The Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary (8 September)

"GOD SEEKS MAN IN THE WOMB OF MARY" 

- St. John Paul II

Image Source:  St. Maximilian Kolbe's Perpetual Adoration Chapel in the Niepokalanów Monastery in Poland

LAY FAST FOR PRIESTS 2025 - OPENING REMARKS

                                                 OPENING REMARKS 

        ~ Anna Rae-Kelly, OCDS, Founder of the Lay Fast for Priests 

This month, twenty years ago, the LAY FAST DAY FOR PRIESTS began in response to a crisis in the priesthood that had shocked and wounded the Faithful.

That first Saturday, a group of just over 200 people from Our Lady's Shrine at La Salette, Massachusetts committed to offer the prayerful sacrifice of a Fast for all priests: those who were, those who are, those who are yet to be ordained.

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face became our Patroness. Over these 20 years, her powerful intercession has drawn people from across the globe to come together for this one Saturday each October to offer sacrificial prayer for all priests. That small group of 200+ 'Fast-ers' 20 years ago who responded to the Little Flower's invitation have grown into millions and from almost every country in the world.

St. Therese once said: "LET US SAVE, ABOVE ALL, THE SOULS OF PRIESTS. WE PRAY, WE SUFFER FOR THEM. AND ON THE LAST DAY, JESUS WILL BE GRATEFUL."

Under that direction of our St. Therese, we further learn from another greatly loved saint who taught us how to do as St. Therese suggests, to "pray and suffer" for other. St. John Paul II guides us....

"PRAYER UNITED WITH SACRIFICE IS THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE IN HUMAN HISTORY."

We offer our "prayer" and our "suffering" in our Fast for Priests and our united Sacrifice will once again, for the 20th year, become a "most powerful force," all across the world for God's priests, His "Ipse Christus". The Spirit of God, "hovering" (Gen. 1) over the face of the earth will breathe His Love into souls from across the Globe and we in turn will breathe His love out into our unitive prayer for all priests, all who were, who are and who are yet to be ordained. Millions of souls will offer sacrificial prayer to God for priests who forgive us in Jesus' Name, who consecrate the Bread and Wine and give us Christ Himself in the Most Holy Eucharist, priests whose hands anoint us when we are at last called Home and whose voice will walk us into Eternity.

St. Therese has given us many humbling testimonies of the sacrifices of our sisters and brothers in recent years.

We remember how in one of the poorest countries in Africa, an entire village fasted from food and water for all priests. Their sacrifice brings Therese's words to life.... "O Jesus, for the priest who baptised me, the priests who have absolved me from my sins, the priests at whose Masses I have assisted and who have given me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion."

We remember a grandmother, her daughter and son-in-law, four sons and grandsons who fasted in their country where priests were being dragged from Altars and those who were attending Mass were made to leave the Churches at gunpoint. We pray with St. Therese: "O Jesus, for your priests labouring at home or abroad in distant mission fields, for your tempted priests, for your lonely and desolate priests..."

With that grandmother, perhaps we too may be inspired this year to pray and offer any small sacrifice for those priests on our Fast Day 2025. Is any sacrifice "small"? Our St. Therese reminds us: "Jesus does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them."

We remember the Bishop who invited his entire Diocese to fast ... "O Jesus, I pray for your faithful and fervent priests... keep them all close to your heart and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity" (St. Therese).

We will offer our fast for all of them this year. Therese teaches us that "Love, because it is Eternal, embraces every time and space." We can therefore raise our prayer and sacrifice for all priests, those who live today, those who were, those who are yet to be.

Last year, in a country where poverty and corruption are life-threatening, a mother joined the Fast but she alone in the family could fast for priests "because the children need the food". This is a country where two priests were murdered in the week prior to the Global Lay Fast. "O Jesus, for your young priests, for your dying priests, for the souls of your priests in Purgatory."

