Medjugorje Message: August 25, 2022
Dear children! God permits me to be with you and to lead you on the way of peace, so that through personal peace, you build peace in the world. I am with you and intercede for you before my Son Jesus, that He may give you a strong faith and hope in a better future, which I desire to build up with you. You be courageous and do not be afraid, because God is with you. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
September 2022
In these difficult times when many have fallen into depression and despair over the state of our world, how hopeful and inspiring it is to hear that Our Lady desires to “build up a better future WITH US”! Twice in this month’s message, she uses the word “build” —a fitting verb for this September Labor Day holiday in which we celebrate our human enterprise, effort and industry for co-creating a better world. Surely our planet Earth is in critical need of a labor force that will work wisely and ethically for the healing and betterment of our shared life, starting with the whole biosphere—reversing the lethal damage we’ve done by centuries of greed and selfish abuse that have plundered our natural resources for monetary gain. The same greed and materialism that have pushed our natural environment to the brink of destruction and to the ecological point of “no return” have also fueled all of the land-grabbing wars of aggression through the centuries, including the current tragedy in Ukraine that impacts the whole world.
Our Lady’s message begins: “God permits me to be with you and to lead you on the way of peace, so that through personal peace, you build peace in the world.” Here Our Lady gives a clear description of her “methodology” of peace-building. It is a “quantum physics” model in which the WHOLE is reflected in the PARTS. Science teaches us that each individual human person is a “holon” of the “whole,” a “microcosm” of the “macrocosm” that is the entire world. Our Lady’s approach to “world peace” is to lead each one of her children, through PRAYER, “on the way of peace” to the point of individually experiencing and embodying “personal peace” —“so that” (as she says) “through personal peace, you build peace in the world.”
The premise of Our Lady’s “grassroots” method is simple: If I, as an individual person, have and project outward to others PEACE in my heart, then all of the people in my life’s “orbit” will experience my “personal peace” in any interaction we have. At the very least, my “personal peace” will preclude my own behavior from being combative, aggressive, mean, violent, or provocative of conflict. Even if the other person is not “at peace” within, at least 50% of any potential unrest or argument has been diminished by my own “personal peace” as Our Lady’s “Peace-builder” in the room! Thus Our Lady’s guiding presence at Medjugorje as the Queen of Peace proceeds according to this grassroots “quantum model,” so well-expressed in a popular hymn: “Let there be peace on earth, and let it BEGIN WITH ME…Let peace begin with me, let THIS be the moment NOW. With every step I take, let this be my solemn vow: to take EACH moment and live EACH moment in PEACE eternally—Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with ME.”
Peace must become a “contagion” that “goes viral” on our planet and “spreads” from one person to another through the “personal peace” that each heart-converted individual is living and carrying into their environment, moment by moment, day by day, in the incrementally small, ordinary, mundane incidents that make up our human life on earth. We must never underestimate the “little things”—as the “Little Way” of St. Therese made clear. We are called to mindfulness in each moment and the practice of the Presence of God, as Brother Lawrence taught. As our Lord revealed in the Gospel, “a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough” and “a mustard seed” produces a giant shrub—both metaphors for how the Kingdom of God is built from the “grassroots, quantum model” operating in our earthly human life.
Next Our Lady says: “I am with you and intercede for you before my Son Jesus, that He may give you a strong faith and hope in a better future, which I desire to build up with you.” What music to our ears, to hear Our Lady expressing such strong solidarity with us in our human condition! Present to us and interceding for us with her Son, she implores that we be given “a strong faith and hope in a better future.” How desperately we need these gifts at this time of deep darkness and “Satanic ego run-riot” throughout our world! Without “strong faith and hope in a better future,” so many people today are giving up in despair: tragically losing our lives, both to deliberate suicide and to the passive suicide of self-medicating drug and alcohol abuse, other addictions, and the numbing apathy of “screen zombie syndrome” in which “virtual reality” on television, internet, social media, and smartphone-scrolling so dominates our consciousness 24/7 that “real life” loses all meaning and purpose. Relationship—with God, others, and oneself––cannot survive in this airless environment starved of the oxygen of conscious awareness and human engagement.
