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Medjugorje
Message: October 25, 2012 |
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Published
by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry In this month dedicated to the souls of the faithful departed, in
which we remember and pray for all our loved ones who have gone before
us—passing beyond the thin veil that separates this worldly life from the
“other side”—Our Lady gives an appropriate if sobering message. She asks us
anew to pray for her intentions, saying, “Renew
fasting and prayer because satan is cunning and
attracts many hearts to sin and perdition.” We should take the time to
“unpack” this important sentence. We
know that fasting and prayer are the “power duo” or “double-whammy”
that Jesus taught his disciples for dealing with cases of demonic possession
in the Gospels. When the apostles fail to deliver a possessed boy from his
affliction, Jesus asserts that “this kind can only come out through prayer
and fasting.” (Mk 9:29) Our Lady’s message extends this Gospel teaching as she clearly
links her call for “fasting and prayer” to the satanic activity that requires
us to respond with these two most powerful weapons. This is because “satan is cunning and attracts many hearts to sin
and perdition.” In biblical language,
“heart” refers to the whole person in their deepest identity—body,
mind, emotions, and spirit—not just the cardiac muscle or the feelings. So
Our Lady is saying that satan attracts many
“hearts”—i.e. whole persons—“to sin and perdition.” This means that
the cunning satanic attractions influence and impact our bodies, our minds, our emotions, and—if given entrance on those three levels of our personhood—even
our souls. When, through the “cunning” (sly, crafty, shrewd, subtle) satanic attraction of our bodies, minds, and emotions we
commit actions or behaviors that are unloving and unjust, violating the
integrity and goodness of the divine image in which we were created, we have
been lured to sin. Over time, if we repeatedly and habitually live under the spell of
these satanic attractions that keep us in bondage to our programs for
physical pleasure, safety and security (leading to “sins of the flesh”
such as gluttony, alcohol or drug abuse, illicit sex, and violence); to our programs
for affection and esteem (leading to relational sins of emotional
manipulation, jealousy, possessiveness, and envy); and to our programs for
power and control (leading to sins of exploitation, theft, murder, and
tyranny), eventually we endanger our soul or spiritual center with the possibility of “perdition.” “Perdition” is a word we rarely hear, which comes from the Latin root
“perdere”—to “lose.” It refers to a final or ultimate loss or destruction: the loss of our soul. In traditional Christian terminology, it is a synonym for “hell” or
eternal damnation. Notice that Our Lady does not say that satan
is successfully taking or sending many hearts to perdition, but that
satanic cunning “attracts” many hearts to this hell of irrevocable
loss. We have no way of knowing if any soul is ever actually lost in perdition; only that the possibility
exists because of the possibility of free will with which we were endowed as
human beings. To the extent that our freedom of will is truly developed, we
also have the potential to commit mortal (or deadly) sin and thereby damn our
own souls (no
one else will—only us!). The point here is that every day and in every way, our egoic, narcissistic False Self falls under the satanic
influences in our culture that are cunningly attracting
us—through our very human
programs for happiness—toward insatiable and unlimited amounts of pleasure,
safety, security, affection, esteem, power, and control. To give full reign
to these attractions and indulge our body, mind, and emotions in these
counterfeit goods offered by the world has the potential to lead us to spiritual devastation and the “perdition” of losing
our precious soul. Our Lady’s motherly concern is to rescue us from
“going down the stoney end” of this “road to
perdition.” She does this by calling us to a better path: “I call you, little
children to holiness and to live in grace. Adore my Son so that He may fill you with His peace and love for
which you yearn.” Here Our Lady points out that we all yearn for divine peace
and love; this is the core, essential
nature of our humanity made in God’s image, and the true, underlying
root-desire beneath our doomed and hopeless False Self programs for happiness
based on the sham promises of pleasure, safety, security, affection, esteem,
power and control—all the satanic attractions that have lured us since the
proverbial Eden to “make our own happiness” and “meet our own needs” while
bypassing our Creator. No one sets out on their journey as a seeker to find
and possess the things that lead to “sin and perdition.” Rather, we
are all searching for peace and love but we are attracted by satanic “cunning” to look for them in “all
the wrong places.” And the most wrong place of all to look for them is in the
culture’s symbols that fraudulently promise fulfillment of our egoic False Self programs; yet that is where we all get
“detoured” at some point. Our Lady says that we return to the right road when
we turn instead to a life of “holiness”—meaning a life of “wholeness” that acknowledges all parts of
our personhood—physical,
intellectual, emotional, and spiritual— rather than just whichever one part is currently dominating and
enslaving us with its insatiable demands for self-made fulfillment. Instead of following our doomed programs for false happiness based on
