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Medjugorje
Message: August 25, 2014 Dear children! Pray for my intentions, because Satan wants to
destroy my plan which I have here and to steal your peace. Therefore, little
children, pray, pray, pray that God can act through each of you. May your
hearts be open to God’s will. I love you and bless
you with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call. |
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Published
by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry Our Lady rarely speaks of Satan, so when she does, we sit up and listen. This month she begins her message with the
plea: “Pray for my intentions, because
Satan wants to destroy my plan which I have here and to steal your peace.” A sobering, jarring sentence! What is Our Lady’s “plan” in Medjugorje? “Peace, peace,
peace—only peace,” she told the six young
visionaries from the start in 1981, introducing herself as the “Queen
of Peace.” So PEACE is Our Lady’s plan, agenda and mission: peace
throughout the whole world that results from inner peace within each
individual heart. A heart that is at peace is a heart open
to God’s will, thus enabling
God to work through that person for good
in the world. So Our Lady’s plan is both large and small, both global and
local at the same time, hinging upon the “microcosm” of each small, local
individual human life that has undergone conversion of heart to form the “macrocosm” of a big, pervasive, universal peace. Our Lady says “Satan wants to destroy my plan…and
to steal your peace.” Where do we see evidence of
this claim today? We need look no further than the evening news: brutal wars,
genocide, murder, rape, riots, revenge and violence around the
planet—particularly in the Middle East, the “Holy Land” where Our Lady and her divine Son lived their earthly lives. Israel,
Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Russia, Ukraine….Criminal acts of unspeakable
atrocity and barbaric rage fill the airwaves and internet, many committed in
the name of religion that has been twisted and distorted through
militant fundamentalist extremism. In these horrifying events that unfold
before our eyes on the nightly news, we see the destruction of Our Lady’s
plan for peace writ large, on the world stage—i.e. the “macrocosmic” level of global devastation—a worldwide failure of peace. But where does it all begin? How do we see that “Satan wants to steal your
peace,” as well? In my own little
corner of the world, how is my
peace being stolen? Crime, theft,
property damage, gang graffiti, drug abuse, road rage, and domestic violence
are commonplace even in my “nice” neighborhood, just outside my “safe” home,
among nearby “strangers” and “acquaintances.” Zooming
in closer, I see my peace slipping away
as people I know, intimately or casually, are suffering terrible accidents, illnesses, broken family
relationships, and the painful loss of loved ones’ deaths. Such reversals of fortune are extremely “close to home” some days,
rattling my cage and rocking my boat of psychic security, comfort and ease. Zooming
in still closer, I look within my own
troubled heart and mind to find various fears, anxieties, resentments,
doubts, guilt, sadnesses, insecurities and other
negative or afflictive emotions that sap my energy for doing good. Now I am
at the “microcosmic” level at which the building blocks of world peace must be assembled—within the individual heart of the
human person in need of conversion. And how are we to understand “Satan”? What is this dark force that wants to “destroy” Our Lady’s plan
for peace and “steal” our peace? Perhaps the single most instructive insight
to “Satan” is found in Our Lord’s exchange with Peter in the Gospel of Matthew 16:23. There, Jesus predicts his upcoming passion, death, and
resurrection—the
Paschal Mystery of our salvation—and
Peter’s response is to take Jesus aside and rebuke him, saying, “God
forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” (Notice that Peter actually invokes the name of “God” in his reply
to Jesus.) At this point Our Lord recoils and says to Peter—the “Rock” upon whom his
church is built: “Get
behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking
not as God does, but as human beings do.” The satanic force that wants to destroy Our Lady’s plan for
peace--beginning with the destruction of each person’s own private,
individual peace--is the same
Satan that Christ found in Peter, wanting
to destroy the divine plan of salvation that would come via the Paschal
Mystery. This “obstacle” to God’s will presented by our human way
of thinking is Satan: the egocentric, narcissistic, self-will that dominates our actions in contradiction to God’s will and the divine way of thinking. Satan franchises, capitalizes, and runs riot with the egoic
obsessions of the human condition—our
emotional programs for happiness based on overblown childhood needs for safety
and security, affection, esteem and pleasure, power and control. These
inner compulsions drive us daily toward whatever symbols in our culture promise to provide them for us through our own human power of
self-sufficiency. Such programs will never work, for in reality, we are utterly
God-dependent and “self”-sufficiency is a satanic illusion. What is the solution to this impasse of our human nature—the Satan that steals individual peace and destroys the heavenly plan for
world peace? Our Lady says, “Therefore, little children, pray,
pray, pray that God can act through each of
you. May your hearts be open to God’s will.” Jesus had to count on Peter
and the other apostles turning away from their strictly human way of
thinking, under the satanic domination of the false self that egoically runs riot with its own agenda for glory and
success. He had to depend on their hearts opening to God’s will rather
than their own selfish will, so that God could act through them and His
church could be established in the world by the spreading of the Gospel
message. This “turning away” from the strictly human and “opening” to the divine within is the
essence of conversion. It is conversion of heart, not cerebral indoctrination in a set of dogmatic rules to defend
with egoic pride and superiority. And it can be
achieved only as we “pray, pray, pray.” We each need a daily prayer practice—just as the Pope (the
successor of Peter) and the bishops and priests (who succeed the apostles)
need a daily prayer practice—to open our hearts to
God’s holy will from moment to moment, thus
enabling each of us to become an instrument “that God can act through.”
