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Medjugorje
Message: November 25, 2014 Dear children! In a special way, today I am calling you to
prayer. Pray, little children, so that you may comprehend who you are and where
you need to go. Be carriers of the good news and be people of hope. Be love
for all those who are without love. Little children, you will be everything
and will achieve everything only if you pray and are open to God’s will—to
God who desires to lead you towards eternal life. I am with you and intercede
for you from day to day before my Son Jesus. Thank you for having responded
to my call. |
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Published
by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry As we enter the holy season of Advent and prepare our hearts to
celebrate the great Christmas mystery of the Incarnation which illuminates our
own human identity, Our Lady’s message beckons us into a deeply contemplative way of seeing and
living. She begins by saying, “In a special way, today I am calling you to prayer.”
What is “special” about her call to prayer “today,” that distinguishes it from the
thousands of other calls to prayer given in Medjugorje
these past 33 years? If we read her message carefully, we notice something
remarkable: her words are all about “ONTOLOGY.” Ontology is the branch of
metaphysics that deals with the nature of “BEING.” Whenever we ask that most profound and important
human question—“Who am I?”—we are asking an ontological question about the nature of our core BEING at a deeper level
than the superficial categories of the ego or false self. When Moses was charged with leading the Israelites out of Egyptian
bondage and he asked to know God’s name, the reply came, “I
AM WHO AM….Tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you.” (Exo 3:14) Later, in identifying himself as one with the Father, Jesus said,
“Before Abraham came to be, I AM.” (Jn 8:58) These are both “ontological”
statements about BEING, without reference to “what” one does or has or believes or says or thinks; pure BEING is prior to all other classifications, definitions and explanations. It is concerned only with the
stark reality of “WHAT IS.” Contemplative prayer is also ontological: concerned only with Reality—that
which “IS.” The verb “to be” is our clearest pointer to an ontological theme, and it is
conjugated: I “am,” he/she “is,” you/they “are.” In this month’s message, Our Lady uses the phrases: “comprehend
who you are” … “BE carriers of the good news”…“BE people of hope”…“BE love…“you will BE everything.” For Mary, all of these facets of our fully
human BEING hinge upon PRAYER. The Great Incentive Our Lady gives for praying is this: “Pray,
little children, so that you may comprehend who you are and where
you need to go.” Wow—what a promise that is! How many of us can say with assurance, “I know who I am!”? Am I not one
person this hour,
and another
person later tonight? Am I not one
person in the morning with spouse and children, and another at work with
colleagues? Who am I??? Am I not patient and tolerant some days and irritable and bitter on
others? Don’t I have some good motives and desires one moment, then the next
moment do the opposite of what my “better angels” wish? Who
am I, really??? I am pious and devout at Sunday
Mass, smiling and serving my fellow parishioners sweetly, but a raging demon
afterward in the church parking lot when someone cuts me off or taps my
bumper. I’m devoted to my spouse who is my “soulmate,”
yet can’t resist flirting with the attractive person who flirts with me. I
hate how liquor makes me feel or act, but keep on drinking. Who
am I??? And where, exactly, do I need to go? Do I need to go up the corporate ladder? Do I need to go to a bigger
house in a finer neighborhood? Do I need to go to another state for a job
promotion? Do I need to go traveling and become more
worldly? Do I need to go to a prestigious college to earn a higher
degree? Do I need to go into a whole new career? Do I need to go to a plastic
surgeon to fix my nose/neck/belly/butt? Do I need to go to a fat farm or
funny farm for an inner or outer makeover? Do I need to go on a retreat or
religious pilgrimage? Do I need to go to the internet to find my romantic
match? Do I need to go to a divorce lawyer to undo the bad match I’ve made?
Do I need to go to a different parish or join another ministry? Do I need to
go to a psychic or therapist or creative self-expression class? Do I need to
go shopping or to a casino? Do I need to go to more movies, concerts,
parties, and games? Where do I need to go??? Our Lady gives us the answer to both of these burning existential
questions according to the lights received in PRAYER. As for “who we are,” she says we are to: “BE
carriers of the good news and BE people of hope. BE love for
all those who are without love.” Here we
have the three “Theological
Virtues” of faith,
hope, and love—the 3 defining traits of our
Trinitarian God. To be a “carrier
of the good news” means to exude FAITH in Our Lord Jesus Christ who dwells within me as I “carry” Him joyfully wherever I go, 24/7—not just when things are rosy and
sweet. To be “people
of hope” means having a radical
optimism, even in the face of our current horrific headlines, that the
Immaculate Heart of Mary which bore for us so great a Redeemer will
triumph in the end—despite the vast suffering and
foolishness we must endure in the meantime. To
“be love
for all those who are without love” means
standing firm in mercy, compassion and forgiveness for all, including those labeled “enemy,” such as violent
ISIS militants, bigots of every stripe, and all who wreak destruction in our
world through a darkened consciousness. To “be
love” for them is to pray,
sacrifice and intercede for them daily just as we do for our friends and
relatives. So…who am I? I am a human
being filled with the Spirit of the living God—faith, hope,
and love—on the journey to divinization through the healing and transforming
of my soul. Like my Lord Jesus Christ, I am an “incarnate word of God” on
this planet Earth. Finally, Our Lady illuminates “where we need to go” according to the lights received in prayer: “Little
children, you will be everything and will achieve everything only if you pray
and are open to God’s will—to God who desires to lead you towards
eternal life.” So…where do I need to go? Where I truly “need to go” has nothing to do with my egoic agenda to “get ahead” or “arrive” in terms of
security, affection, esteem, pleasure, power, and control; all of this is
false-self illusion. Reality—“what IS”—is much simpler: On this earthly plane, I
need to go wherever God wills me to go, which I can only know through the prayer of an open
heart to hear His Divine Will.
