Medjugorje Message: March 25, 2022
Dear children! I am listening to your cry and prayers for peace. For years, Satan has been fighting for war. That is why God sent me among you to guide you on the way of holiness, because mankind is at a crossroad. I am calling you to return to God and to God’s Commandments that it may be good for you on earth, and that you may come out of this crisis into which you have entered because you are not listening to God Who loves you and desires to save you and lead you to a new life. Thank you for having responded to my call.
Annual Message to Mirjana: March 18, 2022
Dear children, with a motherly love I am calling you to—full of strength, faith and trust—look towards my Son. Keep opening your hearts to Him and do not be afraid, because my Son is the Light of the world and in Him is peace and hope. That is why, anew, anew I am calling you to pray for those of my children who have not come to know the love of my Son. So that my Son, with His light of love and hope, may illuminate also their hearts; and you, my children, that He may strengthen and give you peace and hope. I am with you. Thank you.
River of Light
April 2022
This April, as we complete our Lenten journey into Easter, we have two extremely important messages from Medjugorje to contemplate prayerfully: the March 25th monthly message to the world, given on the great Solemnity of the Annunciation when Pope Francis also consecrated Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary; and the March 18th annual apparition to Mirjana.
Our Lady’s March 25th message to the world is one of the most sobering messages she has given at Medjugorje in these 40 years since the apparitions began. She begins by saying: “I am listening to your cry and prayers for peace.” Normally, Our Lady is begging us to pray, rather than acknowledging that we are, in fact, praying. But since the February 24th invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the brutal devastation of an unjust war attacking an innocent people, killing thousands and displacing millions from their homes, has resulted in a huge worldwide outcry for peace and justice, along with an outpouring of prayer that includes Pope Francis’ Consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (as Our Lady requested in Fatima in 1917), with the world’s bishops, priests and lay faithful joining in that prayer.
While there have been civil and small-scale wars continuously throughout human history, we have been remarkably free of global war since World War II, 1939-1945—nearly 80 years ago. Yet Our Lady says, “For years, Satan has been fighting for war. That is why God sent me among you to guide you on the way of holiness, because mankind is at a crossroad.” These 40 years of the Queen of Peace visiting Medjugorje have been Heaven’s attempt to avert a war that would be a complete “game-changer” for human life on earth—and now we as a whole human species are standing “at a crossroad” upon which our fate will be determined. Like the ancient Israelites, we are being offered the same choice that Moses presented: “I call heaven and earth to witness this day that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” (Dt 30:19) How we CHOOSE—exercising the gift of our free will—shall determine whether human life will continue or suffer extinction.
With the nuclear arsenal currently amassed by the global superpowers, a “world war” is no longer a sustainable option for Planet Earth; surely those few who might survive a fiery nuclear holocaust would wish they were dead. And nuclear war is not the only imminent threat to human survival. The “War of Overconsumption” —also driven by Satanic ego—is already well underway, quickly rendering our planet unlivable through climate change borne of our myopic greed for fossil fuels, plastics, daily “Amazon Prime deliveries,” and other substances that are fouling our own nest. Both of these “wars” that “Satan has been fighting for” would result in a world engulfed in flames—a literal “hell on earth.”
And the Satanic groundwork for all war is the sowing of DIVISION between people: ideological division, political division, economic division, racial and gender division, interpersonal division. Certainly we have seen Satan’s victorious inroads in the many arenas of life where people have been urged toward strife and division rather than unity and peace. Some chief demonic “tools” have been partisan political grandstanding and mass media technologies for spreading its poison to all.
To be “at a crossroad” means that we are on a precipice of consequential decision, an inescapable moment of choosing a direction, picking a path, selecting a trajectory that will determine our future. Several times Our Lady has told us that without a return to God we “do not have a future.” Today she says, “I am calling you to return to God and to God’s Commandments that it may be good for you on earth, and that you may come out of this crisis into which you have entered because you are not listening to God Who loves you and desires to save you and lead you to a new life.” We as an entire human race are “at a crossroad.” Our choice is to either stay on our present path—“the broad road that leads to destruction” (Mt 7:13) by continuing the “status quo” of a selfish/narcissistic lifestyle revolving around our useless egoic “programs for happiness” and our craving for “ease and comfort” without regard for their effect on the rest of the world—OR “return to God and to God’s Commandments” by “entering the narrow gate that leads to life” (Mt 7:14) through conversion of heart and walking “the way of holiness” in communion with the whole human family. Those are our choices at this historic “crossroad” for mankind.