Without this vital daily prayer practice, we are 100% guaranteed—whether Pope, bishop, clergy or
laity—to instead become Satan, an “obstacle” to God’s purposes in the world, for without
continual prayer we inevitably fall back into our strictly human way of “thinking not as God does, but as
human beings do.” The human way of thinking is self-centered, narcissistic, hateful,
unforgiving, doubting, despairing, divisive, dark, sad, stingy and myopic.
The divine way of thinking can be seen in the crucifix—a seemingly powerless
man pinned to a cross. As Fr. Thomas Keating says, “Powerlessness
is the greatest power of all because then you’re an empty channel for God to
move through.” A channel of His PEACE, as we pray: Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, Where there is injury, pardon, Where there is doubt, faith, Where there is despair, hope, Where there is darkness, light, Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen. September
Musings . . .
. Mary’s Feast Days (8th & 15th) . . . . Contemplative Prayer . . .
Pope’s Top 10 List . . . Varied Sources of Truth I, who speak to you,
am the Queen of heaven. I am a gardener of this world. For when a gardener
sees the rise of a strong wind harmful to the little plants and the trees of
his garden, at once he runs to them quickly and binds them fast with sturdy
stakes as well as he can. And thus he comes to their aid, in various ways
according to his ability, lest they be broken by the rushing wind or
wretchedly uprooted. I, the Mother of mercy, do the same in the garden of
this world. For when I see blowing on the hearts of human beings the dangerous
winds of the devil’s temptations and wicked suggestions, at once I have
recourse to my Lord and my God, my Son Jesus Christ, helping them with my
prayers and obtaining from him his outpouring of some holy infusions of the
Holy Spirit into their hearts to prop them up….And thus when, with humility of heart
and active compliance, human beings receive these stakes of mine and my
assistance, at once they are defended against the diabolic onslaught of
temptations; and remaining firm in the state of grace, they bear for
God and for me the fruit of sweetness in due season.
– The Virgin Mary to St. Bridget of Sweden + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + So, there is a
paradox: contemplation is useless; it partakes of a dimension of living that
cannot be given a precise utilitarian value. Indeed, at its deepest
level, it resists being forced into such categories. At the same time, it is
necessary and important to the task of renewing human culture and healing a
fragmented and degraded natural world. Contemplation has no end or
purpose beyond itself. It seeks only
to become more aware of, more alive to everything and everyone. Contemplative
practice invites one to enter into this paradoxical space and be mindful of
the mysterious presence of God always radiating forth in the present moment
and yearning toward fulfillment in the age to come. This relinquishment
of purpose can thus be understood and experienced as having a profound
meaning and even, paradoxically, a kind of purpose. There is always
present in the contemplative tradition a suspicion of purpose that is too
narrowly conceived, that threatens to undermine the upwelling of the free
and spontaneous response to life that is the soul’s true freedom. –
Douglas B. Christie + + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ A big problem that all
of us have to face is deciding what is really important in our lives and
what is trivial, to learn to differentiate between what is passing away and
what is enduring. The English medieval writer John of Salisbury wrote:
“It’s not possible for one who, with her whole heart, seeks after truth, to
cultivate what is merely empty.” That is the challenge that each of us has to
face: not to cultivate what is empty because with our whole heart
we seek after truth, after love. Meditation is so
important for each one of us because we live in a society that is in real
danger of losing its sanity. A human spirit that is healthy demands
expansion. All of us need room to breathe, to expand, to
fill our lives with truth, with love. And if we are healthy, we know
that we must cross all the frontiers to what is beyond. The healthy spirit
is the spirit of an explorer: we are not terrified by the beyond,
we are not too tired to seek what is ahead. The spirit that is really
healthy knows that there is no future for us unless we set out into life
wholeheartedly. Meditation is simply a
way of coming to that basic healthiness of spirit, a state wherein our spirit
has room to breathe, where it is not assailed and weighed down by trivia or what
is merely material; a state wherein—because we are open to ultimate truth and
love—we are summoned beyond all mere trivia. We are summoned to live life
not out of the shallows but to live at the source….The discipline
of the daily return to prayer is simply that commitment to turning aside from
everything that is passing away and to living our life out of the source of
all being. That is why we must leave behind all images, thoughts, ideas,
and imaginations; and we must be silent in the presence of the
author of life and love. – Fr.
