Medjugorje Message: June 25, 2023
Dear children! The Most High permits me to be among you—to pray for you, to be a Mother to you and to be your refuge. Little children, I am calling you: return to God and to prayer and God will bless you abundantly. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
Annual Message to Ivanka: June 25, 2023
Little children, I am in need of your prayers. Pray, pray, pray.”
River of Light
July 2023
On the anniversary of Our Lady’s apparitions in Medjugorje, she gave a short and simple message acknowledging the purpose of her prolonged visitation over these 42 years—an unprecedented duration in the history of Marian apparitions. She said, “The Most High permits me to be among you—to pray for you, to be a Mother to you and to be your refuge.” How great is our need for all three of these gifts from “the Most High” ! What a treasure to know that Our Lady is PRAYING FOR US, interceding on our behalf in all the necessities of our life—physical, emotional, and spiritual. How little we understand and appreciate the power of Our Lady’s prayer for us, how desperately we need it, and how often it has saved us without our awareness! She truly responds to our call in every Hail Mary when we say, “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
And how amazing to realize that, still today—just as on the first Good Friday afternoon at Calvary—Our Lady is fulfilling the Lord’s command from the cross that she “BE A MOTHER TO US,” with all of the care, concern, tender love, and sense of responsibility that constitute motherhood. Many of us no longer have our birth mother alive and active in our life. Many of us may have never had a functioning, healthy mother to care for us. Either way, we suffer a deep longing and lack if we are missing our mother—that unique bond of intimate love that only the Mother-Child relationship can provide. All human beings need a mother, or at least a mother “figure” who embodies and expresses the maternal care that is usually the closest thing to “unconditional” love we experience this side of heaven. (Hence such cultural cliches as, “He has a face that only a mother could love.”) Mary, our Mother, truly loves each of us unconditionally.
Finally, Our Lady says that she is “permitted to be among us” at Medjugorje these 42 years “TO BE YOUR REFUGE.” The word “refuge” comes from a Latin root that means “to flee back.” Mary is our refuge—the one to whom we “flee” for safety when life besieges us with dangers, trials, tribulations, and temptations. When we wander away, as children often do, Mary is the one given to us by God, to whom we can “flee back” (or return) as a REFUGE, a safe harbor of peace and security in the stormy seas of trouble, the raging waters of unrest and difficulty. Just as small children venture several feet away from their mama, only to run back and hide within her skirt when frightened by an unfamiliar outward influence, so we can “flee back” to Our Lady as our “refuge” every day. How beautiful that God provided us with an undying spiritual Mother who will never leave us orphaned!
This notion of “refuge” is important. When we suffer, we naturally look for shelter from our pain, often seeking “refuge” in drugs, alcohol, food, sex, psychotherapy, “retail therapy” (material possessions), entertainment, travel, relationships with others, etc. We seek refuge from life’s pain or hardship in various “medicating” people, places, and things. None of these worldly solutions, however, is capable of offering us lasting freedom from the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual afflictions of our human condition. But MARY is the perfect refuge.
In the Buddhist tradition, practitioners take three vows of “Refuge” : in the Buddha, in the Dharma (teaching), and in the Sangha (community). In Christianity, we might translate this concept to say that we “Take Refuge”: in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Gospel, and in the Church. In all three of these places, we are led by OUR LADY toward “refuge.” She leads us to her Son, Jesus Christ (whom she gave to us by her fiat to the angel Gabriel, saying “yes” to the mystery of the Incarnation); she leads us to the Gospel teaching (modeling for us the life of action and contemplation—“pondering these things in her heart” and “doing whatever he tells you”); and she leads us to the community of the Church (maternally present at its birth in the “Upper Room” when the unifying Holy Spirit descended upon the diverse community of believers). Let us remember to invoke OUR LADY OF REFUGE daily, especially when we feel challenged, threatened, or needy in any way. Let us vow to “take refuge” in Mary, for the “Most High” gave her to us in this great capacity!
