Medjugorje Message: July 25, 2026
Dear children! While darkness and peacelessness rule in many hearts, you, little children, be prayer and my extended hands of love. Little children, place the Sacred Scripture in a visible place in your family and read it, so that it may be an encouragement for you to conversion and a new life; because Satan is strong and seduces hearts. Your hearts, through my maternal Heart, I desire to commend to the Heart of my Son Jesus, so that He, the Risen One, may reign in you and joy may begin to reign in you and around you. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
August 2026
The Reign of Joyful Hearts
“While darkness and peacelessness rule in many hearts…”
(for a riven nation are we, dearest Mother—
gutted by conflict, split from self and each other;
locked in isolation, hopeless of a livable, forgivable future;
stressed, scared, disgusted, angry—caged and enraged in our fears:
this runaway machine’s grinding gears of war, injustice, and greed
destroying our poor, weary souls in need!)
“You, little children, be prayer and my extended hands of love”
(Don’t succumb to the general malaise,
overwhelmed by the enormity of these evil days;
be the counterpoint and counter pose to the postures of power and hate:
no retreat into self-protective barricades—fear’s gate!
But open your soul to vulnerable listening prayer,
then hospitality’s outreach to all:
offering our God-Who-Is-Love to heal planet Earth after the fall.)
“Place Sacred Scripture visibly in your family and read it, that it may encourage you to conversion and a new life.”
(Read it as Christ did—to proclaim Good News of help for all:
the left-behind, lost, abandoned, forgotten, oppressed, distressed,
mistreated, conquered, colonized, unwanted and shut-out of this world.
Read it as care for the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, and imprisoned—
not to gratify and glorify the pompous and powerful,
ignorant and arrogant empire builders of earth: NO—
for such reading offers no newness or change to the “status quo.”)
“…because Satan is strong and seduces hearts. Your hearts, through my maternal Heart, I desire to commend to the Heart of my Son Jesus.”
(I must meet seduction with seduction, dear ones, for
my Immaculate Heart to triumph over your ancient enemy:
I must battle for your hearts, now lured away by your culture’s
demonic ego temptings—the awful offerings that
sate your shallow cravings for a moment, bringing
wreckage for a lifetime in the wake of their vanity.
I must draw your hearts, through mine, toward the Sacred Heart of Jesus
that our union of Two Hearts Joined may have the force of desire
to pull you out of the devil’s flaming clutches, a raging fire
now gripping the world in a claw of selfish unconscious yearning:
consuming, devouring the whole Creation, already burning!)
“So that He, the Risen One, may reign in you and joy may begin to reign in you and around you.”
(for when your heart’s removed from demonic ego strife,
and given entirely to the ONE Resurrection and Life—
given wholly “to Jesus through Mary” —
this union of Hearts brings a newness to amaze:
you’ll see Christ’s reign of LOVE begin to rule your days,
causing JOY to dominate everything you do, within and around you;
for now, each and every instance—both “good” and “bad”—
becomes another chance to LOVE with my extended hands.)
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PERENNIAL PEARLS…
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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LOVE is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mystical of cosmic forces. LOVE is the primal and universal psychic energy. LOVE is a sacred reserve of energy; it is the blood of spiritual evolution.
—Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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Every being exists in intimate relation with other beings and in constant exchange of gifts with each other.
—Fr. Thomas Berry, CP
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Recognizing “enoughness” is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more.
—Robin Wall Kimmerer
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Our Amma/Abba, Divine Source-Who-Is-Love,
Whole and Holy is Your Name.
May Your reign of Love come, Your will of Love be done
Here on earth, just as it is with You.
You give us each day all that we need
and You hold no accounts against us,
just as we wish to hold no accounts against each other or ourselves.
Leave us not in temptation of believing the lie of separation,
But deliver us from its consequences of acting out in fear
and the evil delusions of ego.
For Yours is the power and the glory of endless Life, Light, and Love
now and forever, amen.
