direction our thoughts must take on the “path of holiness” toward our goal. St. Paul wrote: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Col 3:1-4)
This month Our Lady tells us, with Heaven as our goal, “JOY will begin to reign in your heart.” Similarly, St. Paul says: “REJOICE in the Lord always. I shall say it again: REJOICE! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all….Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy, THINK ABOUT THESE THINGS.” (Phil 4:4-8)
Our Lady is teaching us that proper preparation for our blissful eternity of glorifying God requires a *continual focused awareness* of the NEARNESS of our death, the GOAL of Heaven (however we imagine and visualize it), and all that is GOOD in this life—never fixating upon the “bad” or negative, which, in our human condition, is only the inevitable fodder for “worry.” So let us go deeply into prayer and ENJOY, with LONGING, imagining and envisioning what our GOAL, “HEAVEN” will be like!
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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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Individualism and Communitarianism in the Catholic View
The development of a true culture—the realizing of the best possibilities in human nature—is essentially a social phenomenon. The liturgy presents us with the divinely established model of social intercourse between persons under the guidance of Christ. While it safeguards all the values of human personality, it uses the energies of God for sloughing off all the excesses of individualism, thus elevating all that is good in humanity above the narrowness of individual selfishness, snobbery, or extreme love-blind nationalism, into the catholic sympathy of Christ for all people, for all things human, for all that is good in God’s world.
Catholicism is not a religion that promotes the glorification of the individual in asserting their political rights over others. Rather, a distinctly Catholic stance holds that respect for the intrinsic dignity of each human person is inextricably bound up with the social ethic expressed in the sacrament of Communion.
—Fr. Virgil Michel, OSB
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October 4: St. Francis of Assisi & the Way of Compassion
A compassionate presence is one of the fruits of contemplation. Compassion and patience are the unique characteristics of true spiritual authority, and without doubt are the way both St. Francis and St. Clare led their communities. They led, not from above or below, but from within, by walking with their brothers and sisters, “smelling like the sheep,” as Pope Francis puts it.
A spiritual leader who lacks basic human compassion has almost no power to change others, for people intuitively know he does not represent the Whole and Holy One. Such leaders need to rely upon roles, laws, costume, and enforcement powers to effect any change, which is really mere conformity.
We see the movement toward a shared compassion in all true saints. St. Francis was able to distinguish between institutional evil and the individual who is victimized by it. He still felt compassion for the individual soldiers fighting in the crusades, although he objected to the war itself. He realized the folly and yet the sincerity of their patriotism, which led them to be un-patriotic to the much larger kingdom of God, where he placed his first loyalty. What Jesus calls the “reign of God” we could call “the Great Compassion.”
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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The realm of God that Jesus preached and died for was known for its kindness and generosity, its compassion and healing. There was no one deemed outside the love of the Holy One whom Jesus called “Father.” No one was excluded from fellowship—rich or poor, male or female, slave or free. Jesus went beyond superficial divisions and called for a culture of compassion.
Compassion changes everything. Compassion heals. Compassion mends the broken and restores what has been lost. Compassion pulls us out of ourselves and into the heart of another. Compassion springs out of vulnerability and triumphs in unity. Only people at home in such a spacious place can take on the social ills of their time and the betrayal of friends, and not be destroyed by cynicism or bitterness.
—Judy Cannato
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When you put the cross on a wall—this is the human condition: crucified between heaven and earth. It can’t go back. It can’t go forward under its own power. All it can do is accept the situation and stew in its own juice which is the consequence of its failure to integrate the instinctual, inevitable needs and demands of nature with the abstract values and meanings that come with human intelligence and freedom of choice, with the possibility of ultimate freedom.
If you are in this situation, you deserve compassion, not condemnation, whatever the hell you do. And to think that God would punish people for failing to measure up in a situation that God knows is impossible—is to me a denigration of the infinite goodness of God. That is why, you have to have a big idea of God.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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The Law of Three: The Affirming, Denying, and Reconciling Forces
In the ancient language of Wisdom, the physical moving center carries the “affirming force” ; its natural aptitude is for reaching out, embracing, making contact. The intellectual center carries the “denying force” ; its natural aptitude is for reasoning, doubting, making fine discriminations. In their own right, these discriminatory skills are legitimate and profoundly necessary, built into the structure of the human mind itself. But in terms of the spiritual journey, trying to find faith with the intellectual center is like trying to play a violin with a saw: it’s simply the wrong tool for the job.
