Medjugorje Message: September 25, 2023
Dear children! I am calling you to strong prayer. Modernism wants to enter into your thoughts and steal from you the joy of prayer and of meeting with Jesus. That is why, my dear little children, renew prayer in your families, so that my motherly heart may be joyful as in the first days, when I had chosen you, and day and night prayer resounded—and Heaven was not silent but abundantly bestowed peace and blessing on this place of grace. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
October 2023
In this month of October dedicated to the Rosary, Our Lady begins her message to the world with a very interesting adjective: “I am calling you to STRONG prayer.” Although she never mentions it by name, we can say with assurance that there is no stronger prayer than the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Its power for miraculous victories, healings, and conversions of every sort is well-attested throughout history. While Our Lady’s constant plea in Medjugorje these past 42 years has been “Pray, pray, pray!” , she has refrained from giving detailed directions on specific types of prayer, leaving that choice up to us—except during the early days of her apparitions in the 1980’s, when, as a gentle Mother, she led the six children-visionaries, along with the whole parish of St. James, toward a gradual praying of the whole Rosary, beginning with just 7 Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s, and Glory Be’s. Eventually, the entire Rosary was prayed communally, beginning before Mass and finishing after Mass each day.
Additionally, pilgrims from around the world witnessed the ubiquitous presence of the Rosary everywhere in Medjugorje, with people from all walks of life openly carrying and praying their beads throughout the day, no matter where or what the occasion and circumstance. The Holy Rosary became the quintessential symbol of Our Lady’s “School of Prayer” at Medjugorje. Indeed, this proved to be “strong” prayer that seeded millions of radical conversions (and “re-versions”) to the faith and to the Church—but most importantly, conversions of heart and life—both for the local villagers and for the millions of pilgrims who traveled there and then returned home with a Rosary prayer practice.
Why does Our Lady now employ the unusual wording of calling us to “STRONG prayer”? When something is “strong,” it has power, vigor, energy, potency, firmness, and security, so that it is well-defended, solid, sound, durable, substantial, resistant to challenges or threats. Any kind of prayer can be “strong,” depending upon our disciplined practice, devotion, and affinity for it. Our Lady has often stated that prayer should be “JOY” for us. Thus, “strong” prayer will be a joyful experience of deepening our relationship with God.
For many people, liturgical prayer—attending Mass and celebrating the Eucharist—is the most “strong,” including the aspect of music and singing. For many others, silent meditation and contemplative prayer is very “strong” as a dedicated daily practice. For others, charismatic prayer is especially “strong” with the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit being shared. For many, intercessory prayer for the healing and wholeness of the world is particularly “strong.” Some find praying the Word in Sacred Scripture through lectio divina or journaling in written words to be the most “strong.” Some find more “strength” in quiet, solitary prayer; others, in vocal, communal prayer. When Our Lady says, “I am calling you to strong prayer,” she is calling each of us to WHATEVER constitutes “strong prayer” for us, in our unique spiritual journey and walk with Jesus into greater intimacy and relationship. While it is normal to practice a wide variety of prayer forms, each of us will be led by the Spirit to what is particularly “strong” for us.
Whatever form it takes, our prayer must be “strong” because Our Lady says: “Modernism wants to enter into your thoughts and steal from you the joy of prayer and of meeting with Jesus.” What does Our Lady mean by “modernism“? First of all, every “-ism” is an IDEOLOGY of some sort: rigid adherence to a belief, theory, system, or movement that views the world through a particular, exclusive lens. The ideology’s “lens” is generally discriminatory, hostile, fearful and ignorant of other, differing “-ism’s,” ideologies, or viewpoints. The tragic polarization and divisiveness of our “culture wars” today are largely due to a pantheon of idolatrous “-ism’s” or ideologies (mostly political) that pit people against each other in absurd and ridiculous ways, invading every aspect of life.
While “modernism” has had specific iterations in certain periods of history, with “Modernist movements” in art, literature, industry, science, politics and religion, Our Lady seems to be using the word as a broad umbrella “catch-all” term for ANY of the dangerous “-ism’s” and ideologies in our “modern” age that steal the peace and foment divisions within our society, driving us far from PRAYER. We might translate Our Lady’s word “modernism” as “the worldly spirit of our present age.”
Her warning of “modernism” focuses on its dark distractibility—its invasive power to “enter into our thoughts” and “steal the joy of prayer and of meeting with Jesus.” Indeed, the relentless “chatter” of our thinking brain with its ego-centered “me, me, me” thoughts has always been a challenge to prayer—even for those who have lived in desert seclusion or monastic cells. The “modernism” to which Our Lady refers now is the same external worldly influence that the ancients faced, of which the Scriptures warn us:
“Seek what is above…Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col 3:2-3) “Peace I leave with you….Not as the world gives do I give it to you.” (Jn 14:27) “Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God.” (Rom 12:2) “My kingdom does not belong to this world.” (Jn 18:36) “If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, the world hates you.” (Jn 15:19) “The god of this age has blinded the eyes of unbelievers, so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” (2 Cor 4:4) “Do not love the world or the things of the world…For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.” (1 Jn 2:15-17)
These Scripture verses and many more throughout the Bible expose what Our Lady calls “modernism“: the addictive attachment to the external, selfish spirit of the present age—the “worldliness” that has plagued humanity forever. In our own time, surely “modernism” includes the overwhelming distractions of our technology-and-media-saturated daily life, constantly “plugged in” to screens relentlessly piping in the “noise” of ideological propaganda’s “-ism’s” and our negative, violently conflicted, and sexually exploitive 21st century mass culture. We are bombarded by these toxic influences 24/7 without reprieve, which surely damages our human relations and “steals the joy of prayer and of meeting with Jesus.”
