Medjugorje Message: January 25, 2025
Dear children! In this year of grace, I am calling you to conversion. Put God, dear children, in the center of your living and the fruits will be love towards neighbor and joy of witnessing; and the holiness of your life will become a true witness of faith. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
February 2025
Our Lady’s first message of the new year 2025 was given to the world on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul—perhaps the single most dramatic conversion story recorded in all of scripture and Church history. Fittingly, she begins her message: “In this year of grace, I am calling you to conversion.” By this simple statement, Our Lady is telling us that we, too, are living in “apostolic times.” 2025 is no less a “year of grace” than the year 33 or 34 when the Risen Christ became gloriously present to Saul, the zealous Jew and rabid persecutor of early Christians. Blinded by the Light of Truth Incarnate on the Damascus road, Saul was called by “Jesus the Nazorean” —just as Our Lady has called each of us for over 43 years in Medjugorje—to “CONVERSION.”
In fact, EVERY YEAR is a “year of grace, for “God’s mercies are not spent; they are renewed each morning.” (Lam 3:22-23) Thus not only is every year a “year of grace,” but every DAY is a “day of grace” and every MOMENT is a “moment of grace.” Because our God-Who-Is-Love is immanent, transcendent, and omnipresent—indwelling the inmost center of all Reality—we are swimming in a perpetual ocean of grace, if only we can have “eyes to see and ears to hear” the truth of our actual condition as children of God. Our Source-Who-Is-Love is never absent—WE are absent from the Divine Presence through the unawareness of our consciousness.
Our Lady says, “I am calling you to conversion.” This call has been the centerpiece of her Medjugorje message from the start. As the Queen of Peace who appeared to us heralding, imploring, beseeching, and interceding for “Peace, peace, peace! Only peace!” on our troubled earth, Our Lady has continually taught that CONVERSION OF HEART is the necessary condition for peace to happen. For there can never be EXTERNAL peace in our world until we have INTERNAL peace within our inmost minds and hearts. Due to the holographic or quantum nature of all creation in our universe, what is true of the “Whole” or larger society, culture, and planet is a mirror reflection and exact copy of what is true within the smallest parts and particles that comprise it. Hence the necessity of conversion or radical change in our inner being for there to be an end to wars, violence, conflict, and all the outer peacelessness of our world.
But what, exactly, is in need of changing? The “conversion” or “metanoia” of which Our Lady speaks means to “CHANGE the direction in which you are looking for happiness.” Last month Our Lady warned us against “a life striving for earthly goals,” and seeking “peace and joy in earthly things.” This is another way of saying that we need to CHANGE from our fear-fueled self-sufficiency to a faith-fueled God-sufficiency: away from our focus on the ego-centered, Lower, or False Self “worldly” preoccupations with safety/security, affection/esteem, power/control, and sensory pleasure that currently drive our life and absorb all our energy and attention, motivating us primarily by FEAR that we will lose or lack these things, thus creating unhealthy attachments and addictions. As Our Lady said last month, “in this way darkness takes over your life and you do not see the meaning of your life.” But if we “convert” away from this fearful, self-sufficient, egoic direction, to what shall we turn for our happiness and meaning in life?
Our Lady says: “Put GOD, dear children, in the center of your living and the fruits will be love towards neighbor and joy of witnessing.” By using the active verbs “living” and “witnessing,” Our Lady highlights our great need to actively experience GOD—the Divine Indwelling Presence at the center of our being—as the animating force propelling our every thought, word, and deed. God is not just the “center of my life,” as if an “object in a box” —static, inert, passive and unmoving. No, God is “the center of my LIVING”: the grace-filled inner “spring of living water” whose energy activates each present-moment choice I make to be in alignment with this Divine “flow.” We must take the “center of my life” (as a noun-in-a-box) OFF THE SHELF of our bored and sleepy consciousness, and WAKE UP to the Divine Presence actively indwelling our hearts and the hearts of every living creature, both human and non-human.
As this CONVERSION of our consciousness takes place, we are gradually freed from our old fear-based obsessions with EXTERNAL material security and conspicuous consumption; with status, romance, and esteem; with power and control; and with excessive sensory comforts of food, drink, sex, recreation, etc. Instead, our awareness is focused upon the NEW direction in which we’re looking for happiness: INTERNALLY, WITHIN, toward the Presence of God/Love indwelling our inmost center in a continual outpouring of grace and guidance for taking the next right step in all that we think, say, and do.