Just HOW do we “return to God and to God’s Commandments that it may be good for us on earth“? For 40 years, Our Lady has called us to “Pray, pray, pray!” But obviously we are not “praying” in the way Our Lady means, for we have now reached this “crossroad” at which “Satan fighting for war” is SUCCEEDING while human beings are dying, physically and spiritually, in droves—not just in Ukraine, but throughout the world. Our Lady bluntly explains WHY we are in this colossal mess—“this crisis into which you have entered because you are not listening to God Who loves you and desires to save you and lead you to a new life.” In case anyone is still asleep and unaware that our situation is dire, grim, and deadly serious, Our Lady says we are in “CRISIS” —a crisis created by our own inattentiveness to God “who loves us and desires to save us.”
From this clear instruction of Our Lady, we can see that for her, PRAYER = LISTENING to the God who LOVES us” —not “talking” to a God who judges, hates, threatens and punishes us! We need LESS fear-based “talking” to God in an effort to “change God’s mind” and MORE love-based “listening to God” in an effort to open ourselves for change toward greater conformity with Divine order. Prayer is not about “changing” God or God’s “mood” (which is always only LOVE)—but about changing US (in a conversion toward Love).
To “return to God’s Commandments” simply means: “RETURN TO LOVE,” for in the gospel teaching, Christ distilled everything down to two simple commandments, “upon which hang the whole Law (of Moses) and all the prophets” : Love of God and Love of Neighbor, with our “neighbor” understood as every living being on earth (Lk 10:25-37), including our enemies. (Mt 5:44)
We can “return to God and to God’s Commandments” of LOVE, first by “listening” to God in a dedicated period of SILENT PRAYER EACH DAY—opening our minds and hearts to the Divine Indwelling Presence and consenting to be guided by the Holy Spirit “who will lead us into all truth.” (Jn 16:13) Secondly, we can “listen to God” in SACRED SCRIPTURE through the time-tested holy practice of “Lectio Divina,” where we allow God to slowly penetrate our rigid minds and stony hearts with the life-giving LOVE contained in a single word or phrase of biblical truth that speaks to us in our personal life situation as a “customized call” to deeper love. The Rosary, the Mass, and Eucharistic Adoration are other great venues for “LISTENING to God.” These prayer forms are ways that we can cooperate with the “God who loves us and desires to save us and lead us to a new life.” In this “new life” —both here on earth and later in heaven—every impulse toward cruelty will be replaced with a movement of kindness.
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One week prior to Our Lady’s monthly message in Medjugorje, she gave her annual birthday message to Mirjana, in which she called us to “look towards my Son” with “strength, faith and trust” ; to “keep opening our hearts to Him and do not be afraid, because my Son is the Light of the world and in Him is peace and hope.” This confident, uplifting message provides a helpful counterweight to the somber seriousness of her March 25th message about our “crisis” of Satan’s warmongering on earth at this dark time. In Medjugorje, Our Lady has never tried to “scare us straight“; instead, she has echoed the consistent scriptural teaching to “Be not afraid,” for “perfect love casts out fear.” (1 Jn 4:18) She knows that FEAR is the underlying cause of so much fighting and discord in our lives, and that planting seeds of fear in people always brings with it weeds of anger, hatred, division, and violence.
Thus Our Lady never refers to the dangerous “villains” and “criminals” who wreak havoc and brutality on our world stage by negative or fearful names, but only as “those who have not come to know the love of my Son.” She asks us “anew, anew…to pray for those of my children…so that my Son, with His light of love and hope, may illuminate also their hearts.” As Jesus taught, we must PRAY for those who persecute the world through their darkened hearts and ignorance of the LOVE GOD, that they may be enlightened and converted by the Christ-Spirit into a new consciousness.
Finally, in the message to Mirjana, Our Lady prays for all of us—that Jesus “may strengthen and give you peace and hope.” How desperately we need this great gift today! May the darkness of our sins and those of the whole world soon be overcome and outshone by the glorious Resurrection Light of the Risen Christ bringing PEACE and HOPE to our earth in joyful alleluias and the Triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart.
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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
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WE CANNOT SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS WITH THE SAME THINKING THAT WE USED WHEN WE CREATED THEM.
