True Life in God e-Newsletter
May 26, 2004
Update on The TLIG Pilgrimage 2005
Detachment-Dispassion-Impassibility by Vassula
A Testimony on TLIG from Fr. Louis-Marie O.S.B
Novena to St Jude to Continue:Starting this Friday May 28th
TLIG Pilgrimage Update
“I shall bring them home from Egypt and gather them back from Assyria; I shall lead them into Gilead andinto Lebanon.” Zechariah 10:10
This pilgrimage, “In the Footsteps of Moses and St. Paul,” is, in a way, the continuation of the pilgrimage taken to Egypt in 2002 by TLIG. These pilgrimages are offered to TLIG volunteers and supporters and are not open to the general public. They are run as a service toTLIG and are not “for profit” ventures. However, those who participate always truly profit spiritually! To organize such a triptakes over 1 year of preparation… and in the case of this trip it will be 2 years in preparation. I am happy to announce we have now opened a pre-registration site.
Only If:
You are an active volunteer in TLIG, have attended a previous pilgrimage,attend a TLIG prayer group or are a serious reader of the TLIG messages should you to fill out the pre-registration form.
We make this stipulation as ourPilgrimages are so good one year we had over 200 people apply to go who never even read TLIG – they just wanted a bargain price for a pilgrimage!
After you fill out this form you will receive by e-mail more details: specific dates, the complete tour itinerary and contact telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. Only those who are active in TLIG will receive this information. The specific dates of the tour and the tour itinerary will not be made public. Every measure has been taken for a safe and secure trip with services contracted through one of the most professional and trustworthy Swiss travel agencies. There is no doubt this will be one of the most, if not THE most spiritually inspiring pilgrimages ever undertaken by TLIG .We travel to the roots of the early church where the most profound events recorded in Holy scripture transpired – few ever make it even close to the places we will see and pray at.
http://pilgrimage2005.tlig.com/
additional note – If you have a problem with not seeing the pre-registration page in your language please wait a few days – Portuguese will not be uploaded for about 5 days . Also our new database is undergoing final maintenance so if the page does not appear check back in a day or two . We appreciate your patience !
Different Ascents: Detachment-Dispassion-Impassibility
by Vassula
Meteora Greece, May 2004.
God always manifested Himself to man, not to give us something new, but to respell all that He has given us, reminding us of His Word, reminding us of our foundations. God becomes knowable to man without losing His transcendence. The vision of God in heaven will be in its fullness; but our Creator makes it possible for us, his creatures, to have a vision and union with Him while we are still here on earth. This is what the messages of True Life in God are basically all about: God, the Creator, making Himself be recognised in an altogether conscious manner, conversing with us and listening to us as friend to friend, to sow Himself in our soul.
The True Life in God messages call us for a radical transformation of self, mind and soul. This transformation takes place during the purification and the dying to one’s self. It is a mystical resurrection done with the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. You can call it: baptism of the Holy Spirit, or baptism by fire, or the Visitation of the Lord, or the day of the Lord, or the New Pentecost. From thereon the Lord is leading us to ascend up to the ascent of the deification of man. We can reach levels of pure Light, levels of divinisation, where we become gods by participation through the effect of the Holy Spirit. If we follow and live all that True Life in God is giving us, which is, I repeat, only a reminder of God’s Word, and observe the Law of God, we will acquire in our lives the freedom of the Spirit and the evangelical virtues, because the Holy Spirit will give us an intellectual light, a deeper and divine understanding of God’s Mysteries and of His Word. It will come on our intellect like flashes of brilliant light, taking us into higher ascents and deeper into the Light Itself. Everyone can attain these ascents and everyone is called to divinisation, no one is deprived from these, so we have no excuse. Unfortunately deification is not much noticed by people because very few reach these levels and yet, all of us who are baptized are called to it to reach it!
