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Medjugorje Message: March 25, 2012 |
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Published by the Marian Center
of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry River of Light |
In these two messages from Our Lady, we are given motherly encouragement and guidance for prayer, conversion, and witnessing our faith to the world. While it is clear that Our Lady is asking “more” from us, her tone is not gloomy or negative. She begins her monthly message to the world by saying, “Also today, with joy, I desire to give you my motherly blessing and to call you to prayer.” Likewise, in her annual birthday message to Mirjana, she asks us to pray for our shepherds (priests and bishops), “that, united in my Son, they can always joyfully proclaim the Word of God.” It has been said that “what is done without joy is zero,” and Our Lady continually affirms that our bearing in the world and our message should be ever joyful, reflecting the meaning of “Gospel,” which is “Good News”---“glad tidings of great joy for all people.” (Lk 2:10) Never a message of doom and gloom! St. Teresa of Avila cried, “God protect us from gloomy saints!” and St. Francis of Assisi forbade his Friars Minor from ever appearing with long faces or frowns. The hallmark of a follower of Jesus Christ is a deep, abiding joy in the Lord. Having said that, it is also clear that Our Lady does not have her head “buried in the sand,” oblivious to our faults and shortcomings. She tells us frankly, “Work more on your conversion because you are far away, little children.” We must realize that conversion is an ongoing journey, not a one-time event, no matter how dramatic or profound our initial experience might have been. For some, there was a life-changing pilgrimage, for others a Cursillo or ACTS retreat, or some other tangible, particular moment in time when God seemed to “grab” us and turn our life around. But these grace-filled experiences were just the beginning of a lifelong walk with Jesus and Mary into deeper conversion, greater holiness, broader vision, and ever-expanding love of God and creation. The road is long, and we have not “arrived”; we are still “far away.” If our “conversion experience” was 10, 20, or 30 years ago, and our spirituality and/or theology has not grown and developed since that initial “honeymoon” phase, then we have not been “working on our conversion,” as Our Lady asks. Conversion means “change,” and this change is ongoing, just as conversion is ongoing; our views do not fossilize and remain rigidly etched in concrete once we “see the light.” Rather, openness of heart and mind in receptivity to the Holy Spirit, especially through prayer, make for continual changes in our vision, viewpoint, and perspective on life. This is a visceral “need” for our soul, compelling us to go further each day in our conversion. Our Lady says, “May prayer become a need for you to grow more in holiness every day.” How many of us feel daily prayer beckoning to us as a deep, undeniable need or craving, as necessary as air and water? Daily Mass, rosary, lectio divina with scripture, silent meditation and contemplation, or other prayer forms become the lifeblood of one who is “working” on their conversion, and such spiritual practice continually expands one’s vision and love, rather than contracting it around a small, complacent self-righteousness. In her message to Mirjana, Our Lady spells out the nature of our “work” on conversion, and how she wants to be in partnership with us: “I desire to be the bond between you and the Heavenly Father---your mediatrix. I desire to take you by the hand and to walk with you in the battle against the impure spirit.” This is no cake walk! It is the walk of conversion through a battlefield where we must, every day, do “battle against the impure spirit.” What is the “impure spirit”? There are many ways of interpreting this phrase, but one of the simplest is to say that we all must put to death the “false self,” which is also the satanic ego that, since the beginning (Genesis), has insisted on “my way” rather than God’s will. This “impure spirit” is present within each of us when we ignore the voice of the Divine Indwelling Presence, the Holy Spirit leading us to all truth, and instead pursue our own selfish programs for happiness based on the needs for safety, security, affection, esteem, power, control, and pleasure. When we live from the false self or satanic ego, we are driven by fear and hate to chase those things that we think will bring us happiness, and which seem in ever short supply, threatening our destruction. This “impure spirit” invades every aspect of our life, including our religion, leading us to behave in fearful, hateful ways toward those we perceive as threats, be they members of other faiths, no faith, or even fellow Christians without our particular “brand” of Catholicism. Our Lady reveals that this is not the “right way” to witness her Son. If we will “consecrate ourselves to Mary completely,” she says, “I will take your lives into my motherly hands and I will teach them peace and love, and then I will give them over to my Son.” We know that “peace and love” are the antidote to fear and hate. The horrifying hatred that we see in the world today is inevitably rooted in fear---fear of the “other,” of the “different,” of whatever might threaten the false self / impure spirit’s programs for happiness. Without fear, we are at peace, and in peace we are free to love. