|
Medjugorje
Message: July 25, 2014 Dear children! You are not aware of the graces that you are
living at this time in which the Most High is giving you signs for you to
open and convert. Return to God and to prayer, and may prayer begin to reign
in your hearts, families and communities, so that the Holy Spirit may lead
and inspire you to every day be more open to God’s will and to His plan for
each of you. I am with you and with the saints and angels intercede for you.
Thank you for having responded to my call. |
|
Published
by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry Our Lady’s message this month is about awareness. She uses several words that draw attention to ATTENTION. She begins by saying to us straight up: “You
are not aware of the graces that you are
living at this time in which the Most High is giving you signs for you to
open and convert.” In her own gentle
way, Our Lady is shaking us, slapping us upside the head (as in the movie Moonstruck) and saying, “Snap out of it!” You are asleep! You are oblivious! You are zoned out! Wake up! We need to hear her message: We are not aware of
the graces that we are living at this time. Instead we are passing through our days on auto-pilot, like
mechanical robots or sleepwalkers. Often we remark how fast time is flying,
how quickly one day, week, or month melts into another. Getting older, we
realize that what seemed only a couple years ago was in fact ten or more—how
can that be?! Yet “it
BE.” As our life slips away like
sand through an hourglass, more and more quickly with the onward march of
aging toward the “finish line” of death, we become vaguely aware of
life’s “quantity” diminishing. But do we ever stop to consider the “quality” of our days? When I reach bedtime at night, has my day drawn me closer in intimacy
to my Source, the loving and merciful God who is present
through me, with me, and in me, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, in every
moment of the past 24 hours? Or do I fall to the pillow in
exhaustion, aware only that I’ve toiled hard all day to fulfill the
obligations of my overcrowded routine, following my own plans and pursuits,
successfully or not? What are the graces of “this time” to which Our Lady
refers—the ones that we are “living” but missing through unawareness? She
says that in this time “the Most High is
giving you signs for you to open and convert.” Where? When? In
virtually every moment! Throughout our entire day,
from one activity to the next, God is present and calling to us through nature,
circumstances, people, places and problems that we encounter. God speaks to
us in birdsong, sunshine, trees and flowers as we sip our first morning
coffee, and in the voices of the spouse, children, parents, bosses,
coworkers, relatives, friends, and strangers we meet during the day. When we
hear or read the news—tragedies of war, violence, crime, and every form of
inhumanity happening in the world—God is present, calling us to “open and convert.” But we are as closed and obtuse as the Pharisees to whom Jesus
said, “You
know how to judge the appearance of the sky, but you cannot judge the signs
of the times.” (Matt 16:2) Everything that happens in my day is an opportunity given by God to grow
closer in conformity to the Love that God is, to evolve in my consciousness toward the Christian goal of life: divinization. The people whom the Church calls “saints” are the ones who lived
their lives in a state of acute awareness, fully awake to this goal of divinization. They did not aspire to be “saints,” for that is too small a goal;
they knew the only worthy goal for a Christian is to become
Christ, to “open
and convert” until the False Self of ego
is completely emptied out and subsumed by the indwelling Presence of God
that has been allowed and invited to “buy up all the real estate in the
Monopoly game,” to the point of owning all of oneself. So what is the remedy for this, our “sleepwalking” state of
unawareness? Our Lady says, “Return to God and to prayer,
and may prayer begin to reign in your hearts, families and communities,
so that the Holy Spirit may lead and inspire you to every day be more open to
God’s will and to His plan for each of you.” This is the perennial teaching of the Queen of Peace at Medjugorje: “Pray, pray, pray!” She invites us to “pray
until prayer becomes a joy for you.” Our
daily practice of prayer in its various forms—liturgical, Eucharistic, vocal,
chant, recited from memory, spontaneous, charismatic/tongues, silent
adoration, mantric/rosary, scriptural/Lectio Divina, meditative,
centering, contemplative—must ultimately lead us into a state of continual
prayerful AWARENESS of the Divine Presence. This
might be called “Christ consciousness” or “having
the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2:16) Then we can truly say that “prayer begins to reign in our hearts.” From this point, Our Lady says, the Holy Spirit will
lead and inspire us to be more open to God’s will and the Divine plan for us
every day. Until prayer “reigns in our
hearts,” we are constantly distracted by the competing pulls of the False
Self drawing us toward our own futile egoic
programs for happiness, our self-centered agendas and maneuverings, with the
Holy Spirit able to “lead and inspire us” only sporadically, in a “hit and
miss” way—not consistently. This is the state of consciousness at which most
of our violent, chaotic world is “stuck”—only occasionally Spirit-led
rather than continually under the peaceful “reign” of prayer. So how will there be peace on earth? As Our Lady points out, this “reign of prayer” must begin in our individual
hearts, then
spread to our “families and communities.” What would a family look like in which “prayer reigns”? What would a community look like under the “reign of prayer”? Like John Lennon, we can only “imagine” a world formed of such families and communities. What matters NOW is
that the peace of this higher state of consciousness (Christ consciousness) must live in my heart through my consistent daily practice of prayer. “Let
there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” August
Musings . . .
