Medjugorje Message: July 25, 2015

Dear children! With joy I am with you also today and I call all of you, little children, pray, pray, pray so as to comprehend the love which I have for you. My love is stronger than evil, little children, therefore draw closer to God so as to feel my joy in God. Without God, little children, you do not have a future, you do not have hope or salvation; therefore leave evil and choose good. I am with you and, with you, I intercede before God for all of your needs. Thank you for having responded to my call.

Published by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry
River of Light
August 2015

This month Our Lady invites us once again into a shared experience of her own joy in God, which we can access through prayer. She begins by saying, “With joy I am with you also today and I call all of you, little children, pray, pray, pray so as to comprehend the love which I have for you.” This “pray, pray, pray” mantra dates back to the earliest days of the Medjugorje apparitions, and now Our Lady explains why we must pray: for comprehension. There are things beyond the scope of learned human scholarship, transcending what any author, preacher or teacher can convey, no matter how skillful their theological mastery. Our Lady’s love is one of these mysteries, as is the joy of God’s Presence. Full comprehension of these realities comes not from the rational intellect or even from scripture study, but only through prayer.

At this moment in our world history, many people are plagued by deep despair, depression, existential fear and chronic anxiety in the face of daily acts of terrorism, barbaric violence, and awful atrocities rooted in hatred and cruelty. In a word, “evil” seems to have the upper hand. But Our Lady says, “My love is stronger than evil, little children.” We must remember that this is the “Woman clothed with the sun” of Revelation chapter 12—the “New Eve” who treads upon the serpent in an ongoing and perpetually victorious battle over the satanic ego—Mary our Mother, given to us by Jesus from the cross on Calvary! We can have courage and confidence in her love that is stronger than evil.

Our Lady continues: “Therefore, draw closer to God so as to feel my joy in God.” First she uses the phrase, “so as to comprehend…” Now she uses the phrase, “so as to feel…” Our Blessed Mother knows the importance of our developmental wholeness and integrity; being the Mother of the Word Incarnate, she understands better than anyone what a fully human person is: a being with physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual centers all running simultaneously—not fragmented into partial compartments with some centers “asleep” and others over-functioning. Our Lady wants us both “comprehending” with our heads and “feeling” with our hearts. The mysteries of divine love and joy of which she speaks in this month’s message cannot be penetrated with thinking-only or with feeling-only, but must be embraced by both aspects of our God-given consciousness. Such complete integrity enabled Our Lady to be assumed into heaven body and soul at the end of her life, as we celebrate each August 15^th.

In order to experience this grace of wholeness and integrity, she asks us to “draw closer to God,” which we do through prayer—especially a consistent daily practice of silent meditation that opens our mind and heart to the divine gift of contemplation. Here we truly “feel” the Marian “joy in God” that overcomes the negativity of worldly evils. Our daily acts of prayer (rosary, Mass, intercession, silent sitting/centering, etc.) can more than counteract the daily acts of evil in our world. To “feel Our Lady’s joy in God” is an advancement or growth in consciousness beyond a mere “head” knowledge or “book learning”; it is a holistic “comprehension.”

In contrast to this blessing of evolving spiritual consciousness, Our Lady offers us a vision of the alternative: “Without God, little children, you do not have a future, you do not have hope or salvation; therefore, leave evil and choose good.” Here we see that, even though God is omnipresent, we can still be “without God” in our own conscious awareness, and—if that is the case—then from our own inner perspective, we “do not have a future, hope or salvation.” We join the ranks of the many people in our world who are riddled with chronic anxiety, existential fear, deep depression and deadly despair. Union with God through prayer is the antidote to this nightmarish existence, for there we come to experience—both “knowing” and “feeling”—the triumph of good over evil; the triumph of the love of Mary, the New Eve, over the ancient serpent of demonic ego. This triumph is the life of “joy in God” that we can share with her. The power of our free will is the hinge upon which this revolution of our life turns: we must “leave evil and choose good,” and this choice is born when we commit in daily practice to “pray, pray, pray.”

August Musings . . . Month of Honoring Mary in her Assumption & Queenship . . . and Practicing Prayer of a Solitary (Marian) Heart . . .