We pray and sacrifice in our Fast for all of these and all priests: for the quiet priests who live and give and are faith-filled and suffer and pray and are obedient and offer sacrifice in an anonymity that makes present the mysticism of the ordinariness of the 30 years of their High Priest in Nazareth. 

THE WORLD OF 'FAST-ERS' WILL BE PRAYING AND SACRIFICING FOR YOU ON OCTOBER 18.

We conclude our prayer and suffering for all priests in union with St. Therese as she speaks for us:

“O Almighty Eternal God, Look upon the Face of Thy Christ, and for the love of Him, Who is the Eternal High Priest, have pity on Thy priests. Remember, O most compassionate God, that they are but weak and frail human beings. Stir up in them the grace of their vocation which is in them by the imposition of the Bishop’s hands, especially (...name here any particular priest whom you wish to pray and fast for). Keep them close to Thee, lest the enemy prevail against them, so that they may never do anything in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation, and bless them abundantly in time, and in eternity."

WILL YOU PRAY FOR GOD'S "IPSE CHRISTUS" AGAIN AS ONE BODY IN HIM FOR THE 20TH GLOBAL LAY FAST FOR PRIESTS ON THE 18th OF OCTOBER, 2025?

May it please our loving God that we will all unite again this year, on Saturday October 18th, to pray and sacrifice together for all priests, for their protection, their faith, their hope, and above all, for their love.

"THE PRIESTHOOD IS THE LOVE OF THE HEART OF JESUS. WHEN YOU SEE A PRIEST, THINK OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST."

(St. John Vianney, patron Saint of Priests)

"O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests, for Your unfaithful and tepid priests, for Your priests labouring at home or abroad in distant mission fields, for Your tempted priests, for Your lonely and desolate priests, for Your young priests, for Your dying priests, for the souls of Your priests in purgatory. But above all, I recommend to You the priests dearest to me, the priest who baptized me, the priests who absolved me from my sins, the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion, the priests who taught and instructed me, all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way. O Jesus, keep them all close to Your Heart."

(St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face)

All are most welcome to join this global army of fasters at the link below:

https://www.annaprae.com/lay-fast-for-priests-2025.html

APPROACHING AUGUST 9, THE FEAST OF ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS

                                  THOUGHTS AS WE APPROACH AUGUST 9

       THE FEAST OF ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS: EDITH STEIN

"This spiration of love is the Holy Spirit himself, who in the Father and the Son breathes out to (the soul) in this transformation in order to unite her to Himself" (St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle 39:3).

How can we understand 'spiration' as a way of transformation and how might we explain it to someone who wishes to grow in love of God and the Christian life?

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) directs our seekings when she intertwines the concept of the "mystical night" with that of the "cosmic night." She teaches us that both are crucial for the soul's transformative journey into union with Christ through our offerings of our prayer and of our sufferings. When our souls are drawn into these "nights", the "spiration of love....the Holy Spirit Himself" ceaselessly breathes the love of Father and Son into our souls as He de-forms, re-forms and trans-forms our disordered spiritual life .

To understand 'spiration' as a way of transformation necessarily requires a statement concerning the meaning of the word 'spiration' within Catholic theology. This is almost impossible for a lay person to define in a book let alone in a sentence but even a feeble effort is appropriate.

The God of St. John of the Cross is Trinitarian.

God's act of Self-knowing generates the Son. The love of the Father and the Son, proceeding from a single spiration and a single substance results in the spiration of the Holy Spirit, third Person of the Most Holy Trinity (adapted from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae).

Therefore, when the Spirit breathes, the Ruah of Father and Son breathe their single breath of unified love, never not creating, never not transforming, healing, beckoning, drawing all of creation into Self. 

We might liken this endless act of God breathing His life and healing and knowledge of Himself into our souls to a sort of Mouth to mouth spiritual resuscitation, born from within, endlessly breathing Breath of Life into our soul, desiring to lift us in our sinfulness out of spiritual disorder into His own Life. His Breath becomes intermingled in ours, we become one, yet He always leaves our will and our identity as distinct and uniquely our own.

