Obituary for Vassula Rydén † 25 September 2024

Vassula Rydén was the most well-known contemporary mystic with a prophetic vocation. She died on September 25 after a complicated operation. She leaves behind two sons and thousands of readers of the messages she conveyed to the world and will be missed by all of us.

Vassula Rydén was born into the Greek Orthodox minority in Egypt in 1942. She grew up in Heliopolis, Cairo and later in Lausanne, Switzerland. She married a Swedish UN diplomat and lived a life as a diplomat’s wife with interests such as painting and tennis. On November 28, 1985, she experienced a revelation from her guardian angel, Daniel, for the first time. Later, it was God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary and other angels and saints who spoke to her. In total, she managed to write down 13 volumes of revelations that have been translated into over 40 languages. She gave over 1170 speeches in over 85 nations.

Vassula’s messages are centered around unity – unity and harmony between people and God, our Creator, unity in families, unity in the world, unity in churches, unity among churches, and ultimately unity between people and religions. When one sees how much division there is in the world with high divorce rates, and new conflicts between the churches and the inhabitants of planet earth, this call to unity may seem like a distant goal. But when it comes to uniting the Christian churches, Christ has promised in the messages that it will be His work, as long as we take a first step by praying and working to unite the Easter dates, which are still celebrated according to both Julian and Gregorian calendars. For Easter 2025, the dates will be celebrated together as a result of the coinciding calendars, and there are many of us who pray that the church leaders may find a way to continue with one common Easter celebration after this.

Vassula knew that the unity of the churches was challenging, but she saw a way in which we could experience a foretaste of the unity of the churches: through joint retreats and pilgrimages. We may not be structurally united in one body and in one unitary liturgy, but we can pray together and share our faith through ecumenical friendship and the common practice of our faith. She fearlessly called for it, and many of us have benefited from it. The unity of churches has been a conscious vocation for many decades. It is unfortunate that we have not yet realized the high priestly prayer of Christ: “…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (Jn 17:21). We have long known that in the TLIG Messages, Christ emphasizes time and again the urgency and importance of unity among Christians, indeed from the very beginning of the Messages: « My Body is maimed to the extent of paralysation » (June 21, 1987).

Alongside the call to pilgrimages, Vassula felt an urgency to help the distress of the poorest in the world through Beth Myriams – houses for the poor. Currently, there are 33 such houses in the world, maintained through donations and without administrative financial burden.

Vassula was and remains (like all prophets in history) a sign of contradiction. She was contradicted both by atheists and rationalists, and by some ecclesiastical authorities who refused to acknowledge that God could choose an ordinary woman to convey a message about God’s reality and loving desires for the world. And like all prophets, she did not receive any ecclesiastical recognition during her lifetime. Nevertheless, she had supporters from all churches – from the laity to cardinals and patriarchs. It was historic that she, being a living Orthodox mystic, achieved a dialogue with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Catholic Church, a dialogue that lasted from 2002 to 2004 and led to the clarification of critical questions that the same Congregation had put forward in a 1995 Notification. Specifically, she answered the questions in a longer response that can be read here. The dialogue led to the Congregation sending a lengthy letter to bishops, calling them to read the Notification in light of her response. This, in turn, led to Archbishop Arguelles and Bishop Felix Toppo to issue the so-called Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, which indicate that in the TLIG messages there is nothing that is contrary to Catholic doctrine, faith and morals.

Vassula’s greatest and lasting impact is perhaps in people from all over the world who continue to read the divine messages she conveyed. The messages have great strength and depth, and a great spiritual growth is evident when comparing the early messages with those that followed over the years. The messages do not intend to surpass the normative Public Revelation of Sacred Scripture, but are a respelling and actualization of God’s Word for our times; they remind us of the truths of the Bible and of those areas in our lives where we fail to live them. Many of those who read the messages have come to believe that God makes himself known in the spirit through the reading thereof and have come to acknowledge that “God’s Word does what it says”, even as He speaks today. The messages unite us with Christ and His will, just as in the classical Lectio Divina, the meditative reading of God’s Word.

On July 8, 1992, God said to Vassula: « I and you will spread My Message; I shall send you to a few more nations, then, when I feel you have accomplished your mission, you shall return to Me; I, Myself, shall come and fetch you. » This has been accomplished. Glory be to the memory of Vassula, and glory be to God for now having called her to Himself, after a lifelong apostolate of Unity.

Niels Christian Hvidt, ThD