Eddie Hughes from Shepherds Bush was saying grace when he got utterly
zapped by the love of God.
To say grace on his birthday over his full English breakfast was evidence
of childhood faith restored by
encountering Our Lady of Medugorje and reading the True Life in God (TLIG) messages
of Vassula Ryden. The love he’d experienced at that breakfast two years back
still flowed from him. As my companion on Bus 15 of our August Holy Land
pilgrimage with his sister and niece he became a great interpreter to me of the
holy sites in Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
As I prayed and walked these sites with Eddie and 750 of us I was blessed
to encounter the hospitality of open hearts – Roman Catholic, Orthodox,
Anglican, Lutheran et al – joined day by day at the altar of the eucharist.
This joining in love became a prophetic sign in its context both of Christian
divisions, so evident in the Holy Land, as well as of the threat of military
action against Syria which overshadowed our pilgrimage. We were privileged to
engage and encourage the beleaguered yet generous Christian communities reduced
from 43% of the population in 1948 to 1.3% today due to the harsh scenario of
Israel-Palestine. In this respect it was extremely moving for the whole group
to receive the hospitality of Anglican Bishop Dawani at a reception in the
precincts of St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem.
‘Your mission is to bring My people under one
Name, My Name, and break bread together’ is a word spoken by Jesus in the True
Life in God messages. ‘Unite! Assemble! Invoke My Name together! Consecrate My
Body and My Blood together.’ This we did across denominations both in Jerusalem
and in Galilee, faithful to the messages within the eucharistic hospitality
that prevails on pilgrimage retreat.
What are the messages?
Since 1985 Greek housewife Mrs. Vassula Ryden claims to have
received ‘locutions’ or messages from Jesus. Over the last twenty eight years tens
of thousands have come to recognise in her messages a respelling of the call of
the scriptures to repentance and faith in Jesus and a fresh owning of Our
Lord’s call for the sundered branches of his church to come together. Readers
of the messages form a network active in prayer, evangelisation and works of
charity called True Life in God in
some thirty nations. The 2013 pilgrimage was the ninth of a series of roughly
bi-annual international gatherings.
My first pilgrimage was in 2005. I had already started
reading Vassula’s messages at the suggestion of my spiritual director, the late
Fr Gregory of Crawley Down Monastery. The messages began to inspire me with
their passion for the transformation of the world and the church and my own
spiritual transformation to serve these ends.
I had always subscribed to the church as being ‘built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets’ (Ephesians 2:20). Since encountering Vassula and
the apostolic movement associated with her messages this belief has finally
landed in my experience. With many others I have received a prophetic reminder
beyond my reasoned catholic faith that Anglican heritage is apostolic and can
still, if faithful, converge with Roman Catholic, Orthodox and other traditions.
Transformative impact
If the gospel is as
St Paul says ‘the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith’ (Romans
1:16) why is evidence of empowered lives like Eddie’s so absent in the main
line churches? The answer is things are changing, not least among those who are
impatient with the visible disunity of Christians. There is impatience and
impatience! The godly impatience surrounding Vassula and TLIG is impatience
among other things with clericalism ‘holding to the outward form of godliness
but denying its power’ (2 Timothy 3:5) The Holy Spirit is raising up through
TLIG thousands of co-workers to tackle this spiritual apathy and build unity at
grass roots localities across the world.
Robin Mace, an
English pilgrim, was another changed man I met in Israel. Also on Bus 15
Robin’s life was changed when he heard Vassula speak in Chichester Cathedral on
July 14 2008. He saw Our Lord’s face on hers and this led to quite a dramatic
change of life. ‘To this day I can’t watch pornography or screen violence’
Robin told me. With his wife Christine he has built an ecumenical Chapel
besides their house as a sign of their desire to seek Jesus always and to
encourage others to seek the Lord, especially through the TLIG messages.
The messages speak of the pain of God at human degradation:
‘I look at the earth today and wish I never did ... My eyes see what I never
wanted to see and my ears hear what I dreaded to ever hear! My heart, as a
father, sinks with grief. I fashioned man to have my image, yet they have
degraded themselves’. At the same time they speak of God’s open heart towards
humanity and his desire to transfigure the whole earth.