“You have been called to participate in this divine
Salvific Plan but to enter as well in the Triune life. Come and breathe in Me and fill your soul with Our Divine Love, this Love that draws you into a perfect union with Us.” (Holy Spirit)(3.3.99 )
“I alone can clothe you in My splendour and give you the indispensable Light. I alone, in My Divinity can impress upon your soul My Image of Holiness. Come to Me and prolong your gaze on My Holy Face so that you may understand fully that you are joint heiress with Me, united to Me and in Me… receive more of Me, allowing Me to receive more of you. My wish is to give more of Myself to you, so that you can give more of yourself to Me. I will be obtaining in this way all that belongs to Me already; through My divine Love that will be poured in you, you will be deified, transfiguring your soul, so that My Father identifies you on Judgment Day with Me.” (Jesus)(25.4.99 )
As I said before, we are all called to be One with God and no one is deprived from it. But if we are seriously willing to give away our will and die to our self and our ego then behold! A transformation will take place. To begin with we need to repent, then from there on, confess our sins, emptying ourselves from everything that does not belong to God and allow His Holy Spirit to invade us with His Divine Light and possess us so that from thereon we can live under His Grace. Allow God to scrutinize every one of your actions, and like someone with a torch entering a dark cave, allow God to enter your heart and put aflame and burn to the root, all that is not divine, holy and not His. Let God raze you to the ground and drag you into the desert in which He drags His annointed ones, so that He brings to your memory, in the silence of the desert, all your misgivings, and your evil conduct, to loathe yourself. Let God strike you with bitter remorse for your indifference towards Him and His Law of Love. Allow Him to do all these things so that this transformation takes place within you. And from thereon He will be your Master, your Educator but your Friend and Brother as well.
And, with great tenderness He will dress your wounds and lift you to His Heart, while he will utter in your ear these words:
“You must keep secure now all My teachings, remembering always the beginning, so that you increase your Knowledge of Me, your God.”31.5.03
True Life in God is a call for perfecting our soul to rise above the heavens. In the very beginning of these messages, we know that Jesus had asked me to die to myself and that He did not want to see any rivals within me, but leave the space for His Holy Spirit. Dying to one’s self, is not only dying to one’s will, but also to all material things that a soul can be attached to. This, our Lord called detachment. But the Lord does not want us to remain there. He wants to draw us into higher ascents of perfection; meaning from detachment to dispassion and from dispassion to impassibility.
What was the meaning of His words to me when He said in the beginning:
“if you allow My Holy Spirit to invade your soul, He can transfigure your soul from a desert into a garden where I can have My rest in you. If you allow My Holy Spirit He can transfigure your soul into a palace, where I can be King and reign over you; if you allow My Holy Spirit to transfigure your soul He can transfigure your soul into a heaven, where in this heaven you will be able to glorify Me…”
Let me explain. To start with, when our Lord uses the expression: “if you allow”, this means if you are willing to give away your will for His Will, so that the Holy Spirit will be free to act in you. And He can raise you to three levels, from a desert to a garden and then to a palace and finally to a heaven. These are three ascents. Therefore, from teaching you to detach yourself, the Holy Spirit will teach you through His Grace to come to a higher degree of perfection and that is: to be freed from earthly passions, into what He calls dispassion. Dispassion brings you into higher levels of contemplation as well.
When the Lord said that He drags the souls in the desert where he shows their sins to them and fills them with remorse to hate themselves. This experience on its own brings you to realize that God is above all things, and without God your table is empty. From thereon nothing more will count in your eyes as before; the things you thought and esteemed important suddenly become like ashes to you. You no longer desire them as before, in fact, they become unbearable to you, for so powerful is this sort of detachment, called dispassion. As our Lord had described this state once, saying:
“And although you will still be among men, your mind will be in heaven. Although your body will be moving among men, your soul and mind will be as an angel’s. I will teach you to live in Us, move in Us and breathe in Us…”
Here, with these words of Jesus we can understand that dispassion means a very high level of contemplation, and at the same time a distaste of all worldly things, a distaste of all evil thoughts and evil acts. It is a total rejection of evil; it is to shed one’s attachments off you. After having renounced to sin as well as a life without God and after having renounced one’s will, then a divine union is made between the Creator and the creature, to which we can say: “now we are walking with God.”
