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Medjugorje
Message: April 25, 2015 Dear children! I am with you also today to lead you to
salvation. Your soul is restless because your spirit is weak and tired from all
worldly things. You, little children, pray to the Holy Spirit that He may
transform you and fill you with His strength of faith and hope, so that you
may be firm in this battle against evil. I am with you and intercede for you
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 Ever-timely in her messages to us, in this “Mary” month of May and of
the Holy Spirit’s pentecostal flame, Our Lady
assures us of her maternal presence and urges us to pray to her spouse, the
Holy Spirit. She begins by describing the condition of our inmost being as
she sees it: “Your soul is restless because your
spirit is weak and tired from all worldly things.” How amazing is the accuracy of Our Lady’s motherly 20/20
vision—with what wondrous precision she sees and reflects back to us the
truth of our hidden hearts and interior state! Yes, indeed: our souls are
restless this spring, but not with the stirring joy of seasonal renewal.
Instead, our hearts are troubled by an afflictive
soul-restlessness that Our Lady sees and
understands, explaining its cause: “because your spirit is weak and
tired from all worldly things.” We are
burdened within and without by the violent downward spiral of world
events—their fearful impact upon our psyche and the emotional toll that
anxiety takes on our personal relationships. Over 200 years ago, in a famous sonnet, the poet William Wordsworth
also described this present state of our “restless, weak and tired” soul. He
wrote: “The
world is too much with us, late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste
our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts
away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The
winds that will be howling at all hours, and are up-gathered now like
sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It
moves us not.” He was commenting on the
empty materialism of the Industrial Revolution that divorced people from
their innate need for spirituality and nature; its effects were not unlike
those we suffer today in the declining mass culture of the 21st
century. In fact, throughout human history, “worldly
things,” as Our Lady says, have served
to drain and deplete our energy and life force, leaving our spirit—the
uncreated divine principle dwelling within us as the seat of grace—“weak
and tired.” This sapping of our vital
spiritual energy, this weakness and fatigue, makes our souls “restless” within us, just as an impaired, overstressed muscle in our body
tends to shake. Sacred Scripture teaches: “Do not love the world or the things of the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that
is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious
life, is not from the Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement
are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.” (1 Jn
2:15-17) Many times in the gospels,
Jesus makes a distinction between the “world” on the one hand, and himself
(or his way) on the other, clearly asserting, “My kingdom does not belong to this
world.” (Jn 18:36) This is because “He
was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not
know him.” (Jn 1:10) While this sets up an unavoidable tension for the follower of Christ
trying to live in the violent cultural stew of our secular world, the
triumphant Easter conclusion is our Lord’s declaration: “In the world you will have trouble,
but take courage, I have conquered the world.” (Jn
16:33) What is the “trouble” we will have in the world? Our problems are many, but the
fundamental underlying “trouble” is what Our Lady calls “this
battle against evil.” Does this definition of
“trouble” sound way too dramatic for “my little life”? Hardly.