What does Our Lady advise us to do in this extremely difficult situation? After exposing our dire predicament, she says: “That is why, my dear little children, renew prayer in your families, so that my motherly heart may be joyful as in the first days, when I had chosen you, and day and night prayer resounded—and Heaven was not silent but abundantly bestowed peace and blessing on this place of grace.” Here Our Lady waxes nostalgic for “the first days” of her apparitions in Medjugorje, which began in 1981. Indeed, many of us experienced intense, dramatic, and radical conversions of heart as pilgrims there in those “first days” of the 80’s and 90’s. Our Lady seems to be addressing the village itself, affectionately calling them “my dear little children,” with the plea to “renew prayer in your families.”
The family Rosary has been a cross-cultural Catholic tradition for centuries, but is virtually unheard of in contemporary American society, where the average family no longer even eats dinner together, much less prays a Rosary. Instead, parents and children live hectic, rushed, fragmented lives, running in different directions with little weekday contact or conversation, and with similarly separate and manically disjointed weekend activities. Thus very little time is available for meaningful, joyful interaction with each other or with God in prayer.
In such a frenetic lifestyle, to “renew prayer in your families” seems a tall order, yet carving out a communal Rosary period would perhaps be the most realistic way to practice “strong prayer” and offset the invasive, joy-robbing poison of “modernism.” A family Rosary (unplugged from all devices!) can be prayed in 15 minutes. To schedule this sacred time every morning or evening, or on certain days of the week, could be a huge “game changer” for our decadent, disintegrating American lifestyle—one that would bring unimagined blessings of conversion to both parents and children and to struggling marriages.
Our Lady’s vulnerable, open heart of love and pain is on full display as she wistfully recalls “the first days, when I had chosen you, and day and night prayer resounded.” She had “chosen” the six young visionaries; the small, poor, humble village of Medjugorje in communist Yugoslavia; and the Franciscan parish of St. James as the place where she would appear and bring about countless miracles flowing from this daily intersection of earth and Heaven. The people of Medjugorje responded to her call with open hearts of love, their Catholic faith re-ignited, taking up daily Mass, twice-weekly fasting, and continual prayer of the Holy Rosary. Their example gave powerful witness to millions of pilgrims who visited and returned home spiritually renewed, thus spreading the conversion brought by the Queen of Peace. Clearly she “chose” us, as well, and called us from afar to her School of Prayer!
Our Lady reminds us that in those early years “Heaven was not silent but abundantly bestowed peace and blessing on this place of grace.” She longs for a return to those “first days” through our renewal of “STRONG prayer,” as we once had in the “joy of meeting with Jesus.” In Revelation 2:4-5, Jesus says to the church at Ephesus, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” He calls for them to remember their first love, just as Our Lady is recalling this to our minds with regard to her apparitions and the prayerful conversions of heart and life that were ours in “the first days.”
Her implicit message is that once again Heaven will respond to our prayerful, reconverted hearts and “abundantly bestow peace and blessing” as before, when our intimate relationship with the Lord is re-ignited, as described in Scripture by the prophet Hosea: “I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart….I will espouse you to me forever, in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord…I will respond to the heavens, and they shall respond to the earth.” (Hos 2: 16-23) In this month of October, let us renew our practice of the “strong prayer” of the Holy Rosary—both individually and in communion with our family and others!
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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
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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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October 1: St. Therese of Lisieux
St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) is an important teacher. The French Catholic Church of her time emphasized an ideal of human perfection, which took the forms of legalism, perfectionism, and self-preoccupation. Yet Therese humbly trusted her own experience, as all mystics must, and taught the spirituality of imperfection instead. She called it her “Little Way.”
Therese came to a complete reversal of her original idea of what it means to be on the path of holiness and undid centuries of Catholic legalism. And against all odds, this 24-year-old, formally uneducated French woman, has been declared a “Doctor of the Church.” She showed us that Gospel holiness has little to do with moral achievements or the elimination of defects—those are ego needs. It is almost entirely about receiving God’s free gift of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. We know God by participation in God, not by trying to please God from afar.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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October 4: St. Francis of Assisi
Francis of Assisi grasped something of the mystery of God and of God’s humility. He did not study theology. He simply spent long hours in prayer, often in caves, mountains, or places of solitude. Love, not knowledge, allowed Francis to enter into the great mystery we call “God.” Francis came to know the God of humble love by meditating on and imitating the poor and humble Christ.
