Medjugorje Message: February 25, 2023
Dear children! Keep converting and clothe yourselves in penitential garments and in personal, deep prayer; and in humility, seek peace from the Most High. In this time of grace, Satan wants to seduce you; but you, little children, keep looking at my Son and follow Him towards Calvary in renunciation and fasting. I am with you because the Most High permits me to love you and lead you towards the joy of the heart, in faith which grows for all those who love God above all. Thank you for having responded to my call.
River of Light
March 2023
This month’s message from Our Lady hits all the high notes of the holy season of Lent: conversion, penance, prayer, humility, peace, grace, Satanic temptation, carrying the Cross, renunciation, fasting, joy of the heart, faith, and love of God. The Queen of Peace begins this concise but comprehensive teaching by saying: “Keep converting and clothe yourselves in penitential garments and in personal, deep prayer; and in humility, seek peace from the Most High.” Our Lady’s first two words—“Keep converting” —contain a world of meaning, for our life is to be a journey of continual, ongoing CHANGE and endless spiritual evolution. Our Mother says, “Keep converting” because conversion is not a “one-and-done” occurrence, but a DAILY phenomenon of ever-deepening growth in faith, hope, and love for God and neighbor. There is no endpoint of true conversion; thus, we must “keep converting” (CHANGING) every day—in conformity with the Divine order of all creation in our ever-expanding, ever-changing universe.
Our Blessed Mother continues: “Clothe yourselves in penitential garments and in personal, deep prayer; and in humility, seek peace from the Most High.” Is Our Lady giving us a Lenten dress code? Probably not. While our Judeo-Christian biblical tradition is filled with references to “sackcloth and ashes” as the chief penitential garments worn while mourning and repenting sins—i.e. the hair shirts of the prophets (like Isaiah), John the Baptist, and many later saints—the Scriptures are also full of “clothing” metaphors: “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because ‘God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.'” (1 Pet 5:5)…. “Therefore, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” (Col 3:12)…. “For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” (1 Cor 15:53)…. “The Lord is robed in majesty.” (Ps 93:1)…. “She is clothed with strength and dignity.” (Proverbs 31:25)…. “Stand firm with the belt of truth around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness, and…the helmet of salvation.” (Eph 6:14-17) The main point of Our Lady’s call to wearing “penitential garments” is that being “clothed” in something makes it immediately visible and thus kept in the forefront of our awareness. Our Lady is asking us to steep our consciousness in repentance for our sins, in “personal, deep prayer,” and in the humility of seeking peace from the Most High.
Our Lady leads her message with the phrase “penitential garments” to remind us of Lent as a season of penance. Our Lord’s first public word of instruction in the Gospel is “REPENT, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” which echoes the very same message of his cousin, John the Baptist, who had prepared the way for him by preaching in the desert and baptizing in the Jordan, clad only in the “penitential garments” of camel’s hair that recalled the ancient prophets’ garb—serving as a rebuke to lavish, worldly materialism.
As we “clothe ourselves in penitential garments” this Lent, what comes into our awareness about our own sinfulness? How does our conscience stir us to remorse for the very human ways we have been unloving and unfaithful to the “Way” of the gospel, the “Way” of Jesus? Perhaps we will wear a cross around our neck, a scapular under our shirt, or a rosary bracelet around our arm as “penitential garments” —but they are just outward signs of the deeper practices or “underclothes” Our Lady is asking for: “personal, deep prayer” and “humility” with which we “seek peace from the Most High.”
Calling us to “personal, deep prayer” is asking us for private time alone, one-on-one, with our Source, God-who-is-Love. “Personal, deep prayer” is what Jesus taught, saying, “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to…be seen by others. But when you pray, go into your inner room (or closet), close the door, and pray to your father in secret.” (Mt 6:5-8) During this Lenten season, let us make time—15-20 minutes, morning and evening—for “personal, deep prayer” in which we, with hearts wide open, plunge into silent listening for the Divine Indwelling Presence at the center of our being. This “Prayer of the Heart” has been the call of Mary, Queen of Peace, for over 40 years in Medjugorje, inviting us to the contemplative dimension of the Gospel, so sorely abandoned and overlooked by the Christian churches and their teachers since the time of the Protestant Reformation.
Through this “personal, deep prayer” we will grow in humility—the queen and foundation of all the Gospel virtues—as we will no longer seek our peace through our own self-sufficiency, but only “from the Most High,” for God alone can provide “the peace which the world cannot give.” (Jn 14:27) Through “personal, deep prayer” we will be shielded from the fake promises and phony allurements of the counterfeit “peace” that the world offers us.
