Medjugorje Message: March 25, 2023
Dear children! May this time be a time of prayer for you.
Annual Message to Mirjana: March 18, 2023
Dear children, I am calling you, through prayer and mercy, to come to know my Son all the better; to learn to listen with a pure and open heart, to listen to what my Son is saying to you in order to come to see spiritually. That, as one people of God in communion with my Son, you may bear witness to the truth with your life. Pray, my children, that, together with my Son, you can bring only peace, joy and love to all your brothers and sisters. I am with you and am blessing you with a motherly blessing.
River of Light
April 2023
Given in the final days of the Lenten season, Our Lady’s 12-word message is shockingly brief, direct, and succinct: “Dear children! May this time be a time of prayer for you.” Her brevity may cause some to be alarmed, concerned perhaps, that Our Lady’s trademark closing signature—“Thank you for having responded to my call” —is missing from this month’s message. Indeed this is extremely rare; however, in years past she has given an even shorter message: “Pray! Pray! Pray!” In both cases, Our Lady is using attention-getting brevity to call us to PRAYER—her foundational message at Medjugorje, the village known as Our Lady’s “School of Prayer.”
As we stand on the threshold of Holy Week: the most sacred and solemn celebration of Christianity, in which the Church relives the Paschal Mystery of our salvation—the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ—we are humbled and hushed into silence before this great mystery. By the sheer brevity of Our Lady’s message, she demonstrates to us the need for quiet, wordless reverence and for SILENT, LISTENING PRAYER. Amidst the daily barrage of words and images bombarding us through our technology, 24/7/365, Our Lady is calling us to find the “off switch” on our media and “power down” every inner and outer “device” that is distracting us with human words. She is calling each of us to enter deeply into the sacred Paschal Mystery of our salvation, to silently “let this time be a time of prayer for you.”
What does Our Lady mean by “prayer“? One week before this monthly message was given, Mirjana received her annual apparition from Our Lady, which includes a treasury of teaching on prayer. That message surely “paved the way” for this month’s fittingly “short-on-words” message to the world, calling us to “this time of prayer.” Let us now unpack Mirjana’s message:
Our Lady begins: “Dear children, I am calling you, through prayer and mercy, to come to know my Son all the better; to learn to listen with a pure and open heart; to listen to what my Son is saying to you in order to come to see spiritually.” The purpose of prayer is to BUILD A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD: “to come to know my Son all the better.” In Christianity, everything hinges on relationship because everything hinges on the nature of cosmic Reality: our interrelated, interconnected, quantum, holistic universe in which “through Christ all things were created, both in heaven and on earth, both visible and invisible.” (Col 1:16) Through the Logos/Word of God, Jesus Christ, “all things were created, and without him nothing was made that has been made.” (Jn 1:3) PRAYER serves our growing realization of this basic truth. PRAYER is intended to bring us into an understanding and acceptance of LOVE as the fundamental nature of REALITY.
In this first sentence of Our Lady’s message to Mirjana, she defines the purpose and goal of PRAYER: “to learn to LISTEN with a pure and open heart; to LISTEN to what my Son is saying to you in order to come to see spiritually.” Notice that Our Lady does not define prayer as our talking to God, or our initiating a long-winded, flowery gab session of verbally listing our own concerns. Jesus said, “When you pray, do not babble/heap up empty phrases/use vain repetitions as the pagans do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” (Mt 6:7) Rather, our Lord demonstrated in the “Our Father” a very brief, concise, simple, and succinct way of using our words in prayer. No elaborate monologues are necessary, he taught, for “your Father already knows what you need, before you ask Him.” (Mt 6:8)
Thus Our Lady’s School of Prayer at Medjugorje has always focused on the contemplative dimension of the Gospel: that we “learn to LISTEN with a pure and open heart; to LISTEN to what my Son is saying to you in order to come to see spiritually.” Here Our Lady links together two vital senses—“hearing” and “seeing.” How often Jesus expressed a longing for us to have “eyes that see and ears that hear” —but our closed hearts and minds prevent it. As we learn to LISTEN more openly, purely, and deeply to the word of Christ that is spoken to our hearts through the Holy Spirit in silent prayer and in the meditative reading of scripture, we develop “ears to hear.” As this prayerful sense of hearing grows, we also develop “eyes to see“—in order to “see spiritually,” as Our Lady says. To “see spiritually” means to see everything in the light of the foundational nature of cosmic Reality: the relationship of all things in LOVE as their common Source.