"Through the Spirit, Father and Son breathe out into the soul in order to unite her to Himself" (St. Elizabeth of the Trinity).

And in our union with the Divine Three, Their Desire becomes our desire ... we then long to breathe Him out to other. 

"Spiration is the love of Spirit Lord," God, Ruah, breathing His continuous life-giving Breath into souls and into all of His creation. The Hearts of the Divine Three, Father, Son, breathing through the Holy Spirit, endlessly breathe into and pour Self into Self. The same Breath is breathed into us by the Spirit, the Breath of God. 

We breathe the Breath of God.

Pere Marie Eugene's words silence us unto awe ... "He penetrates us and envelops us. There is not a molecule of our being where He is not; there is no movement of our members nor our faculties that He has not animated."  

Just as Father and Son dialogue through the Spirit, that same Spirit draws us into Their communication teaches us their language, their language of love, total self-giving, goodness pouring itself into other. This awareness in itself is transformative. The humility of the Holy Trinity cannot but cause awe when we pray. 

Our initial attempts to speak the language of the Divine Three may involve a great deal of stuttering. Our spiritual speech impediments can be gradually corrected. When we pray, the Holy Spirit will inspire us to find ways to identify our obstacles to becoming spiritually fluent. We humbly seek His Wisdom. And He begins to reveal to us the multitude of worldly attachments that keep us firmly rooted in self. Spirit Lord blesses us with a desire for detachment. 

This invites us to meditate on how 'spiration' could be a way of transformation for our souls as well as for those whom we meet and who also want to be transformed into love of God.  St Elizabeth of the Trinity desired to be transformed  to resemble Christ. Spirit Lord empowered her to rest in the Heart of the Trinity and this was the means of that transformation for her. 

"The Trinity dwells in my soul in order to transform me into Itself" (St. Elizabeth, Letter 185).

These are uplifting and encouraging and inspiring words for our soul and for us to share with others. Our Saint is telling  us that it is the desire of the Trinity to transform our souls into Itself.  When we pray about what means of transformation Spirit Lord may give us to begin to resemble the Savior, we can pray and beseech the Holy Spirit to breathe a profound desire in our soul for detachment from my self, to make a spacious place in our soul for the Trinity to enter, make a home in us, let us put His Name on our mailbox, give Him our house keys. And lovingly invite anyone who seeks Him to find Him in us and in everything we used to own that now belongs to Him.

As He breathes this gift ever more deeply into our soul, He empowers our own journey into transformation in Christ and to share this knowledge with other. On our soul's journey of descent into transformation, empowered by Spirit Lord, He never "imposes Himself from without" but rather, this transformation begins in and affects the interior of our soul alone. 

In "Science of the Cross", Edith Stein describes painful experiences which will arise when the soul is being purified by God as He draws us ever closer to Himself. When we offer Him our will, the war against self rages. With His grace, we battle my fallen nature. With every new call to deeper surrender to His Will, we experience  " loneliness, desolation and emptiness ... ( a cessation of ) ... my faculties, ...(fear) ...by threatening horrors." This is "mystical night" in the soul. The "nocturnal light"  that pierces this darkness is God's Presence, a distant Beacon that never flickers but that endlessly lights the way. 

The "cosmic night" described by St. Teresa Benedicta involves that other force which opposes the surrender of our soul and our desire for union of our will to God. This is the  spirit of the world, coordinated and strategized by Satan, warring against all that seeks God. Spirit Lord blesses us with the same "nocturnal light" and illumines the outer world where horrors are concealed but which assault the soul. His grace makes clear their presence and their motive. The spirit of the world has no power against us except the power given to it by God, therefore, every painful  and frightening life-circumstances which seeks to damage the soul has already been measured to our faith by God. 

