Hail Mary Full of Grace
September 5, 2023
Hi! How is each and every one? We have just started the month of September,
one of the months dedicated to Our Lady aside from being her birth month. September 8 is our Lady’s birthday. Happy
birthday, Mama Mary!
September 12 is the Holy
Name of Mary
September 15 is Our Lady
of Sorrows
St Josemaria Institute
and September 24 is Our
Lady of Ransom
St. Josemaria says in Christ is Passing By, Ch 14, 143:
Devotion to our Lady is not something soft and sentimental. It fills the soul with consolation and joy to
precisely the extent that it means a deep act of faith making us go outside
ourselves and put our hope in the Lord.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” says one of the psalms, “how can I lack
anything? He gives me a resting-place
where there is green pasture, leads me out to the cool water’s brink, refreshed
and content. As in honor pledged by sure
paths he leads me; dark be the valley about my path, hurt I fear none while he
is with me.”
“Because Mary is our mother, devotion to her teaches
us to be authentic sons: to love truly, without limit; to be simple, without
the complications which come from selfishly thinking only about ourselves; to
be happy, knowing that nothing can destroy our hope. “The beginning of the way at the end of which
you will find yourself completely carried away by love for Jesus, is a trusting
love for Mary.” I wrote that many years
ago, in the introduction to a short book on the rosary, and since then I have
often experienced the truth of those words.
I am not going to complete that thought here with all sorts of
reasons. I invite you to discover it for
yourself, showing your love for Mary, opening your heart to her, confiding to
her your joys and sorrow, asking her to help you recognize and follow Jesus.”
The author concludes his book
(From Joseph Tissot, How to profit from
your faults, pp. 132-133) as follows:
O most good Mother of him who said: It is
not the healthy who need a doctor, and again, forgive seventy times seven. Will they exhaust your power in the
tenderness of your care? According to
your St. Bonaventure, (Spec., ch. 5)
your devoted saint, you will go to seek the sinner rejected by all. You will embrace and warm him. You will not rest till you have cured him.
Tuus
sum ego, salvum me fac:
I am your patient, save me (Psalm 118 (see 119:94). Such will be my cry of hope all the days of
my exile. The more I recall my past
falls, the more I will remind you that you have the power and goodness to lift
me up. And the more will I rest assured
that you have not abandoned me and left me half-cured.
St. Josemaria says in CB, Ch 14, 145: “If we have
this filial contact with Mary, we won’t be able to think just about ourselves
and our problems. Selfish personal
problems will find no place in our mind.
Mary brings us to Jesus, and Jesus is “the firstborn among many
brothers.” And so, if we know Jesus, we
realize that we can live only by giving ourselves to the service of
others. A Christian can’t be caught up
in personal problems; he must be concerned about the universal Church and the
salvation of all souls.”
Ibid.,
Ch 14, 146: “When we are truly sons of
Mary we understand this attitude of our Lord, and our heart expands and becomes
tender. We feel the sufferings, doubts,
loneliness and sorrow of all other men, our brothers. And we urgently want to help them and speak
to them about God, so that they can treat him as their Father and understand
the motherly care which Mary is offering them.”
From Joseph Tissot: My gratitude for your care and the desire to
manifest your power will help me to follow your counsels. I will love you; I will glorify you because
you have delivered my soul from the
depths of Sheol (Ps 86: 13). And
finally, in Heaven, I will modestly take my seat among these who owe their
salvation to you because in their misery they trusted in you. I will remain your pride—just as the patient
is the pride of the doctor who has snatched him from the portals of death, not
only once but several times. This will
be the greatest gain that grace has gained. My very mistakes will become a
pedestal to your glory, while at the throne of God’s mercies I will sing
forever: Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo—I will sing of thy
steadfast love, O Lord, forever (Ps 89:1). Amen! Amen!
Amen!
St. Josemaria says in CB, Ch 14, 148: “We can’t
forget that Mary spent nearly every day of her life just like millions of other
women who look after their family, bring up their children and take care of the
house. Mary sanctifies the ordinary
everyday things – what some people wrongly regard as unimportant and
insignificant: everyday work, looking after those closest to you, visits to
friends and relatives. What a blessed
ordinariness, that can be so full of love of God!
For that’s what explains Mary’s life – her
love. A complete love, so complete that
she forgets herself and is happy just to be there where God wants her,
fulfilling with care what God wants her to do.
That is why even her slightest action is never routine or vain but,
rather, full of meaning. Mary, our
mother, is for us both an example and a way.
We have to try to be like her, in the ordinary circumstances in which
God wants us to live.
If we act in this way, we give those around us the
example of a simple and normal life which is consistent, even though it has all
the limitations and defects which are part and parcel of the human
condition. And when they see that we
live the same life as they do, they will ask us: Why are you so happy? How do you manage to overcome selfishness and
comfort-seeking? Who has taught you to
understand others, to live well and to spend yourself in the service of
others? Then we must disclose to them
the divine secret of christian existence. We must speak to them about God,
Christ, the Holy Spirit, Mary. The time has come for us to use our poor words
to communicate the depth of God’s love which grace has poured into our souls.”
May I invite you to
accompany me these days as I bring into my quiet moments in dialogue with the
Holy Spirit the above ideas about Mary, Mother of God and our mother. Let us ask her to teach us how to deal with
her and her Son Jesus, that you and I may think of ourselves less and think
more of the others. Teach me my mother how to love myself as God our Lord wants
me to love myself, that is, by doing His will as you instructed the servants in
Cana: “Do what he tells 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
Comments
Post a Comment