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Medjugorje
Message: May 25, 2014 Dear children! Pray and be aware that without God you are
dust. Therefore, turn your thoughts and heart to God and to prayer. Trust in
His love. In God’s spirit, little children, you are all called to be
witnesses. You are precious and I call you, little children, to holiness, to
eternal life. Therefore be aware that this life is passing. I love you and
call you to a new life of conversion. Thank you for having responded to my
call. |
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Published
by the Marian Center of San Antonio / A Catholic Evangelization Ministry Every Lent begins when our foreheads are signed with a cross in black
ash, along with the words, “Remember that you are
dust, and to dust you shall return”—taken
from Genesis 3:19, when the first humans received the curse incurred by their
sin: expulsion from the Garden and death. This month Our Lady’s message
begins with the chilling words: “Pray and be aware that
without God you are dust.” No sugar-coating of our human condition
here! This is the stark reality with which each of us must grapple but
which our youth-obsessed culture of death denies and works relentlessly to
prevent us from facing. We must each awaken to this fact as we gaze
upon our own body--whether it be sleek and strong or
weak and infirm: “Without
God I am dust.” This is another phrasing of St. Benedict’s famous dictum: “Keep death always before your eyes.” Like two bookends placed at the beginning and end of her message,
twice Our Lady says, “Be aware.” First she says, “Be aware that
without God you are dust,” and later she says, “Be
aware that this life is passing.” Awareness is the anchor of our contemplative journey--the life of prayer--and
the most profound and fundamental human awareness is the realization of
our own death: our contingency, our finitude, our expiration date quickly
approaching. This is the reality of the human condition since the “Fall”
depicted in Genesis. A reality that we spend our lives trying to evade and
outrun by all manner of “emotional programs for happiness” that will never
work. What is a healthy and life-giving response to this grim reality of
our creaturely situation? Our Lady says, “Therefore, turn
your thoughts and heart to God and to prayer. Trust in His love. In God’s
spirit, little children, you are all called to be witnesses.” Here Our Blessed Mother is addressing our whole personhood—our
thinking, feeling, sensing, moving, and higher spiritual centers. If we wish
to have a destiny beyond mere “dust” when this brief and fleeting earthly life ends, there is a “turning”
that must take place as we navigate our way through this passing world. It is
a “turning” that constitutes “conversion”—the turning away from sin and toward a faithful focus on the
Gospel, the Good News of salvation and eternal life in Jesus Christ. As we intentionally train our thoughts upon God and develop a prayer
practice, a relationship with this all-loving, all-merciful God develops and deepens, day by
day. As intimacy grows, we increasingly “trust in His love” and
experience the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit. In this inner
Spirit, Our Lady says, we are “called to be witnesses.” This means
that once we are in this committed love-relationship with God, we cannot
help proclaiming by the joyous hopefulness of
our life--visible in our quiet serenity, words and actions--that God
exists and that God
is Love. By doing so, we draw many
more lost souls, adrift in the wasteland of our worldly culture of death,
into a destiny greater than merely returning to “dust” at life’s end. In the last part of Our Lady’s message, she uses the word “life” three times, in three sentences delineating the three
“tenses”—future, past, and present—of our human experience. First she says, “You
are precious and I call you, little children, to holiness, to eternal life.” This is the big “Life”
with a capital “L”—the future one to which we must aspire as the goal, aim, and focus
of our whole being. Because we are “precious”—i.e. of immense value, worth, beauty, honor, goodness--we are
called to this “holiness” or wholeness of a life lived at
the highest possible frequency and intensity as images of our Creator, firing on ALL the cylinders of our human personhood—physical, mental, emotional,
and spiritual—with the inherent dignity, value and potential of eternal everlastingness (rather than “dust”). Next Our Lady says, “Therefore, be aware
that this life is passing.” In
these few words she puts into perspective our whole past life with its
useless and counterfeit programs and agendas for self-centered, egoistic
fulfillment—all the fraudulent, deceptive enticements to which the False Self
is prey. We have spent years in the swirl of “this life” of empty charms
“promising us the goods” to meet our childish needs for safety/ security,
affection/esteem, and power/control…but whose only real “delivery” to us will
be “dust.” Finally, Our Lady says, “I love you and call
you to a new life of conversion.” This is the life of NOW, of living each moment “present to Presence,” consciously and intentionally, with all centers of our being—sensory, mental, emotional,
spiritual--activated and participating, with awareness of who we are (“precious” creatures) and who God is
(Infinite Love drawing all things to Himself). To recognize and accept, with
open-hearted receptivity, the reality that we are loved
immensely enables us to answer Our
Lady’s manifold call at Medjugorje, found in this