Because “God is love,” and “there is NO FEAR in love, but perfect love drives out fear,” we are liberated from the anxiety of “striving for earthly goals” and seeking “peace and joy in earthly things.” In the radical FREEDOM of “putting God in the center of our living,” we begin to experience unparalleled “LOVE” and “JOY”: the fruits of “love towards neighbor” and “joy of witnessing.” With God-Who-Is-Love at the center of our converted consciousness, how could we NOT be filled with a new outpouring of “love towards neighbor“? And because “perfect love drives out all fear” (1 Jn 4:18), our love of neighbor (like the Good Samaritan’s) is no longer restricted to only those who “seem safe” —our own kin, our own kind, our own circle, race, class, religion, nationality, etc.
With CONVERSION of heart that puts GOD at the center in place of our fear-based, egoic, false self needs, “love towards neighbor” EXPANDS to include everyone—for our converted heart and mind now perceive the Divine Indwelling Presence at the core of ALL CREATION, no matter how obscured or disguised it may appear on the surface of certain beings. Indeed, henceforth we “never meet a stranger.” Rather, our kindness and compassion flow forth unobstructed by fear, greed, or selfishness, and we feel the continual “joy of witnessing” to others the Divine Love who is present at the center of our being and our “living.”
Our Lady concludes her message and call to conversion by saying: “the holiness of your life will become a true witness of faith.” Holiness means “whole-ness.” With God-Who-Is-Love at the CENTER of our living, we are ONE with all life forms everywhere, for as St. Augustine taught, “God is that circle whose Center is everywhere and whose Circumference is nowhere.” Today our modern physics and cosmology affirm this ancient maxim in the ever-expanding universe with its holographic nature that makes every particle a centration point of the interconnected Whole.
We are in God and God is in us, making any “separation” from the “entangled web” of our highest Good completely impossible! As we experience the “CONVERSION” to which Our Lady calls us, we no longer live in the fear of separation that is the great delusion of the small, false, ego-self, bound to and driven by fear of being separated from material things, people, and personal autonomy.
Without this crippling fear, anxiety and insecurity, we are FREE for the first time in our life, and WHOLE in our daily living that now continually celebrates the Divine Indwelling Presence at our center—our God/Love who animates, guides, and orchestrates every moment and movement of our life. We live in supreme confidence that this ONE center abides also in every entangled, interconnected life form in the great web of Being—in “everything, everywhere, all at once.” This holy confidence that we embody and project outward to the world, Our Lady says, “will become a TRUE WITNESS OF FAITH.”
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Empty yourself. Sit quietly, content with the grace of God.
—St. Romuald
The purpose of silence is to break through the crust of the false self.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
If God is the center of your life, no words are necessary. Your mere presence will touch hearts.
—St. Vincent de Paul
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than to have words without a heart.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi
Contemplation is a wordless resting in the presence of God beyond all thoughts and images.
—James Finley
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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them.
—Albert Einstein
Division begins in the MIND and can be ended by the HEART.
—Robb Smith
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Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.
—St. John Paul II
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“Incarnatio continua!”: The Incarnation continues IN you, AS you.
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Find inner peace and thousands around you will find salvation.
The purpose of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.
—St. Seraphim of Sarov
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Statement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (1/22/25)
Many of the issues President Trump addressed in his recent Executive Orders, along with what may be issued in coming days, are matters on which the Church has much to offer. Some provisions contained in the Executive Orders, such as those focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty, and the environment, are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us….The Catholic Church is not aligned with any political party, and neither is the bishops’ conference. No matter who occupies the White House or holds the majority on Capitol Hill, the Church’s teachings remain unchanged. It is our hope that the leadership of our Country will reconsider those actions which disregard not only the human dignity of a few, but of us all.
Following the ancient tradition, Pope Francis has declared 2025 as a Jubilee Year of Hope. As Christians, our hope is always in Jesus Christ, who guides us through storm and calm weather. He is the source of all truth. Our prayer is one of hope that, as a Nation blessed with many gifts, our actions demonstrate a genuine care for our most vulnerable sisters and brothers, including the unborn, the poor, the elderly and infirm, and migrants and refugees. The just Judge expects nothing less.
—Archbishop Timothy Broglio, President of USCCB
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Let us not tire of preaching love, for this is the force that will overcome the world. Let us never tire of preaching love. Even if we see waves of violence coming to drown out the fire of Christian love, love must win out. It is the only thing that can.
—Archbishop Oscar Romero
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To be successful by the usual standards of the world means acquiring:
— power, while the saints relied on God’s omnipotence;
— riches, while the saints enjoyed the Creator’s abundance;
— university degrees, while the saints shared in divine wisdom;
— admiration, while the saints rejoiced in receiving God’s love.