Mary’s Assumption
& Queenship . . . Attention/Contemplation vs.
Dualistic Polarization . . . the “Francis Effect” The Immaculate Heart
of Mary is the principle of the life of a world. What is this world? It is
the God-Man, filled with countless rare marvels. Now, this God-Man is the
Son of Mary, and Mary’s Heart is consequently the source of his life, since
the mother’s heart is the principle of the child’s life as
well as her own….But how much more true is this of the
incomparably loving Heart of the Queen of Apostles! The holy Heart of
Mary, from the moment of her conception, has been completely kept in motion
by love for God and charity towards mankind. “Take away the sun that
enlightens our world,” says St. Bernard, “what will become of day or light?
Take away Mary, the Star of the Sea, or take away the Heart of Mary, the true
Sun of the Christian world, and what would be left? Without Mary’s radiance,
nothing is left but enveloping darkness, the shadow of death and the
frightful night of the grave.” O excellent Heart of
my Queen, my most amiable Sun, blessed are the hearts that love you! Happy
the minds that meditate on your greatness, and the tongues that praise you!
Blessed are the eyes that contemplate you, O radiant Mary! The more
they gaze on you, the greater their desire, the stronger the light and
strength they receive to enable them to gaze yet more upon your dazzling
light! -- St. John Eudes + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
Litany
of Humility in
the Spirit of Holy Mary, Mother of God O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, Hear me. From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being honored, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being praised, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being preferred to others, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being consulted, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being approved, Deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of being despised, Deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of suffering rebukes, Deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of being slandered, Deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me, Jesus. That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the
grace to desire it. That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus grant me the
grace to desire it. That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I
may decrease, Jesus, grant me the
grace to desire it. + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + “Attention
is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” – Simone Weil We have to learn to
pay attention. Why should this be so powerful? Why should this selfless
attention that Simone Weil speaks of be so powerful? It is because in
the act of attention we transcend the ego. Fully absorbed in our
attention, we leave self behind. When you come to think of it, what is
it that could possibly mislead us in any sort of apprehension of reality—what
could mislead us, but the ego? Learning to attend, we
learn to see with absolute clarity what is before us. We learn to hear
what is said to us. In other words, we learn to be fully open to reality.
That is what Jesus asks of each of us. That is what he invites each of us to:
a full empathy with divine love. Without such selfless attention, we can
never pass over, never fully hear or see or experience what is. Everything
we see or hear or experience is distorted by the prism of our ego. Learning to meditate,
we learn to leave all our own limited, distorted perceptions behind. We
become absorbed into the divine reality. This is the oneness that Jesus
speaks of in his great prayer in the Gospel of John: “that we may be one.”
The English medieval mystics spoke of prayer as the process of “oneing,” becoming one. Now silent meditation
is simply our beginning on the path to this selfless attention, turning the searchlight
of consciousness off ourselves, going forward. We become like the eye that
cannot see itself, but that sees all. We begin to see
everything as Christ sees it. In other words, we begin to see with his
light. – Fr.