On this note, Our Lady continues, saying: “In this time of grace, Satan wants to seduce you; but you, little children, keep looking at my Son and follow Him towards Calvary in renunciation and fasting.” Our Lady often uses the term, “this time of grace,” referring to the present era in which we live. Though filled with disastrous evils, it is also the gifted time of her visitation to the earth at Medjugorje through the grace of God, present to help us pull out of our collective “nosedive” into destruction and extinction as a species.
But now, Our Lady’s reference to “this time of grace” also means Lent—a season when demonic activity is especially robust, for “darkness” always chases the “light” of fervent spirituality. How exactly does “Satan want to seduce you”? Just as our Lord experienced in the 40 days of desert temptations, we will also encounter, during our 40 days of Lenten observance, the “Enemy” or “Adversary” of our soul—demonic ego—luring us toward false-self “emotional programs for happiness” that seem pleasurable and enticing, but are grounded only in our neurotic human weakness and unconscious evil tendencies.
We will be “seduced,” as Our Lady says, by the three Satanic “worldly mirages” of what we most want in life: Safety and Security; Affection and Esteem; Power and Control. But the Satanic-ego “seduction” is that these three forms of peace and happiness are offered to us only “as the world gives” —not as “the Most High” gives them to the “humble.”
In our daily life, we will be “seduced” by Satanic ego to “sell our soul” for our primitive-brain craving for Safety and Security—driven by fearful anxiety to obsess over our physical body (its health and pleasure), with paranoid worry for our material wealth and possessions. We will be “seduced” by Satanic ego to “sell our soul” for the promise of Affection and Esteem, driven as “people-pleasers” to do anything for the good opinion of others, for fame and popularity, or for an illusory romantic relationship. We will be “seduced” by Satanic ego to “sell our soul” for Power and Control through which we can dominate people, places and things in our life by sheer force of “self-will run riot” and whatever manipulative coping skills we develop to impose “our way” on any situation.
Our culture provides constant rewards for these Satanic “seductions” through the coveted symbols of worldly success in these three areas: the ripped bodies, big houses, fancy cars, and luxury lifestyles we label “Safety and Security” ; the celebrity status, Facebook friends, Instagram/Tik Tok followers, and multiple marriages we label “Affection and Esteem” ; and the trophies of war and other “battles won” in sports arenas, competitions, law courts, and family feuds (amidst the bodies of the fallen and trampled) that we label “Power and Control.” Our enslavement to these three energy centers that drive our lives constitutes the “HUMAN CONDITION” that Jesus confronted in the desert of temptation, upon which our Lenten season is modeled. How can we meet these Satanic “seductions” as disciples of the Christ who came to set us free of our enslavement to them?
Our Lady says: “But you, little children, keep looking at my Son and follow Him towards Calvary in renunciation and fasting.” This is the same “FOLLOW ME” the apostles heard, and only slowly and gradually did they begin to grasp that they were following their Lord “towards Calvary” —to certain, unavoidable DEATH. During the Lenten season the Church invites us to the discipline of a close and intense “following” of Jesus. It begins with the commitment, Our Lady says, to “keep looking at my Son.” How? First of all, we “keep looking at Jesus” through devotion to Sacred Scripture, whereby we can have a daily encounter with Christ in the gospels. Keeping close to the daily liturgical readings of Lent, along with meditative reflections on them, draws us into spiritual alignment with the Church in her journey toward the Paschal Mystery of Holy Week and Easter.
In addition to bible reading, we “keep looking at Christ” through the Sacraments—especially Reconciliation and Eucharist. In Confession we LOOK into the merciful eyes of Jesus as we share the content of our “penitential garments” —the sins uncovered with sincere remorse of conscience, born of our “personal, deep prayer,” as “in humility (we) seek peace from the Most High.” Going to Mass, we encounter the whole Christ—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity—in the Eucharist and unite with Him in Holy Communion. In these wonderful ways we can indeed “keep looking” at Mary’s Son—even though “Satan wants to seduce us” and our culture continually bombards us with those seductions.