Holiness is not the passive presence of God in a person, but God’s life and action in that person. Holiness is a human life filled with God—the most beautiful life possible. Holiness transforms a person and raises them to the highest level: God. Holiness fills a person with love and the Holy Spirit moves them. If we gathered all the light of the sun into a person, they would shine with splendor. Yet, as unimaginable as this is, who can speak of the beauty of a soul in which God dwells? The saint is made by the happy collaboration of an individual with God, the author of all beauty. Holiness allows a person to show forth, like a vase of pure crystal, not merely a portrait of God, but God’s true image. Lord, I have this lifetime to become holy! I know it requires openness and effort, because it is the highest of values.
—Venerable Francis Xavier Nguyên Van Thuân
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Wealth and power are inextricably linked in today’s world. How did we fall into the trap of monetary wealth at the expense of the human person, no less the earth itself? The twin forces of wealth and power have always shaped human civilization, intertwined and self-reinforcing. In our modern era, this relationship is creating a system where financial wealth overshadows moral authority. Billionaires’ financial power provides immunity that moral authority no longer commands. This shift shapes policy, social structures, and our relationship with Earth itself.
In this framework, truth becomes relative and constructed—shaped more by those with power and wealth than by moral or empirical foundations. When truth becomes subjective, wealth and power become the dominant arbiters of what society accepts as true, leading to troubling implications for human dignity, environmental protection, and social justice. The devaluation of objective truth particularly impacts vulnerable populations and environmental concerns whose realities can be easily dismissed. Thus corporate leaders’ wealth effectively shapes what society considers true or important.
Real transformation demands both prophetic voice and practical reform…But even this type of reform will not be effective unless we ourselves become a different people. Our fundamental challenges stem from distorted spiritual values. True transformation demands reconnecting with sacred principles about humanity’s role and responsibilities within creation. The root of our problems is religious, and the remedy must be religious as well.
Despite the prophetic stance of the Gospel, our political system has weaponized religion, transforming Christianity into an arena of conflict…from nostalgic Catholic medievalism to Protestant reductionism. We have severed the incarnation from its earthly roots, eviscerating God from the flow of evolution. Many Christians have become Gnostic. Yet we remain bound to nature’s laws despite our denial.
Every person depends on Earth’s integrity for survival. Yet we continue to treat Earth as mere backdrop for human drama. The artificial divide between religion and science lies at the heart of our moral confusion. We have forgotten our roots as Earth’s children, that earth is our mother. The ecologically dissociated self has created a world stripped of soul, giving rise to planetary dysfunction—socially, morally and politically.
Our moral disorientation stems from divorcing religion from nature—like extracting a beating heart from a living body. Theology departments fail to include nature as the starting point of philosophical reflection; pastors deliver outdated homilies ignorant of modern science. A fractured Christianity is at the heart of a planet in crisis. True divinity doesn’t intervene from outside but rises up through evolution itself. God needs every single creature to become fully alive. The dangerous fallacy of human self-deification (declaring ourselves gods) emerges when we forget our place within nature’s web.
We have limited time to integrate science and religion into a new framework of understanding. Without uniting mind, matter, and spirit through conscious evolution, life on earth faces catastrophe. We must hear St. Bonaventure’s warning:
“Any person who is not illumined by such great splendor in created things is blind. Anyone who is not awakened by such great outcries is deaf. Anyone who is not led by such effects to give praise to God is mute. Anyone who does not turn to the First Principle as a result of such signs is a fool. Therefore, open your eyes; unlock your lips; and apply your heart so that in all creatures you may see, hear, praise, love, adore, magnify and honor your God, lest the entire world rise up against you.”
—Sr. Ilia Delio, OSF
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We believe God is all in all…eternally revealing as the Trinity…Transcendent, Omnipresent, Immanent…active within us as the Divine Indwelling. We believe we are created in the image and likeness of God. Our basic nature is absolute good. We believe humanity is asleep to its divine essence and called to awaken. We believe daily spiritual practice, self-knowledge, and surrender to God form a path of access for those who wish to awaken. We believe we open ourselves to transforming grace through our consent in centering prayer, the Eucharist, the Word in scripture, and spiritual community. We believe God is Love, eternally present. We are called to participate in the dynamism of this love—for God, for one another, and for all creation.
—Tim Cook, C.C.H.
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Everything in this world—every quark, atom, dust speck, heartbeat—quivers with the presence of God and is the presence of God. That is the fourth dimension. “The presence of God should become a kind of fourth dimension to all of life.” (Thomas Keating) Three dimensions comprise the world as it appears to us on the surface—all the individual, random bits and pieces floating down the river of time. The fourth dimension kicks in when one suddenly grasps the whole thing as alive and vibrantly “one”—a single living sacrament reemerging in every nanosecond from the ever engendering wellspring of God.
—Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault
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So you wish to begin a new life? Then begin here and now with whatever you are doing, however dark and meaningless it may seem. For your work is to find God, always and in all ways—at all times, in all places, in any company, and in all ways. This is the wayless way that leads us to grow in everything and increase unceasingly, without end.