month’s message: her call to “pray,” to “trust,” to “witness,” to “holiness,” to “eternal
life,” to “conversion.” Why is it so hard to believe that we are deeply
loved by God, Jesus, the Spirit, and
Our Lady? To believe that they so fervently want us with them that Our
Lord lived and died a brutal death for us, and His Mother has come to us in
apparitions through the ages to call us home? May the Holy Spirit enlighten
the eyes of our heart to know and trust in divine love, and respond to
Our Lady’s constant calling us beyond “dust”! June: Month of the Holy Spirit & the Holy Eucharist There is a very unfortunate misunderstanding
of the Bible present in the world today, in which we actually substitute
the printed word for the real Holy Spirit to solve new problems, new
attitudes, new insights, and new controversial issues. There is a tendency to
bury our heads in the sand of the Scriptures. By this I mean to look to
the printed words given between two and three thousand years ago for answers
to every new problem that arises. Unfortunately, to do this we have to
accept the very mistaken notion that the Holy Spirit is not still present in
the Church, pleading for it, giving it understanding and reminding us
of what Christ taught. Jesus tells us that he makes all
things new. We cannot simply look to the past to determine our attitudes and
understandings of the future. The Church grows as Jesus did, in age,
grace and wisdom by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is
present to remind us of how to deal with ever new, ever complicated issues
constantly arising. There are issues today that cannot be solved by a
blind adherence to a literal interpretation of the Scriptures. Issues
such as women’s rights, DNA research, life resuscitation, holocausts and
ethnic cleansing, nuclear warfare and war in general, worldwide hunger,
ecological mismanagement, immigration reform, gay rights, dysfunctional families,
issues of divorce, the unimaginable growth of prison populations, the drug
culture and many more present-day issues which Jesus never addressed
specifically and which cannot be solved by burying our heads in the sands of
Scripture. They can only be solved by our reaching
out in Scripture-inspired faith to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit
manifested to his church through prayer and love. The church does
have the Holy Spirit and can make decisions in ever-new situations by
proceeding with faith, hope and love with an ever-new understanding of the
world and the meaning of Christ’s great commandment of love. Answers to
the problems of the modern world and the future world are to be found in
faithful hearts imbued with the Holy Spirit of God. We must not be afraid to
step forward boldly and confidently knowing that he will remind us of all the
things which Jesus taught. – Fr. William Meninger, OCSO + +
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The Holy Spirit will descend upon
the Apostles and become present within them after some new fashion in which
he was not before….From the beginning the Holy Spirit had been within them;
now his presence there is new and produces new effects. By God’s indwelling,
then, effected by grace, the Holy Spirit now is present
in the soul differently from the way in which he is present by creation.
By creation he is wholly everywhere, yet more in the higher forms than in the
lower, for he is able to express more of himself in them. Among these
highest forms of visible creation, namely, man, there are again degrees of
his presence, so that even among men he is more in one than in another. This
gradation is in proportion to their grace. The more holy and sanctified they
become, the more does the Holy Spirit dwell in them, the more fully is he
sent, the more completely given, while the Book of Wisdom says expressly
that God does not dwell in sinners. As soon as I am in a state of grace the
Holy Spirit dwells in me in this new and wonderful way, takes up his presence
in me in this new fashion. It is precisely, then, by our faith and hope
and love that this is effected, so that the
individual soul under God’s own movement does help on this union of God and
man. In all the rest of creation God is present by his action; in
the souls of the just…he is present by theirs. – Fr. Bede Jarrett, OP + + +
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When our Lord was going to leave
this world and return to his Father, he called his disciples orphans;
children whom he had been rearing, who were still unable to direct themselves,
and who were soon to lose their protector; but he…would come again to them in
the power of his Holy Spirit, who should be their present all-sufficient Guide,
though he himself was away. And…when the Holy Spirit came, they ceased to
be the defenseless children they had been before. He breathed into them a
divine life, and gifted them with spiritual manhood, or perfection, as it is called in Scripture. From that time forth,
they put away childish things; they spoke, they understood, they thought, as
those who had been taught to govern themselves. That such a change was
wrought in the Apostles, according to Christ’s promise, is evident from
comparing their conduct before the day of Pentecost, and after….their
wonderful firmness and zeal in their Master’s cause afterwards. Before the
Holy Spirit came down…they were as helpless and ignorant as children; had no
clear notion what they ought to seek after, and how; and were carried astray
by their accidental feelings and long-cherished prejudices. Yet the first
disciples of Christ put off their vanities once for all, when
the Spirit came upon them. – Bl.