—Aramaic translation of the Lord’s Prayer
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AUGUST PEARLS…
If divine Providence means anything at all, there can be nothing haphazard about the allocation of human sufferings. If not a bird falls to the ground that God does not know all about, not a human being suffers an affliction with which God is unconcerned. Even those afflictions we bring down upon ourselves by our stupidity, obstinacy, failure to respond to his light…can be used for God’s greater glory.
It is a mistake to look upon every unpleasant thing that happens to us as a deserved or God-sent punishment; far better to look upon it as a God-sent opportunity, whether deserved or not. What may well be consequences of sin can be pressed into the service of sanctity. A man may ruin his health by a life of dissipation and then spend his enforced retirement in the study of the spiritual life…Indeed one of the signs of advancement in the spiritual life is the readiness to turn to good account things which of themselves are far from good. Much that surrounds us is evil, but to the clean of heart it does not appear so.
People who allow the evil in the world to dominate their horizon either become fascinated by it and plunge in, or are disgusted by it and made miserable. The horizon does not have to be crowded with evils, and though it would be absurd to pretend that sin was not really very widespread, it would be equally absurd to see it everywhere and conclude that there was no longer any good. Sin, temptation, suffering, disaster, cruelty, war: these things hit the headlines because they possess greater sensation-content than generosity, justice, order, kindness, truth, peace. It is for the Christian to look squarely at the first list in a spirit of faith and penitence, and confidently at the second in the knowledge that he can make his own contribution to the sum of good there.
—Fr. Hubert van Zeller, OSB
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Where is Jesus going? To Jerusalem, Calvary, hell, and finally into the bosom of the Father. In that place we do not need anything else. Once we have given ourselves totally to God, all that God is and has is ours. God is unconditional love, and when we are unconditional love, in some way, we too are God. That is the invitation of the Gospel and the ultimate purpose of every kind of ministry, service, ritual, and sacrament.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals who have carried their sinning to extremes should not despair or say, “I am too great a sinner to change,” or “God would not want me.” God takes anyone who is willing to love with a “wild tranquility.” An unrepentant sinner cannot love God anymore than someone on dry land can swim; but as soon as someone takes his errant energies to God and asks for their redirection, he will become happy, as he was never happy before.
It is not the wrong things done in the past that keep one from happiness; it is present persistence in that wrong. Someone who turns back to God, as the Magdalene and Paul, welcomes the discipline that will help him change his former ways. Mortification is good only when it is done out of love of God. The right sort perfects our human nature; the gardener cuts the green shoots from the root of the bush not to kill the rose, but to make it bloom more beautifully.
—Servant of God Archbishop Fulton Sheen
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Mysticism and Activism?
There is a stereotype of mystics seeking to escape the world, concerned only with the ecstasy of their own experience of union with the Divine; yet in that union is a doorway that opens out into everything and everyone. The experience of oneness brings us back into relationship with the allness. The oneness and the allness inter-be. Thus we feel deeply the wounds of a battered world, and the suffering and needs of the people, including—as Howard Thurman said in Jesus and the Disinherited, “those with their backs against the wall”—the disenfranchised, the marginalized, and the oppressed.
Inaction is not an option. The mystic worldview creates an ethical mandate, and it offers a new way to enter the world of social transformation—from the position of oneness rather than dualism. It shifts the paradigm. Thurman often quoted union leader Eugene Debs: “While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal element, I am of it. And while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
Spiritual disciplines are those practices by which we remove the barriers to our “inner altar”—our place of communion with God. So activism can be a spiritual discipline: the necessity to identify with, and work for the liberation and reconciliation of all parties in order to restore beloved community.
—Liza Rankow
There is no opposition between action and contemplation. Interior experience is geared to action. It is designed to soften up our self-centered disposition, our compulsive motivations, and to open us up completely to God and the genuine service of others. Service flows out of our consenting to God’s presence and is a sign of the transformation God works in us. By making oneself a servant of everyone, the divine healing of Christ can flow through us without our getting in the way.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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Growing Past Our “Insider/Outsider” Group-Think
There is nothing wrong with identifying with groups. The problems come when we over-identify with them. When we over-identify with a group, we give them unquestioning loyalty, whether or not their system of values is moral. Well-established groups often resist change because their members over-identify with the group and as a result they stagnate or even become dangerous, since anyone who questions the group’s principles can be accused of being a traitor.
