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Medjugorje Message: December 25, 2011
Dear children! Also today, in my arms I am
carrying my Son Jesus to you, for Him to give you His peace. Pray, little
children, and witness so that in every heart, not human but God’s peace may prevail,
which no one can destroy. It is that peace in the heart which God gives to
those whom He loves. By your baptism you are all, in a special way called and
loved, therefore witness and pray that you may be my extended hands to this
world which yearns for God and peace. Thank you for having responded to my
call.
Annual Message to Jacov:
December 25, 2011
Dear children! Today, in a special way, I desire to take you to and give you over to my Son. Little children, open your hearts and permit Jesus to be born in you, because only in this way, little children, you yourselves will be able to experience your new birth and set out with Jesus in your hearts towards the way of salvation. Thank you for having responded to my call. |
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Our Lady has given us two
beautiful Christmas messages. In the first she speaks of bringing Jesus to
us, and in the second (Jacov’s) she speaks of taking us to Jesus
and “giving us over.” In these two images, we see that Our Lady is the Great
Mother who holds all in her hands, carrying Our Lord in one
arm, and us—the rest of her children—in the
other, trying by every possible approach to unite us with Christ in oneness
of heart.
In her message to the world, Our
Lady emphasizes the gift of peace, what the Gospel proclaimed
as “glad tidings of great joy for all the people.” (Lk 2:10) In
Shepherd’s Field on the night of Jesus’ birth, “suddenly there was a
multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the
highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.’” (Lk
2:13) Our Lady reminds us of what this peace is, and that we have
already received it and must share it with the world. She says, “Pray…and
witness so that in every heart, not human but God’s peace may
prevail, which no one can destroy. It is that peace in
the heart which God gives to those whom He loves.”
Here the Queen of Peace takes
pains to explain what she means by “peace.” It is not the fragile and
destructible “human peace” that rulers of nations try to “secure” through
nuclear weaponry or the high-stakes poker game of threats, bluffs, economic
sanctions, aggressive actions, building of warheads, stockpiling of arms,
occupying troops, and diplomatic cat-and-mouse moves designed to maintain or
establish a “balance of power” that is shaky at best. Nor is it the “human
peace” that we seek in our personal lives or families that depends upon the fulfillment
of our ego needs: the saving of face; esteem and recognition from others;
apologies for wrongs suffered; attention and special treatment from spouses
or lovers; freedom from illness, accident or injury and anything that
threatens our own or our loved ones’ physical safety; time for pleasure and
leisure; and a sense of control and power over as much as possible. All these
elements make for “human” peace that can be destroyed in a moment by ourselves or other people and life events. Our Lady is not
talking about this ephemeral, transitory “peace” at all.
She is speaking of “God’s
peace…which no one can destroy. It is that peace in the
heart which God gives to those whom He loves.” And who does God
love? Everyone! The glad tidings of great joy are for “all the people”—the whole world without exception. Yet the Good News or
evolutionary leap of consciousness has come to our human species in a
uniquely historical way through the gift of the Incarnation,
and those who have been initiated into the Way who is Jesus Christ
have thus received a special calling or vocation to “witness”—to work
for the transformation to “Christ-consciousness of Indwell-ing Divinity”
and the spiritual evolution of all human beings. Our Lady
says, “By your baptism you are all, in a special way called and loved,
therefore witness and pray that you may be my extended
hands in this world which yearns for God and peace.”
We are called by Our Lady (and our
baptism), not to shove dogmatic formulations or mythic membership in a
particular church down anyone’s throat, but to be the leading edge of
human evolution. What equips us for this great task is Love—the
Love that came down at Christmas and entered through the door of humility and
poverty into the thick of our human condition. This new Love/Christ
consciousness rooted in humility is radically different,
counter-cultural, and counter-intuitive to the machinations of “human” or
worldly peace based on ego-fulfillment. Those who “witness” this soulful
“peace of heart” serve as Our Lady’s “extended hands” reaching out to the
rest of humanity, equally loved by God—to light the way for all
to begin living in the peace of Christ which no one can destroy.