—Albert Einstein
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Lenten Examination of Conscience Based on Pope Francis’ Consecration Prayer
In his Consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pope Francis included an open admission of our sins. Following are some of the phrases he used in listing for Our Lady the part we have played in the sad state of our world. Let us consider each of these admissions deeply as they relate to our own personal lives, and consider confessing them in our private prayer and in the Sacrament of Reconciliation:
+ “We have strayed from the path of peace.”
+ “forgotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the past”
+ “disregarded the commitments we made”
+ “grew sick with greed”
+ “thought only of our own interests”
+ “indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns”
+ “chose to ignore God”
+ “to be satisfied with our illusions”
+ “to grow arrogant and aggressive”
+ “to suppress innocent lives”
+ “to stockpile weapons”
+ “stopped being our neighbor’s keeper”
+ “stopped being steward of our common home…the garden of the earth”
+ “have run out of the wine of hope”
+ “joy has fled”
+ “fraternity has faded”
+ “forgotten our humanity”
+ “squandered the gift of peace”
+ “opened our heart to violence and destructiveness”
+ “hatred and thirst for revenge”
+ “hardened hearts”
+ “dryness of our hearts”
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When Jesus says that he has come to bring fire to this earth, he is referring not to the fire of division but the fire of love. He preached and incarnated only love, and that sometimes sparked its opposite. He triggered hatred in people, but he never hated in return. Instead he wept in empathy, understanding that sometimes the message of love and inclusivity triggers hatred inside of those who for whatever reason cannot fully bear the word “love.”
We frequently ignore the Gospel. Factionalism, tribalism, racism, economic self-interest, historical difference/privilege, and fear cause bitter polarization and trigger a hatred that eats away at the fabric of community; and that hatred justifies itself by appealing to some high moral or religious ground.
But the Gospel never allows for that. It never lets us bracket charity and it refuses us permission to justify our bitterness on moral or religious grounds. It calls us to a love, an empathy and a forgiveness that reach across every divide to wish good and do good to those who hate us. And it categorically forbids rationalizing hatred in the name of truth, justice, or right dogma. We need to be careful inside our culture wars. There is never an excuse for lack of fundamental charity.
—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
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Somewhere someone needs help.
Send love.
It matters.
If you can’t get there yourself,
Then take a deep breath.
Breathe in the weight of their troubles,
Breathe out and send all those burdens
into the Light
Where sorrows can be held
With the most tender and infinite grace.
Breathe in what you can do.
Breathe out what you can’t change.
Spool out a thread of connection.
Send courage and calm.
For the nights can be long
And filled with shadows
And sometimes terrible
Unexpected waters will rise.
Somewhere someone needs help.
Send love.
It matters.
—Carrie Newcomer
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Easter Light: Holding Crucifixion and Resurrection Together
Suffering and death are everywhere, from roadkill to mass shootings to tsunamis: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only creation, but we ourselves…” (Rom 8:22) Paul’s metaphor of “labor pains” implies that suffering is woven into the process of creation from the very start, and it continues through the birth of the new creation. We experience resurrection, as St. Paul did, embedded in travail itself: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” (2 Cor 4:8)
Without the resurrection to enliven his experience of suffering, Paul would have been both afflicted and crushed, perplexed and driven to despair, struck down and destroyed. But he is not. The Risen Christ illumines everything. According to the gospel accounts, the risen Jesus repeatedly displays his wounds: they are not left behind. Christ is both crucified and risen, and baptism is immersion into both sides of this paschal mystery. The resurrection irradiates present affliction with hope streaming to us from the glory yet to be revealed.
—Julia Gatta
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FEAR unites the different parts of our false selves very quickly. The ego moves forward by contraction, self-protection, and refusal–by saying “No.” Contraction gives us focus, purpose, direction, superiority, and a strange kind of security. It takes our aimless anxiety, covers it up, and tries to turn it into purposeful urgency, which brings a kind of drivenness. But this drive is not peaceful or happy. It is filled with fear and locates all its problems “out there,” never “in here.” Fear and contraction allow us to eliminate other people, exclude them, and expel them, at least in our minds. This gives us a sense of being in control and having boundaries—even “holy” boundaries. But people who are controlling are afraid of losing something. Fear (mostly unrecognized) justifies our knee-jerk rebellion or need to dominate.