John Main, OSB + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ It is practice,
not deprivation, that drives the spiritual journey
and pushes us to grow beyond our limits. In a noisy and overactive lifestyle
drenched in media buzz and bombarded by visual intrusions, the times of
morning and evening meditation purify and recharge our silence. Attention
is the muscle of silence. It is built up strongly through regular and
moderate exercise. The true nature of
silence is that its way of seeing penetrates beyond the apparent surface of
the object being attended to. Instead we become one with it. As we stop
thinking about it we start to be with it. But our contemporary lifestyle and the
institutions that monitor us do not set much store by silence. The
very nature of silence makes it easy to lose, without even realizing it.
The more distracted you become, the less you notice that you’re not paying
attention. The more external stimulus occupies the mind, the less we know
that we have lost inner spaciousness. Learning to be silent
involves taking the attention off ourselves, in the way we are
usually thinking about ourselves, looking over our shoulder or peering at the
horizon. What should I do? How can I be happier? Am I a failure or a
success? What do people think of me? Am I in control? Such questions
normally determine our decisions and patterns of growth or decline. Each
question arises from a self-objectifying sense of self, which has a necessary
role to play in life. But very easily these questions can become the dominant
cast of mind from which we live all the time. We become their slaves. How
we see ourselves and how others see us, has, with the help of the media,
generated a cultural obsession with self-image. Unchecked and unmodified,
it destroys the confidence of the true self that enables us to risk and to
give ourselves—to live. We are all frightened
to jump in; we find excuses to avoid the sitting stillness and run from the
dawning silence. But when we do become silent, life bursts open with a
freshness and poignancy that is the energy of the life of Christ. In an
instant the fears, prejudices and self-constructed prisons of the human
condition begin to crumble. Going into the inner room, as Jesus describes
it, we discover that we are moving through space boundlessly.
– Fr. Lawrence Freeman, OSB + +
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+ Pope
Francis’ Top 10 Secrets for Happiness 1) “Live and let live.” Everyone should be guided by this
principle, which has a similar expression in Rome with the saying, “Move
forward and let others do the same.” 2) “Be giving of
yourself to others.” People need to be open and generous toward others, because if
you withdraw into yourself, you risk becoming egocentric. And stagnant water
becomes putrid. 3) “Proceed calmly in life.” In the Argentine novel by Ricardo Guiraldes, the protagonist looks back on his life. He
says that in his youth he was a stream full of rocks that he carried with
him; as an adult, a rushing river; and in old age, he was still moving, but
slowly, like a pool of water. This latter image means to have the ability to
move with kindness and humility, a calmness in life. 4) “A healthy sense of leisure.” The pleasures of art,
literature and playing together with children have been lost. Consumerism has
brought us anxiety and stress. Even though many parents work long hours, they
must set aside time to play with their children. Families must also turn off
the TV when they sit down to eat, because it doesn’t let you communicate with
each other. 5) “Sundays should be
holidays.” Sunday is for family; workers should have Sundays off. 6) “Find innovative ways
to create dignified jobs for young people.” If they have no
opportunities they will get into drugs and be more vulnerable to suicide. It
is not enough to give them food. Dignity is given when you can bring food
home from one’s own labor. 7) “Respect and take care of nature.” Environmental degradation
is one of the biggest challenges we have….Isn’t humanity committing suicide
with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature? 8) “Stop being negative.” Needing to talk badly about others
indicates low self-esteem. That means, I feel so low
that instead of picking myself up I have to cut others down. Letting go of
negative things quickly is healthy. 9) “Don’t proselytize; respect others’ beliefs.” We can inspire
others through witness so that one grows together in community. But the worst
thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyzes: ‘I am talking with
you in order to persuade you.’ No. Each person dialogues, starting with his
and her own identity. The church grows by attraction, not proselytizing. 10) “Work for peace.” We are living in a time of many wars and