(There are millions of ways and means through which God might call me into
service; I must listen for His bidding.) And most importantly, in the “big
picture”—beyond this short and fleeting earthly life—I have an eternal
destination. To fulfill my God-given potential as a human being made in the divine
image, I
need to go to heaven, and that final destination must order and guide every other step and stop along the way. Advent blessings to all, as we celebrate the two comings of Christ—in the flesh of our flesh in his earthly incarnation at Bethlehem, and in the Spirit of our spirits awaiting His return to fetch us to our eternal home! O Come, Emmanuel! Come,
Lord Jesus! December
Musings . . .
Advent: Season of Hope & Quiet
Contemplation . . . Awaiting/Becoming the Incarnate Word . . . We
are an Advent people. We live not satisfied but plagued with thirst for the
coming of the Lord. Our tragedy is that we often do not recognize the source
of our restlessness but seek to satisfy it with all sorts of things that
anesthetize our longings but do not fulfill them. One of the gifts of
Advent is to stir in us the recognition that what we truly yearn for is
not some passing palliative but the One who has come and will come again,
day by day and at the end of time, to those who seek him. In Advent we are made
aware that the hours of darkness are lengthening. The days grow shorter. Night
seems to consume the world. Perhaps we feel the darkness in our own hearts,
our own lives, our own prayer: we look for some
sign of God and see nothing. Perhaps we are oppressed by the darkness of
the world around us: we notice the poor living without shelter on our
streets, we hear the cry of the hungry, we are
alerted to wars and rumors of war. We yearn to see the day when Christ will
come to put an end to darkness of every kind. In Advent we live in the night
with our faces turned toward the unseen dawn, praying in hope for the rising
of the Sun. Advent is the season
of vigil.
At the quiet heart of the busiest time of year, we keep watch in prayer
for the signs of Christ’s coming to bring us peace—not in the past or in the
future, but in our present everyday world.
-- Magnificat + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + Advent: a time of wondrous expectancy, mystery, and the rekindling
of faith. 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. People move inside out of the cold. Fires are
lit. Just as nature moves deep inside, so too are we invited to turn
inward during this sacred time of preparation—the Advent of God into our
very own hearts. “Advent is the season of
the God-seeker. May God help us to wake up to ourselves and in doing
so, to move from ourselves toward Him….That is the first Advent message: Only where man does not cling
inwardly to false security will his eyes be capable of seeing the Ultimate.”
– Fr. Alfred Delp, SJ The spiritual journey is a series of consents, an accumulation of our ‘Yes’ to God in big and
small ways, day after day. Our practices, which start out structures to
encourage and assist our softening to ‘Yes,’ over time
become a way of life, a way of being in constant relationship with our
Beloved. Then we might exclaim that all
of life is Advent, a time of quickened awakening to new possibilities and
new experiences of quiet, joy-filled and expectant living. The “Four Consents
of Advent” are Consent to the Goodness
of Being; Consent to the Full
Development of our Being in Life; Consent to Diminishment; and Consent to be Transformed in Christ. – Contemplative Outreach + +
+ +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ Each galaxy, each star,
each living creature, every particle and subatomic particle of creation—we
are all made in God’s image. How? Genesis gives no explanations, but we do
know instinctively that it is not a physical image. God’s explanation is to
send Jesus, the incarnate One, God enfleshed.
Don’t
try to explain the Incarnation to me! It is further from being explainable
than the furthest star in the furthest galaxy. It is love, God’s limitless love enfleshing that love into the form of a human being,
Jesus, the Christ—fully human and fully divine. – Madeleine L’Engle + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + The Ongoing-ness of the Incarnation: God
Living a Human Life in Us God needs experiencers
rather than thinkers (theorists) in order to know what it is to be fully
human.
