Medjugorje Message: June 25, 2024
Dear children! I rejoice with you and thank God for permitting me to be with you, to lead you and love you. Little children, peace is in danger and the family is under attack. I am calling you, little children: return to prayer in the family. Put Sacred Scripture in a visible place and read it every day. Love God above all that it may be good for you on earth. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
July 2024
This 43rd anniversary message from Our Lady Queen of Peace in Medjugorje followed a special “surprise” novena that Our Lady requested for the nine days preceding the anniversary on June 25th. Unexpectedly, on June 15th, Our Lady informed the visionary Marija that instead of having her regular daily apparition at 6:40 pm, she wished to have all the pilgrims and villagers in Medjugorje gather on Apparition Hill (Mt. Podrbdo) each night from June 16-24 to pray for peace, with Marija’s apparition from Our Lady occurring at 11:30 pm each night.
This novena did take place just as Our Lady requested, with large numbers of pilgrims and local residents climbing Podrbdo in song and prayer to attend each evening, gathering on the Hill of Apparitions several hours before the visit from Our Lady, who reminded them, “Same place, same time tomorrow” as she departed each night. The visionary Marija noted that Our Lady prayed over the crowds all nine evenings in Aramaic, her native language—which was surprising, as she usually speaks there only in Croatian.
This unexpected request from Our Lady and the nine-day change in the normal routine of Marija’s daily apparition was a bit startling—and a sobering reminder of the gravity of our current global situation and our dire need for more focused, fervent, and consistent PRAYER for PEACE. This month’s message from Our Lady to the world on June 25th—the 43rd anniversary of her apparitions at Medjugorje—confirms these concerns by clearly articulating the state of our present world in crisis.
Her message begins: “I rejoice with you and thank God for permitting me to be with you, to lead you and love you.” Here, Our Lady graciously acknowledges our celebration of this remarkable milestone—her unprecedented-in-history Marian apparitions lasting longer than any ever have before. As always, she refers everything to GOD and not to herself, with gratitude for the Divine permission she has been given to be with us, lead us, and love us these many years in Medjugorje. To begin her message with the uplifting words, “I rejoice with you…” demonstrates her motherly care for us, setting our minds and hearts at ease, dispelling fear and anxiety, and inspiring hope in the midst of our world’s turmoil.
Next, Our Lady turns to the serious business of her maternal message: “Little children, peace is in danger and the family is under attack.” This statement is true on so many levels—from the “macro” level of huge events on the world stage, to the “micro” level of our inmost individual experience. From the broad viewpoint of Heaven where Our Lady “sits,” indeed the peace of the entire planet is “in danger,” beginning with the physical survival of the biosphere itself, as our air, water, and soil fill with deadly toxins, killing hundreds of species daily and impacting our food and water supply; our climate suffers extremes of temperature leading to unprecedented natural disasters (fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, etc.) and imminent mass human migrations of “climate refugees” further destabilizing the already-fragile socioeconomics of our world cultures. While scientists have been warning us for decades of this impending environmental disaster and ways to avert it, our human GREED has left us with “heads buried in the sand” of denial and resistance to needed changes in our care for creation.
“Zooming in” from this broad whole-earth perspective, we can also see that “peace is in danger” (and already shattered) in specific parts of the world, with wars raging in Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and many other places. In addition, we see what seems to be a new “Cold War” brewing between Western democracies and Communist dictatorships (e.g. Russia, China, N. Korea), with power alliances, posturing, nuclear “saber-rattling,” and intimidation tactics appearing in the daily headlines; some are calling a Third World War “all but inevitable.”
Zooming even closer, we can see that within our own country, “peace is in danger” as senseless gun violence continues to kill us and dramatic political polarization divides communities, driving neighbors, colleagues, old friends, married couples, and close family members into separate “bunkers and silos” of estrangement, in our own personal “Cold Wars” of sad division and broken relationships. Finally, we must see that “peace is in danger” within ourselves, as the rates of suicide, homicide, mental illness, depression, anxiety, and the emptying-out of churches signal a massive loss of faith, hope, love, religion, spirituality, and that INNER PEACE upon which any “outer peace” in the world must be built.
When Our Lady says, “the family is under attack,” who does she see as the “attacker”? She has told us many times: it is Satan, the ancient enemy of humankind. Again, from the viewpoint of Heaven, the “family” that is “under attack” is the whole, worldwide HUMAN FAMILY—the children of God and of Our Blessed Mother. It is not only the “Catholic family” or the “American family” who are “under attack.” It is every family in the world—of every race, religion, nationality, language and culture. From Heaven’s perspective, we are all ONE family as human creatures created by ONE GOD. As St. Paul said, “there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, man or woman—all (of us) are ONE.” And the “attack” on the family is precisely an attack on this ONENESS or UNITY that we were meant to cherish and enjoy.