John Henry Newman + +
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+ Whoever approaches God and truly
desires to be a partner of Christ must approach with a view to this goal,
namely, to be changed and transformed from his former state and attitude, and
become a good and new person, harboring nothing of the “old man.” For
it says, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.” For our Lord
Jesus Christ came for this reason, to change and transform and renew human
nature, and to recreate this soul that had been overturned by passions
through the transgression. He came to mingle human nature with his own
Spirit of the Godhead. A new mind and a new soul and new eyes, new ears, a
new spiritual tongue, and, in a word, new humans—this was what he came to
effect in those who believe in him. Or new wineskins, anointing them with
his own light of knowledge so that he might pour into them new wine which is
his Spirit….For he who changed the nature of five loaves into the nature of
the multitude, and gave a voice to the irrational nature of an ass, and
converted a prostitute to purity, and prepared the nature of burning fire to
become dew upon those in the furnace, and tamed the nature of wild lions for
Daniel, is able also to change the soul that was barren and savage
from sin to his own goodness and kindness and peace by the holy
“Spirit of promise.” --
Pseudo-Macarius + +
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+ + Holy Spirit, it is you who, with Mary
as your faithful spouse, are to bring forth and fashion the children of God. In her and with her, you brought
forth the Head of the Church and, in the same way,
you will bring all his members into being. Within the Trinity, none of the
divine Persons is begotten by you. Outside the Trinity, you are the begetter
of all the children of God. All the saints who have ever existed or
will exist until the end of time, will be the
outcome of your love working through Mary. The reign especially
attributed to God the Father lasted until the flood and ended in a deluge of
water. The reign of Jesus Christ ended in a deluge of blood, but your reign,
Spirit of the Father and the Son, is still unended
and will come to a close with a deluge of fire, love and justice….None
can shield himself from the heat it gives, so let its flames rise. Let this
divine fire which Jesus Christ came to bring on earth be enkindled before the
all-consuming fire comes down and reduces the whole world to ashes….When you
breathe your Spirit into them, they are restored and the face of the earth is
renewed. – St. Louis de Montfort + +
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allow ourselves to be loved.
It was to facilitate this that the Holy Spirit was sent into the human heart,
to touch it, to awaken it, to draw our minds into its redemptive light. The
sending of the Spirit was a resurrection event and so continues as freshly
today as it did “late that Sunday evening,” as St. John tells us, when
the disciples were together behind locked doors and Jesus came and breathed
on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Our natural lethargy and
self-evasiveness, our reluctance to allow ourselves to be loved are, like the
locked doors, no impediments to the Holy Spirit. The Spirit has been sent into
the human heart, and it lives out the divine mystery there for as long as God
sustains us in being. Even in the heart of the utterly evil man, were
there such a person, the Holy Spirit would still be crying, “Abba, Father,” without ceasing. We begin with a dim awareness of the
stirring of the Spirit in our heart, the presence of another by which we know
ourselves. In awakening to its full reality, in listening to our heart, we
awaken to the living proof of our faith justifying that first dim awareness,
that first hope….It is the intoxication of our personal awakening to the
Reality of the Spirit, to the experience of the joy released, pressed down
and flowing over, which Jesus preached and communicates through His
Spirit. It is the intoxication of prayer. – Fr.
