Medjugorje Message: August 25, 2019
Dear children! Pray, work and witness with love for the Kingdom of Heaven that it may be good for you here on earth. Little children, God will bless your effort a hundredfold; you will be witnesses among peoples, souls of unbelievers will feel the grace of conversion and Heaven will be grateful for your efforts and sacrifices. Little children, witness with the Rosary in hand that you are mine and decide for holiness. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
September 2019
Shortly before Labor Day, Our Lady gave this monthly message extolling the fruits of our labor for the Kingdom of Heaven, saying, “Dear children! Pray, work and witness with love for the Kingdom of Heaven that it may be good for you here on earth.” She is extending to us a powerful motivation for our “prayer, work and witness” for the Kingdom of Heaven—not simply an offer of “pie in the sky when we die” (after a life of misery)! No, Our Lady says that our lives given to “prayer, work and witness” for the Kingdom of Heaven will actually be rewarded “HERE ON EARTH.” Really? Isn’t a life given to Christianity a constant countercultural struggle with godless values—an endless war waged against “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” with our only hope for peace and happiness after death, in heaven? Not at all, according to Our Lady—and the Gospel!
She continues: “God will bless your effort a hundredfold; you will be witnesses among peoples, souls of unbelievers will feel the grace of conversion and Heaven will be grateful for your efforts and sacrifices.” These three promises of our earthly reward correspond to the three activities Our Lady mentions: “Prayer, Work, and Witness.”
Prayer: In Medjugorje, on the second of each month, Our Lady gives a message to Mirjana especially reminding us to pray for unbelievers—“those who have not yet come to know the love of God.” Part of the “hundredfold” blessing of God she promises is that through our prayer “with love,” souls of unbelievers will feel the grace of conversion—that is, they will experience the love of God, thanks to us.
Work: All true work involves effort and sacrifice. Our Lady says that part of the “hundredfold” blessing of God we’ll receive while on earth is that “Heaven will be grateful for your efforts and sacrifices” —i.e. for our work.
Witness: When we “witness with love for the Kingdom of Heaven,” Our Lady assures us, “you will be witnesses among peoples.” This means there will be a widespread ripple effect to our behavior and example that is observed by others—whether we know it or not!
All of these promised rewards “here on earth” for our “prayer, work and witness to the Kingdom of Heaven” revolve around a small, two-word stipulation in Our Lady’s first sentence, calling us to “pray, work and witness WITH LOVE for the Kingdom of Heaven.” Indeed, acting “in love” is the only legitimate, authentic, sincere or genuine way to labor in the vineyard of the Lord Jesus Christ, our God-who-is-Love. As St. Paul so powerfully explains in 1 Corinthians 13, any Christian “prayer, work or witness” done without love is of ZERO value—no use or good whatsoever—just “a sounding gong or clanging symbol” of empty hypocrisy.
On the other hand, any of our labors done for the Kingdom of Heaven and carried out FOR the love of God and WITH the love of God—no matter how small and seemingly insignificant—will be blessed “a hundredfold” with an expansive growth of their fruits, like the tiny mustard seed’s “great tree” that emerges, or the small bit of yeast’s “huge batch of dough” that rises. For us, a little lovingkindness prayed, worked, or witnessed sincerely for Christ’s sake goes a very long way—even unto eternity!
Our Lady’s image of God’s “hundredfold” blessing on our human labor comes from the Scriptures. In Genesis, when Isaac sowed seeds in a drought-stricken land of famine, having FAITH in God despite the terrible odds of success, he received “a hundredfold” return on his planting at the harvest, greatly blessed for his faith. (Gen 26:12) In the Gospel, just after Jesus teaches the spiritual difficulty that wealth presents, a baffled Peter asks what sort of reward believers can possibly expect then, reminding the Lord that “we have given up everything and followed you.” In reply, Jesus says, “Amen, I tell you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.” (Mk 10:29-30)
This radical “hundredfold” recompense that Jesus and Mary both promise us “now in this present age” and “here on earth” is not to be understood in the literal, materialistic sense of all our “sacrificed” goods being replaced in kind. Rather, this promise of life being “good for you here on earth” refers to the JOY, PEACE and FREEDOM of our inner being when we are living in Christ-consciousness—the AWARENESS of the Divine Indwelling Presence of God at our center, allowing us to flow with life’s moving current in ACCEPTANCE of everything as part of God’s will, knowing, as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, that “all things work together for good for those who love God” (Rom 8:28), and that “Everything is yours, whether…the world or life or death or the present or the future—all is yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Cor 3:21-23)
As members of Christ’s Body, then, ALL people are our relations and ALL the earth is our homeland. Even in the sadness of losing our dear relatives and loved ones, or our material wealth, or even our bodily health, we still experience the DIVINE INDWELLING PRESENCE and thus the companionship and oneness with God throughout everything that happens—even our losses, sorrows, suffering and the “persecutions” that occur as inescapable parts of the human condition. Thus the “hundredfold” blessing of God on our life is simply our lived experience of “Emmanuel”—“God with us”: that God as “Son of Man” has joined in this journey of human incarnation completely, 100%, so that we are truly never alone. That’s the “hundredfold” of our earthly blessing for labor…but there is also, as Jesus promised, “eternal life in the age to come“—the icing on our cake of Christ-consciousness—so much more than “pie in the sky when we die“!
