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Medjugorje
Message: November 25, 2013 Dear children! Today I call all of you to prayer. Open the
doors of your heart profoundly to prayer, little children, to prayer with the
heart; and then the Most High will be able to act upon your freedom and
conversion will begin. Your faith will become firm so that you will be able
to say with all your heart: ‘My God, my all.’ You will comprehend, little
children, that here on earth everything is passing. Thank you for having
responded to my call. |
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Published
by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry What a beautiful Advent message Our Lady has given us. In this sacred
time of silent waiting for the Savior in alert, attentive wakefulness, Our
Lady invites us to “open the doors of your heart profoundly to prayer…to
prayer with the heart.” How do we open our heart “profoundly”? The
Latin word “profundis” means from “the deepest depth” or “from the bottom or foundation.”
What do we find when we plunge to the deepest recesses of our heart, of our being-in-God? Like diving into the ocean, once beneath the rushing noise of
surface waves, we are stunned by the fathomless SILENCE below. When Our Lady
invites us to “prayer with the heart” in “profound” openness, she is beckoning us to SILENCE. To the prayer of meditation
and contemplation beyond words, thoughts, images, and sounds. The call
of Our Lady at Medjugorje is a
call to contemplative Christianity and
contemplative Gospel living. (The
Rosary and Centering Prayer are two of the many forms of Christian meditation.) Our Lady makes four astonishing promises to those who answer her call
to profoundly-open
prayer of the heart: 1) the
Most High will be able to act upon our freedom; 2) conversion will begin; 3) our faith will become so firm that
we can sincerely say, “My God, my all”; and 4) we will comprehend that here on
earth everything is passing. Perhaps the most astounding thing about the first promise is the
implication that God is not “able to act upon our freedom” when we are closed and un-praying. Why not? Because without prayer
of the heart we have no freedom--hence there is no “freedom” upon which our God can “act”!
Instead, we are slaves to our own mechanical, automatic, conditioned
reactions to life based on our “inner tyrant”’s
overblown egoic needs for security, affection,
esteem, pleasure, power, and control. This interior bondage is loosened and
finally freed only through profound prayer of the heart. Superficial “lip-service”
prayers with words that never penetrate to the silent depths of our inmost
being have little effect upon the powerful strongholds of False Self
enslavement. St. Paul says, “For freedom Christ has set us free,” and indeed, freedom is the great fruit of silent prayer, opening us to the divine gift
of “free will,” which means we become free to do God’s
will—the divine
will that emanates from our True
Self and the Divine Indwelling Christ-Spirit at our inmost center…the divine
will to which we remain oblivious
and disobedient as long as we are ensnared by the egoic
needs that dominate the “shallow waters” of our mechanical, conditioned
personality. There, without the faculty of conscience born of a free will, we are “eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear.” Our Lady’s second promise is that “conversion
will begin” once God is able to act upon
this freedom, accessed by our practice of profound prayer of the heart. We might think we’re “already converted,” but even St. Francis of
Assisi, on his deathbed, said, “We must begin, for up until now we’ve done nothing.” Actually, conversion is
always “one day at a time” and must begin anew each day, each moment of our
life in response to God’ interior directives. But the deep change that is
authentic “metanoia” or conversion
of heart cannot begin until God is able to act upon our freedom; that is, until we have a “free will” capable of aligning with the
Most High who dwells at our inmost center as our authentic and true self: God
acting “in us, as us.” (Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO) Or, as St. Paul put it, “I live now, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20) When conversion begins, we are finally “acting” upon life rather than passively and mechanically “reacting” to it. We are all familiar with the tragic waste of life suffered by those
in the throes of addiction--be it to drugs, alcohol, sex, food, dependent
relationships, or any other substance or behavior. Most of us have
experienced some degree of addiction (or at least an unhealthy habitual
behavior) that is hard to eliminate permanently. In this sad situation, there
is no free will and thus no “opening” for God to “act upon our freedom.” The most
successful programs for healing addiction are those based on a spiritual approach including profound prayer by which one’s will and
life are turned over to God, the “Higher Power.” Only
then, as Our Lady says, “conversion will begin”—i.e., lasting
change becomes possible, one day at a