Precisely because Mary is with God and in God, she is very close to each one of us. While she lived on this earth, she could only be close to a few people. Being in God, who is actually “within” all of us, Mary shares in this closeness of God. Our Lady knows our hearts, can hear our prayers, can help us with her motherly kindness. She always listens to us and, being Mother of the Son, participates in the power of the Son and in his goodness. We can always entrust the whole of our lives to this Mother. – Pope Benedict XVI

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The dogma of the Assumption affirms that Mary’s body was glorified after her death. In fact, while for other human beings the resurrection of the body will take place at the end of the world, for Mary the glorification of her body was anticipated by a special privilege. …Although the New Testament does not explicitly affirm Mary’s Assumption, it offers a basis for it because it strongly emphasized the Blessed Virgin’s perfect union with Jesus’ destiny. This union, which is manifested, from the time of the Savior’s miraculous conception, in the Mother’s participation in her Son’s mission and especially in her association with his redemptive sacrifice, cannot fail to require a continuation after death. Perfectly united with the life and saving work of Jesus, Mary shares his heavenly destiny in body and soul….The Assumption is the culmination of the struggle which involved Mary’s generous love in the redemption of humanity and is the fruit of her unique sharing in the victory of the cross. – St. John Paul II

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Through Mary, Jesus came to us; through her, we should go to him. Let us implore without fear the help and intercession of Mary, our Mother. She is kind, she is tender, and there is nothing harsh or forbidding about her, nothing too sublime or too brilliant. When we see her, we see our own human nature at its purest. She is not the sun, dazzling our weak sight by the brightness of its rays. Rather, she is fair and gentle as the moon, which receives its light from the sun and adapts it to our limited perception. She is so full of love that no one who asks for her intercession is rejected, no matter how sinful he may be. – St. Louis de Montfort

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The secret of Mary’s prayerful bearing needs to be written for the benefit of all souls. What did Mary do given her apparent inactivity and exterior lack of mobility? Hear her reply, to understand her word of life: “I listen in my heart where the Heart of my God lives….I obey my heart which only wishes to please my God. That is my great and intimate secret, the secret of intimacy, the entire life of my soul. I listen to my love—secret of intimate prayer. I obey my love—secret of intimate conformity.”

Do you listen as she does, in courageous silence amidst all the voices of egoism? Do you obey him promptly with this generous gift of your whole being? Shouldn’t you be able to say at any moment, as Mary did, “I listen in my heart to the Heart of my God, of my Savior, of my Spouse. Listening only to him, I hear him alone, and I hear him at every moment. And at every moment he tells me the same thing: ‘I love you, love me.’ Also my one, constant reply is to obey him, believing in his Love, however veiled it may be, proving my love through a ceaseless Fiat. And in thus obeying the Heart of my God, I am obeying my own true heart, my heart of a child, of a spouse, aspiring only that my heart have its identity in One Heart.” Oh, understand and live this secret of Mary’s life of love, this secret of your Mother! – Cum Clamore Valido (1943)

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What is the prayer of the solitary heart? My answer is that detachment and emptiness cannot pray at all, for whoever prays desires something from God: something to be added…or something to be taken away. But the heart that is detached has no desire for anything, nor has it anything to be delivered from. So it has no prayers at all; its only prayer consists in being one with God. – Meister Eckhart

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It’s a risky thing to pray, and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God. If saying your prayers is an obstacle to prayer, cut it out. The best way to pray is: stop. Let prayer pray within you, whether you know it or not. This means a deep awareness of our true inner identity. It implies a life of faith, but also of doubt. You can’t have faith without doubt. Give up the business of suppressing doubt. Doubt and faith are two sides of the same thing. Faith will grow out of doubt, the real doubt. We don’t pray right because we evade doubt. And we evade it by regularity and by activism. In these two ways we create a false identity, and we justify the self-perpetuation of our institutions. – Thomas Merton, OCSO

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Take and accept yourself just as you are, where you are. Let God work with your faults and limitations. Just recognize them and be with them, without trying to correct them directly. As you watch them, feel them, and accept them, their force and exaggeration will gradually diminish. Keep moving to the center of your being where divine love is and be present to and welcome whatever bodily feeling or emotion that is happening. The present moment contains all we need to be happy.