—Ilia Delio, OSF
Francis patterned his life after the gospel simplicity and humility of Jesus, whose self-emptying and letting go of power was at the heart of his divinity. Divine power is found in downward mobility and identification with human suffering, not in weaponry, status, or comfort. God’s love for the world is expressed in solidarity with the least.
Jesus embodied a radically different lifestyle than that of the heads of church and state in Francis’ time. Francis discovered that the glory of God is found in identification with the most vulnerable people, the poor, disabled, and leprous. The incarnation of Christ means that Christ is one of us, living among the poor and dispossessed. A poor Christ reveals “the divine pathos,” God’s intimate experience of the world’s pain and suffering.
Foolish by the world’s standards, Francis, Clare, and their followers sought the way of holy poverty or spiritual simplicity that breaks down walls and builds bridges with all God’s creatures. Better than none, equal to all in need of God’s grace, Francis and Clare found God in “the least of these.” They served Christ by letting go of power in order to become siblings of all creation.
—Bruce Epperly
A Franciscan Renaissance would be ecological, nonviolent, economic, and inclusive. At this time of ecological crisis, we need a spiritual vision that integrates love for God and our neighbor with love for the earth. The ecological vision of Francis was about the interconnectedness of all creation, so that we see every creature as sister or brother.
In this time of violence—of school shootings and war in Europe, when politicians promote more guns and bombs to make us “safer”—we need St. Francis’ message and example of nonviolence as never before. Christianity began as a nonviolent peace movement, a community known for love, gathered around a table of fellowship and reconciliation, armed only with the basin and towel of service, not the bomb and gun of violence. A Franciscan Renaissance would invite us to become, in St. Clare’s words, not violent warriors but nonviolent “mirrors of Christ” for others to see and follow.
In this time of a larger and larger percentage of wealth being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals, the Franciscan vision is deeply economic. St. Francis rose in the early stages of modern capitalism and saw its potential dangers. He offered an alternative value system where the poor and outcast matter more than money, luxury and power. While our current economy places no value on creation except as a source for raw materials that we consume, a Franciscan Renaissance would “redeem”—re-assess and revalue—everything, to rediscover the priceless beauty of the earth and its creatures.
In this time of exclusion, division, classism, racism, and religious prejudice, we need the example of St. Francis and St. Clare, who modeled deep inclusiveness and solidarity within the interconnectedness of all life—all life beloved by God.
—Brian McLaren and Patrick Carolan
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October 15: St. Teresa of Avila
Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), a Spanish Carmelite nun, mystic, reformer, and Doctor of the Church, wrote the spiritual classics The Interior Castle, The Way of Perfection, and her Autobiography. Her best known prayer is “Nada Te Turbe“:
Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you.
All things are passing. God never changes.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.
She also wrote:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
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October 7: Our Lady of the Rosary
As Mother of all humanity, Our Lady must know everything which bears directly or indirectly on the supernatural life which she has been commissioned to give and nourish in us. This universal knowledge of all that concerns our destiny—our thoughts, desires, the dangers in which we are, the graces we need, temporal affairs connected with our salvation—is a prerogative that belongs to Mary because of her motherhood of God and her spiritual motherhood of human beings. Knowing our spiritual and temporal needs, Mary is impelled by her great charity to intercede for us. She who has loved God and souls to the extent of delivering up her Son Jesus on Calvary, is in consequence all-powerful with God and with Jesus to obtain all that is necessary for the salvation of those who turn to her.
—Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.
Just as Mary’s function in the Incarnation was to knit together the body and soul of Jesus the Christ, her role in our life is also to knit together body and soul throughout the course of our spiritual evolution. Her work is the work of integration. As a bridge, she joins human and divine in the depths of the Self, enabling them to function as one. The Rosary is an integral spiritual practice that holds immense power and potential for bridging our human and divine natures, thus accelerating both personal and planetary evolution for the good of the world.
Throughout the long and varied history of prayer beads used across many cultures and religions of antiquity, there has been a common spiritual experience and realization about their use. Whether Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, the practice is designed to move one out of the head and into the heart, or core being—to aid in connecting with the sacred presence of God within.
In all the traditions, repetitive prayer of a short sacred phrase or word helps to silence the mind, empty one of excesses, simplify and make one less complicated and fragmented, more grounded, more in balance and harmony, more aware and awake, less reactionary, angry and defensive, and more loving. Above all, the use of prayer beads is an integrative practice that facilitates the engagement of our whole being, with all three centers—physical, mental, and emotional—working together simultaneously to open the heart to Divine Presence. This is the essence of prayer.
—Michele Maxwell
from Mary, Matrix of Change: Personal and Global Transformation through the Rosary
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
The Rosary is a simple contemplative prayer, accessible to all, great and small, the educated and those with little education. In the Rosary we turn to the Virgin Mary so that she may guide us to an ever closer union with her Son Jesus to bring us into conformity with him, to have his sentiments and to behave like him. Indeed, in the Rosary while we repeat the Hail Mary we meditate on the Mysteries, on the events of Christ’s life, so as to know and love him ever better. The Rosary is an effective means for opening ourselves to God. Each time we pray it, we are taking a step forward, towards the great destination of life: heaven.
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