For all the splashy, sensational,
headline-grabbing “evils” of the world—terrorist attacks and plots, tribal wars, racist murders, violent
urban jungles, ethnic genocides, hedonistic orgies of drug, alcohol and sex
abuse, greed-fueled corruption in government, corporate business, law
enforcement, medicine, agriculture, insurance, political finance, food
supply, environmental care, etc.—have their roots in
“my little life,” the place where each human heart must wrestle, every day, with
the bogus internal programming of the false
self. This “battle against evil” is the daily struggle against the overblown ego feeling separate, disconnected, and threatened, always selfishly
demanding its own brand of security, affection, esteem, pleasure, power and
control—whatever that looks like—in “my
little life.” The “extreme evils” of the
headlines are just this inner battle writ large. The line between good
and evil cuts through the center of every human heart. To fight any sort of battle, we need energy, strength, stamina,
power, vitality, and confidence. But these are the very traits we lack in our current state of a “weak and tired” spirit whose soul life-force has been sucked dry by the influence “of all worldly things.” Worldly things whose roots are in the fallen human condition
that each individual bears in the self-centered ego. Our Lady counsels
us: “You, little children, pray to the
Holy Spirit that He may transform you and fill you with His strength of faith
and hope, so that you may be firm in this battle against evil.” In this month when we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost, we
need to turn more fervently and frequently than ever to the indwelling
Holy Spirit, the third person of the Blessed Trinity given to us by the
Risen Christ as our own interior Counselor, Consoler and Advocate. Through
Him we can indeed be transformed and filled with strong faith and hope, even in the midst of these dark and trying times on our planet
Earth when the battle against evil (inner and outer) is intense and
relentless. We must let the Holy Spirit remind each of us that, as Sacred
Scripture teaches, “You belong to God, children, and you
have conquered, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is
in the world.” (1 Jn 4:4) POWERFUL PRAYER TO THE HOLY
SPIRIT: “Come, Holy Spirit! Come by means of the
powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your well-beloved
spouse!” (Pray this many times each day, and in every
difficult situation.) May Musings . . . Mary’s Month . . . Holy Spirit’s
Month (Pentecost) . . . Fruits & Gifts . . . May Crowning marked a new spiritual season. Our
Mary, queen of heaven and earth, lifted us right out of the last long, cold
days of winter and firmly planted our hearts in the warm and promising soil
of spring. I will be forever grateful to the church for bringing me Mary, and
grateful to Mary for bringing me her Son. For that was my route. I
might not have discovered the gaze of Jesus if I had not first felt the
maternal, nurturing, and safe embrace of my mother in heaven. That’s why we
crown her on our Catholic version of Mother’s Day. – Thomas Merton, OCSO + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ Recognizing that she is “the handmaid of the Lord” and
pronouncing her “Yes,” welcoming in
her heart and in her womb the mystery of Christ the Redeemer, Mary
was not a merely passive instrument in the hands of God, but
cooperated in the salvation of men with spontaneous faith and complete
obedience. Without removing or diminishing anything and without adding
anything to the action of him who is the one mediator between God and men,
Jesus Christ, Mary points out to us the ways of salvation, ways that all converge
in Christ, her Son, and his work of redemption. Mother of the Church, the Blessed Virgin is present in a special
way in the life and action of the Church. Precisely, for this reason the
Church always looks to her who, through the action of the Holy Spirit begot
the Word made flesh. What is the mission of the Church if not that
of making Christ be born in the hearts of the faithful, through the action of
the same Holy Spirit, by means of evangelization. Thus,
the “Star of Evangelization” (as Pope Paul VI called her), points
out and illuminates the ways of the proclamation of the Gospel. – St.
John Paul II + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
Our Lady guards our health. What does this mean? She helps us grow,
to confront
life, to be free. A mother helps her children grow up and wants
them to grow strong; that is why she teaches them not to be lazy…not to sink
into a comfortable lifestyle, contenting oneself with possessions. The mother
takes care that her children develop better, that they grow strong, capable
of accepting responsibilities, of engaging in life, of striving for great
ideals. Our Lady helps us to grow as human beings and in the faith, and
never to fall into the temptation of being human beings and Christians in a
superficial way, but to live responsibly, to strive ever higher. A mother
then thinks of the health of her children, teaching them to face
the difficulties of life…to see the problems of life realistically
and not to get lost in them, but to confront them with courage, not to be
weak, and to know how to overcome them, in a healthy balance between security
and risk….The Lord entrusts us to the loving and tender hands of the
Mother, that we might feel her support in facing and overcoming the
difficulties of our human and Christian journey. Lastly, a good mother also
helps her children make definitive decisions with freedom.
