“Sincerely”: Our Lady is Calling You to Convert!”
A Series
Part 2: March 2012: “What Place do you Give to Jesus in your Life?”
Medjugorje Message, March 18, 2009
“Dear children! Today I call you to look into your hearts sincerely and for a long time. What will you see in them? Where is my Son in them and where is the desire to follow me to Him? My children, may this time of renunciation be a time when you will ask yourself: 'What does my God desire of me personally? What am I to do?' Pray, fast and have a heart full of mercy. Do not forget your shepherds. Pray that they may not get lost, that they may remain in my Son so as to be good shepherds to their flock. ”
Our Lady looked at all those present and added:
“Again I say to you, if you knew how much I love you, you would cry with happiness.
Thank you. ”
In a little book that my husband, Charles, gave me, called Jesus is My All in All: Praying with the “Saint of Calcutta,” Mother Teresa, I read:
When asked by a reporter: “Mother, what place do you give to Jesus in your life?,” she immediately replied, “I give Him all the place.”
Knowing even just a little of Blessed Mother Teresa’s life, who would doubt the sincerity of her statement? Blessed Mother Teresa, please pray for us, that we will also give Jesus “all the place” in our lives. Our call to spiritual conversion is a call to give Jesus “all the place” in our lives. With St. John the Baptist, our souls are moved to proclaim, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
When we seek Jesus, He leads us into our hearts, that we may experience His Heart. A small group of Little Handmaids and a couple friends are doing the 33 days of preparation to do the total consecration to Jesus through Mary of St. Louis de Montfort on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25. In a book called 33 Days to Morning Glory we read about St. Louis de Montfort leading peasant volunteers in a French town to build a huge monument to the Passion of Christ. After 15 months of loving labor to build the monument, it is completed and the Bishop is scheduled to come and bless it. However, before the Bishop can bless the monument, St. Louis learns that the government is going to destroy the monument, because some enemies have told the government the lie that it has been built as a fortress against authorities. St. Louis stands before the thousands who have come for the blessing and says, “We had hoped to build a Calvary here; let us build it in our hearts.” St. Louis de Montfort, please pray for us, that we may also build a Calvary in our hearts.
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me
and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
After reading that passage about St. Louis de Montfort in 33 Days to Morning Glory, my friend, Alma, emailed me:
Today's reading made me think about how petty and just plain spoiled I can be when things don't go as planned. Just a few days ago, I was trying to make a copy of the Divine Mercy Chaplet to carry in my car, and I "wanted it to look pretty". The whole time I felt like Jesus was telling me, "I don't care how it looks on paper,--how does it look in your soul?" But I kept trying, and finally I had to give up, and I was angry, because I felt that God should have let me make it look nice. I'd worked on it for 45 minutes, after all! Then I read today's reading, and I felt ashamed. Even though I'd already confessed my sin, I still felt shame. These people had worked and planned for 15 months, only to have it torn down! And all St Louis de Montfort said was,"...Let us build it in our hearts. Blessed be God." Wow! I was ready to throw myself on the floor and kick and scream and drum my heels over a copy that I knew I was wasting time on, because "pretty" is not what God wants. He wants our love, our trust, our devotion, our soul. What a lesson for me! May I learn to accept His holy will always
.
How beautiful that Alma is learning, as we are all called to learn, that “pretty” is not what God wants, that “He wants our love, our trust, our devotion, our soul”! Let us pray with Alma that we will all have the grace to “accept His holy will.” In this way God will restore the beauty that He created in us from our conceptions.
Rosa Maria, one of the Little Handmaids, shares with us her beautiful poem/reflection that is a message of hope for those of us who are seriously on the path to conversion, with the many detours that we take. This is a translation from the Spanish:
Divine Plan
There is a Divine plan that I don’t know,
though I strive to imagine it.
Into this plan we enter totally,
with our mistakes and our failings.
How good it would be to feel and to know
that we are fulfilling the Divine plan,
this plan of love!
But, no, we sense the opposite.
Something tells us
that we are forgetting the Divine plan,
or, what is worse, that we know it, but ignore it.
Our struggle and our great error
is to want to overthrow the Lord’s plan,
as millenia before Lucifer did.
But that, friends, will never be accomplished.
In the end, as always, Christ will triumph
and will rescue us from the claws of error,
since He has already given up His life for us.