—Meister Eckhart
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February 11th: Our Lady of Lourdes
The Word of God absorbed into his divine person Mary’s blood and the substance of her flesh; by becoming man of her he received her features as the appropriate character in which he was to manifest himself to humanity. Her sanctity comes not only of her being his Mother, but also of his being her Son. He is the Wisdom of God, she therefore is the Seat of Wisdom. His presence is heaven, she therefore is the Gate of Heaven. He is infinite Mercy, she then is the Mother of Mercy.
What is befitting in the children of such a Mother but an imitation of her devotion, her meekness, her simplicity, her modesty, and her sweetness? Her glories are for our sakes also. Let us copy her faith, who received God’s message from the angel without a doubt; her patience and obedience who went to Bethlehem and bore our Lord in a stable; her meditative spirit, who pondered in her heart what she saw and heard; her fortitude, whose heart the sword pierced; her self-surrender, who gave him up during his ministry and in his death.
—St. John Henry Newman
“Do whatever he tells you.” (Jn 2:5) These words spoken by Mary at the wedding at Cana resound to all Christians of all time….This kind of radical obedience has been modeled by the saints. At Lourdes in 1858 Our Lady gave a seemingly nonsensical instruction to a young girl named Bernadette: “Go out and drink at the spring and wash yourself in it.” But there was no spring. So Bernadette in humble obedience bent down and, scraping mud from the ground, spread it on her face and drank of it. Some laughed at her, some were angry. Fresh water soon began to flow abundantly. Since then countless thousands have been healed through the waters of Lourdes.
How often the Holy Spirit gives us promptings we ignore. To see the Lord’s healing power requires listening to him, choosing to be obedient, trusting that he will lead us. Go talk to that person. Call that person. Tell that man the Lord loves him and understands the pain he is going through. Ask the woman sitting there if she would like prayer for anything. Repent of that sin that is blocking the Lord’s work in your life. The Lord will use even our mistakes for our humility and growth toward maturity.
—Mary Healy
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Jesus has the authority, should we request it in our free will, to enter our minds and share his ability to love unconditionally, enabling us to forgive what we could never forgive by our own power. He can help us in any moment we’re willing to see beyond the separation. All our pain emerges from the misperception that we are separate from those from whom we cannot be separate. We long for love and the feeling of primordial oneness, yet we constantly think and behave in ways that make the separation seem real, living in a constant hell of our false belief in separation.
Our true self is like the hidden statue within Michelangelo’s marble block. Jesus is the sculptor who can work with us to make it visible. If you were able to drop your fear, your anger, your neuroses, your anxiety, your character defects, your judgments, your addictions, your armor, your defensiveness, your attack thoughts, and your sense of victimization, there would be one thing left: the real you. And that is the Christ within. Jesus is the mystic power that can take us home.
—M. Williamson
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February 22: Feast of the Chair of St. Peter
The Church is designed for the people that we are: people of flesh, people of spirit, people of grace. Without prayer we run the risk of seeing the Church merely as a social body and not the Body of Christ. Without prayer we won’t know how obedience to its living laws differs from mere discipline. Without prayer we will not perceive the kind of commerce we are invited to take part in within her, as Jesus Christ moving from Jesus Christ to Jesus Christ. Without prayer we will not live from the Church as one can live from the discourse at the Last Supper. Without prayer the Church may give us all the treasures—God’s life through baptism, Christ’s blood through penance, the seal of unity in the Mass and Communion—but we will only keep a small part of it. Without prayer we can be learned in the teachings of the Church, but they will not bring us to the fuller life that they were destined to bring. Above all, without prayer, the Gospel will be words but we will risk failing to meet the Person who is speaking and training us.
—Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
The Jubilee calls us to spiritual renewal and commits us to the transformation of our world, so that this year may truly become a time of jubilation, an occasion to dream of a new world where peace and justice reign. This is a moment to recover lost hope, to renew the hope in our hearts, and to sow seeds of hope amid the bleakness of our time and our world.
I hope the year ahead will be a jubilee for our Mother Earth, disfigured by profiteering; a time of jubilee for the poorer countries burdened beneath unfair debts; a time of jubilee for all those who are in bondage to forms of slavery old and new. Christians are called to bring hope to the interminable, dreary days of prisoners, to the cold and dismal lodgings of the poor, and to all those places desecrated by war and violence.
Hope is incompatible with the detachment of those who refuse to speak out against evil and the injustices perpetrated at the expense of the poor. If God can visit us, even when our hearts seem like a lowly manger, we can truly say: Hope is not dead; hope is alive and it embraces our lives forever!
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