They speak of God’s desire for spiritual renewal and the
recovery of visible unity. ‘The inner power of my church is my Holy Spirit’ he
says. A central message envisages the three main branches of the church –
catholic, orthodox and protestant – as three metal bars that need bending and
uniting together by the white heat of the Spirit. Until this happens – and it could happen a
lot faster than people imagine – God says his work of reconciling the world is
held back. The messages are a call to unceasing
prayer, for churches to unite in diversity and work together in evangelisation
for the conversion of the world.
Building love
For seven days our 16 buses travelled out first from a
Jerusalem hotel to Bethlehem, Jericho and southern sites and then secondly from
Nazareth in a visitation of sites near Lake Galilee. As we travelled news of the
threatened violence in retaliation against Syria travelled with us. In my
judgement our most moving Eucharist was in the Basilica over the Rock of
Christ’s agony coincident with the British Parliament’s vote against military
action. Who were we, I thought, 750 out of the world’s 6 billion, to be elected
to visit Jerusalem and to stand in prayer at that season so near to the hurting
place of the world?
Another personal highpoint
was the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem which we did wisely over two days. Each coach
had a local guide and a spiritual leader who on our English speaking Bus 15 was
Fr John Abberton from West Yorkshire. On the Wednesday morning we ascended from
the Praetorium of Antonia fortress where Jesus was condemned up to the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre. ‘We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by
your holy Cross you have redeemed the world’.
No sooner than those words and the accompanying genuflexion had been
made at the first station I burst into tears which continued on and off up to
the ninth station and recurred the next day at Christ’s Tomb and since then. I was
privileged to learn from Eddie and other TLIG pilgrims how Our Lord uses the
gift of tears in private devotion to deepen intercession as well as a closer
walk with him.
I confess that as a fairly hard headed priest I am struck
very often more by the superficial historical aspects of Christian pilgrimage
and the desire to gain knowledge through travel. On this pilgrimage God seems
to have had other ideas in deepening my penitence for a lack of love for him
and for sinners. ‘Tell them that the God
they have forgotten has never forgotten them…I need your heart to unite you and
unite your Church’ Jesus says in the messages, with a warning about lesser
priorities, ‘I do not want administrators in my house…who have industrialised
my house’. The abundance of information we priests have to deal with and
organise nowadays! How little this should matter to us compared to keeping our
hearts on fire for God and for people!
In that spirit I was led to use the contacts information on
my phone in a new way. On the last Sunday morning we visited Mount Tabor where
I was able to take the opportunity to walk up with my friends from Crawley Down
monastery. As we walked spaced apart I slowly read out my parish contacts to
God, praying for them one by one, and for humanity as a whole, that we be
changed from his image into his likeness. ‘And all of us, with unveiled faces,
seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being
transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this
comes from the Lord, the Spirit.’ (2 Corinthians 3:18)
Looking forward
A repeated theme in the messages is Our Lord’s desire for
the churches to make one day, not several, for the celebration of Easter. ‘Deep
in my body I have the lance piercing me. I want the lance removed’. The blade
of that lance is the visible disunity of Christians and it is symbolised by
separate celebrations of Easter. At every recent pilgrimage attendees have
signed up to petitions for a common date of Easter to be relayed to the Pope
and the different Patriarchs. This year the engaging style of Pope Francis,
whom Vassula met a few years ago in Buenos Aires, made for great encouragement
in pressing forward to implement Jesus’ desire for one Easter and, indeed, one
Altar.
I believe the messages of True Life in God to be truly
prophetic words for today from the risen Lord Jesus respelling the truth of
scripture. Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and other denominational adherents
recognise in them spiritual material that resonates with the writing of the
early church fathers. Many are using the messages as a springboard for
contemplative prayer. They are held to be prophetic words for today from the
risen Lord Jesus and his Mother.
Mystic Vassula Ryden is a remarkably unassuming lady,
fearless yet humorous and lacking self-importance. It has been her
extraordinary and costly role to hand on the messages braving much cynicism,
including my own initially. Vassula is handmaid of a unique work of God in our
age, uniting and shaping the church up to be herself a better handmaid of the
advancing of God’s kingdom of justice, love and peace.
The spiritual apathy and indifference of our culture are too
powerful for a divided Church!
All messages can be found on the internet at www.tlig.org
Canon John Twisleton is Rector of St Giles, Horsted
Keynes in West Sussex