We endlessly pray the words of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face:

"Your lot indeed is a beautiful one, since Our Lord has chosen it for you, and has first touched with His own Lips the cup He holds out to yours."

Through the gifts of the Spirit, our soul and our prayer offerings are enriched in mystical understandings which reveal to us how this "outer world is given back to us entirely transformed." When the soul suffers the pains of its own sins, we can offer to willingly bear that pain for another who does not pray and does not do penance and who has separated themselves from God. In small acts of vicarious suffering/atonement He draws us into His Act of Redemption in the saving of that lost soul.

"God has imprisoned all in disobedience that He may have mercy on all" (Romans 11: 25, 30-36).

--

Anna Rae-Kelly OCDS
www.annaprae.com

OUR LADY, QUEEN OF MOUNT CARMEL

It is July 16 ... IT IS THE FEAST OF OUR LADY, QUEEN OF MOUNT CARMEL

Do we call her Mother? For St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face Mary is "much more Mother than Queen."

"If a child is to cherish his mother, she must cry with him and share his sorrows." 

Knowledge and love can only deepen for our tender Mother Mary when we seek wisdom about her from her Sacred Spouse: Spirit Lord. 

In prayer, He may direct our thoughts by drawing us into the revelations about our Beloved Mother that He has inspired in holy souls throughout the centuries. Through His Wisdom, revealed through them, a contour of her gentle, sweet features begins to take shape. 

Mary was described by St Louis de Montfort as "our powerful Sovereign, our beloved mistress, ... the world of God."

We have therefore a world of reflections to explore in our search to glimpse her beauty: her interior silence, her profound humility, the light of her faith that will shine through the darkness of our mind, her total self-emptiness, her willing enslavement to God's Will. When we accept Mary as our Spiritual Mother, she will "reveal our thoughts" (Luke 2) to us and we begin to grow in self-knowledge, that gift which gives us deep humility under the Gaze of God. 

There is an abyss between God Who is Infinite, Numen, and we, who are finite. The depths of the abyss are highlighted in a conversation between Our Father and St Catherine of Siena. The Father asked her: "Do you know, my daughter, who you are, and who I am? ... You are she who is not; I am He Who is."

1200 years before God illumined Catherine about her finiteness, her nothingness, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary at the  Annunciation. When we stand, in unobtrusive silence listening to their dialogue, it becomes clear to us that Mary, the Immaculata, the God-bearer, the Hodogetria, was fully aware that she was the one "who is not."  We hear her describing herself  as the "handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1:38).

This word, "handmaid", holds profound meaning. We remember that this was the same ancient word that St. Paul used to describe the Savior in Philippians 2:7: Jesus "emptied himself, by taking the form of a slave, (doulos) being born in the likeness of men..."

Mary His Mother, the self-described handmaid, the douly of the Lord, the bondslave of God, His total possession, the one whose Owner had all rights to do with her as He willed, even and including should His Will be to take her life. 

Mary was empty of self. She was, as it were, the "prelude" (St John Paul II) to her Son's total self-emptiness, God's Doulos. 

And God accepted His Son's self-sacrificial death on the Cross, Christ, the Saving Victim. 
 
Mary, Queen of Carmel, embodies the beauty of a Carmelite heart and life in her love for the Saving Victim. In her self-emptiness, Mary embodies the being who could be filled with God. It is Spirit Lord Who "opens her lips and her mouth declared His praise" at the Visitation. 

Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus OCD wrote that, "prayer finds its supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it." Because she was totally empty of self, Mary's prayer was filled with supernatural efficacy, with a faith that animated every thought, word, action that she made.  Mary will gently mother us into an awareness of the abyss of our finiteness, helps us to offer ourselves as God's doulos/douly, leads us into the wisdom of self-knowledge where our awareness of our nothingness deepens in the perspective of the Infinite Who is God. 