Next, Our Lady reveals the ACTION that must be born of all our CONTEMPLATION if it is authentic and life-giving. PRAYER—our “open-hearted listening” and “spiritual seeing”—must bear the fruit of “MERCY” in our lives and everyday behavior, for Our Lady said at the start, “I am calling you, through prayer AND mercy….” She continues: “That, as one people of God in communion with my Son, you may bear witness to the truth with your life.” As we evolve spiritually through prayer, our open, listening heart becomes a receptive “womb” for the seeding of the divine Indwelling Presence of Christ. In this “gestation,” we begin to see the world “spiritually” through the eyes of the Emmanuel-Presence of “God-with-us” at our innermost center, which is the same innermost centration point of Love imbedded in all creation. We are each a “holon” of the “Whole,” as quantum physics teaches. God loves ALL of us as if there were only ONE of us.
Our Lady calls us to fully enflesh and radiate to the world this inner reality, “that as one people of God in communion with my Son, you may bear witness to the truth with your life.” What is this “truth”? The TRUTH is that God/Reality is LOVE—the interrelated, interconnected Oneness of all things in Christ, who is the common creative force and summation of life, “from whom, through whom, and for whom all things were made.” (Rom 11:36) Out of this lived communion with Jesus and each other, Our Lady calls us to “bear witness to the truth with your life.”
Here we cannot avoid the call to “martyrdom,” for the Greek root of the word “witness” is “MARTUR” and refers to one who is willing to endure great suffering or even be put to death for their fidelity to a religious or ideological truth. But the “TRUTH” to which Our Lady calls us to “bear witness” is beyond religion and ideology; it is the ultimate Truth of human life that transcends all “belief systems” on earth: the TRUTH that the Inner Nature of All Reality is the Connectedness or Oneness of LOVE. (Or, as Christians say, “God is love.” –1 Jn 4:8,16)
To “bear witness to the truth with our life” will, in fact, often bring us into the “coliseums” of martyrdom, for to conform with the TRUTH as expressed by our Lord Jesus Christ, we must practice a radical enfleshing of this cosmic/quantum interconnectedness of LOVE in all circumstances—even to the point of “loving our enemies, blessing those who curse us, doing good to those who hate us, and praying for those who persecute us.” (Mt 5: 43-44) Such a path is a million times harder than “bearing witness” to smaller “truths” that allow for petty revenge, disrespect, and hating our enemies.
Our Lady concludes by saying: “Pray, my children, that, together with my Son, you can bring only peace, joy and love to ALL your brothers and sisters.” In our tragically polarized culture today, the divided camps—all claiming sole ownership of ideological, political, or religious “truth”—often glorify a concept of “martyrdom” that means “bearing witness” through combat, hatred, vengeance, and raging violence. Such “bearing witness to the truth” is totally antithetical to Our Lady’s call. In the second century, St. Tertullian wrote, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,” which meant that the willing sacrifice of one’s life in non-violent protest—rather than fighting, killing, or retaliating against an enemy—led to the profound inner conversion of non-believers. The kind of genuine conversions that could never be forced or imposed through a hostile, overtaking will-to-power.
Our Lady is calling us to THIS martyrdom, which is the example her Son gave in his self-emptying sacrificial death on the cross. The former type of combative, self-glorifying, violent “martyrdom” for the sake of dubious human “truths” is very appealing to our fallen egocentric condition as sinners—but it is not the Way of Jesus Christ or His Blessed Mother. To witness to the truth of Divine Love as the only Reality, we need to be “in communion” and “together” with Christ, for we do not possess the strength or ability on our own. Joined with Him, we pray that we “can bring only peace, joy and love to all our brothers and sisters” —even to those for whom we must struggle to find peace, joy and love in our hearts! This is the martyrdom of Love shown by the Lord whom we follow, a “martyrdom” to which all of us are called. May Easter joy be yours.
