Queen of Heaven, Rejoice

April 11, 2023

Ko-fi

Happy Easter blessings to each and every one!  Let us continue rejoicing and even more during this Easter Octave (week).  Let us rejoice with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, and our mother too, as we pray the Regina Coeli instead of Salve Regina, Hail Holy Queen. By praying the Regina Coeli, you and I are joyfully proclaiming with Our Mother, victory of life over death:  for the Lord has truly risen.

Let us also thank Jesus for His love and for choosing to redeem us from our sins.  How do you and I manifest our love and gratitude to Him on the other hand?  The following is another excerpt on Love-Sorrow for each and every sin that nailed Jesus on the Cross (From Joseph Tissot, How to profit from your faults pp. 92-93).

 The Saint (St. Francis de Sales) also shows how one should welcome a beaten and despairing penitent:  “If you see him afraid and broken down, and he is doubtful of obtaining pardon for his sins, raise him up while pointing out to him the great pleasure that God gets from the repentance of terrible sinners. 

Peter Paul Ruben

The worse our misery, the greater the glory it will bring God’s mercy. Show him that our Lord prayed to God his Father for those who crucified him to make us understand that, when we crucified him with our own hands, he pardoned us with great generosity.  God has such a great regard for true repentance that the least conversion in the world makes him forget all sorts of sins.  This, to such an extent, that even if the dammed and the devils could have it, all their sins would be forgiven.  The greatest saints were notorious sinners:  St. Peter, St. Matthew, St. Mary Magdalen, David, and so on.  In fact, the worst wrong that we can do to God, as well as to the Passion and death of Jesus Christ, is not to hope to obtain pardon for our sins.

 Aleteia

Through faith, we are obliged to believe in the remission of sins, so that we do not doubt at all the sacrament that we receive, which our Lord has instituted to this effect” (Advice to Confessors, 2, 196).

The mutual interaction of sorrow and love

 

“Don’t forget that Sorrow is the touchstone of Love” (The Way, 439). This deep and incisive statement by Saint Josemaría Escrivá touches on the very different reactions to pain. There is a relation between the way each person deals with pain and the way he or she loves, because only when one makes love the meaning of sorrow does it become acceptable. Only then can one actually reach the point of exclaiming: “Let us bless pain. Love pain. Sanctify pain [...] Glorify pain” . In Saint Josemaría Escrivá’s writings the mystery of pain is a constant touchstone; it becomes an occasion for a face-to-face encounter with the God who became Man in order to teach us to live as men. In choosing to become Man, Jesus Christ wanted to suffer all that was humanly possible to suffer in order to teach us that love can overcome every kind of suffering.

 Love-sorrow for each fault

We know with what perfection the gentle Francis de Sales practiced this kindness with regard to his penitents.  Such sentiments filled him, and he used them himself.  His contemporaries and those whom he trusted tell us: “I have often heard the interest that St. Teresa of Avila had for reading the lives of saints who had been sinners. This preference can be explained, for thereby she was able to see the magnificence of divine mercy shining above their great misery” (Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, III, ch. 14, s.28).

“I don’t know how I am made,” wrote St. Francis to St. Jeanne de Chantal.  “I feel miserable, but I don’t trouble myself about it; and sometimes I am even happy in thinking that I am a really good object for the mercy of God.”

Aleteia

Finally, Father La Rivière speaks of the saintly bishop’s saying that it is not possible to express the love-sorrow he felt for each fault:  a pain blended always with filial fear, a bitter-sweet emotion of absolute abandon and complete hope in God’s incomprehensible goodness.  “No, it certainly is not possible to express that, since this excellent person, from his tender youth, had been instructed by the Holy Spirit to see God as extremely good and lovable, even in the midst of his own imperfections.  These last are totally destroyed by God when we repent for them.  He wipes them out in the ocean of his mercy and consumes them in the fire of his infinite charity.  With this in mind, if one sometimes becomes slightly weak and does not live up to one’s good resolutions, then he, without getting angry or impatient, should start again gently and look toward the benign Savior with perfect confidence” (Fr. La Rivière, Life of the Blessed Francis de Sales, 3, 9).

Salesians of Don Bosco West

Published in 1981, The Way of the Cross has become a beloved devotion for Catholics worldwide: “You too someday may feel the loneliness of Our Lord on the Cross. If so, seek the support of him who died and rose again. Find yourself a shelter in the wounds in his hands, in his feet, in his side. And your willingness to start again will revive, and you will take up your journey again with greater determination and effectiveness” (Josemaria Escriva, The Way of the Cross, Twelfth Station).

And a sure sign of beginning again is through the Sacrament of Confession where Jesus accepts our sorrow of love and you and I receive His mercy.

See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”

Affectionately,

Guadalupinky