the call for peace must be shouted. Peace sometimes gives the impression of
being quiet, but it is never quiet. Peace is always proactive and dynamic. -- From an interview in the
Argentine weekly “Viva,” 7/27/14 + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
+ Now as I age, both
chronologically and in ministry, I find that I am richer and more
compassionate to the exact extent that I…remain faithful to the truth wherever I
find it, no matter its source. Hence, today I find myself
drinking from intellectual wells of every sort. I still read with a critical
eye, but now also with a thirst for the insights these writers have into life
and the soul. Sometimes, in our fear of being tainted in our orthodoxy, we forget that
many of the great theologians in Christian tradition were unafraid to pick up
pagan thinkers, mine their insights for truth, and then blend these with
their faith: St. Augustine did this with Platonism. Thomas
Aquinas, in the face of considerable ecclesial criticism, did the same thing
with Aristotle. Ironically, centuries later, we now take many of their
intellectual categories, which they originally took from pagan thought, as
our very criteria of orthodoxy…. Dare we say that Jesus
did the same thing? He picked up parables and stories that were current in
his culture and tailored them to further his own religious and moral
teachings. Moreover, he taught…that we are to honor truth wherever we see it,
irrespective of who’s carrying it. But isn’t this syncretism? Picking
up truth from a variety of sources is not syncretism. Syncretism is combining
insights gleaned from everywhere in a way that is uncritical of internal
contradiction. True faith is humble enough to accept
truth, wherever it sees it, irrespective of the tension it causes and
irrespective of the religion or ideology of whoever is speaking it. Big minds
and big hearts are large enough to contain and carry large ambiguities and
great tensions; and true worshippers of God accept God’s goodness and truth
wherever these are manifest, no matter how religiously or morally
inconvenient that manifestation might be. God is the author of all that is
good and all that is true! Hence, since no one religion, one church, one
culture, one philosophy, or one ideology contains all of the truth, we
must be open to perceive and receive goodness and truth in many, many
different places—and we must be open to the tensions and ambiguity
this brings into our lives.
– Fr.
Ron Rolheiser, OMI + + +
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Mark Your Calendar!
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September 1 |
Labor Day |
|
6 |
Portraits of World
Mysticism Class: A Mysticism of
Practice—Ignatius Loyola with Prof. Philip Sheldrake; 9 am-12 pm, Oblate
School of Theology Whitley Theological Center, 285 Oblate Dr., $40, (210)341-1366 |
|
8 |
Nativity of the Blessed
Virgin Mary |
|
14 |
Feast of the Exaltation of
the Holy Cross |
|
15 |
Our Lady of Sorrows |
|
17
& 24 |
Class (4 Wednesdays): Scriptural Reasoning—Reading the Sacred
Texts of Judaism, Christianity & Islam with Narjis
Pierre; 11 am- 1 pm, SoL Center, 300 Bushnell; $45
incl. lunch; call (210) 732-9927 |
|
17
& 24 |
Lecture Series (4
Wednesdays): Our God-Drenched
Universe—Science & Sacrament in a Changing World with Sr. Linda Gibler, OP, PhD; 7-9 pm, Oblate School of Theology
Whitley Center, 285 Oblate Dr., $50; call (210) 341-366 x 212 |
|
19-20 |
13th Annual
Catholic Women’s Conference, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, 200 E.
Market St; Fri. 5-9 pm/Sat. 8:30 am-4 pm; with Speakers, Mass, Adoration,
Exhibitors, lunch, etc. $70; (210) 521-3377 |
|
20 |
Day of Reflection: Dangerous Things—Desire & Prayer in
the Spiritual Life of Women with Dr. Renata Furst & Mary Wilder; 9 am-4 pm; Oblate School of Theology
Whitley Center, 285 Oblate; $55 incl. lunch, call (210) 341-1366 x 212 |
|
23
& 30 |
Class (2 Tuesdays): The Forbidden Books of the Prophet
Enoch—Their Influence on the Earliest Christians with Dr. Todd Hanneken (St. Mary’s U); 7-9 pm, SoL
Center, 300 Bushnell; $35; call (210) 732-9927 |
|
27 |
St. Vincent de Paul
PEACE
MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; Peace Rosary at 11:30 am |
|
28 |
Rosary-making:
2:00-5:30 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; free parking &
materials |
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29 |
Feast of Archangels
Michael, Gabriel & Raphael |
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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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rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced without
permission. |