Our precious days on earth—the spiritual journey—are not primarily about us
or even about our transformation in Christ. They are about God taking over
our lives in every detail. Living daily life and the evolution of
consciousness are not primarily about “us.” They are about God and God’s
life, death, and resurrection in us. They are about whatever God wants to do
or doesn’t want to do. They are not about our past or future or even
about our present circumstances. For Christ to be “us”—to take over every
aspect of our life in space and time and to experience our human existence in
this present moment—that’s what the latter days of life are aimed at. The
goal is not just union or even unity with God, but God incarnating in our
humanity with all its circumstances. Christ renewing the sacred mysteries
of his human life in our humanity is one way of describing his incarnation in
each of us. If we let the sense of
our nothingness, spiritual destitution, and powerlessness penetrate our
consciousness through and through, we can be deified as completely as the
Word was made flesh in the incarnation. To arrive at this unified whole, there
is only one route to get there, and it has been known to all the spiritual
traditions of the world: dying to self. The
consciousness that has mystical experiences must finally be let go, as
consciousness steps out into that bare, positionless
freedom that is unity. Purification is the
scrubbing, so to speak, of the soul between the up-and-down movements of
consciousness. It is also the healing and completing of our creation out of
nothing: to be taken over body, soul and spirit by the Eternal Word of God; to
be an extension of Jesus in space and time; and to contribute to the
continuation of the ongoing evolution of the human family. A certain
radiance and interior glow may accompany divine insight and even energize the
body at times. One knows one is being lived in by God. – Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + Dec. 8 Prayer of
Pope Francis on the Solemnity of the Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Awaken
in all of us a renewed desire for holiness: May
the splendor of truth shine forth in our words, the
song of charity resound in our works, purity
and chastity abide in our hearts and bodies, and the full beauty of the Gospel be evident
in our lives. Help
us always to heed the Lord’s voice: May we never be indifferent to
the cry of the poor, or untouched by the sufferings of the sick and those
in need; may we be sensitive to the loneliness of the elderly and
the vulnerability of children, and always love and cherish the life of every human being. Amen. + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + Keeping the Advent Vigil with Mary The salvation of the world
began through Mary and through her it must be accomplished. Mary scarcely appeared in the
first coming of Jesus Christ so that men, as yet insufficiently instructed
and enlightened concerning her Son, might not wander from the truth by
becoming too strongly attached to her. This would have happened if she had
been known, on account of the wondrous charms with which the Almighty had
endowed even her outward appearance. St. Denis tells us that when he saw her
he would have taken her for a goddess, because of her incomparable beauty, had not his faith taught him otherwise. But in
the second coming of Jesus Christ, Mary must be known and openly revealed by
the Holy Spirit so that Jesus may be known, loved, and served through her.
The reasons which moved the Holy Spirit to hide his spouse during her life
and to reveal but very little of her since the first preaching of the Gospel
exist no longer. God wishes therefore to reveal
Mary, his masterpiece, and make her more known in these latter times.
Because she kept herself hidden in this world, in her great humility she…obtained
from God, his Apostles, and evangelists the favor of not being made known. As
Mary is not only God’s masterpiece of glory in heaven, but also his masterpiece
of grace on earth, he wishes to be glorified and praised because of
her by those living upon earth. Since she is the dawn which precedes
the Sun of Justice, Jesus Christ, she must be known and acknowledged so that
Jesus may be known and acknowledged. As she was the way by which Jesus
first came to us, she will again be the way by which he will come to us the
second time though not in the same manner. Since she is the sure
means, the direct and immaculate way to Jesus, and the perfect
guide to him, it is through her that souls must find him. He
who finds Mary finds life—that is, Jesus Christ. –
St. Louis de Montfort
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Mark Your
Calendar!
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December 2
& 9 |
Two-part Lecture: Mary of Guadalupe: Birthing Christ in the
Americas with Fr. Vincent Louwagie, OMI; 7-9
pm, OST Whitley Theological Center; $25, call (210) 341-1366 x 212 |
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4 |
Advent Reflection: Christmas Story for Adults with Fr.
Jack Clark Robinson, OFM; 7-8:30 pm, St. Matthew Catholic Church, 10703 Wurzbach; music, prayer, reception to follow |
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7 |
Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast
Day Mass with Archbishop Gustavo; 2 pm, St. Mark the Evangelist Church, 1602
Thousand Oaks Dr. |
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4 |
Public Lecture: The Spiritual City—the Future of Urban
Life with Prof. Philip Sheldrake. 7-9 pm, OST Whitley Theological Center,
285 Oblate, $10 |
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6 |
First Saturday of Month
Class: Portraits of World Mysticism:
Francis & Bonaventure with Fr. Jack Clark Robinson, OFM; 9 am-12 pm;
OST Whitley Theological Center, 285 Oblate Dr., $40, call (210) 341-1366 x
212 |
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7 |
Second Sunday of Advent |
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8 |
Immaculate Conception of
the BVM (Holy Day) |
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9 |
St. Juan Diego |
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12 |
Our Lady of Guadalupe |
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14 |
Third Sunday of Advent |
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21
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Fourth Sunday of Advent |
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25 |
Christmas Day: Nativity of the Lord |
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26 |
St. Stephen |
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27 |
St. John, Apostle PEACE
MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; Rosary at 11:30 am |
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28 |
The Holy Family (No Rosary-making this month!) |
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31 |
New Year’s Eve |
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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 |
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Copyright, Marian Center of San Antonio. All
rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced without
permission. |