If the awareness of our nothingness nips at our spiritual pride and disheartedness begins to lurk in the depths of such self-knowledge. St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face encourages us:

"You, Lord, will descend to my nothingness and transform that nothingness into living fire.....and even when I have nothing....I will give Him this nothing."

And so, we may stand gazing into the vast abyss between the Infinite Who is, and the finiteness of we, "who are not". With St Therese, we may humbly offer all that we are to God ... and give Him our nothing. 

With Mary as our Queen of humility, we offer our Yes, ourselves, to be His douly, His doulos, to do with as He Wills.

And the mighty power of Spirit Lord will rush into our depths, fill our souls with Himself to the capacity pre-ordained by God, and transform our "nothingness into living fire". 

All who meet us, every moment of our days, will touch God as He moves in and through us and all will taste His sweetness as He transforms us into His own Image. And He will draw souls to God through our "nothing" that He fills with Himself. 

How?

When He fills the measure of ourselves that we give to Him, that measure becomes the property of Spirit Lord. He has one Desire....to draw us into winning souls for God and that Desire begins to propel us at disconcerting moments. We may be watching a tense TV movie when we feel His unmistakable invitation to join Him in prayer. Ten minutes before the exciting conclusion  of the movie. 

We obey, take ourselves off into solitude with Him and at the knee of Mary, we pray an urgent Decade of the Rosary......and our great, great grandchild, yet to be born, who will only ever see photographs of us, will be snatched by God away from a life of drugs, or pornography, or alcohol. St Therese teaches us that prayer soars beyond space and time and God already owns the decades where our great grandchild moves. What was, what is and what is yet to be are all one in Him. Through our small sacrifice, united with in and through Christ Jesus'  ultimate Sacrifice, we have won the soul of our loved one. 

 God has gratefully accepted the little space of ourselves that we have given Him, filled it with Himself and His Desire for souls,  and then waits to reward us in unimaginable ways for doing something that He gave us the power to do in the first place.

And we begin to understand how he transforms our “nothingness into living fire”, even beyond space and time.

More words from St. John Paul II come to our mind: “Prayer united with sacrifice is the most powerful force in human history.”

Mary was filled with self-emptiness. And filled with God.

Mary: "zealous for the glory of the one true God and the sanctification and salvation of souls"; Mary: the "Woman"-made-prayer; Mary: whose sacrificial suffering from the "sword" that pierced her heart so that she could reveal our thoughts to us;  Mary: "united with Christ Crucified and His omnipotent prayer as Saving Victim"; Mary: the pure and most powerful intercessor for all of God's children for whom the Savior shed His Precious Blood; Mary: whose "adoration and contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity" is inexhaustible; 

                                                Mary, filled with Love Himself ...
                                                Mary, Mother, Queen of Mount Carmel, pray for us. 

(Quotes used in the final paragraph are from the ancient charism of the Discalced Carmelite Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel) 

PENTECOST

                                           Πεντηκοστ

                                            PENTECOST 

                                  A CARMELITE REFLECTION 

     

"On the day of Pentecost, when the seven weeks of Easter had come to an end, Christ's Passover is fulfilled in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, manifested, given, and communicated as a Divine Person: of His fullness, Christ, the Lord, pours out the Spirit in abundance" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 731).

The Holy Spirit of the Living God, the Third Person of the Divine Three. Where do we meet Him in Sacred Scripture? What does He reveal about Himself, this RUAH, the Holy One Who "brooded over the face of the waters" of our souls in our darkness? (Gen 1)

 

He is the Power of the Most High Who overshadowed Mary, filled her being, and she conceived the Lord God. 

His work reveals Himself. He is the Giver of Life, in abundance.

Mary, carrying the just-conceived three day old Saviour, greeted Elizabeth whose child in her womb leaped with holy joy when Spirit Lord released the soul of the unborn John the Baptist from original sin. 