As always, we ask “how?” In Our
Lady’s annual message to Jacov, she gives her perennial answer: “Little
children, open your hearts and permit Jesus to be born in
you, because only in this way…you yourselves will be able to experience
your new birth and set out with Jesus in your hearts towards
the way of salvation.” Our baptism is the sacrament of a reciprocal
new birth: we are born into the life of God and God is born in us at
the same time. Yet, what wondrous humility: a God who waits upon our
“permission”! We must “permit” Him to be born in us, and this we do through opening
our hearts.
2012: A New Year of Change & Growth
It is said that three of the
greatest, most progressive positions of the Catholic Church for the
advancement of humanity are: 1) Openness to Interfaith Dialogue (see
Vatican II document, “On the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian
Religions”—Nostra Aetate); 2) Social Justice Teaching (see Vatican II
document, “Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”—Gaudium et Spes);
and 3) Relation to Science (acceptance of evolution and modern
scientific discoveries about the universe and the new cosmology). At the
beginning of this new year in our cosmos, this month we look especially at
the third area—Science--and its ramifications, often undergirded by the work
of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, SJ and later theologians who have followed his
lead.
We are the first generation to
learn the comprehensive scientific dimensions of the universe story. We know
that the observable universe emerged 13.7 billion years ago, and we now live
on a planet orbiting our Sun, one of the trillions of stars in one of the
billions of galaxies in an unfolding universe that is profoundly creative and
interconnected. With our empirical observations expanded by modern science,
we are now realizing that our universe is a single intense energy
event that began as a tiny speck that has unfolded over
time to become galaxies and stars, palms and pelicans, the music of Bach and
each of us alive today. The great discovery of contemporary science is
that the universe is not simply a place, but a story—a story in which
we are immersed, to which we belong, and out of which we
arose. – Brian Swimme, cosmologist
Although as yet unrealized, this
scientific account of the universe (the new cosmology since Hubble revealed
the vast extent of the universe) is the greatest religious, moral and
spiritual event that has taken place in recent centuries. It is the supreme
humanistic and spiritual as well as the supreme scientific
event. – Fr. Thomas Berry, Passionist priest
Our economic, religious and
ethical institutions ride antique notions too narrow to freight what we’ve
learned about how life works on our sparkle dot of diamond dust in space. They
haven’t assimilated the last century’s breakthroughs: that all life is
related by lineage, by flows of energy, and by cycles of water, carbon,
nitrogen; that resources are finite, and creatures
fragile. – Carl Safina, scientist
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Life means change, and the rich diversity of life
is based on change….Change is relevant to all life’s expressions in culture,
education, politics, economics, and history. If evolution describes creation,
and evolution means change, then change must be integral to God,
who is Creator. Every level of being—cosmic, personal, spiritual—is evolving
toward wholeness. God is unbroken wholeness in movement, and creation is
movement toward God-centered wholeness….The creator God of an
evolutionary, interrelated universe is an evolutionary, interrelated God….The
very claim that God “becomes” something points to change within God. Could
God become a human person without change? Scripture states that
“God is love” (1 Jn 4:8), and love by its very
nature is dynamic and relational. If God is love, then God is change….Love cannot be known except in
relationships, in being affected as well as affecting, in sharing and
participating.
Process should be taken as the
fundamental metaphysical constituent of the world and of God’s relation to
the world….If the nature of love is unity and evolution is process
toward greater unity, then sin is resistance to unity; it is the refusal
to change and grow…the refusal to participate in the web of
life.
The evolutionary process is moving
toward evolution of consciousness…to the birth of the
whole Christ. Evolution is not blind, random, or meaningless
change. Rather, there is a unifying influence in the whole
evolutionary process, a centrating factor that continues to hold the
entire process together and move it forward toward greater complexity and
unity. The universal Christ could not appear at the end
of time at the peak of the world, if he had not previously entered it during
its development, through the medium of birth, in the form of an element.…Since
we are the continuation of Christ in evolution, the positive direction of
evolution depends on our choices and actions. We are to give
ourselves to Christ and to his cause and values…to participate in the
process, to risk, to get involved, to aim toward union with others, for the
entire creation is waiting to give birth to God….We are not only to
recognize evolution but make it continue in ourselves….We are to harness
the energies of love for the forward movement of evolution toward the
fullness of Christ. This means to live from the center of the heart, where
love grows, and to reach out to the world with faith, hope, and
trust in God’s incarnate presence….