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” (1 Jn 4:18) Our Lady continues: “I am asking of you to pray and fast because only in this way will you know how to witness my Son in the right way through my motherly heart.” We recall that the unbeatable combination of “prayer and fasting” is the way Our Lord taught his disciples to exorcise demons. The “impure spirit” that takes possession of a human being can be eradicated only by prayer and fasting, according to the Gospel. Now Our Lady is asking us to pray and fast as the “only way” that we ourselves will be able to give proper witness to Jesus Christ: through her motherly heart that operates by peace and love---never by means of fear and hate, which are the currency of the kingdom of this world, seen in our politics, our “social networking” (bullying), in the international arena of wars and rumors of war, and death by the weaponry of our own “impure spirit.” Our Lady wants to partner with us in the great “work” of conversion, the exorcising of our own personal demon---the “log” in our own eye rather than the “speck” in our neighbor’s eye---the “impure spirit” of satanic ego which we must “battle” every day. Only then can we, with our shepherds, “always joyfully proclaim the Word of God.” + The Iconography of the CROSS + Within its simplicity the cross holds a multitude of sublime meanings. In ancient times, before Christ, the cross was already imbued with a holy symbolism that permeated art and ritual. The Egyptians saw it as an emblem of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water), and as a symbol of well-being and the life to come. Pre-Christian Scandinavia saw the cross as the hammer of the sky god Thor, a symbol of worship. Druidic sanctuaries were often built in the form of a cross, the long base signifying the path of life for the living, the three shorter arms representing the three states of the spirit world—a pre-Christian equivalent of heaven, hell and purgatory. The Hebrews took the blood of the paschal lamb and sprinkled it upon their doorposts in the form of a cross so that the Angel of Death would bypass them on the first Passover in Egypt. When the blood of a sacrificial animal was sprinkled on objects or people it was done in the form of a cross. These gestures were instituted over a thousand years before Jesus was crucified. He came not to abolish these ancient practices but to complete them. In art, Christ is depicted holding the cross on a banner as he rises from the tomb, thus making it a sign of liberation rather than defeat, a glorious trophy of the conquest of death with risen life, the instrument of torture transformed into a promise of resurrection. In Byzantine legend the cross was a bridge or ladder by which human souls could climb toward God, and early saints meditated upon all the things that are cross-shaped as reflections of the divine sign, from flying birds to the mast of a ship, from plows to anchors. The cross contains a sacred geometry that can also symbolize the two Great Commandments: its vertical beam a reminder to love God wholeheartedly while the horizontal beam invites love of neighbor as our very self. It also signifies the union of two pairs of opposites and thus the overcoming of all dualism in the oneness of unity consciousness. The cross can also reflect the three theological virtues: the earth the foot of the cross is lodged in the firm foundation of faith; the upper end of the cross representing hope rising to heaven, and the crossbeam symbolizing a love that embraces all, even one’s enemies. The cross is called the sacred “axis mundi” or pole of the world, enveloping the three realms of creation—the human, the divine, and the earth/universe. It is also known as “the umbilical cord of the cosmos.” Every life is filled with crosses. Those that we pick up and carry willingly have the spiritual power to break the death-dealing ego with the humble love that brings forth new and eternal life. (Adapted from Magnificat) A Walk through HOLY WEEK . . . PALM SUNDAY: Entry into Jerusalem, The Final Act of the Drama The future does not seem bright, his followers will be persecuted. The Master is about to leave without having finished hardly anything while almost abandoning his disciples. The people have abandoned him because it has become too risky to follow him; the synagogue declares him a heretic, indeed blasphemous; the political representatives despise him; and his “own” do not understand him. He has not left them anything durable, no institution; he has neither baptized nor ordained, much less has he founded anything. He has left both the Spirit and himself as a silent presence in the Eucharistic act. He has sent his disciples as lambs among wolves and refuses to change tactics even at the end: wolves are still roaming about. He promises his followers only one thing: the Spirit. ---Fr. Raimon Panikkar HOLY THURSDAY: The Last Supper & Institution of the Eucharist
The Eucharist marks the beginning of a new future,
not the end. Those who participate in the Eucharist are asked to remember the death and
resurrection of Jesus, not
as a past event but as the power of the future.
The remembrance is an
empowerment to go and do the same: to die and rise in this new
pattern of life at the heart of the universe that is the Christ.
We have domesticated the Eucharist by depleting it of its power to
create anew. The dangerous memory of Jesus has become a
comfortable memory of piety, not an invitation to costly
discipleship for a new future…drawing us into solidarity
with the poor, victims of violence and oppression, oppressed
creatures of the earth—the peoples, animals, and plants
whose well-being is destroyed or threatened….Understanding
the Eucharist
as the internalization of God’s love leads to the centrality
of the Eucharist as the basis of catholic life. The true catholic
personality is one centered around the mystery of the Eucharist.