time! In “12-Step” terminology, the “daily reprieve” from addictive behavior
is based solely upon one’s “fit spiritual condition” of being in “conscious
contact with God” through prayer. The third promise in Our Lady’s message is that for those who
practice profoundly-open
prayer of the heart, our “faith will become
firm so that we will be able to say with all our heart: “My
God, my all.” These four words—“Dio mio e mio tutto!”—are a famous private prayer of praise spoken by Francis of
Assisi, which Brother Bernard overheard the saint praying continuously
one night, with eyes and hands raised to heaven in great fervor and devotion,
when he thought no one was listening. Later these words became a Franciscan
motto: “Deus meus et Omnia,” as well
as a contemporary chant/song by David Haas, “My God and My All.” By alluding to this prayer of St. Francis, Our Lady is promising
that prayer of
the heart in silent meditation and
contemplation will yield for us a faith in God as deep, genuine,
world-renouncing, focused, single-minded and fervent as St. Francis of
Assisi’s. Wow! Finally, Our Lady’s fourth promise to those who answer her
contemplative call is “comprehension that here on earth
everything is passing.” This means a radical
relativizing of all the things of this world in the light of eternity—the
constant recognition that our earthly life and everything in it is
transitory, fleeting, temporary and that our true homeland is heaven. To keep
this vision of mortality—our own and everyone else’s, both those we love and those we
consider “enemies”—brings a revolution and a “sea-change” to our attitudes.
Again we can look to St. Francis and other saints, frequently depicted holding
a skull as a constant reminder of death. St. Benedict said, “Keep
death always before your eyes.” In so doing, we will live
life to its fullest, which none of us do, so long as we act as if we’ll
be in this world forever. Caught up in the hectic daily rush, stressed by
petty trivialities, obsessed with money and “stuff,” we
sleep in the dream of forgetfulness
that “everything
is passing.” Shakespeare’s Hamlet
constantly thought of death, and in the wisdom of Sirach
we find, “In
all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin.” (7:36) So Our Lady’s fourth promise to us implies wisdom and a virtuous
life. All four of her promises can serve as Advent meditations while we
await the coming celebration of Christmas-Incarnation in silent wonder and profoundly open-hearted prayer. Advent:
In Darkness and Desire Waiting, Watching, Longing for the
Light of the World There is something wondrous and expectant about the very word
“Advent.” In the northern
hemisphere, the weather is cold, sometimes bitterly so. There is no doubt
that winter is in the air. The days are growing shorter, the darkness longer.
The trees stand stark and bare. All living things have dug their roots into
the earth for protection. The forest animals hibernate. People move inside
out of the cold. Just as nature moves deep inside, so too are we invited
to turn inward during this time of preparation for the Lord’s coming. This
inner preparation, nourished by prayer, silence, scripture and the sacred
music and rituals of the season, is essential if we are to celebrate in a
manner worthy of the holy commemoration of our Lord’s birth. Advent is a quiet,
contemplative time of waiting for the Light, the Light who came to be the light of the whole human race.
The Light through whom we are given life, rescuing us from the great darkness
and hopelessness and frenetic rushing of this time. It is a time to dig
deeply into ourselves, and feed the essence of our being with the food of new
life, renewed faith and enlivened hope.
– Fr.
Thomas Keating, OCSO The believing Christian celebrates an Advent with multiple
meanings….The season of Advent is the time
of man’s original religious instinct. Never will we experience our
primeval homesick yearning for God more actively and alertly than in this
season of Advent wreaths. Advent is
the time of the God-seeker. The original longing within every
human heart is a great impulse toward the hidden God, a longing to wander in
that forgotten homeland of the soul…. Beyond this general human meaning,
Advent has a great historical meaning to the believer, the grateful
remembrance of the millennia of God’s gracious care that has led man to the
fulfillment of this longing for him….fulfillment
in Christ. The believing Christian celebrates Advent in the context of
liturgy. By taking part in the inner life of the Church, he expresses within
his life the original religious and historical meaning of Advent. He lets
himself be caught up in that “fullness of time” which is both actually
present and always returning, within the Church of Christ.
– Fr. Alfred Delp,
SJ + +
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+ + + The real trump card of Christianity is not just that we
believe in God. The mystery we are about is much more than that: It’s that the
material and the spiritual coexist. It’s the mystery of the Incarnation.