John Main, OSB + +
+ +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + Contemplation:
Non-dual Thinking Contemplation reaches a different
mind which leaves itself open so that when the “biggies” come along (love,
suffering, death, infinity, contradictions, God, sexuality),
we still remain with an open field. We don’t just close down when it doesn’t
make full sense, or we are not in full control, or immediately feel
validated. That calm and non-egocentric mind is called contemplative, or non-dual
thinking. The lowest level of
consciousness is entirely dualistic (win/lose)—me versus the world and basic
survival. Many never move beyond this. The higher levels of consciousness
are more and more able to deal with contradictions, paradoxes, and all
Mystery (win/win). This is spiritual maturity. At the higher
levels, we can teach things like compassion, mercy, forgiveness,
selflessness, even love of enemies. Any good contemplative practice quickly
greases the wheels of the mind toward non-dual consciousness. This is
exactly why saints can overlook offenses and love enemies! -- Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + Liberal/Conservative
Polarization: Dualism on Steroids Abbot Christian de Cherge [one of the Trappist monks martyred by Islamic extremists in Algeria
in 1996] preemptively forgave his killers and wrote that his final wish
was that, one day, he would be playing joyfully with them in heaven—he, a
Christian, they, Muslims, both experiencing the same joy before God….“This
is what I shall be able to do, God willing: immerse my gaze in that of the
Father to contemplate with him His children of Islam just as He sees them,
all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of His Passion, filled with
the Gift of the Spirit whose secret joy will always be to establish communion
and restore the likeness, playing with the differences.” How
different in substance, spirit and tone this is from our attitudes and our
rhetoric today. Simply put, today we
too often lack basic respect, charity, and honesty both in attitude and in
language. This is true on both sides of the ideological spectrum, liberal
and conservative. Both in attitude and language, we too often
display the following: * We are devoid of
self-criticism and any hint that we, ourselves, should struggle more deeply
with things before which we find ourselves indignant. * We are long on name-calling and ideology and short on charity. * We lack essential respect for the persons and positions we are attacking, always
assuming ill-will or ignorance. * We rely on clichés, slogans and ridicule to cheapen the
position we are criticizing. * We make everything either/or—never both/and, thus creating illicit dichotomies which make us
choose between two things which are not essentially incompatible. * We never seriously try to understand the position of those who think
differently. * Finally, we take ourselves too seriously, pretentiously
lacking both joy and humor. The net effect of this
is polarization and bitterness within our communities where, already,
too many people are speaking through the prism of neurosis, suspicion and
paranoia on the pretense that this is prophetic sensitivity to truth and
justice. We see this in every
circle today: liberal and conservative. Everyone is hypersensitive;
but beneath all this seeming sensitivity for truth, there lies a basic
lack of respect and charity. Good people can no longer work together or
even talk together. We are a long way from the type of big-heartedness,
nobility of character and genuine Christian witness of Dom Christian de Cherge….God, it seems, has a heart that can embrace and hold differences. Forming that kind of
heart is the real task of theological education. – Fr. Ron Rolheiser,
OMI, President, Oblate School of Theology + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + “The Francis Effect” by Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, NM Pope Francis captured
the world’s attention with a variety of comments and departures from Vatican protocol,
but once he got that attention, he didn’t hesitate to issue a challenging
message. From the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis spoke a very
humble message, and then came a signal—a break in protocol. He
asked the people for a blessing. That’s not a very common thing, not
exactly the protocol one would expect; usually you ask a blessing from
someone who has some sort of authority in your life. It turned out to be only
the first of many protocols Pope Francis broke during his first year. During the Holy
Thursday liturgy, he washed the feet not only of men but of women, and in
fact of some who were not Christian. Many people were hurt by that, not because they were women
or non-Christians but because there were set rubrics in the liturgy
that say it is men who are to have their feet washed. Personally, I believe
that the moment of washing the feet of the 12 people is about
service, not priesthood. The message was that there
is a bigger picture, a bigger law, that we need to be concerned about,
and he has repeated that over and over. What are the rules and laws that
capture us? Do they prevent us from seeing the bigger picture of living
the Gospel? He began to preach spontaneously—something we hadn’t
seen—and used language we hadn’t heard, certainly not from a pontiff. So we
saw clearly that it was a new day. Some were delighted, some hurt. Some
wondered about his commitment to the so-called non-negotiables,
when he complained about our small-mindedness, while others were
delighted with his focus on the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized. Francis’ first
apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) contains the
statement, “I prefer a church that’s bruised and broken and dirty because it’s
been out in the streets rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being
confined and from clinging to its own security.” The media loved it.
They’d never heard this kind of language from the Vatican. It’s the kind of
language we’d hear from our Old Testament prophets. It shakes people up. Now
that he has our attention, he’s calling us to conversion—in the
church, in society, in the global economy, our cities and nations—so
we can’t simply remain in this exuberance of the so-called “Francis effect.” + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ +
|
Mark Your Calendar!
|
August 6 |
Transfiguration of the Lord |
|
8 |
St. Dominic |
|
11 |
St. Clare of Assisi |
|
14 |
St. Maximilian Kolbe, OFM |
|
15 |
Assumption
of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(HOLY DAY) |
|
22 |
Queenship
of the Blessed Virgin Mary |
|
27 |
St. Monica (mother of St.
Augustine)
|
|
28 |
St. Augustine |
|
29 |
Death of St. John the
Baptist |
|
30 |
PEACE
MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; Rosary at 11:30 am |
|
31 |
Rosary-making:
2:00-5:30 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; free parking &
materials |
|
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 |
|
Copyright, Marian Center of San Antonio. All
rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced without
permission. |