At every Sacrament of Baptism, the Mighty Power of Spirit Lord, Giver of spiritual life cleanses the soul from original sin. We see the priestly vestments, the white Baptismal cloth, the holy water, we hear the child's cries. What we don't see is the rush of Spirit Lord pouring Himself into that soul, Self-giving Goodness, unseen, unheard, calling that child into Rebirth out of original sin.  Spirit Lord, Whose work reveals Himself. He is the Giver of spiritual life, in abundance. 

Throughout the Gospels, a limited profile of this Divine Person slowly emerges into our sin-restricted view. His Aroma reveals His Presence. He is Wonder Counselor and Consoler, the Revealer of our Salvation, the One Who endows God's people with glory, the Winnower of all souls destroying evil in His unquenchable Fire (Luke 1 to 3). He is the Dove Whose arrival at the Jordan River "tears open the heavens" (Mk 1:10) to descend upon the Lord, the One Who then propels Jesus with great force into the desert to confront and defeat and silence satan" (Mt 4:1-11). He is Holy Joy and He fills Jesus with that great joy and "anoints" Him to preach the Good News to the poor, to set souls free who are imprisoned and oppressed by sin in all its suffocating wiles, to give sight to the spiritually and physically blind, to raise the dead to life.

It's with awe and deep humility then that we read a reflection from Blessed Pere Marie Eugene of the Child Jesus OCD. His words help to open our spiritual eyes a little wider to grasp more about the Beauty of this Divine Person and His intimacy with and within our being:

"He penetrates us and envelops us. There is not a molecule of our being where He is not; there is no movement of our members nor of our faculties that He has not animated. He is around us and even in those regions more intimate and more profound than our soul itself. God is the soul of our soul, the life of our life, the great reality in which we are, as it were, immersed; He penetrates all that we have and all that we are by His active presence and His vivifying power....He is the Architect of our holiness, our supernatural beauty: 'In Him we live and move and have our being.' 

We are identified with Christ, that's true, but it happens through the action of the Holy Spirit present in all the pores of our soul, in all the molecules of our body, in all earthly and heavenly realities. 

It is not a matter of believing in the Holy Spirit in a vague sort of way. We must believe in Him as a living reality, a living, intelligent, all-powerful Person, a Person who knows what He wants, who does what He wills, and who knows where He is going" (Acts 17:28, Fr. Marie-Eugene OCD, I Want To See God).

A "Person, a Person who knows what He wants, who does what He wills, and who knows where He is going."

And Christ the Lord pours out this Spirit in abundance, this Divine Person whose deepest longing and joy is the sanctification of our souls, to rebirth us into friends of God.  

Pere Marie of the Child Jesus was one who knew well the Spirit of the Lord as his "friend": "This Spirit is our Guest, a living flame in us, a light. He is our friend."

Nevertheless, Pere Marie's disconcerting Friend pushed him, disturbed him and the soul of our Blessed Pere rejoiced in the discomfort:

  

"We need hardships, disappointments, we need to be thwarted in our thoughts and in our plans; we need God's breaking our framework in order to understand that there could be something different. And sometimes we don't want to break our framework, for we are prisoners of our thoughts, of our plans."

Through His grace, God communicates to the soul a participation in His Nature. We may therefore rejoice when our Friend disconcerts us with broken frameworks, thwarted plans, hardships. God's Jealous Hand is at work within us, rebirthing, reshaping, renewing our countenance to closely resemble that of the Second Person of the Divine Three. And when we meet Our Father, He will immediately recognize the Countenance of His Beloved Son, returning His Gaze with great joy.

"Spirit Lord is a Person Who does what He wills."

And He wills to transfigure all souls into His love, His beauty, His purity, His gentleness, His holiness, His understanding, His order in the design of God, His wisdom, His knowledge, His counsel, His fortitude, His gift of holy fear, His piety. 

The Catechism teaches us that the Saviour's "Passover is fulfilled in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit" (CCC 731).

