Medjugorje Message: September 25, 2024
Dear children! Out of love towards you, God has sent me among you, to love you and encourage you to prayer and conversion, for peace in you and in your families and in the world. Little children, do not forget that true peace comes only through prayer, from God Who is your peace. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
October 2024
This short message from Our Lady gives us a picture of the nested, intertwined web of connectedness that is the Ultimate Reality in which “we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) This Ultimate Reality may also be called “GOD,” “LOVE,” or “the BODY OF CHRIST.” Our Lady begins: “Out of love towards you, God has sent me among you, to love you and encourage you to prayer and conversion, for peace in you and in your families and in the world.” By starting with the words “OUT OF LOVE TOWARDS YOU,” Our Lady gives us the most important affirmation that every human being needs: awareness of God’s personal love for “me.” What a different world we would inhabit if every child grew up with this primary understanding that they are LOVED in their very being and existence, prior to anything they ever “do.”
Notice that Our Lady—rather than saying simply “God has sent me TO you” —uses the word “AMONG.” Using the word “among” emphasizes that we for whom Our Lady was sent are parts of a group (“holons of a whole” ) along with her—not separate, isolated individuals “other” or “alien” to Our Mother. She has come “among” us collectively as her “dear children,” entering into the midst of the whole human family—not as a stranger or outsider, but as one of us: the fully human Mother of Jesus who became the Mother of all humankind.
Our Lady says that she’s been sent “among” us to “love” us and “encourage” us to “prayer and conversion.” Indeed, LOVE and ENCOURAGEMENT must always go together; whomever we love we want to build up, support, encourage—never tear down, deflate, dishearten, or discourage. And the laser focus of Our Lady’s “encouragement” to us is always “PRAYER and CONVERSION” —this is the proximate or immediate goal that must necessarily precede her ultimate purpose on earth as the Queen of Peace.
So “PRAYER and CONVERSION”: these are the two main things Our Lady has asked of us these past 43 years in Medjugorje—the primary focus of her “loving encouragement.” First, PRAYER, which is the medium of our relationship with God, the “coin of the realm” of Heaven, the means through which we access, encounter, and realize our connection with God and with all Creation. Prayer is the “river of light” or “stream of Christ consciousness” upon which some of us float via “boats” of language, music, or movement, while others plunge nakedly as swimmers through silence. Without prayer of some sort, there is no first-hand EXPERIENCE of the connectedness and interrelatedness of Ultimate Reality which is summarized in the teaching, “GOD IS LOVE.” So it’s no wonder that in Medjugorje, as her chief effort to “love” and “encourage” us, Our Lady has repeated endlessly: “PRAY, PRAY, PRAY!”
Secondly, “CONVERSION” is the concrete, material, tangible FRUIT of prayer that appears in our life as a result of the new consciousness we receive in prayer, the awakening awareness of Ultimate Reality as GOD/LOVE, that—coming from prayer—causes us to change the direction in which we’re looking for happiness. This “change” we call conversion, beginning with “conversion of heart” and “re-pentance” (“thinking again”) about how we wish to live our life. The fruit of our PRAYING is this “change of direction” from an ego-centered life devoted to my own personal safety/ security, affection/ esteem, power/ control, and sensory pleasure, to a life centered on the relational Whole of God-Who-Is-Love and wishing to be immersed in the “Divine Flow” of this vast web of interconnectedness by playing whatever part I am given by God’s Holy Will in each moment. “CONVERSION” is this daily movement from an egoic “me/ myself/ I” focus toward “Abandonment to Divine Providence/ Surrender to Love.” It is an ongoing, open-ended, lifelong process.
Our Lady says that her mission “among” us to encourage “prayer and conversion” is in service to an even bigger long-term goal: “for PEACE in YOU and in your FAMILIES and in the WORLD.” Here again, in Our Lady’s words we see the quantum, holistic, interconnected, and nested nature of Ultimate Reality that even our modern science has begun to discover. Mary, Queen of Peace is aiming for no less than “PEACE ON EARTH,” which she teaches is inextricably linked to peace within each one of us, “AND” peace within all our FAMILIES. The “and’s” that link “you, your family, the world” are the “connective tissue” of our “entangled universe,” which science tells us is a deeply interconnected, holistic, nested reality, just like the brightly painted sets of Russian nesting dolls that children play with. The “microcosm” of “my individual peace” is nested inside the “macrocosm” of the larger “my family’s peace,” which is nested inside the still larger “macrocosm” of “world peace” —with all levels of “PEACE” being “holons of the Whole” composed of the same basic building blocks of “prayer and conversion” which form the exact same necessary “genetic DNA” required for “TRUE PEACE” at every level of life: personal, interpersonal, communal/ world.
