Total Consecration-March 25, 2014

Dear Sisters,
Our Lady took my hand and led me through to the Feast of the Annunciation where I gave myself to her.  I willingly follow her promptings now, and they always lead me to her baby.

I'd been sick almost the entire consecration period.  After chest x-ray, blood drawn, two rounds of antibiotics and steroids, the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong.  Only1HolySpirit, pointed out that she thought my illness was a sort of purge of all the stuff that I needed to shed before the consecration.  It makes a lot of sense as I've been healthy since I made the consecration.

I decided that I needed to do the consecration at a mass where I could take my time in prayer.  As I had to work that day, the options at our local parish were not right for this important step in my faith journey.  But thank God for St. Tim's.  Our Lady's Prayer Group meets there every Tuesday night at 7PM to say the Rosary, the Chaplet and a mass. This fit in perfectly with my plans.  I opted to leave the house at 6PM so that I could have time to say the final prayers and to sign the consecration document.  I was listening to Immaculate Heart Radio and Mother Angelica's show taped sometime in the 90's came on.  She talked about her own consecration to Our Lady on this very day so many years before.  Tears came to my eyes as I realized that I was making my consecration on the same day that this living saint had made hers.  From now on I will share this anniversary with Mother Angelica.  Imagine that!  But really it's even better than that...
Early in the consecration process, I realized that the Feast of the Annunciation is also the day that Louis de Montfort made his own consecration.  I had picked this Marian feast as my own consecration day without realizing it's significance.  God is GREAT!!

A mass of clouds followed me all the way to the church.  It looked like a dust storm was brewing.  I got out of the car and went to the Rosary project that a friend of mine's son did for his Eagle project.  It's gorgeous. He got an artist to paint the pictures of the different meditations.  As you walk the rosary path, you have ten stepping stones for each Hail Mary and then you stop at the the meditation for that day.  It is so well done.

Entering the church is always impactful.  The mural takes your breath when you first see it again.  How beautiful is the representation of our brothers and sisters in the faith!  I asked them to pray for me and I made the final vows of consecration and signed the book.

The night was wonderful and during mass, Father asked if anyone was doing their consecration and I raised my hand.  Some of the people there were celebrating the anniversary of their consecration.  An all around wonderful night.

I feel like a child again, looking to my Mother for guidance, love, safety and example.  She is so beautiful and so loving and so very patient with her children.  And all of you are my sisters under her mantle.  We image her and emulate her by giving birth to Jesus in our hearts.

Mother,
I give myself to you.
Help me to use my feminine genius to its fullest in my work, family,and friendships.
Take my hand each day and lead me to your son.
Let me work to please Him always.
I am grateful to you for your love and guidance.
Tuus Totus

Total Consecration

Dear Sisters,

What a lovely journey I've taken during this lent!  I have a wonderful tour guide in St. Louis de Montfort. He's brought me through the heights of my conceit, the valley of my selfishness and through the bog of my laziness.  He brought me to a mirror where I was shown who I can be...a beautiful image that I yearn to become. God loves me so much; I am humbled and like a small child who knows that if they hold up their arms that their papa will pick them up and hold them close to their heart, I tuck myself into a small little bundle and fling myself into Mary's arms.  She holds me tight, rocks me and hands me over to Jesus.  Can there be greater bliss?

I am in Week Two: Knowledge of Mary.  The captions reads;

 Mary must be known and openly revealed by the Holy Spirit so that Jesus may be known and loved through her.-St, Louis de Montfort

The question today is; Christ goes so far as to share even his Mother with us so that she might be our Mother as well. What does it mean for you to have Mary as your Mother?

I am so struck today by the way that Jesus holds nothing back for himself.  He gave us his body, his blood, he shares his divinity by offering us his Father as "Our Father" and he even shares his Mother with us from the cross.  Total giving born of total love. 

I know that we are all familiar with the natural little jealousies that happen between siblings in regards to their parents.  When my kids were young and I was speaking to one of them, sometimes the other child would put her little hands on my face and turn my attention, literally, to them instead.  That natural 'look at me!' instinct is strong and needs an act of detachment and love of another to be overcome.  

No one knows Jesus' ways more than His dear Mama.  We can learn so much from Mary who lived a hidden life with Jesus and is still by His side.  As I give myself to Mary, I ask her to show me how to die to self so that Jesus can live through me.  I ask Mary to show me how to give birth to Jesus in my heart.  I ask her to keep me close so that I might not stray.  I ask her to show me how to please Jesus. I ask her to help me be a true helpmate to my spouse and a loving mother to my children. It occurs to me that having Mary as my mother is the surest way to permanent union with God's family.