John Main, OSB + +
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+ + + The teaching of the Divine
Indwelling is a fundamental doctrine for the spiritual journey. The
Father, the Son—the Eternal Word of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, are
present within us. These relationships, which are never separate in their
unity, are forever interacting. The Father is the potentiality for all
existence; the Son is the actuality of all possibilities of existence; and
the Spirit is the love that motivates both. Love loving itself eternally
in the Trinity is the basis of our existence, the most intimate part of us,
that which is most real in us, the part of us that is capable of infinite
happiness through participation in the divine life. The true self, which is what we are trying to awaken through spiritual
practice, is not separate from God. The true self is the divine manifesting
itself in our uniqueness, in our talents, in our personal history, in
our cultural conditioning, and in all the rest of the complex factors that go
to make up our conscious life and its manifestations in our various
activities. The infinite tenderness of God, right now, minus all the
obstacles we place in opposition to that manifestation, is present in us,
right now. But each of us, because of what traditional theology calls the
fallen condition, is out of touch with this enormous energy of love that is
inviting us to participate. – Fr.
Thomas Keating, OCSO + + +
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+ + It is not impossible for a man to
imitate the virtues of God when he has received the spirit of God. It is no very new change to see
things participate in the nature of those with which they are joined.
Insipid food, seasoned with salt, will become savory; preserved with sugar,
sweet; and dressed with perfumes and spices, aromatic: It is in like manner less
extraordinary for man to become divine, if he partakes of the divine Spirit….It
is from the influence of this Spirit, as from a heavenly seed, that the children
of God are born. –
Venerable Fr. Louis of Granada + + +
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+ + When we awaken to the evolutionary
impulse, as the urge toward higher creativity, it becomes apparent to us that
the energy that is driving the process as a whole is inherently spiritual
or divine. Spirit created and is creating the universe. What is this
ceaseless creative striving in matter, nature, and culture? And where does it
come from? What is it that mysteriously compels the universe to exist, life
to emerge, and mind to appear? That which compels this complex and singular
process to exist and develop is Spirit as the creative impulse. And
when we feel that energy surging through our own bodies and minds, we find
our purpose in being here, as ourselves, in the world, so we can
consciously create the future as an agent of that impulse itself. – Andrew Cohen + + +
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Mark Your Calendar!
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June 1 |
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5-13 |
Solemn Mass Novena to St.
Anthony of Padua with Fr. Kevin Shanahan, MSC; 7 pm nightly (5 pm on June 7);
St. Anthony de Padua parish, 102 Lorenz Rd.; for more information: 824-1743 |
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8 |
Pentecost
Sunday |
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13 |
St. Anthony of Padua,
Patron of San Antonio |
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16-18 |
OST Summer Institute: Coping with Grandiosity in Our Lives—The
Deity and the Dragon Inside Us with Dr. Robert Moore, Dr. Marga Speicher, & Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI; Whitley Theological Center, Oblate School
of Theology, 285 Oblate Dr., call (210)341-1366 x212 for info &
registration |
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22 |
Corpus
Christi Sunday |
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24 |
Birth of John the Baptist |
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25 |
33rd
Anniversary of Medjugorje Apparitions: Screening of The Triumph acclaimed documentary
film about Medjugorje; 7 pm, St. Mary’s Church
Social Hall (basement), 202 N. St. Mary’s; free admission (love offering) |
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27 |
Sacred Heart of Jesus |
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28 |
Immaculate Heart of
Mary
PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s
Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s;
Rosary at 11:30 am |
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29 |
St. Peter & St. Paul,
Apostles
Rosary-making: 2:00-5:30 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s;
free parking & materials
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We stand before you, Holy
Spirit, conscious of our sinfulness, but aware that we gather in your
name. Come to us, remain with us, and
enlighten our hearts. Give us light
and strength to know your will, to make it our own, and to live it in our
lives. Guide us by your wisdom,
support us by your power, for you are God, sharing the glory of Father and
Son. You desire justice for all: enable us to uphold the rights of others; do
not allow us to be misled by ignorance or corrupted by fear or favor. Unite
us to yourself in the bond of love and keep us faithful to all that is true.
As we gather in your name, may we temper justice with love, so that all our
decisions may be pleasing to you. Amen. – St. Isadore of
Seville (prayed before every session of
Vatican II) |
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Copyright, Marian Center of San Antonio. All
rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced without
permission. |