Then our Lord spoke of turning our soul into a heaven adding that in this heaven we will glorify Him. This is the ultimate perfection of the soul that enters into the angelic virtue of impassibility. This is a far wider aspect of dispassion. It is a detachment of lust and passion, of pleasures and desires of the flesh. In a message our Lord said that after the divine union between the Creator and the creature and after having been given the Unction of the Holy Spirit, this is how we become:
“Now you will become part of Me and one with Me, adorning each one of your members with divinity and light, incorruptibility and blessedness to be befitting for Me, your God and King. All of a sudden the world of the past will seem to fade away gently from you with all its content, forever. And in a single moment, impassibility, the angelic virtue will blossom in your heart; likewise a spiritual sensuousness of what it would be like to be near the Beatific Vision will occur itself instantly. Angelic virtues in variety will be your crown from thereon, for these are what I will offer you as a gift to attain perfection. The Absolute God then will intertwine Himself with you in the delicate scents of the Nuptial Chamber and be one with you, englobing you entirely in His Light until you yourself become light. Enwrapped in My Holy Spirit your mouth will be My Mouth, your limbs, My limbs, your eyes, My Eyes, your utterance will be My Utterance. Your acts and thoughts will all be divine. Henceforth, your entire lustrous being and soul will be animated by Me; this will be the beginning of your new life in Me …”
In other words, freedom of all passions can be obtained through the freedom of the Spirit, through the death of self, through the death of one’s will.
Letter Received From Fr. Louis-Marie O.S.B
Dear Forum Editor,
I am sorry that I came to know about Vassula’s special request for prayers only today (20th May), that is, to join in the Novena to St. Jude. To all the three questions asked, my answer is “Yes”: (1)True Life in God Messages have truly helped me in my spiritual life; (2) it is so necessary for the Voice of Jesus to be heard these days; (3) we need to see the urgency of Jesus’ pleas and answer Him in loving deeds. Although I am late, I began St. Jude’s Novena right away today – Ascension Thursday. (In our Holy Face Monastery here in Clifton, New Jersey, we celebrate a Novena Mass in honor of St. Jude every Thursday evening). I hope I am not too late in joining the thousands who are united with Vassula to pray for her special intention.I find it so fitting also to continue this Novena during these nine days in preparation for Pentecost since St. Jude was among the 120 who were gathered in the Upper Room (Cenacle) praying with Mama Mary “with one heart and one mind” for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I hope this would inspire someone else also to join in – even at the last moment – and form the chain of prayer *that will bless and give success to Vassula’s God-given Mission throughout the world.
* (a chain indeed we will commence a second Novena to St Jude this Friday- see below -editor)
I would like also to share a few thoughts on how the True Life in God Messages have helped me (I wanted to do this for some time and may be the right time is now!. For me, as a Benedictine monk and priest, these Messages have served as ideal material for my daily “Lectio Divina” (reading for meditation and contemplation). These ready-made conversations with our Father-God, our Lord and Savior Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Mama Mary, the Saints and even my Guardian Angel have helped to progress my spiritual life.In fact, for the past two years (I have been familiar with the Messages for the past 5 or 6 years), I have used these Messages almost daily as a part of my Thanksgiving after Holy Communion. They have been very useful for an intimate communion with Jesus soon after Holy Mass: “Conversations with Jesus”.
Besides, having been a professor of Dogmatic Theology for over 20 years in the Major Seminary (teaching the subjects of Holy Trinity, Christology, One God, Holy Spirit & Charisms) I find the TLIG Messages truly inspiring as food for contemplation on the mysteries of our faith. I believe that, in order to really appreciate them, we have to approach them not just with our heads, but with our hearts and praying and serving-hands as well. The Messages have helped me to relate or apply the faith-doctrine I have been teaching to my day-to-day life of prayer and action. I find that there is absolutely no clash between the head-and-heart dimensions; rather, there is an ideal balance that is offered between believing in the dogmatic truths of our faith and the daily living of our Christian obligations. The TLIG Messages are a veritable “training ground” for progress in achieving a healthy balance between Prayer and Work (the Benedictine “Ora et Labora”): which is really Faith-and-Love-in-Action (True Life in God). I must add here that, after teaching the Theology of the Holy Trinity for so many years (i.e., thinking and speaking of God in intellectual terms), the Messages of True Life in God have blessed me with a truly personal and contemplative experience of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity: “Conversations with the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit”.
