Pious Tears and Mary Magdalene has a Lesson for Us
Hi! How is each and every one? It is July 16, the
Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. I
would like to invite you all to join me in asking Our Lady for whatever the
good Lord wills for each one of us. You
know that recently somebody shared the gist of the book, What Men Live By by Leo Tolstoy. Are
you not intrigued by the title?
I suggest you search the
book that is downloadable and free. It
is very short. You can read it in one sitting and you can get the message
clearly. But don’t worry I can give you
the gist in the way I could. God sent an
angel to a mission on earth but the angel felt compassion for the person to
whom he was sent and did not carry out the mission as instructed. So when he
reported back to God he was sent back to earth to carry out the mission accordingly
and to stay on earth to learn three things.
He has to find out the answers to the following questions: What is given to man; what
is not given to man? And what does man live by? Now I am tempted to let you find out the
answers yourselves. This way you will be
truly challenged to read the book and mull over the lessons therein.
I assure you it is worthwhile
the effort of reading the book and finding out the full story for yourselves. I wish you would share with me your
findings. And now let us go back to
business. The following post is an
excerpt on Pious Tears and Mary Magdalene’s Lesson for Us (From
Joseph Tissot, How to profit from your
faults,
pp. 116-118).
It is here that we witness the triumph of love. An author we have often quoted wonders whether there is a secret to recover lost time. Isn’t this as impossible as wanting to bind up a tempest?
He replies: “Thank
God the secret does exist! Love has
invented it. Love has revealed it, so
that the love within you can take hold of it.
This secret is found in pious tears, though they are not of the
eyes. God does not give them to
everyone, nor does he ask anyone for them.
They are the tears of your heart, of repentance, of the anguish of the
soul, and of contrition. With these
invisible tears, cover every aspect of your life that has remained
sterile. Washed by these tears, those
areas will witness the re-entry of love.
And who knows! These misspent
years may become in God’s sight more wonderful, flourishing, and precious
because of repentance than they would have been with innocence alone. If you weep like Mary Magdalene, then no one
will accuse you of having sinned” (Msgr. C. Gay, On Life and Christian Virtues:
On Charity).
Mary Magdalene’s example confirms this doctrine to
such an extent that St. Francis de Sales is able to make excellent use of
it. It is the crowning glory of all the
venerable Doctor’s teachings and summarizes this chapter.
Mary
Magdalene has a lesson for us
“Mary Magdalene underwent a wonderful
conversion. From the soiled and stained
creature that she was, she became a pure and clean vessel ready to receive the
precious liquor of grace. With this she would later anoint her
savior. She was one who, because of her
sins, was a foul-smelling heap of manure.
After her conversion she became a beautiful lily, a wonderfully perfumed
flower. The more she withered and became
rancid because of sin, the more she was now purified and renewed by grace.
“We see flowers grow and bloom even from a rotten
and smelling mound of earth. We notice
that the more the earth is filled with manure and rotten matter, the better the
growth and beauty of the flowers planted there.
“In the same way, though completely contaminated by
sin, Mary Magdalene, after her conversion, became more beautiful through
contrition and love. We can justly call
her the advocate of all Christians and all children of the Church. These can be divided into three groups. The first consists of all the just people;
the second, of repentant sinners who do not desire to die in sin; and the
third, of obstinate and unrepentant sinners who do not care to repent and who
die in a state of sin. It is not about
this last category that I want to talk, for they have no desire to go to
Heaven. Hell is ready for them, and it
is their heritage. Their misfortune is
proportionate to their obstinacy to die in sin.
They are, therefore, damned.
“It is not as one of these sinners that Mary Magdalene
is an example, but of those who want to abandon their sinful lives. She was a sinful woman, as the Scriptures
teach us: Mulier erat in civitate peccatrix – a woman of the city who was a sinner (Lk 7:37). She abandoned her sinful life and asked for
God’s forgiveness with true contrition and a firm resolution to give up
sin. In this way, she inspires all
sinners to follow her example.
“And as for her repentance, dear God! How large and generous it was! How much she wept for her sins! What did she not do to erase them, both during
the lifetime of her Savior and even after his death! She has offended God with all her heart, with
all her soul, and with all her body, without reservation. But now she expended herself generously and
totally in acts of repentance; she can very rightly be called the patron of all
repentant sinners as she surpassed them all through penance.
“We commonly see that if men have been hurt, they
want satisfaction in proportion to the wrong done to them. If they have been robbed of a coin, they have
to be compensated by another. If a man
is harmed by another, it is befitting that he be given compensation in
proportion to the harm inflicted on him.
In the Old Law it was a case of ‘an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
“Well, this law is now abolished among men;
nevertheless, in a sense, it is still in force with Jesus Christ and those
devoted to his service. For one has to
render him as much as one can, in proportion to the fault committed. That is to say, he desires that we do at
least as much for him as we have done for the world. This is not asking too much of us. For, if carried away by vain attractions we
have done so much for the world, what should we not do for the greater
attractions of his grace—which is good and generous. It is not wrong for him to expect this much
from us. For just as we used our heart,
our soul, our affections, our eyes, our speech, our hair, and our perfume for
the world, so also we should use and sacrifice them in the service of Sacred
Love.”
Need I say more? I guess there is already much to reflect on
in your quiet moments with Our Lord between the book by Leo Tolstoy and this
article on Mary Magdalene. May you find
joy and share the joy of lessons learned with people around you.
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
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