With love, Rosy.
A Series
Part 2: March 2012: “What Place do you Give to Jesus in your Life?”
Medjugorje Message, March 18, 2009
“Dear children! Today I call you to look into your hearts sincerely and for a long time. What will you see in them? Where is my Son in them and where is the desire to follow me to Him? My children, may this time of renunciation be a time when you will ask yourself: 'What does my God desire of me personally? What am I to do?' Pray, fast and have a heart full of mercy. Do not forget your shepherds. Pray that they may not get lost, that they may remain in my Son so as to be good shepherds to their flock. ”
Our Lady looked at all those present and added:
“Again I say to you, if you knew how much I love you, you would cry with happiness.
Thank you. ”
In a little book that my husband, Charles, gave me, called Jesus is My All in All: Praying with the “Saint of Calcutta,” Mother Teresa, I read:
When asked by a reporter: “Mother, what place do you give to Jesus in your life?,” she immediately replied, “I give Him all the place.”
Knowing even just a little of Blessed Mother Teresa’s life, who would doubt the sincerity of her statement? Blessed Mother Teresa, please pray for us, that we will also give Jesus “all the place” in our lives. Our call to spiritual conversion is a call to give Jesus “all the place” in our lives. With St. John the Baptist, our souls are moved to proclaim, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
When we seek Jesus, He leads us into our hearts, that we may experience His Heart. A small group of Little Handmaids and a couple friends are doing the 33 days of preparation to do the total consecration to Jesus through Mary of St. Louis de Montfort on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25. In a book called 33 Days to Morning Glory we read about St. Louis de Montfort leading peasant volunteers in a French town to build a huge monument to the Passion of Christ. After 15 months of loving labor to build the monument, it is completed and the Bishop is scheduled to come and bless it. However, before the Bishop can bless the monument, St. Louis learns that the government is going to destroy the monument, because some enemies have told the government the lie that it has been built as a fortress against authorities. St. Louis stands before the thousands who have come for the blessing and says, “We had hoped to build a Calvary here; let us build it in our hearts.” St. Louis de Montfort, please pray for us, that we may also build a Calvary in our hearts.
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me
and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
After reading that passage about St. Louis de Montfort in 33 Days to Morning Glory, my friend, Alma, emailed me:
Today's reading made me think about how petty and just plain spoiled I can be when things don't go as planned. Just a few days ago, I was trying to make a copy of the Divine Mercy Chaplet to carry in my car, and I "wanted it to look pretty". The whole time I felt like Jesus was telling me, "I don't care how it looks on paper,--how does it look in your soul?" But I kept trying, and finally I had to give up, and I was angry, because I felt that God should have let me make it look nice. I'd worked on it for 45 minutes, after all! Then I read today's reading, and I felt ashamed. Even though I'd already confessed my sin, I still felt shame. These people had worked and planned for 15 months, only to have it torn down! And all St Louis de Montfort said was,"...Let us build it in our hearts. Blessed be God." Wow! I was ready to throw myself on the floor and kick and scream and drum my heels over a copy that I knew I was wasting time on, because "pretty" is not what God wants. He wants our love, our trust, our devotion, our soul. What a lesson for me! May I learn to accept His holy will always
.
How beautiful that Alma is learning, as we are all called to learn, that “pretty” is not what God wants, that “He wants our love, our trust, our devotion, our soul”! Let us pray with Alma that we will all have the grace to “accept His holy will.” In this way God will restore the beauty that He created in us from our conceptions.
Rosa Maria, one of the Little Handmaids, shares with us her beautiful poem/reflection that is a message of hope for those of us who are seriously on the path to conversion, with the many detours that we take. This is a translation from the Spanish:
Divine Plan
There is a Divine plan that I don’t know,
though I strive to imagine it.
Into this plan we enter totally,
with our mistakes and our failings.
How good it would be to feel and to know
that we are fulfilling the Divine plan,
this plan of love!
But, no, we sense the opposite.
Something tells us
that we are forgetting the Divine plan,
or, what is worse, that we know it, but ignore it.
Our struggle and our great error
is to want to overthrow the Lord’s plan,
as millenia before Lucifer did.
But that, friends, will never be accomplished.
In the end, as always, Christ will triumph
and will rescue us from the claws of error,
since He has already given up His life for us.
With love, Rosy.
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