In receiving the Eucharist each person receives the whole Christ,
so that the entire body is present in each member. In
this way…all persons are internal to the very being of one
another….The Eucharist,
therefore, is the sacrament of evolution because every act
of Eucharist is an act of making a new future through a new divine
presence, a new relatedness, a new freedom to love. But this
eucharistic embrace as an act of whole-making means letting go and
receiving the other into oneself.
It requires death
to the old self that refuses to embrace another and openness
to the other as part of oneself.
Whole-making is the desire to be part of a greater whole, and
Eucharist sacramentalizes the whole. GOOD FRIDAY: The Crucifixion of Jesus
Once I was gazing at the
cross. And while I was thus gazing at the cross with the eyes of
the body, suddenly my soul was set ablaze with love….I saw
and felt that Christ
was within me,
embracing my soul with the very arm with which he was
crucified….My soul remained in this state of joy in which
it understood what
this man, Christ, is like in heaven….how we
will see that through him our flesh is made one with God….And
in no way whatever can I be sad concerning the passion; on the
contrary, my joy is in seeing this man…. All my joy now is
in this suffering God-man.
God’s historical
revelation in the Son aims at a transformative
subjective appropriation.
The Church Fathers already insisted that all objective redemption
would be useless if it were not re-lived
subjectively as a dying and rising with Christ in the Holy Spirit.
“If Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem, but not
in you, you would remain lost forever.…The
Cross on Golgotha cannot redeem you from evil if it is not raised
up also in you.”
(Silesius)
It came to me like a
blinding flash of light that Christ
did not resist evil,
that he allowed himself to be violently done to death, that when he
gave himself to be crucified,
he knew that the exquisite delicacy and loveliness of the merest
detail of Christian life would survive the passion, that indeed,
far from being destroyed by it, it depended on it….I am
confident now that the
beauty of life, which is nothing else but our divine Lord living
in human souls, will go on,
and that our lives, though they seem to leave no visible trace,
will not have been in vain.
The essence of the
spiritual journey is to let
go of everything, including one’s life and life work.
Even Christ had to let go of his intimate relationship with the
Father. On the cross he cries out, “Why
do I have to be alienated from You?!” The sense of
separation from God goes with sin and influences everything we
think or do. The willingness to be transformed means letting
go of the false self.
The latter is the hardest thing we have to do in this life. The
death of the false self is the goal. Total self-surrender is
resurrection.
Even our spiritual path has to be left behind….Every true
seeker of God, from the beginning of time to the end of the world,
has to pass through this mysterious inward death and rebirth,
perhaps many times over. We must surrender
our personal vision in order to become Vision itself.
That, after all, is the goal and term of Christian life.
Jesus didn’t move
from Jesus to Christ without death and resurrection. And we
ourselves don’t move from our independent, historical body
to the Christ consciousness without dying
to our false self.
We, like Jesus himself, have to let
go of who we think we are, and who we think we need to be.
We have to become the naked self before the naked God. That will
always feel like dying. We need to know, experientially, that
naked, undecorated self is already and forever the beloved child
of God. Jesus’
life is also our life.
The road leading to God
does not entail a multiplicity of considerations, methods, manners
and experiences....but demands only the
one thing necessary: surrender
of self.
The path Jesus showed us
on the cross is the path of “kenosis” or self-emptying
love.
In order to be filled by God, one must first be emptied. “All
sins are attempts to fill voids,”
said Simone Weil. The antidote to sin that we see on the cross is
an emptying rather than
filling: the outpouring
self-surrender of
kenotic love. This is the wisdom path taught and modeled by Jesus
as the “Royal Road” to unitive
consciousness---a
mystical oneness
in love that
we can live, with God and all beings. It is a
union in love that nothing can separate:
“My soul longs to see us so
built up on Christ crucified that neither the
water of trial, nor the wind of temptation, nor even the devil
with his wiles or the world with its allurements or the flesh with
its impurity will ever be able to separate us from the love
of Christ and of our neighbors.”
HOLY SATURDAY/EASTER SUNDAY: The Resurrection
Faith in the resurrection
of Jesus says that there
is a future for every human being;
the cry for unending life which is a part of the person is indeed
answered….God
exists:
that is the real message of Easter.