Our Lady ends her anniversary message: “Little children, I am calling you: return to God and to prayer and God will bless you abundantly.” Is this a “transactional” or “quid pro quo” proposal from Our Lady? Will God “bless abundantly” those who “return and pray” but withhold blessings from those who don’t? Not at all. Rather, God’s blessings are abundant for ALL every day. Jesus explained the divine unconditional love by the fact that the Most High sends sunrise and rainfall to “both the good and the evil, the just and the unjust.” (Mt 5:45) However, only those who “return to God and to prayer” have the joy of RECEPTIVITY: the ability to perceive and experience these ever-present daily blessings of God through the OPEN HEART and OPEN MIND of SPIRITUAL AWARENESS that comes from PRAYER—a dedicated time each day to be “present to the Presence” of God, within and without. Thus Our Lady is returning to her (now 42-year old) message given from the beginning at Medjugorje in 1981: her CALL to us to “return to God and return to prayer.”
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Our Lady’s annual message to Ivanka on June 25th, extremely brief, also hearkens back to the earliest days of the Medjugorje apparitions: “Little children, I am in need of your prayers. Pray, pray, pray.” Throughout the 1980’s and 90’s, Our Lady often gave the world a succinct one-line monthly message: “Pray, pray, pray.” She also spoke frequently of her need for our prayers in order to accomplish her mission on earth through the Medjugorje event. Our Lady is reviving this teaching now with her message to Ivanka, who received the 10th and final secret from Our Lady in 1985, which ended her daily apparitions. Mary told her that she would henceforth see her only once a year on the anniversary of the apparitions. Three of the six visionaries now have all ten secrets and see Our Lady only once per year: Mirjana (on her birthday, March 18th); Jacov (on December 25th); and Ivanka (on June 25th). Marija, Ivan, and Vicka continue to see Our Lady every day, with Marija receiving the monthly message to the world on the 25th of each month.
No one knows when or how this incredible collaboration between earth and heaven will end, but Our Lady has always said that we live in “A TIME OF GRACE.” In worldly terms, a “grace period” often signifies some “extra time” granted, beyond what is strictly deserved or warranted, to accomplish or fulfill an obligation. We don’t know whether Our Lady is being extended a “grace period” or whether WE are, but perhaps it is BOTH. She is continuing to convey a sense of urgency and need—both for herself and for us—to work together collaboratively and collegially for the good of the world. (Perhaps even for the survival of the planet or human species!) In Medjugorje, Our Lady has indicated that we are part of a HUGE enterprise, beyond our imagination, and that a VAST project hangs on our response to her call to “Pray, pray, pray.” Let us begin anew today.
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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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The Welcoming Prayer
(a prayer of surrender to God, Reality, and Love with each moment)
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within me. Amen.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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A layered reality is part of the Catholic imagination. To possess this imagination is to dwell in a universe inhabited by unseen presences—the presence of God, the presence of saints, the presence of one another. There are no isolated individuals but rather unique beings whose deepest life is discovered in and through one another. This life transcends the confines of space and time.
—Wendy Wright
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Mysticism is as real as science. We live in a world where what is real is reduced to what is physical, to what can be empirically measured, seen, touched, tasted, smelled. We live in a world that’s mystically tone-deaf. When the surface is all that there is, it’s hard to be enchanted by anything, to see the depth that’s uncovered by poetry, aesthetics, altruism, religion, faith, and love. When the physical is all that there is, it becomes impossible to conceive of the Body of Christ and difficult to understand our real connection to each other.
As human beings, we are connected to each other in ways beyond the physical, beyond time, beyond separation by distance, and even beyond separation by death. But to understand this, we need a mystical imagination. The mystical imagination is the other half of the scientific imagination. The mystical imagination can show us something that science, wonderful though it is, cannot. Namely, it can show us the many grace-drenched and spirit-laden layers of reality that are not perceived by our physical senses. The Holy Spirit isn’t just inside our churches, but is also inside the law of gravity.
How do we learn that? A saint might say, “Meditate and pray long enough and you will open yourself up to the other world!” A poet might say, “Stare at a rose long enough and you’ll see that there’s more there than meets the eye!” A romantic might say, “Just fall in love really deeply or let your heart get broken and you’ll soon know there’s more to reality than can be empirically measured.” And the mystics would say: “Just honor fully what you meet each day and you will find it drenched with grace and divinity.”
—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
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Jesus notes in his preaching, “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile….It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come,” and “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Mt 7,12) In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis imagines the devil teaching his apprentice that he doesn’t need to make people follow him; it is enough that they look more at their own wickedness than at the goodness of God. That way they end up becoming evil and turning away from the Father.