We are all called to come sip at the ocean of the Spirit's love and power. Who are we, His apostles today? Our faces are many, but each one is unique, as unique as our service which He gifts to us to manifest Christ's Presence in His Church, His world: 

"It is especially in their common work that the Holy Spirit glorifies the instruments He has chosen. The Holy Spirit makes Himself lowly ... in order to glorify them. Inspirer of the work by His light, efficacious agent by His omnipotence, yet He hides Himself under the human traits of the apostle and in each of us, His works show forth His Gifts, His desires, His diverse genius. The Holy Spirit appears in this world under a thousand human faces that reflect the power and grace of His hidden presence. The Spirit never repeats Himself in the exterior forms He chooses". 

Mary, the Mother of God has been described as the Immaculata (St Maximilian Kolbe); "the fairest honor of our race" (Antiphon 2, The Liturgy Archive); "Beloved Daughter of the Eternal Father, Admirable Mother of the Son, Faithful spouse of the Holy Spirit" (St Louis de Montfort).

It therefore is fitting to conclude our thoughts by reflecting on the profound reflection of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross OCD as she seeks to discern the Spirit's Beauty through the eyes of Mary, Queen of Carmel, His faithful spouse:

                                             

POEM TO SPIRIT LORD.

"Are You the one who created the unclouded mirror

Next to the Almighty's throne,
Like a crystal sea,
In which Divinity lovingly looks at itself?
You bend over the fairest work of Your creation,
And radiantly Your own gaze
Is illumined in return.
And of all creatures the pure beauty
Is joined in one in the dear form
Of the Virgin, your Immaculate Bride:
Holy Spirit, Creator of All!"

COME, HOLY SPIRIT, FILL THE HEARTS OF YOUR FAITHFUL, ENKINDLE IN 

US THE FIRE OF YOUR LOVE, SEND FORTH YOUR SPIRIT, AND WE SHALL BE CREATED, AND THOU SHALT RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

--

Anna Rae-Kelly OCDS
www.annaprae.com

THE PASSION AND DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF THE LORD

                                                                     THE  GIFT OF SELF

"God is Love, and is therefore the Good, communicative of itself... to give of Himself is an essential movement of His Nature... His Free Will is captivated by the movement of His Love." 

Love is His Being. His Will is subject to the Self-emptying power of His Mighty Love. Wearing nothing but His cloak of Ignominy, we behold the Man of Sorrows Whose Passion reveals the depths of His Love: His Love pins Him to His Cross: In His Love He endures His loneliness, His abandonment, His isolation, and His tsunami of pain. 

                                  

                                                             LOVE IS HIS GIFT OF SELF.

                 "What power this gift has! ...It cannot fail to draw the Almighty to become one with our lowliness." 

                                                                  Our "lowliness". 

Our misery draws God... our "feeble love enslaves Him," captivates Him. 

When our free will is captivated by our desire to love Him, we begin to grow in self-knowledge.  And the awareness of our sins causes us to stumble on our own Via Dolorosa alongside our Beloved Savior this Good Friday,  When we skin our knees during our multiple falls under the weight of our pride, we are given to remember that it is Spirit Lord Who is endlessly inspiring a holy longing in our soul to pour ourselves, our will, our 'belongings', our security, into an ever-deeper self-abandonment into God's ocean of Love. 

                                                 In other words, to gift ourselves to God.

Maybe we may pause to wonder, during this Holy Week, are we too actually being invited to be so profoundly identified with our Savior, to love with His Love, to participate in His Redemptive Act of winning souls whom Jesus Lord can then give with great joy back to Our Father? To unite ourselves into Love, to give Him the total gift of 'myself'?

Could people whose lives are as ordinary as ours actually be called to such depths of holiness? Isn't that Way reserved for God's saints?