Our Lady concludes her message: “Little children, do not forget that true peace comes only through prayer, from God Who is your peace.” How rightfully Our Lady reminds us not to “forget” what “true peace” is, for in our human condition, we seem to persistently look for “peace” where it cannot be found. We “forget” every time we seek inner peace in outer things—in the people, places and possessions that we think will “complete” us or our life: our culture’s symbols for safety/ security, affection/ esteem, power/ control, and sensory pleasure. We seek “inner peace” in a bank account, a house, a car, a vacation, a relationship, a marriage, a child, a job, a position of authority, a favorable reputation, social popularity, a winning political candidate, food/alcohol/drugs, and in many other ways. All of these attempts at “inner peace” are worldly pursuits, but our Lord said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. NOT AS THE WORLD GIVES do I give it to you.” (Jn 14:27) “The world” gives peace in a way that often leads to comparison, competition and conflict as we strive, struggle and fight for our illusory separate pieces of the “peace pie.”
In all these worldly pursuits, Our Lady reminds us, we “forget that true peace comes only through prayer, from God Who is your peace.” Every time we “forget” what “true peace” is, we fall into a partial, distorted, dualistic materialism of fragmented Unreality that mistakes some separate, isolated parts or mechanistic, atomistic “pieces” or “fragments” of life for the Ultimate Reality of the Relational Whole that is GOD ALONE. Being partial, separate objects of our pursuit, our “worldly peace” is thus based on fragile, fragmentary IDOLS rather than upon the WHOLE—“God Who is your peace.” Mary, Queen of Peace is calling the world to “true peace” through a dramatic evolution of consciousness that can only happen through “Prayer and Conversion.” This peace will mean the end of war, but so much more! It will bring a revolution of LOVE as we develop “eyes that see” and “ears that hear” the lie of separation/ division/ isolation and the true nature of Ultimate Reality permeating the whole intertwined universe/ multiverse: our God-Who-Is-Love!
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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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Our relationship with God is our very meaning as human beings. The human creature is, by definition, a relation to God. We become human, become what we are meant to be, in the measure that we are lost to ourselves and taken up into God. Prayer is a conscious affirmation of this truth. How do we attain intimacy with God? Or rather, how do we enter into the intimacy offered? We must be certain that no wooing is necessary. We do not have to find ways of attracting the divine partner, of getting God to notice us. Here is someone who is love itself, the very font of our existence, enfolding us, inviting us to receive him…
Most of us find it impossible not to think of prayer as a special activity in life: an art that can be taught or learned rather as we can learn to play a musical instrument. Because of this, some of us are quick to feel we are proficient, others that we are painfully handicapped, are missing out on some secret or have some lack in our nature that makes prayer difficult if not impossible for us. We feel there are certain laws governing prayer, and techniques to be mastered….Thus we eagerly look to be taught. When we take up a book on prayer, we are looking for the key, the magic formula. We look hither and thither for someone who will hand us the secret. All this is proof that we are overlooking the fundamental fact: that prayer is not a technique but a RELATIONSHIP. There is no handicap, no obstacle, no problem. All anyone can teach us is to keep our eyes on Jesus.
—Sr. Ruth Burrows, OCD
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Praying. It doesn’t have to be the blue iris,
it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones;
just pay attention, then patch a few words together
and don’t try to make them elaborate,
this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks,
and a silence in which another voice may speak.
—Mary Oliver
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You don’t have to enter a monastery to be a mystic. To be a mystic in our times is about intention. Living as a mystic means orienting the whole of yourself toward the sacred. It’s a matter of purposely looking through the lens of love. When you say yes to cultivating a mystical gaze, the ordinary world becomes more luminous, imbued with flashes of beauty and moments of meaning. The universe responds to your willingness to behold the holy by revealing almost everything as holy.
You can start right here, in the middle of your messy life. Your beautiful, imperfect, perfect life. There is no other time, and the exact place you find yourself is the best place to enter. Set your intention to uncover the jewels buried in the heart of what already is. Open your heart, and then do everything you can to keep it open. When we make a pact with ourselves to show up for reality just as it is, reality rewards us by revealing its hidden holiness, fruitful shadows, and radiant wounds…in the places we least expect.
—Mirabai Starr
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OCTOBER 4: ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Francis of Assisi succeeded in living in a single-hearted way, in which his only goal was to love. This intense eagerness to love made his whole life an astonishing victory for the human and divine spirit, and showed how they work so beautifully together.
After his conversion, Francis lived the rest of his life in an entirely different economy—the nonsensical economy of grace. Such transformation of the soul is the heart of the gospel for Francis. He then brought the mystery of the cross to its universal application, for he learned that both the receiving of love and the letting go of it for others are always a real dying to our present state. Whenever we choose to love we will (and must) die to who we were before we loved. Our former self is taken from us.
For Francis, the key realization was “The LOVE who loved us greatly is greatly to be loved.” Religion is not about heroic willpower or winning or being right. True growth in holiness is growth in willingness to be loved and to love.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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We are a fragmented people in deep pain. In the West (and especially in the United States) we are divided societally, as evidenced in our political polarization and the rise of hate groups, we are divided interpersonally as evidenced in increasing loneliness and isolation, and we are divided intrapersonally, as is evidenced by the exploding usage of antidepressants and the correlation between early adverse childhood experience and adult suffering and illness. Every day the world seems to tell us that we are isolated individuals struggling to matter, to belong, and to change our negative experiences.