But Our Lady does not leave her children alone in this degraded state. She points us toward “a better future, which I desire to build up with you.” Our Blessed Mother wants to join us in the work of reconstruction as we “build peace in the world” : ENVIRONMENTAL PEACE between humans and Nature—the ecosystem of Creation that sustains all life; INTERNATIONAL PEACE between different countries and diverse governments; POLITICAL PEACE between polarized partisan blocs within our own and other nations; CULTURAL PEACE between different ethnic, racial, socio-economic, age, gender, and sexual orientation groups, all of which must co-exist in harmony, sharing our one planet, in both urban and rural settings; INTERPERSONAL PEACE between communities, families, friends, and married couples; and INNER PEACE within each individual human heart that is a “holon” of the “whole.”
With Our Lady’s maternal presence and help, our task of peace-building is not so daunting as when we try to face the decadent depravity and disintegration of our world on our own, with our totally inadequate resources. The song “Beautiful City” from the musical Godspell says: “Out of the ruins and rubble, out of the smoke, out of our night of struggle, can we see a ray of hope, one pale thin ray reaching for the day? We can build a beautiful city, yes, we can. Yes we can! We can build a beautiful city—not a city of angels, but finally a city of man. We may not reach the ending, but we can start. Slowly but surely mending, brick by brick, heart by heart. Now, maybe now, we start learning how….When your trust is all but shattered, when your faith is all but killed, you can give up bitter and battered, or you can slowly start to BUILD!”
Our Lady concludes her hope-filled message by saying: “You be courageous and do not be afraid, because God is with you.” Here Our Lady gets to the root of so much misery in our world: FEAR. We can never exaggerate how much FEAR drives the False Self “emotional programs for happiness” through which Satanic ego wreaks havoc in our life, robbing us of the PEACE that is rightfully ours as children of the Most High God. FEAR drives us toward the error of looking for safety/security, affection/esteem, and power/control in the weak and futile symbols of our homemade earthly projects for happiness—leading to jealousies, rivalries, conflicts, wars, and the shattering of peace on earth—rather than resting with serene contentment in the inner awareness of the Divine Indwelling Presence at our inmost center: our God-Who-Is-Love, never separate or absent from us, but ever-Present at the core of our Being!
With this awareness, indeed, as Our Lady says, we all can and should “BE COURAGEOUS AND NOT AFRAID, BECAUSE GOD IS WITH YOU.” St. Paul wrote, “You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being BUILT together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” (Eph 2:19-22) As co-laborers with our Mother, the Queen of Peace, may our brave and confident work as Peace-builders for “a better future” be blessed by the Lord of the Harvest whom we serve.
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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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WE CANNOT SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS WITH THE SAME THINKING THAT WE USED WHEN WE CREATED THEM.
—Albert Einstein
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Season of Creation: September 1 – October 4
2022 Theme: “Listen to the Voice of Creation“
Pope Francis is calling upon all people to “repent and modify our lifestyles and destructive systems” in order to rein in climate change and save ecosystems. He says that an ecological conversion must occur not only among individuals but within “the community of nations”—especially in United Nations conferences to address climate change and rapid biodiversity loss through species extinction. Vatican spokesperson Cardinal Michael Czerny says, “New fossil fuel projects every day accelerate our race towards the precipice. Enough is enough. All new exploration and production of coal, oil, and gas must immediately end, and existing production of fossil fuels must be urgently phased out.”
Pope Francis said, “The present state of decay of our common home merits the same attention as other global challenges such as grave health crises and wars. There is a need for a covenant between human beings and the environment. Extractive industries must end practices that destroy ecosystems, threaten biodiversity and harm communities. It is necessary for all of us to act decisively. For we are reaching a breaking point.