Satanic Ego always works to DIVIDE—to foster conflict and separation, focusing on and exploiting the differences between people rather than the overwhelming likenesses we share in our common human condition: all of us bleeding red blood and crying salty tears. But Satanic Ego would make of every difference a “deal-breaker,” a “hill we’re willing to die on,” rather than trying to empathically, compassionately ACCEPT the other who looks, thinks, or feels in some way “different.” This divisive demonic ego lives and thrives at every level of human life, in all environments—from unknown loners to famous celebrities to the highest-ranking figureheads of government and religion. In the Gospels, Jesus confronts divisive demonic ego in the hypocritical rule of the Pharisees within his own religion. And our own polarized U.S. politics vividly exemplifies the “divisiveness on steroids” that is Satanic Ego’s “attack on the family.”
This deadly “attack” is greatly helped by the easy weaponization of our MASS MEDIA, which has now driven deep wedges of division between peoples through unregulated social platforms (Facebook/Meta, Twitter/X, TikTok, etc.), YouTube propaganda videos, and a whole digital universe of tracking algorithms and cyber-manipulation. This “mind control” will ramp up even more with the advent of “A.I.” (artificial intelligence) to further distort and fabricate “Truth,” spoon-feeding lies to millions of naive consumers, all addicted to our devices and helplessly duped and “played” by every side through extremists who now dominate the “airwaves”—both “Right” and “Left.” (St. Thomas Aquinas taught: “The truth is in the middle.”)
An especially tragic aspect of the “family under attack” is the plight of our children and young people: the Surgeon General is now warning that social media is as addictive and harmful to their health as drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes! Suicides among teens are often directly related to online social media bullying or other psychological “screen” damage from their uncontrollable smartphone or computer use. Exacerbating this terrible predicament is the fact that the “adults in the room“—parents and grandparents—are just as ADDICTED to screens and smartphones as the youth are. Thus we have “the blind leading the blind” in our efforts to moderate or eliminate this insidious technological “threat to our peace” and “attack on the family.”
Far from the iconic Norman Rockwell images, the icon of a “family” today is a loosely-grouped set of adults and children, each staring mutely into their own smartphone, iPad, or kiddie computer screen, oblivious to each other and to the world around them. There’s no conversation, interaction, or indication of any connection or relationship between the family members—all are isolated within the private cyber-worlds of their screens….Yes, “the family is under attack“!
Our Lady continues: “I am calling you, little children: return to prayer in the family. Put Sacred Scripture in a visible place and read it every day. Love God above all that it may be good for you on earth.” These instructions from Our Lady are not new; she has called us to family prayer and Scripture reading many times before. But perhaps her words need a brief admonishing preface such as we hear on an airplane flight: “Turn OFF your phones and put AWAY your electronic devices!” Then—“return to prayer in the family….” What a monumental CONVERSION and HEALING could take place throughout our whole culture if every family would dedicate one hour each evening to simply being present together in a “device-free zone” for a shared experience of interacting with God and each other.
Last month, Our Lady asked the whole world to “form prayer groups.” Every family on earth can be the first essential “prayer group” to which we belong. And how are we to pray? This “family prayer” could be a simple communal rosary with time for sharing each member’s personal “mysteries” of the day—Joyful, Sorrowful, Luminous, Glorious. It could also be a simple reading of the daily Gospel from the Church’s liturgy of the Word in the manner of “Lectio Divina,” with each person sharing what brief word or phrase most speaks to them in their life. Each family can discover its own best prayer path.
One such hour each day, spent together with God as a family, can build INTIMACY and TRUST—both with God and each other—in an amazingly powerful way. This TRANSFORMATION of the nuclear family will have a “ripple effect” on the much larger “family” of our city, our nation, and our whole world. Many years ago, Fr. Patrick Peyton, CSC, founder of the Family Rosary Crusade, famously said, “The family that prays together stays together,” and “A world at prayer is a world at peace.” Surely this present moment in history cries out for our heeding the unvarnished truth of these teachings from Fr. Peyton and from the Queen of Peace, who gives us the hope that even at this “11th hour” of human degradation and world destruction, “it may be GOOD for you on earth“—IF we choose to “love God above all.”
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is ONE.
LOVE the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your strength.” –Dt 6:4-9
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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
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JULY 4th: INDEPENDENCE DAY
“Be free, yet without using freedom as a pretext for evil, but as slaves of God.” (1 Pt 2:16)
“For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” (Gal 5:1)
“So speak and so act as people who will be judged by the law of freedom.” (Jas 2:12)
“You were called for freedom, brothers and sisters. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love.” (Gal 5:13)
According to the Gospel, freedom is not achievement but gift. Freedom is not license but radical obedience to God’s liberating law of love. Let us give thanks for the gifts of freedom we have received and, trusting in God, let us seek to share them as gifts with all who are still enslaved by political oppression, social or economic injustice, or personal sin.