I have discovered that many passages of TLIG Messages are very similar to the spiritual writings of the Saints: just to name a few, of St. Catherine of Siena, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, St. Gertrude, St. Faustina, St. Louis-Marie de Monfort, St. Padre Pio. In fact, the Messages seem like a perfect compendium of the spirituality of all these and other Saints. Among the numerous themes found in the Messages, for me, the Marian spirituality is the most awe-inspiring. Just as an example, in the Message of March 25, 1996: “The Woman Adorned with the Sun”, I find a beautiful reflection and summary of many of the titles of our Blessed Mother used in our traditional “Litany of Our Lady” (which we have always recited after our Family Rosary for years). In fact, it’s a part of God’s Love Hymn regarding “Her Name”… It begins with “Queen of Heaven”, “Mother of God”, etc. etc. In my opinion, it is the most sublime Love Hymn ever to be composed and dictated by the Son of God to honor His Blessed Mother. It is clearly an eternal eulogy issuing from the depths of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in praise of the Immaculate Heart of His Mother. This Marian Love Hymn could not have been written by a human hand except by the most authentic inspiration and dictation of the Holy Spirit. As a spiritual director of souls, I would recommend it to be carefully read and highly cherished by every “beloved disciple” of Jesus who desires to grow in true devotion to the Blessed Mother.
There is something else in the TLIG Messages that is enriching my prayer-life: the many Spirit-filled and Spirit-inspired prayers (most of them dictated by the Lord to Vassula). When I consider the whole progression of this Love Hymn from God, just the collection of all the prayers given to us through Vassula is reason enough to encourage every Christian to read the Messages in order to deepen one’s life of prayer. Moreover, I see the use of these heaven-inspired prayers in the TLIG Writings as one of the strongest means to the realization of the Unity among Christians. The Lord is not only helping us to re-learn the fundamental truths regarding the practice of oral, mental and contemplative prayer, but He is also trying to lead us step-by-step to a new actualization of our intimate communion with Him in the Liturgical or Sacramental dimension of prayer – especially in the Holy Eucharist (the Holy Mass). Who would not want to use some of the most beautiful and heartfelt prayers dictated by the Lord through Vassula, such as the ones in the Messages of: January 29, 1990; March 25, 1991; March 2, 1993; November 11, 1993 (The Emmanuel’s Song); etc. etc. etc?
If I may add just one more point here (and in fact, this could be the most significant of all. It is the extensive use of Holy Scripture in the Messages. Throughout the “Conversations”, the Lord and His Blessed Mother strongly encourage the reading of the Word of God (the Bible); in fact, in many cases, the exact passages in the Bible to be read and reflected upon are cited. This has created in me a fresh taste and hunger for the Word of God. I feel that the Lord Himself is doing a “re-reading” of Scripture for us and with us and in us – taking some of the key-passages of the Bible – picking them out of the Book as it were and reading them out to us with His own Mouth – so it has the fresh Breath of the Holy Spirit in order to put “New Life” or “True Life” into us. This is like what happened to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: the Lord rejoins us on our journey through life and once again “opens the Scriptures” to us, giving new meaning to the passages we have so often read and making a significant impact in our heart and life… and finally leading us to see the connection between the Scriptures and the Eucharist, so that in both the breaking of the Word and the Bread we are able to recognize the Lord: “It is the Lord!”
Fr. Louis-Marie Navaratne O.S.B. (S.T.D. – Rome)
Holy Face Monastery,
P.O.Box 691,Clifton,
New Jersey 07012,U.S.A.
(E-mail: [email protected]
P.S. – Dear Forum Editor, Please, do convey this assurance of prayer-support on the part of the monks in this monastery to Vassula. May the Lord and Mama Mary bless and reward you and yours and your apostolate.
God bless you.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Louis-Marie O.S.B.
Novena to St. Jude Continues!
Due to popular demand we are going to have a second Novena to St. Jude starting this Friday May 28th, 2004. Priests and lay people have written me that they missed the first Novena or were late in starting it. So we will add a second one. This is also a chance for all those who may have not done a complete prayer to try again to make all the days. Here is a link to the Novena in the last Forum: (click here)or (go here)
Let’s say it this time with more fervour!!! This Novena is for Vassula’s intentions regarding the church. Praying together like this around the whole world during Pentecost is especially significant. All of us who read the messages know the urgency of the times. Let me suggest to everyone to search on the website the word pentecost – Jesus has a big promise for His Church and all of us. Go here to search the website: click here.
If you have TLIG related news, information or inspiration please write:
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