When we listen, we can hear in the voice of creation a kind of dissonance. On the one hand, we can hear a sweet song in praise of our beloved Creator, and on the other, an anguished plea, lamenting our mistreatment of this our common home. The latter chorus is made up of the cries from the earth itself, species facing extinction, people who are economically poor facing the gravest impacts of climate change, Indigenous communities whose ancestral lands have been invaded and destroyed by predatory economic interests, and young people who are crying out, anxiously asking adults to prevent or at least limit the collapse of our planet’s ecosystems.
The responsibility to care for creation is an essential part of living a virtuous life for Christians. All people of faith have a responsibility not only for a personal ecological conversion but also to work and act in a spirit of maximum cooperation. The recent move for the Holy See to join the Paris Agreement is in hope that the humanity of the 21st century will be remembered for having generously shouldered its grave responsibilities. To meet the net-zero emissions goal means converting models of consumption and production, as well as lifestyles, in a way more respectful of creation, and to practice integral human development that is grounded in responsibility, prudence, solidarity and concern for the poor and future generations.
In the name of God, I ask the great extractive industries—mining, oil, forestry, real estate, agribusiness—to stop destroying forests, wetlands, and mountains, to stop polluting rivers and seas, to stop poisoning food and people. Richer nations must acknowledge the ecological debt they’ve incurred through centuries of polluting and take greater responsibility in producing solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss.
During this Season of Creation, let us pray that new measures serve to unite the human family in effectively confronting the double crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss. Let us weep with the anguished plea of creation. Let us hear that plea and respond to it with deeds, so that we and future generations can continue to rejoice in creation’s sweet song of life and hope.”
—Brian Roewe reporting from Rome
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Into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His will prevails. The experience is recognized as PEACE. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of every sort.
—Leonard Cohen
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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. This is one reason why all religious traditions have universally insisted that religious life cannot be done with the mind alone; that is the biggest single impediment to spiritual becoming.
—Cynthia Bourgeault
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I do not know why we were made believers during the time of the great turning, but there we are. We are one of the hinge-generations, people living in historical periods of great and deep change. We did not choose this for ourselves, but I believe it was chosen for us by a power greater than we can comprehend. Our task is to help as many people as we can to make the transition safely and in PEACE. We may not live to see all of the outcome, but what we do today will alter reality for many generations to come. Let us accept this mission with a courageous humility and go forth together in FAITH.
—Steven Charleston
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In facing ourselves we find the PEACE that surpasses all understanding, the PEACE which the world cannot give through all its promises of delightful mythology. It’s the world that is. It’s the world of God’s infinite mercy. It’s the world in which the power of God is totally at the service of infinite mercy, in which God takes upon Godself the anguish, the desolation, the loneliness, the hellishness of which hell itself is the symbol. And that is the PEACE that the world cannot give. And that is the PEACE which is total gift: when we let go of our undue attachment or dependency on all the methods we thought would bring us happiness, which is the peace that the world offers, but not the PEACE that Jesus has come and died to give us.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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The pitfall of the religion of perfection is self-righteousness, that cancer of the soul that requires more of others than it demands of itself and so erodes its own fiber even more. It is an inner blindness that counts the sins of others but has no eye for itself. Real contemplatives receive the other with the open arms of God because they have come to know that for all their emptiness God has received them. To be a contemplative it is necessary to take in without reservation those whom the world casts out, for they show us most clearly the face of the waiting God.
—Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB
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Christianity is a lifestyle—a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established “religion” and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s “personal Lord and Savior.” The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
There are plenty of church teachings that have changed over time. A church that does not develop its thinking in an ecclesial way is a church that goes backward. That is the problem of many today who claim to be traditionalists. They are not traditionalists, they are backwardists. Tradition is the root of inspiration in order to go forward in the church.
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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