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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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Jesus took upon himself the responsibility for all the sins of humanity, and he began to suffer for them as if it had been he who had committed them….This act of love makes abundant satisfaction for all hatreds. The obedience that it involves compensates for all rebellions in the eyes of God. The humiliations of the Passion redeem all acts of pride. The gentleness of him crucified repairs all acts of anger and his sufferings pay for all sensuality. This act of charity of the Incarnate Word has saved the world. This act can still save us today and sustain all souls. His act of love continues to defend us against all the seductions of the world and the devil.
—Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.
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During the entire Easter octave, the Church seems not to come out of her unspeakable rapture. Paschal joy is the gladness of Jesus risen, which pours forth upon the world such an abundance of happiness that “there should never again be sadness upon the earth after the Resurrection of the Lord.” What are our poor miseries and sorrows, even those that distress us most, compared with that immense reality of the definitive triumph of sinlessness over sin, of light over darkness, of love over hate? The Passion was a combat, a gigantic duel between life and death, between sinlessness and sin. Life by dying seemed conquered, but death was defeated forever. From the depths of suffering and death, sinlessness arose victorious over sin to bestow upon the world the divine gift of JOY.
—Servant of God Luis Maria Martinez
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Our Desert Experience
The desert, while accursed, was never seen as empty. It was a place that was full of action. It was a space that provided an opportunity, and even a calling, for divine vision. In the desert, you were invited to shake off all forms of idolatry, all kinds of earthly limitations, in order to behold an image of the heavenly God…the presence of a boundless God whose grace was limitless. You cannot hide in the desert; there is no room for lying or deceit there. The desert is a place of spiritual revolution, not of personal retreat. It is a place of inner protest, not outward peace. It is a place of deep encounter, not of superficial escape. It is a place of repentance, not recuperation. Living in the desert does not mean living without people; it means living for God.
The desert is a necessary stage on the spiritual journey. To avoid it would be harmful. Ironically, you do not have to find the desert in your life; it normally catches up with you. Everyone goes through the desert. It may be in the form of some suffering, or emptiness, or breakdown, or breakup, or any kind of trauma that occurs in our life. Dressing this desert up through our addictions or attachments—to material goods, money, food, drink, success, obsessions, or anything else we turn toward or depend upon—will delay the utter loneliness and inner fearfulness of the desert experience. If we go through this experience involuntarily, it can be overwhelming and crushing. But if we accept to undergo this experience voluntarily, then it can prove both constructive and liberating.
—John Chryssavgis
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We should not run from ourselves. We must stay faithfully with whatever new life is being hatched within us. There is a universal temptation to miss our lives by living completely on the surface. Our culture encourages competition and ambition, and we are highly mobile. That mobility can create a kind of rootlessness that will injure us—the kind of rootlessness that is internal, caused by our not staying with anything long enough to grow deep roots.
In the desert, monks were counseled, “Go to your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” The cell was a sacred space, a place of listening to divine Presence. The plain ordinariness of spiritual practice and the life of prayer entices us to “leave our eggs” and simply move continually from one interest to another. When boredom threatens, it can be an outward, visible sign of God’s secret, hidden, inner work within the human heart and soul.
We can stay in the cell, in the little room of daily living, and let that cell be our teacher. This staying in the cell, or “sitting on the eggs,” means noticing our appetite for overstimulation. The cell teaches us to slow down, to notice what is right in front of us. The wisdom of the desert teaches that by staying with ourselves, with our inner ups and downs, hurts and fears, we will bring forth the new life that God is creating within us.
—Rev. Mary Earle
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It is hard to admit in a consumer culture that POVERTY is the key to the fullness of life. To the secular mind it seems absurd. Western culture is immersed in a capitalism based on the idea that worldly success is a blessing of God. The type of poverty that St. Francis and St. Clare speak of is opposed to the spirit of self-sufficiency. To be vulnerable and dependent on others is what the Franciscans saw in the mystery of Jesus Christ. Divine revelation is the movement of God to poverty. The One who is rich in love comes down to where we are, takes on our humanity, and opens his arms on the cross to embrace us in love.