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In order to wish to be present, I must see that I am asleep. “I” am not here. I am enclosed in a circle of petty interests and avidity in which my “I” is lost. And it will remain lost unless I can relate to something higher. I need to understand that by myself, without a relation with something higher, I am nothing. I can do nothing. By myself alone, I can only remain lost in this circle of interests. I have no quality that allows me to escape. I can escape only if I feel my absolute nothingness and begin to feel the need for help. I must feel the need to relate myself to something higher. Nothing real in me can be hurt.
—Jeanne de Salzmann
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The truly sacred attitude toward life is in no sense an escape from the sense of nothingness that assails us when we are left alone with ourselves….The sacred attitude is one that does not recoil from our own inner emptiness but rather penetrates into it with awe and reverence, and the awareness of mystery. This is a most important discovery in the interior life.
—Thomas Merton
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Progress comes through the voluntary acceptance of constriction and diminishment. And that’s the unpleasant bottom line. Because all of us think that evolution comes through expansion…expanded space, expanded agency, endless opportunity….But it’s actually, spiritually speaking, in the opposite direction. It’s in the leaning into the conditions that you experience as intolerable that you gradually realize that they are exactly the conditions that bring forth something new, something that can’t be born in any other way.
—Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault
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We have entered a time of descent that takes us down…a season of decay, of shedding and endings, of falling apart and undoing. This is not a time of rising and growth. It is not a time of confidence and ease. No. We are hunkered down. From the perspective of soul, down is holy ground.
—Francis Weller
The divine way is indeed the downward way.
—Fr. Henri Nouwen
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To awaken means to realize one’s nothingness, one’s complete and absolute mechanicalness, and one’s complete and absolute helplessness. And it is not sufficient to realize it philosophically in words. It is necessary for us to realize it in clear, simple and concrete facts, in our own facts. Until we reach the stage of realizing our own nothingness, we cannot change.
—Maurice Nicoll
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Awakening is messy. You don’t transcend into some paradise or elitist inner garden. It doesn’t perfect you. You first see all the reasons you’ve so wanted to stay asleep. To awaken is to begin to feel…coming out of denial about all the reasons you’ve needed to wield that terrible tool of “othering“—because so much is unbearable inside of our own self.
Awakening doesn’t come from spiritual mastery defined as overcoming our shortcomings. The myth that awakening looks anything like spiritual perfectionism is the best sleeping pill. Awakening is the often compass-less and inglorious inner odyssey toward all that is bruised and true in our hearts.
—Chelan Harkin
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Give over your own willing. Give over your own running. Give over your own desiring to know or be anything, and sink down to the seed which God chose in your heart, and let that grow in you, and be in you, and breathe in you, and act in you, and you will find by sweet experience that the Lord knows, loves, and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of life.
—Isaac Penington
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Don’t let people pull you into their storm. But instead, pull them into your peace and make all things new.
—Pema Chodron
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July 16th: Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Always seek the beautiful virtue of humility, which the Blessed Virgin will teach you. She will make you live in the truth, so you might love and serve only the Lord. The call to Carmel, the house of the Virgin—as St. Teresa used to call it—is an immense blessing. It is where we strive to live only for God….In the house of the Virgin we are truly happy. What a beautiful feast! This phrase, “house of Mary,” says a lot. Just think what the Lord found in his Mother’s house. He must find this in each one of us: an image of his Mother. Be very grateful to the Lord who has chosen to have great intimacy with you here on earth…and just imagine what it will be in heaven! The truth is that if these houses of the Virgin are good to live in, they are even better to die in.
—St. Maria Maravillas of Jesus, OCD
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The “I Don’t Know” Prayer
I don’t know….
I don’t know where to go from here.
I don’t know what is happening.
I don’t know how to process this.
I don’t know what to do with these emotions.
I don’t know how to handle this situation.
But YOU know.
With my little grain of faith, I say:
YOU know.
Now I leave it all with YOU.
Amen.
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Special Act of Sorrow
FORGIVE me my sins, O Lord, forgive me my sins;
the sins of my youth, the sins of my age, the sins of my soul;
the sins of my body; my idle sins, my serious voluntary sins,
the sins I know, the sins I have concealed so long, and which
are now hidden from my memory. I am truly sorry for all the
sins of my childhood up to the present hour. I know my sins
have wounded your tender Heart, O my Savior. Let me be
freed from the bonds of evil through your most bitter passion.
O my Jesus, forget and forgive what I have been. Amen.
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
In the midst of so much gloomy news, immersed as we are in many social and personal emergencies, you comedic artists have the power to spread peace and smiles. In your own way, you unite people, because laughter is contagious. I like to pray daily—and I have done this for more than 40 years—with the words of St. Thomas More: “Grant me, O Lord, a good sense of humor.” Do you know this prayer? I ask for this grace every day because it helps me approach things with the right spirit….I want everyone to hear this beautiful prayer of St. Thomas More:
Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest. Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humor to maintain it. Grant me a simple soul that knows how to treasure all that is good and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil, but finds the means to put things back in their place. Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumbling, sighs and laments, nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called “I.” Grant me, O Lord, a good sense of humor. Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke and to discover in life joy, and to be able to share it with others. Amen.
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
