Consecration Day 6

Dear Sisters,
Everywhere I turn during this time, I find Mary.  I picked up a CD at church that speaks about her role in Divine Mercy.  Every book I read references her and her role as our Spiritual Mother.  If I turn on the radio, she is the topic being discussed.  I turn on EWTN and there she is.  It seems that I am being flooded with images and ideas, concepts and stories about our heavenly Mother.  A coincidence?  I think not.  So I put my hand in her hand and ask her to show me the way.

Today's scripture reading is Matthew 23: 25-28

                Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity. You blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So also you outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

St. Louis de Montfort                                                                                     TD:#102-103

                There is another category of false devotees of our Lady – hypocritical ones. These hide their sins and evil habits under the mantle of the Blessed Virgin so as to appear to their fellow men different from what they are.

                Then there are the self-interested devotees who turn to her only to win a court-case, to escape some danger, to be cured of some ailment or to have some similar need satisfied. Except when in need they never think of her. Such people are acceptable neither to God nor to his Mother.

Question:

                What is the image of yourself that you present to the world? What is the reality with in you?

Resolution

                It is very common to do what is good so that others might see and notice us and not for a truly holy motivation. Look for an opportunity to be generous in a hidden way and do it.

How naked I feel before this question of hypocrisy.  After all, don't we all wear some mask or other each day?  Are we who we know we are in every circumstance?  So many questions.  Who am I?  Am I an empty tomb with dead men's bones, or am I a living tabernacle of the Lord?  What is it within me that keeps me from embracing wholly the Lord?  Why do I fear? What do I fear?  

It seems that today I am full of questions Lord.  I don't know the answers but I trust that you are revealing yourself to me little by little.  You give me as much of You as I can take in any given moment.  You see my fears, You know my hidden places. You see my faults and yet, I feel that You love me so much.  Perhaps this day I will just hold to that...Your love.  Today I will just allow you to transform me a little bit more than the day before.  Today I will allow myself to know Your love, to trust just a little bit more than I did last year or last week or yesterday.  I will allow your sweet Mother to lead me where You want me to go...knowing that she loves me so much.  She like You doesn't see my ugliness.  She like You loves me unconditionally.  Help me to love that way too.

Sisters, how strange that the Master of the Universe needs our permission to work within us.  I know that I've held back.  I haven't fully given myself to Him yet.  But I will.  This I vow.  I will belong completely to the Lord. 

My Lady, pray for me that I can do this.  

I do believe, Lord help my unbelief.

Total Consecration Day 4

Dear Sisters,
Prayers go out to you all for your various intentions.  As I write this I think of the sister that is facilitating the Endow classes for 2 parishes, the sister that is worried about her daughter's health, the sister that is having pain in her hand, the sister that has a brother-in-law that had a stroke,  the sister that is physically challenged, the sister that is looking for work, the sister that is traveling, the sister that has a stressful job.  What a privilege to pray for all of you, knowing that in my darkest moments your prayers sustained me.

I'm in Day 4 of the Consecration to Jesus through Mary and I feel the Spirit moving in me; shaving off some of the dross to find the shiny metal inside...let it be gold God!!  I found the first few days challenging, as if the devil somehow was trying to prevent this.  That's how I knew that I needed to continue and not give up.  My husband has decided to come along on this journey too.  I didn't ask him to.  The Spirit is moving powerfully in his life as well.

Scripture                                                                                                                           Luke 14:16-24

                But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet, and invited many; and at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for all is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it; please, have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them; please, have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported this to his master. Then the householder in anger said to his servant; Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and there is still room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my banquet.’

St. Louis de Montfort                                                                                                              LEW: #76

                In the opinion of the world, a wise man is one with a keen eye to business; who knows how to turn everything to his personal profit without appearing to do so. He excels in the art of duplicity and well –concealed fraud without arousing suspicion. He thinks one thing and says another. Nothing concerning the graces and manners of the world is unknown to him. He accommodates himself to everyone to suit his end, completely ignoring the honor and interests of God. He manages to make a secret but fatal reconciliation of truth and falsehood, of the gospel and the world, of Christ and Belial. He wishes to be considered an honest man but not a devout man, and most readily scorns, distorts and condemns devotions he does not personally approve of. In short, a man is worldly-wise who, following solely the lead of his senses and human reasoning, poses as a good Christian and a man of integrity, but makes little effort to please God or atone by penance for the sins he has committed against him.

Question

                The temptation to make excuses for not responding to the will and the call of God is very common and very subtle. What are the excuses that you make most frequently?