Beyond a continual “looking at her Son,” Our Lady says we must “follow Him towards Calvary in renunciation and fasting.” Jesus said, “Whoever wants to follow me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mt 16:24) This practice of our “self-denial” is just a small reflection of the radical SELF-EMPTYING of Christ, called “kenosis” in Greek. We practice fasting and renunciation during Lent in imitation and solidarity with the fasting and renunciation of Christ in the desert, when he abstained from food and drink and renounced pursuit of the demonic ego’s programs for safety/security, affection/esteem, and power/control. The “bottom line” of these ascetical practices is to nourish and strengthen our dependence upon GOD in place of our delusional self-reliance. Many Catholics “fast” from particular foods, drinks and activities during Lent. Ideally, we are simultaneously turning to GOD for whatever fulfillment (“hit,” high,” “ease and comfort”?) that we previously sought from that food or drink or activity. Building up our faith in God as provider is the whole point of our fasting.
As we journey with Jesus “towards Calvary”—praying for the crucifixion and death of our false self/Satanic ego on the cross of salvation—what renunciation can we practice in regard to our own inner emotional programs for Safety/Security, Affection/Esteem, Power/Control? Perhaps we can choose one of those programs that most clearly dominates our life and leads us into sin or excess, and prayerfully discern through the Holy Spirit a habit or response that we can “renounce” during this Lenten season. For example, do we over-worry/over-fret about our “self” and our “stuff” ? Over-spend/over-consume material things? Over-compensate/over-submit to win others’ favor? Over-assert/over-compete/over-argue to exert power and control? In practicing this form of “renunciation,” we effectively drive the false self/selfish ego “towards Calvary” and a salvific death by the grace of God in Christ!
Our Lady concludes her message by saying: “I am with you because the Most High permits me to love you and lead you towards the joy of the heart, in faith which grows for all those who love God above all.” In the end we return to the beginning: “Keep converting” —for in deepening “love for God above all,” our faith GROWS endlessly, evolving from strength to strength. We come to realize that the “kenosis” of the Cross that is “leading us towards Calvary” with Jesus is also leading us, not to the false and illusory egoic “peace as the world gives,” but “towards the JOY OF THE HEART”: eternal love with the 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
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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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LENTEN JOY
We have ashes placed on our foreheads. What does it mean, having ashes on your head? It means that you came from the earth and to the earth you will return. “Remember, man, that you are dust.” Ah, but what dust! You are dust that is going to be one with God. Isn’t that enough to make you dance, right in the middle of this ash business? We are not an ordinary dust—we are dust that is going to be eternal, glorified, with God. So let us receive that “dust” with joy—a joy based on discipline—and let us enter the corridor of Lent.
Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves, of really straightening the ways of the Lord. What is it that we have to tear out of our soul, by the roots? What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and the life of the Spirit? Let us be willing to surrender all that we have within ourselves. Lent is a corridor that leads us to the face of God. You cannot come heavily laden. His Son died naked. So, do not carry anything. You will take before God only that which you have given away. Meanwhile, let things drop, really drop. Then you will enter Lent with a fantastic joy. For every time you drop anything pertaining to the wrong type of self-fulfillment, or to the adoration of yourself, or to all the things that clutter up your life, a sense of immense joy will come to you and through you.
—Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty
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Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting.
So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy;
if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others.
If you do not close your ear to others, you open God’s ear to yourself.
—St. Peter Chrysologus
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We might wonder what value there is for us Christians in depriving ourselves of something that in itself is good and useful for our bodily sustenance. The Sacred Scriptures and the entire Christian tradition teach that fasting is a great help to avoid sin. The Divine Master himself sets the example….The true fast is directed to eating the true food, which is to do the Father’s will, and the believer, through fasting, intends to submit himself humbly to God, trusting in his goodness and mercy.
The practice of fasting contributes to conferring unity to the whole person, body and soul, helping to grow in intimacy with the Lord….Denying material food, which nourishes our body, nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by his saving word. Through fasting and praying, we allow him to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience: the hunger and thirst for God.
It is good to see how the ultimate goal of fasting is to help each one of us to make a complete gift of self to God. With this interior disposition, let us enter the penitential spirit of Lent. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Cause of our Joy, support us in the effort to free our heart from slavery to sin, making it evermore a living tabernacle of God.
—Pope Benedict XVI
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To repent is not to take on afflictive penances. It means to change the direction in which you are looking for happiness. That challenge goes to the root of the problem. If we repent, we may experience enormous freedom for a while. Then, as the dust settles, the old temptations recur. We have to face the fundamental problem, which is the unconscious motivation that is still in place, even after we have chosen the values of the gospel.
