J.M.J.
November 8, 2016
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity:
“May my life be a continual prayer, a long act of love.”
Dear Family of Mary!
“…In order to love Him with all your heart, you need to come to know Him. You will come to know Him through prayer. Pray with the heart and with your feelings. To pray means to think of His love and sacrifice. To pray means to love, to give, to suffer and to offer. I am calling you, my children, to be apostles of prayer and love…” (November 2, 2016)
Our Lady calls us to fall in love with Jesus. She knows that this is our destiny. But she also knows how blind we are. We are earthly creatures. We are like little newborns, who are still unaccustomed to the light of heaven. It takes a lot of time for us to learn to see in such light. Prayer is that school in which we slowly begin to see the Lord. In prayer we learn Him. We learn His ways, His words, His humor, His desire to die for us. We slowly begin to see the magnitude of His self-gift. The more we see, the more we can only respond with love.
St. Faustina spoke about this process of knowing and loving this way:
No one can comprehend what my heart feels when I meditate on the fact that God unites me with himself through the vows. God makes known to me, even now, the immensity of the love He already had for me before time began; and as for me, I have just begun to love Him, in time. His love was [ever] great, pure and disinterested, and my love for Him comes from the fact that I am beginning to know Him. The more I come to know Him, the more ardently, the more fiercely I love Him, and the more perfect my acts become. Meanwhile, each time I call to mind that in a few days I am to become one with the Lord through perpetual vows, a joy beyond all description floods my soul. From the very first time that I came to know the Lord, the gaze of my soul became drowned in Him for all eternity. Each time the Lord draws close to me and my knowledge of Him grows deeper, a more perfect love grows within my soul. (Diary 230)
February 12, [1937]. Today, the presence of God is piercing me through and through, like a ray from the sun. My soul is longing for God so intensely that I fall into a swoon every now and then. I feel Eternal Love touching my heart, and my littleness cannot bear it, and this causes me to swoon. Still, my interior strength is great, and my soul wants to match the Love with which it is loved. The soul at such moments has a very deep knowledge of God, and the more it comes to know Him, the purer and more fervent does its love for Him become. How unfathomable are the mysteries of the soul and God! (Diary 946)
We will come to know Him through prayer.
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
© Mary TV 2016