self-reliance, Our Lady invites us to “live
in grace.” This means to live in conscious
awareness that, as St. Therese of Lisieux said,
“Everything is grace.” Everything is gift. Each heartbeat, each
breath, and all that flows out from those—is a
gift of God and not something that we
earn, merit, create or control. Living in this awareness of divine grace
leads us naturally to an “attitude of gratitude” and love for God. Our Lady
says simply: “Adore my Son.” When we take our eyes off of our own small world with its narrow,
petty concerns that are “all
about me,” and instead turn our gaze
and full attention to Jesus Christ, adoring Him present within our inmost being, present in every
person we meet, present in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar—Our Lady
says He will “fill you with His peace and love for which you yearn.” In
reverence for our own souls and those of all the departed, let us renew our
spiritual practices of fasting and prayer as Our Lady asks, in this holy month of All Souls. November Musings: Saints in the making . . . Thanksgiving month . . . Vatican
II’s Broadening Views Getting Over Yourself: What makes a
saint? We might well ask this in the
November month of All Saints. The saints are those who do not “make up” a God
in their own image to love, but love the “I AM” that is God. They do not
“make up” their own self-image or a projected ideal image for other people--a
homemade or False Self--to love,
but love the True Self (with the
Divine Indwelling Presence) of each and every person. So to become a
saint: “The assignment is to get over yourself. The assignment is to love the God you did not make
up with all your heart, soul, strength, body, and mind, and the second is
like unto it: to love the neighbor you also did not make up as if that person
were your own strange and particular self. Do this, and the doing will teach
you everything you need to know. Do this, and you
will live.” --
Barbara Brown Taylor “The shift from
narcissism to humility to big Self is, and always has been, the journey of
the mystic and the realizer. The bigger our self becomes after we’ve
transcended the crippling effects of narcissism, the more powerfully and
creatively we will be able to live our precious human lives. Because we’ve
gotten over our small selves, we will be living for a higher purpose. And
that’s what changes everything.” -- Andrew Cohen A New Saintliness: “Our love should
stretch as widely across all space, and should be equally distributed in
every portion of it, as is the very light of the sun. Christ has bidden us to
attain to the perfection of our heavenly Father by imitating his
indiscriminate bestowal of light. We have to be catholic, that is to say not
bound by so much as a thread to any created thing, unless it be to creation
in its totality….We are living in times which have no precedent, and
in our present situation universality, which could
formerly be implicit, has to be fully explicit. It has to permeate our
language and the whole of our way of life. Today it is not nearly enough
merely to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the
present moment, a new saintliness, itself also without precedent.” –
Simone Weil “We live in a universe that is expanding. I think it is
incumbent upon us to keep expanding, not to contract. If I close down, I
suffer this great sin of hubris. Life is always in process. God isn’t a noun,
but a verb. Like love.”
-- Paki Wieland, grandmother & international human rights activist Saintly
Love in Practice: Sr. Elvira’s
Community of Drug Addicts Our community can be
defined as a perennial Easter of the resurrection of Love in the heart of
those who, for years, have been dead and buried in their own selfishness and
in the false pleasures of the world. To all whom we welcome, we propose this journey
from selfishness, which gives birth to sadness, to the sacrificial gift of self,
which is the source of true joy. I remember the day a young man told me
with profound sadness, “My greatest suffering, the greatest burden that
weighs upon my conscience, is that I don’t know how to love! I’m not capable of loving!” The
true sadness of life is the failure to learn to love. I thank the Lord
because, from the beginning, we have not had paid employees to take care of
those who desperately knock at the door of our house; instead we have people
who do it voluntarily for love without payment. It is a poor, fragile, and
limited love, but it is also true, faithful, freely given, and capable of
sacrificing for those who suffer. Those same people, who today learn to
love by serving a day at a time, are those who thought they were incapable of
ever loving….I am happy to see youth, who were once dead, now capable of
shaking off the frenetic attitude of entitlement, of wanting everything and
wanting it now, of getting pumped up by ego-driven security, and settling for
the comfortable life focused on their own pleasures. The Community was
opened, not only so that people can be free of their own slavery, but
also so that they can learn how to love. They searched for joy, the
fullness of life, and the meaning of life in the false illusions of the
world. We know that the fullness of life is Love and that a life
is wasted if it is not given away! This is the “School of
Life” of the community: to move beyond yourself and to help others in concrete
actions that involve your very life. One day one of our young men gave
testimony: “Every once in a while I would think, ‘When I’m a dad, I will love
my children very much. When I am married, I will love my wife very much.’”