In the language of sacred tradition, the emotional center carries the “reconciling force.” It serves as a bridge between the mind and the body and also between our usual physical world and this invisible other realm. When properly attuned, the emotional center’s most striking capacity, lacking in the mind alone, is the ability to comprehend paradox. Logical inconsistencies that the mind must reduce into a simple “either-or” can be held by the heart in “both-and” —and even more important, felt that way—without needing to resolve, close down, or protect oneself from the pain that ambiguity always brings.
—Cynthia Bourgeault
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How Can We Restore “FREE THINKING” & “CIVIL DIALOGUE”?
We are in the midst of an ignorance outbreak. Conspiracists’ accounts of global politics, while irrational and implausible, have enraptured thousands. Specious anti-vaccine rhetoric abounds even among the educated, and everywhere bad ideas are spreading like a virus. We need “mental immunity” from infectious ideas and mind-parasites, and a better way to THINK. We need a regimen of mental resistance to fend off this growing scourge. In an era when misinformation is more common than the flu, HUMILITY is a very important virtue.
Bad ideas are mind parasites. Parasites require a host; bad ideas require a host. Parasites often compromise the health of their hosts; bad ideas can also compromise the mental wellbeing (and physical survival) of their hosts. Parasites can leap from body to body; bad ideas can leap from mind to mind.
But how to inoculate the mind when so many are anti-vaxxers? The hardest problem! It’s easier to prevent a mind infection than to cure one. Better to teach someone critical thinking when they’re young than to have to do cult deprogramming later in their life. Exposure to certain kinds of arguments and objections can strengthen the mind’s resistance to bad ideas. But you can also manipulate a mental immune system to make it reject good arguments, too. Propagandists use such strategies, hijacking the mind’s immune system and inducing it to overreact to a good argument.
Just as your body’s immune system can overreact and attack your body, the mind’s immune system can overreact and attack good information. The trick is learning how to calm your mind so you don’t feel defensive, which enables us to actually dialogue together in fruitful ways. The emerging science of mental immunity can help us learn how to maintain that calm demeanor, where we don’t get defensive by other people’s arguments. When we get defensive, we stop listening to one another and stop hearing each other’s reasons, and learning from them.
The best investigative reporting is the collaborative thinking of many people together who help each other identify each other’s mind parasites—each seeing things differently and spotting things the others miss. This is not “groupthink” and actually it is healthier than simply saying “think for yourself.”
How do we get unstuck from the arrogance of thinking we know better than everyone else, and admit, “I don’t know everything” ?
HUMILITY is a very important, under-appreciated virtue. One path forward is to engage the “Socratic method” of posing questions that raise our awareness of the gaps in our understanding. The more aware you become of the gaps in your understanding, the more humble you’ll be, and wiser. We need to learn a form of discourse and idea testing that gives much more time and attention to the QUESTIONS and fixates less on easy answers.
Doubts and questions are the antibodies of the mind. A conversation full of clarifying questions is a powerful mind inoculant, making clear the shape of the gaps in our understanding. It requires being okay with the discomfort of maybe being wrong, and not getting the high from our confirmation biases. Becoming comfortable with uncertainty and navigating it primarily with questions is the great virtue of philosophy.
—Mary Elizabeth Williams and Andy Norman
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Try, on principle, to avoid all “formatory thinking” : the world of recycled opinions, slogans, broad generalizations, rigidly behavioristic psychological models. Labeling, typing, groupthink, political correctness—all these modes of prepackaged discourse lock your mind into familiar tracks leading nowhere. If you’re going to think, then THINK: use your own mind, heart, grounded presence (intellect/emotion/physical body) to see what is actually going on, and try to understand with what is most AWAKE in you, not the most asleep.
—Cynthia Bourgeault
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
All of us are brothers and sisters! Let us pray to the Most High that, after this time of trial, there may no longer be “others,” but rather, a great “WE,” rich in diversity.
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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