Excuses, excuses... I'm full of them.  "I'm tired" ranks right up there as my number one excuse for not saying a rosary or not picking up a spiritual book.  And it's true that there are days that I am very tired.  But somehow I make time to watch a TV show that interests me or to play a game on the computer.  Close to "I'm tired" is the ever present "I deserve a little down time after working all day."  It reminds me of the guest that bought the field or the oxen.  They were tired after working all day and wanted to spend time as they wanted.  But I see now that when I do these things, I don't cheat anyone but myself of the great banquet.  For tired or not, spending time with God is the best refreshment of all.

St. Louis de Montforts meditation  was like reading the bio of a politician.  Powerful words these "He wishes to be considered an honest man but not a devout man, and most readily scorns, distorts and condemns devotions he does not personally approve of." Yikes!!

So more to the point of this exercise, how am I a politician?  How do I appear honest and yet am only keeping up appearances?  How do I scorn others in their religious piety?    

Here's how I do this:

My thoughts about a person (especially people that I meet at work and don't actually know) don't reflect my courteous and kind attitude.  Help me to rein in my ugly thoughts Holy Spirit, the thoughts that attribute motives to people that I don't know.  Help me to rein in my ugly thoughts about people that dress in ways that offend me.  Help me to rein in my ugly thoughts about people that speak crudely.  Instead, when I meet these people, let me see them with Jesus' eyes... love first and always and then a prayer for their well being.

Holy Spirit,

Help me to see my selfishness for what it is and remember that all my time, brief as it is on this earth,  belongs to God.

With love and belief that your grace can and will transform me,

your little broken pencil~

22

Total Consecration

Dear Sisters,

A couple of years back, my dear husband and I started the Total Consecration to Jesus Christ through Mary in the way of Louis De Montfort.  Mid way through we lost steam and didn't finish.  I've been feeling such a need to be born again in Mary's spiritual womb, that I've decided to start the journey again.  What a great way to get ready for lent!  So today, I began my journey through Mary to Jesus once more.

It is no mistake that the first 12 days are spent on ridding oneself of the 'spirit of the age'.  We are infected with the world's ideas, norms, images and stilted morality.  I like so many of you suffered through years of secular poison infiltrating my being.  It has taken a lot of prayer and study to learn the lessons that all saints seem to understand; that the path to peace is through and with Jesus.  I yearn to become a slave for the Lord.  One that does his will and doesn't worry about 'the world'.  Of course I get sucked back in through media, work problems, my children and my own disordered desires.  At this crucial juncture in time and space, I think we all sense the dangerous path that our society and our government have chosen.  As we run counter to the current tide of religious intolerance, false morality and the dictatorship of relativism, sometimes we feel like we're salmon swimming upstream.  Thank God for all of you to help me cut through the tide of filth to the shores of beauty.

Here is the scripture on which today's meditation is based:
Sacrifice of Body and Mind.1^* I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.^a2Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.^b

Here is St. Louis De Monfort Meditation:

St. Louis de Montfort                                                                                             SM:#3

Chosen soul, living image of God and redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, God wants you to be holy like him in this life, and glorious like him in the next.. It is certain that growth in holiness is you vocation. All your thoughts, words, and actions, everything you suffer or undertake must lead you to that end. Otherwise, you are resisting God in not doing the work for which he created you and for which even now he is keeping you in being. What a marvelous transformation is possible! Dust into light, uncleanness into purity, sinfulness into holiness, creature into Creator, man into God! A marvelous work, I repeat, so difficult in itself, even impossible for a mere creature to bring about, for only God can accomplish it by giving his grace abundantly and in an extraordinary manner. The very creation of the universe is not as great an achievement as this.

Every line makes me pause "Chosen soul"... Oh how those words make me tremble.  I am a chosen soul. Chosen by God himself to do His work.  Made in the image and likeness of the Lord himself...that's me.  Why do I forget that so often?  And how precious am I, that I am redeemed by the most precious blood of Jesus Christ.  I savor the words "it is certain that growth in holiness is your vocation".  Can it be? Can my vocation be to grow in holiness?  What a wondrous vocation! I have been resisting God and I have long put off the work for which he created me.  

Dear Lord,
I am yours.  I am the clay and you are the potter.  There is nothing I can make of myself that you can't make better.  Take me and form me Lord.  That I may do your work, mirror your love to others and become who you created me to be.  I feel you preparing me to receive you more fully and it scares me a little, but if your sweet mother would walk this path with me, I will not feel afraid.
AMEN!

“Religion is actually not a crutch; it is a cross. It is not an escape, it is a burden; not a flight, but a response. We speak here of a religion with teeth in it, the wind that demands self-sacrifice and surrender. One leans on a crutch, but a cross rests on us. It takes a hero to embrace a cross.” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

from Dottir of God