The False Self is the syndrome of our emotional programs for happiness grown into sources of motivation and made much more complex by our socialization, and reinforced by our over-identification with our cultural conditioning. Our ordinary thoughts, reactions, and feelings manifest the False Self on every level of our conduct. Now we experience the full force of spiritual combat, the struggle with what we feel we should do, and our incredible inability to carry it out. This insight is the beginning of the real spiritual journey.
In the Christian view, death is an integral part of living. Dying to the False Self is the movement from a lower form of life to a higher one; from a lower state of consciousness to a higher state of consciousness; from a weak faith to a faith that is strong, penetrating, and unifying.
Holy Spirit of Truth, teach us how to relinquish our over-identification with our bodies, feelings, emotional programs for happiness, intellectual powers, cultural conditioning, and idealized images of ourselves. Thus, may we be free just to be our true selves and to do Your will. Amen.
—Fr. Thomas Keating, OCSO
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Immediately after the temptation in the desert, Jesus goes out to Galilee and begins to preach. “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” What does the word “repent” mean? It doesn’t mean to beat ourselves up or feel bad about ourselves. “Repent” means to turn around, to change. The first word that comes out of Jesus’ mouth is CHANGE—be willing to change. People who are not willing to change are not willing to turn away from themselves. We’re in love with our way of thinking, our way of explaining, our way of doing—one of the greatest ways to protect ourselves from God, from truth and from grace.
Immediately after he begins his preaching, Jesus calls his first four disciples. Jesus just says, “Follow me” and immediately they left their nets and followed him. A true disciple will have that kind of readiness. We’re all called to discipleship the same way. We hope that the point comes when we’re ready to let go of our nets. What are our nets? Our security systems. Fishing is Simon and Andrew’s livelihood, and Jesus says to let go of it. He’s going to give them a new vocation. What is God asking us to do? Where is God asking us to go?
—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
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What loneliness does for us, especially very intense loneliness, is destabilize the ego and make it too fragile to sustain us in the normal way. We begin to unravel, feel ourselves become unglued, become aware of our smallness, and know in the roots of our being that we need to connect to something larger than ourselves to survive. But that’s a very painful experience and we tend to flee from it.
However, this is a great paradox. This experience of intense loneliness is one of the privileged ways of finding the deep answer to our quest for identity and meaning. Because it destabilizes the ego and disorients us, loneliness puts us in touch with what lies below the ego, namely the soul, our deepest self. The image and likeness of God lies in there, as do our most noble and divine energies. In loneliness there is depth. The lesson is this: don’t run from loneliness. Don’t see it as your enemy. Don’t look for another person to cure your loneliness. See loneliness as a privileged avenue to depth and empathy.
—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
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Jesus had only one “operational mode.” Everything he did, he did by self-emptying. He emptied himself and descended into human form. And he emptied himself still further (“unto death on a cross“) and fell through the bottom to return to the realms of dominion and glory. In whatever circumstance, Jesus always responded with the same motion of DESCENT: going lower, taking the lower place, not the higher.
He called us to dying to self, but his idea of death to self was not through guarding his purity of being, but through radically squandering everything he had and was. John the Baptist’s disciples were horrified because he banqueted, drank and danced. The Pharisees were horrified because he healed on the Sabbath and kept company with women and disreputable, impure people. Boundaries meant nothing to him.
Abundance and generosity to the point of extravagance is everywhere in his life. When he feeds the multitudes, there is not merely enough but twelve baskets of leftovers. He seems not to count the cost. All will come in good time and abundantly, so long as one does not try to hoard or cling. He walked this path to the very end. Do not hoard, do not cling—even to life itself. Let it go, let it be. It was not love stored up but love poured out that opened the gates to the kingdom of Heaven.
—Cynthia Bourgeault
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Let yourself be vulnerable. Let your walls down, your carefully constructed fortresses breached, your fiercely guarded heart laid bare. Let your wounds be touched, your fears revealed, your deepest desires, damaged dreams, and most daring hopes unveiled before the Bridegroom, who has the power to redeem, restore, and resurrect them. Drop your independence and the idea—which you clutch so tightly—that you can do anything to protect and save yourself. And let Him love you.
—St. Elizabeth of Hungary
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Wisdom from Pope Francis
This is me, a sinner on whom the Lord has turned his gaze. And this is what I said when they asked me if I would accept my election as pontiff. I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance.
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