When we stop contemplating beauty, which is the fruit of God’s love, ugliness and evil ferment and grow in our heart, occupying it and overflowing in our words. Many social media influencers suffer from this problem. They are so focused on denouncing the evils of the world that they fail to announce the beauty given to us by God. Attention to the evils of the world is really necessary, but how can we overcome these problems without having just as clear a vision of the good?
This is not an irrational belief in the power of positive thinking, an illusory escape from reality. In small things and great, we need to contemplate beauty and love, which fill our heart and become intellectual insight. The contemplation of true beauty is not merely a matter of appearances or forms. Beauty often shines through in the worst situations and most unlikely places. Suffering is no obstacle to finding it.
May our mouths never cease to condemn with indignation the evils of the world, but also be heralds of the true beauty that comes from Love.
—Francisco Neto
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O Holy Spirit, free us from all the
emotional programs for happiness that
feed our false selves, and grant us the
restfulness of detachment from their
restless energy. Amen.
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Helminski says, “Presence is the human self-awareness that is the end result of the evolution of life on this planet. Humanity represents a new form of life, of concentrated spiritual energy sufficient to produce will. With will—the power of conscious choice—human beings can formulate intentions, transcend their instincts and desires, educate themselves, and steward the natural world.”
It’s one of the paradoxes and ironies of our human existence that we are suspended midway between the animals and the angels. We short-circuit our true vocation as human beings when we just see ourselves as the highest predators. That’s how we act all the time. What do we do? What do we spend our days doing? We build nests—the birds can do that. We hoard and stockpile—the ants can do that. We defend our turf—the lions and tigers and bears can do that. But what we are really called to do in a profound way is to be transformers of human energy. What animal can write a poem or play a sonata?
—Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault
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In the prophetic books of the Hebrew bible is the clear emergence of critical consciousness and interior struggle in Israel. We see them allowing an objective, outer witness, which is the death knell for the ego and the group ego. They have to leave their false innocence and naive superiority behind and admit that they do not always live as they say they do at the level of “law” or inside their idealized self-image.
We can call the prophets the fathers and mothers of consciousness, because until we move to self-reflective, self-critical thinking, we don’t move to any deep level of consciousness at all. We remain largely unconscious, falsely innocent, and unaware. It’s great to think we’re the best and the center of the world. It passes for holiness, but it isn’t holy at all.
Until an objective inner witness (the Holy Spirit) emerges that looks at us with utter honesty, we cannot speak of being awake or conscious. We are on cruise control and cannot see our egocentricity at work. Unfortunately, people so fear a negative and judgmental critic that they never access the “Compassionate Witness” promised us in the Holy Spirit.
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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July 4: The American Way
The same Spirit that Jesus received in baptism now rests on anyone who follows him….This is a very non-American way of being. Think of the phrases that shape our national identity. We assert our “right” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” which means we are free—and even expected—to organize our lives around our own individual desires. So much of our American story consists of groups of people protecting themselves and what’s theirs, with a gun or a flag or the cloak of racial, class, or gender privilege.
Jesus’ story is exactly the opposite. In this moment, as we reckon with the limits and consequences of self-centrism, domination systems, and the church’s capitulation to empire, we could lean into the Jesus way. We could reclaim kenosis (self-emptying). Imagine re-centering on the God we know in Jesus. Imagine becoming practicing communities that follow Jesus and embody his community of love.
—Rev. Stephanie Spellers
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STOPPING is not a passive act, but an active one. It requires us to consciously step out of our habitual patterns of thought and behavior, and to create a space for something new to emerge. It is in this space of stillness and openness that we can connect with our deepest selves and with the divine. We can receive guidance, inspiration, and healing, and we can begin to live from a place of greater authenticity and purpose.
—Tami Simon
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Jesus taught, “Love your neighbor in the same manner as you love yourself.” In short, when I truly remember myself, I remember others. Anne Morrow Lindbergh expressed this pairing of self-care with care of others in a poignant way in Gift from the Sea: “When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others….Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected to others, and for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be re-found through solitude.” Solitude, like silence, helps us come to ourselves again, to reset and be found by God’s love and presence.
—Peter Haas
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
I believe in God—not in a Catholic God; there is no Catholic God.
There is God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation.
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