Poverty is not so much about want or need; it is about relationship. Poverty impels us to reflect on our lives from the position of weakness, dependency, and vulnerability. It impels us to empty our pockets—not of money, but the pockets of our hearts, minds, wills: those places where we store up things for ourselves and isolate ourselves from real relationship with others. Poverty calls us to be vulnerable, open, and receptive to others, to allow others into our lives and to be FREE enough to enter into the lives of others.
—Sr. Ilia Delio, OSF
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When Moses led the Israelites to freedom, they often yearned to return to Egypt. They were often nostalgic for the “good old (bad) days” in Egypt. The miracle of the manna that fell from heaven each day in the wilderness did not satisfy their hunger for security. They missed the predictability and sense of control they felt in Egypt—where everything was known. Though they were actually oppressed and enslaved, the Israelites looked back on their time with nostalgia because they could not bear the uncertainty they faced as a free people. Freedom is uncertain and unpredictable. The daily supply of manna prepared them for becoming a free people, for freedom requires an ability to bear uncertainty, to trust in the unfolding journey.
The manna challenged the Israelites to develop beginner’s mind—to experience something new and fresh while eating the very same thing each day….to continually live the questions, remaining awake and curious and not going into sleep mode. Beginner’s mind is a way of life. Each day we are challenged to see the same familiar people and landscapes with new eyes. Just as the cosmos is created anew each moment, everything is alive and changing, ourselves included, if we are spiritually awake and paying attention. When we see existence as alive with possibility, we come out of Egypt, our personal places of bondage.
—Estelle Frankel
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Strong imaginative images and strong feelings about God are, in the end, just that—images. Wonderful, but icons. An image is not the reality. An icon, though beautiful and helpful, when mistaken for the reality, becomes an idol. For this reason, God, at certain moments of our spiritual journey, takes away our certainty and deprives us of all warm, felt feelings of faith. God does this so that we cannot turn our icons into idols, or let the experience of faith get in the way of the end of faith itself—an encounter with the reality of God.
Mystics like John of the Cross call this experience of seemingly losing our faith, “a dark night of the soul.” While that darkness of doubt and the “non-existence” of God can be confusing, it can also be maturing: it can help move us from being arrogant, judgmental, religious neophytes to being humble, empathic men and women, living inside a cloud of unknowing, understanding more by not understanding than by understanding, helpfully lost in a darkness we cannot manipulate or control, so as to be finally pushed into genuine faith, hope, and love.
—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
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Until and unless there is a person, situation, event, idea, conflict, or relationship that we cannot “manage,” we will never find the True Manager. So, God or Life makes sure that several things come our way that we cannot manage on our own. Self-made people, and all heroic spiritualities, will try to manufacture an even stronger self by willpower and determination—to put them back in charge and seemingly in control. Usually, most people admire this, not realizing the unbending, sometimes proud and rigid personality that will be the end result.
It is the imperial ego that has to go, and only powerlessness can do the job. Otherwise, we try to engineer our own transformation by our own rules and with our own power—which is, by definition, not transformation! It seems we can in no way engineer or steer our own conversion. If we try to change our ego with the help of our ego, we only have a better-disguised ego! As Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
Jesus, the Crucified One, is risen! He stands in the midst of those who mourned him, locked behind closed doors and full of fear and anguish. He comes among them and says: “Peace be with you!” He shows the wounds in his hands and feet, and the wound in his side. It is no ghost; it is truly Jesus, the same Jesus who died on the cross and was laid in the tomb. Before the incredulous eyes of the disciples, he repeats: “Peace be with you!” Our eyes, too, are incredulous. We struggle to believe that Jesus is truly risen, that he has triumphed over death. Could it be an illusion? No, it is not an illusion!
Today, more than ever, we need him to stand in our midst and repeat to us: “Peace be with you!” Only he can do it. He alone has the right to speak to us of peace, for he bears our wounds. His wounds are indeed ours, because we inflicted them on him by our sins, by our hardness of heart, by our fratricidal hatred. They are ours because he bore them for our sake; he did not cancel them from his glorified body; he chose to keep them, to bear them forever. They are the indelible seal of his love for us. The wounds on the body of the risen Jesus are the sign of the battle he fought and won for us, with the weapons of love, so that we might have and remain in peace. As we contemplate those glorious wounds, our hardened hearts break open and we welcome the Easter message: “Peace be with you!”
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