Mary as a good mother teaches us to be, like her, capable of making
definitive choices at this moment in a time controlled by a philosophy of the
provisional. It is very difficult to make a lifetime commitment. And she
helps us to make those definitive decisions in the full freedom with which
she said “Yes” to the plan God had
for her life. – Pope Francis + + +
+ + +
+ +
+ + +
+ + + If we recognized how the
Holy Spirit is present in everything—physical creation, love,
human creativity, and morality—perhaps we could hold more things together
in a fruitful tension rather than so often opposing them and having the
different gifts of the Holy Spirit fight each other within our lives.
What does this mean? We have too many unhealthy dichotomies in our lives.
Too often we find ourselves choosing between things that should not be in
opposition to each other and we are in the unhappy position of having to
pick between two things which are both, in themselves, good. Thus, we live in
a world within which the spiritual is set against the physical, certain moral
precepts are set against creativity, wisdom is set against education,
commitment against sex, conscience against pleasure, and personal fidelity
against professional success. But obviously there is something wrong here.
If one force, the person of the Holy Spirit, is the single source that
animates all of these things, then clearly we should not be in the position
where we have to choose between them. Ideally we should be choosing both
because the one, same Spirit undergirds both….We need to let
the Holy Spirit, in all his and her fullness, animate our lives. What this
means concretely is that we must not let ourselves be energized and driven
too much by one part of the Spirit to the detriment of other parts of that
same Spirit. We should be suspicious of ourselves when we have morality
without creativity, when our wisdom spurns education, when our commitments
are sterile, when our conscience has a problem with pleasure, and when our
personal fidelity is defensive in the face of art and achievement. One
Spirit is the author of all these. Hence there must be equal
attention paid to each of them. – Fr. Ron Rolheiser,
OMI +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + Our relationship with God can become
more and more intimate. It moves beyond friendship into various levels of
union. Union can go on unfolding both in this life and for all
eternity….There is a limit to what we can do in this body, but there may be
no limit in the next life. If we believe and hope that we are going
to be living with God forever, why not get acquainted with this extraordinary
presence now? God’s will for us is to manifest God’s goodness and
infinite tenderness in our lives right
now. Christian tradition is not merely a handing on of various
doctrines and rituals. It is the handing on of the experience of the
living Christ, revealed in scripture, preserved in the sacraments,
renewed in every act of prayer, and present in the events of our lives. If
we are open and available to this presence, our lives will be transformed.
The spiritual journey is a struggle to be ever more available to God and
to let go of the obstacles to that transforming process. The Gospel is not
merely an invitation to be a better person. It is an invitation to become
divine. It invites us to share the interior life of the Trinity. No one ever grew as much in the
spiritual life as the Blessed Virgin Mary because there was no interior
obstacle to hinder her growth.
Growing in grace for her meant growing in the midst of the human condition
with its trials. The transforming union should enable one to handle
greater trials than those of less evolved Christians. If God liberated holy
people from their false selves, it was precisely for some great purpose. Life,
once one is in union with God…is full of surprises. It is by giving
up all your expectations that you will be led to Medicine Lake, the Native American’s term for contemplative
prayer. The medicine that everyone needs is contemplation, which alone leads
to transformation. – Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + + “Who
knows what a person is but that person’s own spirit within him? In the same
way, only the Spirit of God knows what God is. This is the Spirit that we
have received from God, and not the spirit of the world, so that we may know
all that God of his own grace has given us.” (1 Cor.
2:11-12) That is the invitation given to
every one of us so that we may know personally from our own
experience all that God gives us. The
way to that knowledge is the way of faithfulness—a daily faithfulness to our meditation. Faithfully every morning
and every evening of our lives to turn aside from everything that is passing
away and to be open to the eternal Spirit of God. It is also the way of
faithfulness during our meditation…from beginning to end, not following thoughts, not spinning phrases
or words, but growing in simplicity. The power by which we do all this is
given
to us. It is the power of the love of Jesus. As St. Paul calls
each of us to know: “Surely you know that you are God’s temple,
where the Spirit of God dwells.”