Without thinking or feeling some emotion, there is just awareness. There is then no desire for bliss, enlightenment, or to teach others. Things are just as they are. In that so-called emptiness, enjoyment arises of itself. As soon as we try to enjoy, the enjoyment ceases. Somehow at the bottom of emptiness, there is enjoyment, fullness, presence and peace.

Bring the same emptiness and freedom to each moment and its content. Then you will be happy even in the midst of suffering. Accept everything and everyone just as they are, where they are, and try to act as lovingly as possible in every situation. Be ready to be led you know not where or when. Hush the discriminating mind dividing things into what is good or evil for me. – Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO

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It often happens that what seems trivial to us is greater in God’s sight than what looms large in our eyes. Therefore we should accept all things equally from God, not ever looking and wondering which is greater, or higher, or better. We should just follow where God points out for us—that is, what we are inclined to and to which we are most often directed, and where our bent is. If a man were to follow that path, God would give him the most in the least. It often happens that people spurn the least, and thus prevent themselves from getting the most from the least, which is wrong. God is in all modes, and equal in all modes, for him who can take Him equally. People often wonder whether their inclinations come from God or not, and this is how to find out: if a person finds it within himself to be willing above all things to obey God’s will in all things, provided he recognized it, then he may know that whatever he is inclined to, or is frequently directed to, is indeed from God. – Meister Eckhart

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The certainty of the fundamentalist must be sacrificed and radical doubt must be allowed to question us all. Our experience of the death of certainty is also the death of desire—the egotistical desire to be right, to be safe, to be better than others. Such death is our sharing in the cross. The rebirth of desire that follows is the transformed desire that springs from a pure heart in the vision of God. This “desire for God” is not like any other desire we have known. Yet “happy is the person whose desire for God has become like a lover’s passion for his beloved,” St. John Climacus declared. It does not exhaust itself or lead us to exploit others in order to fulfill it. It is both desire and freedom from desire as it was experienced before.

Meditation is purification of the heart and the death of desire. As there is a birth for every death, there is also the regeneration of desire as desire for God. This can never be desire for an object of ego-satisfaction. Desire for God is desire for our happiness by obedience to the law of love. This law states that the only kind of desire that will make us truly and permanently happy is the desire for the happiness of others. – Fr. Laurence Freeman, OSB

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Wisdom from Pope Francis:

“True wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue, and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution. Real relationship with others, with all the challenges they entail, now tend to be replaced by a type of internet communication which enables us to choose or eliminate relationships at whim, thus giving rise to a new type of contrived emotion which has more to do with devices and displays than with other people and with nature….Alongside the exciting possibilities offered by these media, a deep melancholic dissatisfaction with interpersonal relations, or a harmful sense of isolation, can also arise.” (#47)

-- Laudato Si (Encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home”)

Mark Your Calendar!

August 4-6	Come to the Waters Bible Study (on the Role of Water in Scripture) with Rev. Kelly Allen; 9:30 am-12 noon; SoL Center, 300 Bushnell; $35; call (210) 732-9927
6	Transfiguration of the Lord
11	St. Clare of Assisi
14	“Evening with Mary”: Vigil Mass of the Assumption followed by presentation and Rosary; 7 pm; St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s
15	Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (4^th Glorious Mystery of the Rosary)
22	Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (5^th Glorious Mystery of the Rosary)
25	Class: Jesus, the Face of the Mercy of God—Implementing Pope Francis’ Vision of a More Merciful Church with Dr. Rose Marden; 4 Tuesdays, 7-9 pm; Oblate School of Theology Whitley Theological Center; $55; call (210) 341-1366 ext 212
26	Discussion Group: The Heart of Merton—New Seeds of Contemplation; 5 Wednesdays, 7-9 pm, Oblate School of Theology, Tymen Hall; $75; call (210) 341-1366 ext 212
28-29	14^th Annual Catholic Women’s Conference: “Come to Me”; Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, 200 E. Market St; $60; speakers, Mass with Archbishop Gustavo, music, rosary, confessions, adoration, exhibitors, healing service, meal concessions, & more. Call Pilgrim Center of Hope: (210) 521-3377
29	Death of St. John the Baptist PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s
30	Rosary Making: 2-5:30 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

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