Jesus of Nazareth now lives as the
Christ, and to the extent that we welcome the Spirit of creativity into
our own lives, Christ is born in the universe. If love is truly the heart
of Christian life, then authentic Christian life can flourish in an
evolutionary universe through new patterns of love….What
would Christianity look like, what impact would it have on the world…if we
simply lived the beatitudes, creating new
fields [of love] based on the Gospel?...Can we form new communities with
people of other religions by praying together or worshipping together in such
a way that new fields of unity are established? Can we welcome the divorced
and remarried, gays and lesbians, and a married priesthood into community as
the unfolding vision of God for the transformation of the earth? Can we renew
our relationship to the earth in such a way that we stop abusing its
resources…treating every aspect of nature with utmost dignity?
This polarizing tension is where
we find ourselves in the church today. An evolution of consciousness is
emerging in history and in the lives of many men and women committed to the gospel
of Jesus Christ. This new consciousness is expansive, inclusive,
attuned to the new science, ecologically oriented, and pluralistic in scope….It
is a new consciousness of whole-making and therefore resists the
attitude of divide and conquer. It is a consciousness of interrelatedness
and a desire to create new wholes within wholes—in short,a new
catholic presence….As consciousness evolves, so does the universe.When
the level of our awareness changes, we start attracting a new reality. When
Jesus of Nazareth appeared in public announcing a new consciousness of God’s
presence, he became at odds with his fellow Jews.…As with evolutionary
emergence on the whole, the new emerging catholic consciousness is
encountering resistance to change on various levels….On every level, the
inability to embrace Catholic identity as new patterns of relationship
reflects an inability to let go of medieval theology and engage the world as
science informs us. Hence, there is resistance to relate to God in a new way,
in a new world, to see the God of Jesus Christ as the God who does new
things, the God of hope and promise. – Sr. Ilia Delio, OSF
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Far too many Christians are insufficiently conscious of the “divine” responsibilities of their lives…giving only half of themselves, never experiencing the spur or intoxication of advancing God’s kingdom in every domain of mankind. The world is still being created and it is Christ who is reaching his fulfillment through it. – Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
New Year’s Resolutions Suggested by NATURE
Advice
from the NIGHT SKY:
See the Big Picture
. . . Be a Star . . . Keep Looking Up . . . Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark . . .
Stay Full of Wonder . . . Expand Your Horizons . . . Turn Off the Lights!
Advice
from a MOUNTAIN:
Get to the
Point . . . Enjoy the View
Advice
from the MOON:
Live Life to the
Fullest . . . Be Someone to Look Up To . . . Don’t be Phased by Difficulties
. . . Take Time to Reflect . . . Enjoy a Little Space . . . Honor the Cycles
of Nature . . . Light Up the Night
Advice
from the SUN:
Keep it Light . . . Rise
to the Occasion . . . Look on the Bright Side . . . Set Your Sights
High . . . Renew Your Energy . . . Keep a Sunny Disposition . . . Be
Brilliant
Advice
from a TREE:
Stand Tall and Proud
. . . Sink Your Roots into the Earth . . . Be Content with your Natural
Beauty . . . Drink Plenty of Water . . . Enjoy the View
Advice
from a CANYON:
Carve Out a Place
for Yourself . . . Aspire to New Plateaus . . . Stand the Test of Time . . . Don’t
Get Boxed In . . . Listen to the Voice of the Wind . . . It’s Ok to Be a
Little Off the Wall . . . Reach Deep
Advice
from a CACTUS:
Get Plenty of
Sunshine . . . Accentuate Your Strong Points . . . Be Patient through the Dry
Spells . . . Conserve Your Resources . . . Don’t Desert Your Friends . . .
Wait for Your Time to Bloom . . . Stay Sharp
Advice
from a RIVER:
Go with the
Flow . . . Slow Down and Meander . . . Go Around the Obstacles . . . Stay
Current . . . The Beauty is in the Journey
Copyright, Marian Center of San Antonio. All rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced without permission.
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