Once we restore the idea that the Incarnation means God truly loves creation
then we restore the sacred dimension to
nature. We bring the plants and animals and all of nature in with us.
They are windows into the endless creativity, fruitfulness and joy of God. We
assert that we believe in the sweep of history, humanity and all of creation
that Christ includes. Incarnation is already redemption. Bethlehem was more
important than Calvary. It is good to be human. The Earth is good. God has
revealed that God has always been here. It’s a
Franciscan approach….It will increasingly become mainline spirituality as we
become more comfortable with an expanded view of the mystery of Incarnation
in the cosmos. If we Christians had taken this mystery seriously, we would
never have raped the planet like we do, never have developed such an
inadequate theology about sexuality…. We come at God inductively. Start with Jesus, then we know what the heart of God is like. Then we can
move backwards to the Cosmic Christ who exists from the beginning. Then we
live in a coherent universe where there is no division between the natural
and the supernatural. That’s the unique message of Christianity, that
there is nothing God is not available to….what the Christ means is the confluence of divinity and
physicality, spirit and matter. When the material and spiritual worlds
coexist, we have Christ. Medieval icons always depicted Jesus Christ
holding up two fingers, proclaiming the fact…“My divinity does not cancel out my humanity.” Everything that happens to Jesus must happen in our individual
souls as well. The Incarnation
means the divine indwelling is not out there, over there. It happens within
us. This movement from Jesus to the Christ means that the same anointing that
was given to Jesus is given to all of us….Jesus didn’t move to the 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…. The mystery of the Incarnation means the divine indwelling is
in all of us. We’re indeed the body of Christ….Christ comes again whenever
we see that matter and spirit coexist. This truly deserves to be called
good news. – Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM + + +
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He was the world,
and he came into the world. He was the world through his divinity; he came
into the world through his Incarnation. Indeed, to come or to go away is
a function of humanity; to remain
and to exist is one of divinity.
Because, therefore, when he was the world through his divinity, the world did not recognize him, he deigned to come
into the world through his humanity
so that perhaps thus the world might acknowledge him….He was born of the
Father, and he did not choose to remain the only one; he descended to the
earth where he might acquire brothers and sisters for himself, to whom he
could give the kingdom of his Father. He was born God from God, and he did
not wish to remain only the Son of God; he deigned to become also Son of Man,
not losing what he had been, but taking up what he had not been, so that by
this he might transform human beings into sons and daughters of God, and
might make them co-heirs of his glory, and they might by grace possess
what he himself had always possessed by nature. – St. Bede the Venerable + + +
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God’s sign is the baby in need of help and in poverty….God’s
sign is simplicity. …God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This
is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendor. He comes
as a baby—defenseless and in need of our help. He does not want to
overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He
asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other
from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his
feelings, his thoughts, and his will—we learn to live with him and to
practice with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very
essence of love. God made himself small so that
we could understand him, welcome him, and love him….Christmas has become
the feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given himself to us. – Pope Benedict XVI + + +
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No one, whether shepherd or wise man, can approach God here
below except by kneeling before the manger at
Bethlehem and adoring him hidden in the weakness of a newborn child. – Catechism of the Catholic Church, 563 + + +
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The Evangelists tell us that the earth shook on the day when
Christ died upon the cross. But that was the great after-tremor of Jesus’
first act of love, when in the silence of Mary’s house he became flesh and
dwelt among us, and then, on the night of the Nativity, first showed to
Mary and Joseph, then to the humble animals, and only then to mere shepherds,
his sacred face. The earth shook with the fire of love, and from that day
until this, wherever men and women still remember the name of Jesus and how
he was born in a lowly stable, they will feel that tremor, and know, somehow,
even if they have forgotten the words, that the meek shall inherit the
earth, that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and that all
the pomp and glamour of the world will pass away, all its capitols and
senates and universities and towering dynamos of business leave not one
scorched stone upon a stone, but the child born in the manger will remain,
and he alone can tell us the secret of who we are and where we must go. – Anthony Esolen + + +
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It is the Word that
is made flesh, the spirit of joy and wisdom and love. So where the spirit is
at home in a human creature, and Christ born of his life is manifest, there
must be a grace of living which touches every detail of life. His mind
must be quickened; he must see the world in wonder and reverence; he must be
conscious that privations, pain, and weariness of the body are prayer, but that so, too, are
the pleasures and labors of the body. Body and soul together give glory to God: the sharper the
capacity for sorrow and joy, the greater the hallowing; the subtler the