As my Mother, she introduces me to her other children, the saints that have gone before.  She can send her children to us to teach us different lessons that we need to learn.  How beautiful to learn contemplation form Teresa of Avila, or courage from Joan of Arc, or knowledge of scripture from St. Paul... She can help me on my journey sending her sons and daughters, my brothers and sisters in faith to me.  As my earthly mother had my brothers and sisters help me in various ways; my brother taught me to ride a bike, my sister helped me with homework, my other sister would feed me when I was a baby, etc. our Mother Mary will likewise send helpers my way so that I stay on the narrow path.  And of course, she will always point the way to THE WAY, THE TRUTH and THE LIFE-JESUS!!

Dear Mother,

I put myself in your loving hands.  Consider me your little child.  Teach me Mother that I may learn the way to please Jesus.  I too want to give birth to Him in my life...show me the way.

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

Martha, Martha...

Reflections on Luke 10:38-42

Dear Sisters,

Today as I ponder the morning readings in Magnificat, it occurred to me that Martha's other name could be 'Action'.

Travel with me as we see Martha wiping her hands on an old piece of cloth tied around her waist.  She greets Jesus as he approaches the door and bids him to enter.  You can see her bustling around as she accommodates all of her guests.  Already her mind is on offering washing water for their feet and cool water to drink.  She is mentally tabulating the offerings in her larder and deciding what she needs to prepare.  Her mind is full of what needs to be done...done...done.

In the midst of the frantic activity her guests have whirled her into, she looks around to see that she is alone in her tasks.  "Where on earth is Mary?" she wonders, irritation clearly written on her face.  "Doesn't the girl realize all that must be done?  It has ever been this way with Mary.  Head in the clouds!"

Martha, her hands and wrists deep in dough shifts her stance in order to see into the other room.  "Where can she be?"  All the bodies surrounded Jesus, make it hard for Martha to make out Mary's whereabouts.  Where Mary wasn't, was where she ought to be....according to Martha.

Suddenly some of the others shift a bit and Martha finally sees Mary.  And where is she? Sitting, SITTING, mind you at Jesus' feet with a goofy adoring look on her face.  Here I am...as per usual... carrying the lion's share of the work while the child (I can't think of her as any other way) is SITTING! Hmph!!

Now ladies, there isn't one of us that hasn't felt exactly like Martha; put upon, overworked, irritated by the thoughtlessness of others and victimized by the circumstances.

Watch with me as Martha crisply wipes her hands and marches, yes, I believe she marched out of the kitchen area.  I think too that the apostles gave her a wide berth when they saw the blood in her eye, so that she had a clear path to Jesus and Mary.

Mary, at the feet of Our Lord is blissfully unaware of the tempest about to descend.  Her heart is so full and her soul has been lifted by golden wings by the words of The Master.  She can but stare lovingly into the face of this amazing man.  His voice so pure, His words speak to her of eternal things.  She is sitting at his feet, because it is the only place in the world that she can possibly be.

Into this peaceful tableau whirls hurricane Martha.  "Lord! (I added the exclamation point) do you not care that my sister has left me by myself (again!) to do the serving?" The accusation, imposed into the peaceful setting, stops all movement.

Jesus looks lovingly at this woman who he knows well and says, " Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.  There is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.

Jesus can easily read Martha's hit parade of worries.  Everything from offering 'proper' hospitality as defined by the norms of that time to hoping that the refreshments are up to snuff,  obsessing over whether the house is presentable enough and on and on and on.  Can you just see the hamster in the wheel in Martha's head rolling along with all these random thoughts, and worries?  Squeak, squeak, squeak goes the wheel, causing complete distraction.  In a brain so full already, there was no room at all for what Jesus was sharing with all the others.  Martha was present, yes, but she wasn't present in the moment.

I am Martha.  This reading today is a direct conversation from Our Lord to me.  How hard is it for me to just sit and pray!?  I rarely give myself permission to do this.  Read,...sure. Walk and do the rosary,...yes. Clean as I listen to Catholic Radio,...no problem.  Iron as I watch EWTN, ...yep.  But sit quietly and just 'be'?  Why is that so difficult?

Today I feel Jesus is giving me permission to just BE.  He is telling me to be present to Him.  He is reminding me that I do not have 'the better part'. And He is convicting me of His great love despite it all.  He's waiting for me in the ever present moment...and in this moment I leap into his arms, sit quietly at his feet, and let Him love me.

May Our adorable Lord grant all my sisters quiet moments to just BE.

With love,
His little broken pencil...