Once we get a bit older and more mature, we need to be able to re-assess the values we have been taught, as they may not always be healthy for us. The sometimes-erroneous values of others must not stand in the way of true growth. Knowing that something is wrong may call for withdrawing from a group, but this is essential if we are to grow.
—Murchadh O’ Madagain
God knows no political or religious boundaries. The old maps are not relevant in this new kingdom. In the kingdom that Jesus is preaching, there are no rigid barriers between insiders and outsiders. The former universally-accepted and unquestioned social and religious boundaries are swept away. The kingdom of God is open to everyone. The Abba whom Jesus revealed is the God of the human race as a family. Everyone must be concerned about everyone else. Unconditional love is the name of the game.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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August 15th: The Assumption of Mary into Heaven
Every human story, even that of the Mother of God, is brief on this earth and comes to an end. Yet nothing is lost….We are right to see in Mary, assumed into heaven, our own destiny. She is given to us as the sign that the Resurrection of Jesus was no isolated event, no mere exception. In Christ, we, too, can “swallow up death.” To be sure, it is God’s work, not ours. Yet Mary is that wondrous union of grace and freedom, which urges each of us to have trust, courage and participation in the life of God’s people.
“He who is mighty has done great things for me.” May each of us know this joy and proclaim it with a new song. Let us not be afraid to choose life! It may seem risky and imprudent. But we are disciples of Christ. It is his love that drives us—soul and body—in our time. We no longer live for ourselves. This—and only this—spreads life and lets life prevail. Our victory over death begins here and now.
—Pope Leo XIV
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Examination of Conscience based on the Beatitudes (Mt ch. 5)
+ Do I embrace poverty of spirit—or flee from it at the speed of light?
+ For whom have I been in mourning?
+ How meek am I in my response to the gospels?
+ In what ways am I hungry for righteousness?
+ How merciful am I toward those who have done me some harm?
+ How pure is my heart? What keeps it so impure? How am I trying to purify my heart?
+ What are the divisions in my life and how am I responding to them as a peacemaker?
+ What enemies do I love? For which enemies am I praying?
+ Whose threatened life am I trying to safeguard?
+ Do I accept persecution as a blessing—or do I avoid anything that might get me into trouble?
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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The ego is the ultimate hoarder. It hangs on to everything. We hoard our entitlements: I am rich, I am educated, I am a person of authority. We hoard our principles and ideologies; we hoard our self-justifications and our resentments. We use all these things to line the nest of our fragile sense of selfhood.
But Jesus sets himself against any kind of hoarding. He teaches a path of radical non-clinging. He says in effect, “Don’t clench your fist. Open your hands.” The world is abundant and provident beyond belief, and what flows through it is a coherence, a beauty, a life force that expresses the heart of God. For Jesus, the world is suffused with the glory of divine tenderness. Whenever we go into any braced position—clinging, defending, self-justifying, insisting—it immediately blinds us spiritually. It cuts us off from the whole and we can no longer see the abundance that’s flowing right here.
—Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault
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In the 13th century, Ibn Hasdai said: “Man was given two ears and one tongue, so that he may listen more than speak.” It is a privilege just to listen. And there is a fine distinction between “listen TO” and “TO listen.” When we “listen to” we are actively engaging our senses of sound for a particular audible cue. But, when we choose “to listen,” we are opening ourselves up to the sounds of silence and solitude; to ways and words unanticipated, unscripted and often unfamiliar. We do not choose these words; they choose us.
—Albert Lewis
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Wisdom from Pope Leo XIV
Psychological and psychiatric literature has documented with growing insistence how early childhood unsupervised exposure to media and digital devices can negatively impact sleep, attention span, control of emotions and relationships, especially during the most vulnerable stages of life—at times with tragic consequences.
—Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas
(Magnificent Humanity: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence)
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