– Fr.
John Main, OSB + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + To remember is literally “to call to mind.” It is therefore to
be re-membered to that from which
our distractedness and forgetfulness frequently disconnect us. When we go
“online,” our computer connects us to the great mind of the worldwide web…but
the connection is fallible because it is only technology. We have all
experienced a sudden disconnection and have seen the little message asking if
we would like to be re-connected. The Holy Spirit in a similar way
intervenes at the moment of need in the midst of our human fallibility. He
does not demand anything, only asking if we want to be reconnected. To be
re-membered or re-connected is an act of redemption, of ever-available
compassion, which over a lifetime can become a powerfully embedded pattern.
We get into the habit of living consciously, of seeing God in all things.
We learn to believe that we are loved. We develop insight into the pattern of
past, present, and future. We see how mistakes arise from living too much in
the past or the future. The making flesh of the eternal Word happened at a
historical moment but it also happens in every moment. To be conscious of
this incarnation is contemplation and to remain
conscious of it requires the work of meditation. Without this
continuous work of prayer, of being re-membered to
reality in the here and now, we too often miss the gift of the moment because
we are thinking of what we have lost or of what we are hoping will happen
tomorrow. – Fr. Laurence Freeman, OSB + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + Spiritual direction can be extremely
brief….Basically our conscience, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, is the ultimate
director and the human director is in service of awakening our
sensitivity to the Spirit. The Spirit works through the Seven Gifts of the Spirit nudging our conscience and suggesting
what to do in practical life. The Seven Gifts of the Spirit are a kind of
“cloud of unknowing” that guides us like the Israelites who were led through
the desert by the cloud, a symbol of the Spirit. This enveloping cloud warns
us that our rational evaluation of situations is not enough and that we
need the intuitive assistance of the Gifts of the Spirit, which are
higher levels of inspiration and motivation. – Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO The
Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit: WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING, COUNSEL, FORTITUDE, KNOWLEDGE, PIETY,
FEAR OF THE LORD (Isaiah 11:2-3) The
Twelve Fruits of the Holy Spirit: LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GENEROSITY,
FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS, SELF-CONTROL (Gal. 5:22), LONGSUFFERING, MODESTY, CHASTITY + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + 8
“Points of Agreement” Between Six Religious Traditions—Christian,
Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, & Native American…where we are ONE
in the SPIRIT: 1) The world religions bear witness to the
experience of Ultimate Reality, to which 2) Ultimate Reality cannot be limited
by any name or concept. 3) Ultimate Reality is the ground of
infinite potentiality and actualization. 4) Faith is opening, accepting, and responding
to Ultimate
Reality. It precedes 5) The potential for human wholeness—or, in
other frames of reference, 6) Ultimate Reality may be
experienced not only through religious practices, but 7) As long as the human condition is
experienced as separate from Ultimate 8) Disciplined practice is essential to the
spiritual life; yet spiritual attainment is not — from 1984 Interfaith
Conference of Deep Practitioners, St. Benedict’s
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Mark Your
Calendar!
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May 1 |
St. Joseph the Worker (May
Day) |
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2 |
Portraits
of World Mysticism: Contemporary Mysticism with Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI;
9 am-12 pm, OST Whitley Theological Center, 285 Oblate Dr., $40, call (210)
341-1366 x 212 |
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10 |
Mother’s Day |
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13 |
Our Lady of Fatima |
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14 |
Ascension Thursday (Holy
Day) |
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22 |
Guadalupanos Memorial Day Balloon Rosary; 6:30
pm, St. Luke’s Catholic Church (parking lot), 4603 Manitou (refreshments
after rosary) |
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24 |
Pentecost
Sunday |
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25 |
Memorial Day |
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30 |
PEACE
MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; Rosary at 11:30 am |
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31 |
Holy Trinity Sunday |
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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. |