delicacy of the daily life, the surer is Christ proved in it. In office or home or hospital; prison, barracks, or church—anywhere at all where men and women are—the
mystery of the Incarnation can bear fruit in bodies and souls all day and all
night…. We have thought about the simplicity
of the things Christ chose to use, but simplest of all and the first
essential was the humanity of Mary of Nazareth, in whose flesh the
Word was made flesh. The marriage feast is here and now; and everyone has a
wedding garment if he will only accept it and put it on. Christ has laid His
Humanity upon us. A seamless garment, woven by a woman, single and
complete…. – Caryll Houselander + + +
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Blessing
of an Advent Wreath—First Sunday of Advent or the evening before: An Advent Wreath is constructed of a circle of evergreen
branches into which are inserted four candles; three candles are violet and
the fourth is rose/pink. The candles represent the four weeks of Advent. The
rose candle is lighted on the 3rd Sunday of Advent (“Gaudete” Sunday). Make the sign of the cross and say: Our help is in the name of the Lord. Who made heaven and earth. Listen to the words of the Prophet Isaiah:
Isa 9:1-6: The people who walked
in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of
gloom a light has shown. You have brought them abundant joy and great
rejoicing. As they rejoice before you as at the harvest, as people make merry
when dividing spoils. For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his
shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,
Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is
vast and forever peaceful, from David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which
he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice, both now and forever. Lord our God, we praise you for your Son, Jesus Christ: he is
Emmanuel, the promised of ages. Let your blessing come upon us as we light
the candles of this wreath. May the wreath and its light be a sign of
Christ’s promise to bring us salvation. May he come
quickly and not delay. We ask this through Christ our Lord, amen. (Close with a verse from “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”) + + +
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of the Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ (from the ancient Roman Martyrology,
to be chanted or recited on Christmas Eve): The 25th Day of December, when ages beyond number
had run their course from the creation of the world, when God in the
beginning created heaven and earth, and formed man in his own likeness; when
century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds
after the Great Flood, as a sign of covenant and peace; in the twenty-first
century since Abraham, our father in faith, came out of Ur of the Chaldees; in the thirteenth century since the People of
Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt; around the thousandth year
since David was anointed King; in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of
Daniel; in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; in the year seven
hundred and fifty two since the foundation of the City of Rome; in the
forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world
being at peace, JESUS CHRIST, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence, was conceived
by the Holy Spirit, and when nine months had passed since his conception, was
born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man: The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
according to the flesh. + + +
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Mark Your Calendar!
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December 1 |
First Sunday of Advent |
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7 |
Portraits
of World Mysticism Class: Hinduism
with Prof. Ravi Gupta; 9:00 am-12 pm, Oblate School of Theology Whitley
Theological Center, 285 Oblate; $40; call (210) 341-1366 x 212 |
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8 |
Second Sunday of Advent |
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9 |
Immaculate Conception of
the Blessed Virgin Mary |
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12 |
Our Lady of Guadalupe |
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14 |
St. John of the Cross |
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15 |
Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete/ “REJOICE”) |
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22 |
Fourth Sunday of Advent |
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25 |
Christmas Feast of the Nativity of
Jesus Christ |
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26 |
St. Stephen, first martyr |
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27 |
St. John, Apostle |
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28 |
The Holy Innocents PEACE
MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; Rosary at 11:30 am |
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29 |
The Holy Family: Jesus, Mary &
Joseph |
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How busily employed you must be
during this holy season in preparing a lodging for the Guest who is coming to
you!...O blessed time, which brings before our minds the truth that God came
in the flesh to dwell among us, to enlighten our darkness and to direct our
feet in the way of peace, so that being made his brothers and sisters, we
might share in his inheritance! Earnestly indeed may you long for Christ’s
Advent, and prepare your heart to be his dwelling-place, for men wished
for his coming ages before his birth…“the
Desired of all nations.” Jesus gives himself to none but those who
anxiously look for him. Choice food is thrown away on such as cannot
taste it, and so those who long not after God’s presence cannot value him as
they ought.
-- St. John of the
Cross, Feast Day December 14 |
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Copyright, Marian Center of San Antonio. All
rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced without
permission. |