The SOUL or the True Self does not proceed by contraction but by expansion. It moves forward, not by exclusion, but by inclusion. It sees things deeply and broadly not by saying “no” but by saying “Yes,” at least on some level, to whatever comes its way.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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“Jerusalem, Jerusalem…! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke 13)
Jesus calls Herod a fox and then refers to himself as a mother hen. A mother hen. I can’t say that God is going to keep bad things from happening to you. Because honestly, nothing actually keeps danger from being dangerous. A mother hen cannot actually keep a determined fox from killing her chicks. So where does that leave us? Maybe it’s not safety that keeps us from being afraid. Maybe it’s love. Which means that a Mother Hen of a God doesn’t keep foxes from being dangerous…a Mother Hen of a God keeps foxes from being what determines how we experience the beautiful gift of being alive.
God the Mother Hen gathers all of her vulnerable little ones under God’s protective wings so that we know where we belong. Faith in God does not bring you safety. The fox still exists. Danger still exists. Danger is not optional, but fear is. Maybe the opposite of fear isn’t bravery. Maybe the opposite of fear is love. So in the response to our own Herods, to the very real dangers of this world, we have an invitation as people of faith: to respond by loving.
—Nadia Bolz-Weber
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The dead body of Jesus was raised, and the cosmic universe at its deepest level suddenly had a new set of laws, and the very atoms of this universe as nature first arranged them, were rearranged. Something radically new appeared within history. What is new in the resurrection is not just the unbelievable new possibility of physical resurrection, but the equally unbelievable possibility of the newness of life that forgiving and being forgiven brings. In our everyday lives that is how we are asked to appropriate the resurrection of Jesus: by forgiving and by letting ourselves be forgiven. Jesus has been raised, an unbelievable newness has burst into our world, and there is something even beyond our wounds, sins, and betrayals. The chain of anger has been broken.
—Fr. Ron Rohleiser, OMI
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The Christian journey is by definition a Lenten journey. Following Jesus through the cross should not be a special effort six weeks of the year; rather, it is the path into God. It is a path of conversion, a realization that we are unfinished, insecure and a bit broken. “Conversion” is based on the Greek word “metanoia” which literally means “change of mind” or “change of heart.” What is this change of mind and heart? It is essentially a process of “unlearning” or rewiring our thoughts, attitudes and actions, from self-centeredness to God-centeredness.
—Sr. Ilia Delio, OSF
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We begin our prayer by disposing our body. Let it be relaxed and calm, but inwardly alert. The root of prayer is interior silence. We may think of prayer as thoughts or feelings expressed in words. But this is only one expression. Deep praying is the laying aside of thoughts. It is the opening of mind and heart, body and feelings—our whole being—to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond words, thoughts, and emotions. We do not resist them or suppress them. We accept them as they are and go beyond them, not by effort, but by letting them all go by.
We open our awareness to God whom we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than than consciousness itself…the Source from whom our life emerges at every moment. We sink into this Presence. This Presence is immense, yet so humble; awe-inspiring, yet so gentle; limitless, yet so intimate, tender and personal. Everything in my life is transparent in this Presence which is healing, nonjudgmental, self-giving, boundless in compassion. We surrender to the attraction to be still, silent, open, attentive, motionless….to be loved, just to be.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
This cruel and senseless war, like every war, represents a defeat for everyone, for every one of us. We need to reject war, a place of death where fathers and mothers bury their children, where men kill their brothers and sisters without even having seen them, where the powerful decide and the poor die. This means destroying the future….This is the bestiality of war—a barbarous and sacrilegious act!
War should not be something that is inevitable. We should not accustom ourselves to war. Instead, we need to convert today’s anger into a commitment for tomorrow, because if, after what is happening, we remain like we were before, we will all be guilty in some way. Before the danger of self-destruction, may humanity understand that the moment has come to abolish war, to erase it from human history before it erases human history. I beg every political leader to reflect on this, to dedicate themselves to this!….to understand how each day of war worsens the situation for everyone. Let us continue to pray untiringly to the Queen of Peace.
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Mark Your Calendar Jan 25 Sat 
PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
Feb 22 Sat PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
Mar 29 Sat PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
Apr 26 Sat PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
May 31 Sat PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
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PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
PEACE MASS: 12 pm, St. Mary’s Church, 202 N. St. Mary’s; 11:30 am Peace Rosary
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