You should try to realize
that in
you is
the power, strength, and love of Christ…that in
you Christ lives his risen life,
that He has
already overcome death—died and risen from death and
overcome it; that it
is the Risen Christ, who has already defeated death, who lives in
you.
The Risen
Jesus is the heart of the world.
He gives life to the whole Universe, and He is the ray of light
that shines from the empty tomb upon all humanity yesterday,
today, and forever. Jesus’ Resurrection is a particular,
special, and unique event. It is the proclamation of the victory
of life over death, of love over sin. Easter
is the “feast of the running feet”;
everyone arrives at the tomb tired, sad, and disappointed…and
they leave running! The Risen Christ gives us the dynamic
enthusiasm to announce the victory…. The power of His
resurrection crushes the chains that bind us. Christ’s
resurrection sets us free!
If you know that our
Pasch, Christ, has been sacrificed and that you are to celebrate
the feast whenever you eat the flesh of the Logos, you
never cease to act out the Pasch,
meaning, as it does in our language, passage:
by
every thought and word, every contact with the things of your
earthly life you
go over to God and rush onward to his city. The person who can
really say we
have risen with Christ and
God has awakened us with his Son and allowed us to take our place
in the world of heaven with him is always
living in the time of Pentecost.
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Mary’s Gift to Us In Mary, there are the two contradictory agonies: the longing to save Jesus from his unbearable agony and the effort to help him to finish his work…giving him to the world on the cross as she has given him to the world in the stable. If her heart had been filled with a soft sentimental pity, she would not have helped, but would have hindered. Human love helps when it is within the framework of…when it expresses the will of God. A Mother’s vocation is fulfilled when she offers her Son to God, to life, and to his own destiny; it is ruined when she clings to him for her own sake on the plea of saving him from hurt. This is the crowning with which His Mother crowned him: her offering of her Son to the Father, and her strengthening him for the kingship of the cross. -- Fr. Gerald Vann, O.P. |
Mark Your Calendar
April
1 |
Palm Sunday: The Passion of the Lord |
4 |
Signs and Wonders in John’s Gospel” with Dr. Mary Lou Mueller : 4 Weds; 10:00-11:30 am, SoL Center, 300 Bushnell; $35 Toward a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance” Lecture with Mehmet Oguz, Director of SA Institute of Interfaith Dialog; Sol Center, 300 Bushnell; $10; call 210-732-9927 |
5 |
Holy Thursday |
6 |
Good Friday of the Passion of the Lord |
7 |
Holy Saturday, Easter Vigil |
8 |
Easter Sunday: Resurrection of the Lord |
13 |
Josh Blakesley “Come to Jesus” Praise & Worship Family Concert, 7-9 pm, Prince of Peace Catholic Church, 7893 Grissom Rd; for tickets call 681.8330 |
15 |
Divine Mercy Sunday: Celebration of the Feast at 2:00 pm, Our Lady of Czestochowa Shrine, 138 Beethoven |
19 |
Holocaust Remembrance Day The Dinner of Abrahamic Traditions: Short Talks, Panel Discussions, and a Buffet Dinner to strengthen friendship & understanding among the three Abrahamic Traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Featured Speakers: Aux. Bishop Oscar Cantu, Rev. Kelly Allen, Rabbi Leonardo Bitran, Imam Safak; 6 pm -8 pm, SoL Center, 300 Bushnell, $15 includes dinner; RSVP by emailing oguz@interfaithdialog.org |
21 |
Introduction to Centering Prayer Workshop: 9 am-1 pm, Omega Retreat Center, 216 W. Highland, Boerne, TX; $40 incl. two follow-up sessions; presented by staff of Contemplative Outreach-SA, Sr. Mary Agnes Zinni, OSB; 830.816.8471 |
22 |
Earth Day Rosary Making: 2-5:30 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; free parking & materials |
23 |
Lecture with Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI, President of Oblate School of Theology and internationally renowned author: “Dark Nights and Doubt: A Failure of Faith or a Failure of Imagination?”; 7-9 pm, Sol Center, 300 Bushnell, $10; call 210-732-9927 |
25 |
St. Mark, Evangelist |
27-28 |
Lecture/Gathering with Robert Moore, Ph.D.: “The Fellowship of the Dragon: The Shift from Hope to Realization in Psyche, Spirituality, and Community”; 7:00 pm Friday & 9:30 am-3:30 pm Saturday; Oblate School of Theology Whitley Theological Center, $50 includes lunch; call 210.341.1366 x 226 |
28 |
PEACE MASS: 12 noon, St.
Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s |
"Oh my Jesus, what took you to the cross but love?".....................................................
................................................-- St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi
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