If we’re wondering just how to go about “witnessing with love for the Kingdom of Heaven,” Our Lady ends her message with this simple practical instruction: “Little children, witness with the Rosary in hand that you are mine and decide for holiness.” Just as Mary, in birthing Jesus, gave Him not only to her own family but to the WHOLE WORLD, likewise Jesus, in giving Mary to His beloved disciple on Calvary, gave her not only to John but to the WHOLE WORLD—as has been proven throughout the centuries of her miraculous interventions and apparitions all over the planet. One of the clearest ways we can “witness with love for the Kingdom of Heaven” and reveal ourselves as the Body of Christ on earth is by showing that Mary is our Mother! “With Rosary in hand”—i.e. through regular meditation upon its twenty joyful, sorrowful, luminous and glorious Mysteries of how human life is lived in conformity to the Divine Will of Love—we can be empowered to “DECIDE FOR HOLINESS.”
A decision for holiness (wholeness) is crucial to conversion; it is the Third Step of all 12-Step programs: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” At Medjugorje, Our Lady has repeatedly called us to take Step 3: “DECIDE FOR HOLINESS.” Let us draw close to the Mother of Jesus and Our Mother, with Rosary in hand, to make this decision today.
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Choose to perceive in every event today the Presence of transforming grace.
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Third Step Prayer
God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy power, Thy love, and Thy way of life. May I do Thy will always.
—Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
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Our Lady’s focus is always transformation based on what connects us rather than on what separates us—upon the “heart” rather than the “head“….upon love, mystical union, and contemplative practice, rather than doctrinal distinctions of belief systems. As the 14th century anonymous mystical author of The Cloud of Unknowing taught, God cannot be penetrated with the intellect but only with a form of kenotic (self-emptying) love. The self-emptying of “kenosis” is the wisdom path taught by Jesus as the “royal road” to unitive consciousness.
Our churches and our world, torn apart today by bitter division, are hungering for this mystical heart of Christianity—the message of conscious love and solidarity among all beings. Our world can no longer afford the “luxury” of division, competition, exploitation, and warring between parties, races, cultures, nations and religions. We need the mystical awareness to discover, in prayer of self-surrender, our one planetary heart—the universal heart of Christ, and the unitive wisdom of Jesus.
—Cynthia Bourgeault
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When people have the light…they are always running on toward perfection, constant and persevering right up to the moment of their death. They bravely endure the assaults of the devils….Those who have the light laugh in the face of all this. They respond as people dead to their selfish will and enlightened by the light of faith: “I can do anything through Christ crucified….I know the truth. And I know that whatever God grants or permits, he does it for my good, so that I may be made holy in him.”
Oh how blessed are those who have come to such a light of perfection through sweet knowledge of the truth! For they see and surrender to the knowledge that whatever God permits, he does it out of special love. For God who is love cannot but love his human creatures. So whatever he gives us is given for this purpose.
—St. Catherine of Siena
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Only if we put the events of the day in contact with the Word of God will those events become signs of the will of God—we must knead the Word of God like leaven into them. This Word will then reveal the will of God that has to be done in these events…. Some of the things he tells us are valid always, some apply to each particular day. What he speaks each day is his Word as it comes to us echoing from these particular events, circumstances and the people that we currently are. When we listen to it, hear it, keep it and are given it, the Word of God does the will of God in us and through us. Active and creative, it never stops re-creating. This is valid for the whole Christian life. In creating life God has not created a monument. He has created life that is growing, that is dynamic, that is evolving, animated, and fruitful. Every life that is born of the Word of God is therefore growing, is dynamic, is evolving, is animated and is fruitful.
—Madeleine Delbrel (Servant of God)
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
Helping the poor and immigrants is as important as opposing abortion. Our defense of the innocent unborn needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred, and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm. One cannot claim that defending the life of a migrant is a “secondary issue” when compared to abortion or other bioethical questions.
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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