Whether the topic is politics, racism, or climate change and environmental destruction, the hard truth is that we cannot effect a change in the popular imagination with facts and reason alone. If we are to move toward wholeness societally, interpersonally, and intrapersonally, neither religion nor psychological theory and practice are enough because the very worldview that we are swimming in as a culture—materialistic dualism—is a major reason for the splitting we experience. Could there be a way to look at both cosmos and psyche that promotes wholeness rather than separation?
—Dr. Sheri Kling
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Divine love is a force of constant expansion, ever-evolving; this dismantles outdated paradigms of a changeless and static Absolute. And it invites each of us to a never-ending and awe-inspiring journey of perpetual development, under the influence of an ever-fresh love and God-fallen-in-love. Since reality exists as a holarchy of interconnected wholes, even matter becomes entangled in this sacred equation. Embracing this dynamic perspective of the ever-evolving nature of love, God, soul, and matter can transform our lives and our world.
—S. Padmanabha
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God looks for experiencers more than theorists. Thinking is normally a lot easier than being. It is our predominant cultural conditioning in a time of rapidly developing technological skills and massive scientific information. The cybernetic age is primarily about information—not experience, understanding and love. These spiritual values need to be infused into it.
Christ lives in us. This is our answer to every question, experience or discovery. We are called out of nothingness to work at this. It is the Father’s will. Nothing can change it. It is our true reality. Christ lives in us means that he prays, acts, thinks, loves, suffers and dies in us; and at the deepest level is our true Self.
God is manifesting in each moment as the human consciousness in each of us. “We are the icons of God,” as Jesuit theologian Fr. Bernard Lonergan said. To please God, all anything has to be is itself. Unity consciousness is to let God act through us at every moment without resistance.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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AUTUMN is a potent time for letting go, for honoring what is to come by releasing what was. Falling leaves, like each moment, are notes of an eternal song, continuously being sung and disappearing into thin air. Go outdoors and sit quietly today, neither remembering all the beautiful things that have occurred nor anticipating all the wonderful or terrible things yet to come. Just for this moment, find yourself simmering in the rich, savory stew of the Infinite Now, observing nature and feeling the sheer pleasure of inhabiting your miraculous body without racing off toward anyone, anywhere or anything else.
—Celebration Circle
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God’s Word spoken at creation set off a resonance that continues to vibrate throughout the universe and in us. The consciousness into which we move through contemplative prayer is Christ Consciousness. This “prayer in secret” taught by Jesus (Mt 6:6) is letting go of expectations and desires. Engaging in this prayer is not so much doing nothing as being nothing. The willingness to let go of our false self is the work of the Spirit within us.
Silence is the greatest teacher there is. God’s creative Word is uttered in sheer silence, and it is our ability to resonate with it that furthers our transformation. We can’t get there by ourselves, so we consent to God’s doing “it” in us. We can’t climb the ladder of transformation, but we have the capacity to receive it.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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Our troubles and sorrows, our disillusions and regrets, our anxieties and distrusts all speak to the frustration of divine life within. God is suffocating under the weight of our own dead matter. Divine reality is our root reality. The Self is potentially an explosive self in love, the love that can bring about a new world of justice, a new world of life for all, a new world that looks to the future. Love alone can bring us to another universe. That is why the words of the late Jesuit Pedro Arrupe are words that vitalize the whole: “Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”
—Sr. Ilia Delio, OSF
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The protection of life and the promotion of justice are all of one piece. We cannot be an authentic prophet and have a few moral blind spots. A huge consequence flows from this, namely, we cannot treat issues like abortion, nuclear war, lack of ecological sensitivity, the plight of refugees, racism, sexism, poverty and inequality, poor access to health care, unequal access to education, and discrimination against the LGBTQ community in isolation from each other, as if these were wholly discrete issues. Whether we admit it or not, these areas are all inextricably interconnected.
Failure to be sensitive to who is weak and vulnerable in one area deeply compromises one’s moral standing on other issues that deal with the weak and vulnerable. We must advocate for and strive to protect everyone who falls victim within our present way of living. It’s all of one piece! There can be no exempt areas. All the issues that deal with justice and peace are one whole, one seamless garment, and like the soldiers casting dice for Jesus’ clothing, we should hesitate to tear this garment into different pieces.
—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
Science and faith follow two different and parallel paths, between which there is no conflict. These paths can harmonize with each other, because both science and faith, for a believer, have the same matrix in the absolute Truth of God. Theology must become transdisciplinary, part of a web of relationships, first of all with other disciplines, philosophies, sciences, arts, and all other knowledge, in order to penetrate and communicate the truths of faith and transmit the teaching of Jesus in today’s languages, with originality and critical awareness.
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