But then he realized that this was an illusion, a fantasy, a theory, and a
dream that would never have been fulfilled, if today he had not
learned how to “love so very much” those who are at his side….You don’t
become a mom or dad just by having sex with somebody; you become a friend, a
brother, a mother, a father by loving those who live with you.
This is the true Easter: to learn that through the love you give, that
costs you exhaustion and sacrifice, you find the fullness of life!
--
Sr. Elvira, Comunita Cenacolo
America Thanksgiving Thoughts: “Eucharisteo. I
give thanks.” “Eucharist”
means “thanksgiving.” “It all comes down to confidence and gratitude.” -- St. Therese of Lisieux “In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great
deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life
becomes rich.” -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer “I did not intend my creatures to make themselves servants and
slaves to the world’s pleasures. They owe their first love to me. Everything
else they should love and possess, not as if they owned it but as
something lent them.” -- St. Catherine of Siena Vatican
II and World Religions: We have just
celebrated the 50th anniversary of Vatican Council II, whose
teachings in 16 landmark Church documents are still being studied,
interpreted, and implemented, with occasional setbacks and delays from those
who resist the changes, development, and evolution that this great ecumenical
Council brought through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. One profound
document—On the Relation of the Church
to Non-Christian Religions— opened the door for much greater interfaith
dialogue. As a result, from 1984-1988, an Interreligious Conference took
place at St. Benedict’s Trappist Monastery in
Snowmass, Colorado, that included Christians (Catholic and non-Catholic),
Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs. Together, over the years, they
worked up a list of 8 “Points of Agreement” that All the
Religious Traditions Share: 1) The world religions
bear witness to the experience of Ultimate Reality, to which they give
various names. 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. Faith in this sense precedes
every belief system. 5) The potential of human
wholeness—or, in other frames of reference, enlightenment, salvation, transcendence,
transformation, blessedness—is present in every human being. 6) Ultimate Reality may
be experienced not only through religious practices, but also through nature,
art, human relationships, and service to others. 7) As long as the human condition
is experienced as separate from Ultimate Reality, it is subject to ignorance
and illusion, weakness and suffering. 8) Disciplined practice
is essential to the spiritual life, yet spiritual attainment is not the
result of one’s own efforts, but the result of the experience of oneness with
Ultimate Reality.
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Mark Your Calendar!
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November 1 |
All
Saints Day (Holy Day) Class: Mapping
Your Spiritual Journey with Marylyn Croman,
co-founder of Writers Institute, Our Lady of the Lake U. & Gemini Ink; 3
Thursdays (also Nov. 8 & 15); 7-9 pm; SoL
Center, 300 Bushnell; $35; call (210)732-9927 |
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2 |
All
Souls Day |
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2-3 |
Retreat: “The Magnificat: Mary’s Prayer for Today,”
Fri. 7-9 pm & Sat. 9 am- 4:30
pm; University of the Incarnate Word Chapel, 4301 Broadway; $30 incl. lunch &
prayer journal; call (210) 824-5332 or Dorothy.batto@amordeus.org
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4 |
Daylight Savings Time ends (set clocks back
one hour) |
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6 |
Election
Day |
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7
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Presentation: As the Council Begins—What the Archdiocese of San Antonio Contributed
to Vatican Council II with Dr.
Scott Woodward, Dean of OST; 2 Wednesdays (also Nov. 14); 7:00-9:00 pm;
Oblate School of Theology Tymen Hall; 285 Oblate
Dr., $20; call 341-1366 x 212 |
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10 |
Portraits of World
Mysticism Series: Compassion in the
Christian Tradition, 9 am-12 pm,
Oblate School of Theology Whitley Theological Center, 285 Oblate; 341-1366, x
212 |
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12 |
Veterans
Day |
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21 |
Presentation
of the Blessed Virgin Mary |
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22 |
Thanksgiving Day |
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24 |
PEACE
MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; Rosary at 11:30 am |
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25 |
Christ
the King ROSARY
MAKING: 2-5:30 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; free parking and
materials |
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“Only he who has succeeded by persistent and conscious efforts
in freeing himself from the chaos resulting from his own lack of
consciousness can be aware of what Religion really means.” – G.I. Gurdjieff “If your heart were right, then every creature would be a
mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine.
There is no creature so small and abject, but it reflects the goodness
of God.” -- Thomas a’ Kempis |
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rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced without
permission. |