St Teresa of Avila answers our questions:

"... He didn't say, 'I will give drink to those whom I think fit for it'... He invites us all, without conditions..." 

Our great saint was teaching us that there is no two-tier holiness, that holiness is friendship with God and that He desires to call all of us His 'friend'.

 

And so we may further wonder... what measure of self should we give our Friend?

Once again, St Teresa of Jesus advises us:

"We think we are giving God everything, whereas what we are really offering Him is the revenue, or the fruits of our land while keeping the stock and the right of ownership of it in our own hands."

Perhaps these words of Teresa cause us to confront the reality that we have determinedly retained the right of ownership of everything God has given us. During our life-years, we have constructed illusions to avoid giving God the gift of self: illusions of self-importance, self-pride, self-opinion... these and many more 'selves'.  

We may have listened to and been imprisoned by the fears that the devil uses to paralyze our soul: if we give God ownership of our 'self', will He take our family, our bank account, our home, our loved ones? Our fears convince us that these losses will be the consequences of total self-surrender to Jesus Lord Whose own life and death encompassed all of these 'losses'. 

St Teresa speaks:

"He refuses to force our will. He takes what we give Him."

If all we can give Him is a mustard seed-measure of self, He grasps it with great joy because, "our feeble love enslaves Him". 

In Matthew 19, we hear Jesus Lord loving and reassuring response to our soul-destroying fears:

"...everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for 

my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life."

                                     Our God will never be outdone in generosity.

If we give Him ownership of family, He will grasp our gift and heal all the situations in our family that wound us deeply... the lost soul of a beloved brother, the illness of a grandmother, the daughter who has separated from us, the fear for a son bound over by addictions.

 

When we give over the rights of ownership to the "fruits of our land" as well as the "stock from the revenue," He will lovingly remind us that He is and always has been the CFO of our bank account and He will lead us to the purchase of a different "field" which, unlike our bank account, will not imprison our soul. It will transform our soul into the very likeness and beauty of our Savior Lord.

                           "...so that in eternal glory the Celestial Court shall marvel at the marked likeness of their features with my  Divine Countenance" (Our Lord Jesus Christ to St. Gertrude).

And while we are "still a great way off " (Luke 15:20), our Beloved Father will run all the way to meet us because He will behold in us the very Countenance of His own Son.

                   Our gift of self: the most perfect expression of love we can offer to God. 

                         

Quotations:

Blessed Marie Eugene of the Child Jesus. OCD

St. Teresa of Jesus OCD

St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face OCD

                                        

                                          

                            

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Anna Rae-Kelly OCDS
www.annaprae.com

GOD'S LENTEN BECKONING TO OUR SOULS

Across the world, souls who yearn for deeper awareness of God's Loving Merciful Presence in every moment, are now directing their gaze with excitement and holy joy toward Ash Wednesday. 

                        This is the time of God's beckoning.

We are being invited to encounter Him in new ways during our Lenten days; to accompany Him in the Holy Week prior to and during His Passion; to celebrate with Him and in Him with holy joy on Easter Sunday. When Spirit Lord draws us along this way of our soul's transformation, His Divine Inspirations are our beacons and we hear Him speak with words that have no sounds:

"Jesus needs neither books nor Doctors of Divinity in order to instruct souls; He, the Doctor of Doctors, He teaches without noise of words."

 

A deep yearning groans in our souls to "know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in our world," and Christ's passionate love for us and His Desire for Intimate Union with our soul fills us with silent awe. 

"Between God and the soul, secret things are always happening." 

And they are happening in the ordinariness of our days, unseen, intimately hidden as Holy Spirit speaks to us. As we surrender our selves, our opinions, our hopes, our families, our expectations, our control that was never ours, spiritual miracles begin to reshape our desires and transform our relationships. 

This is the Lenten time when Spirit Lord asks our permission to purify our soul. When we give our YES, our FIAT to Him, in the ordinariness of our Lenten days, in our common daily work, we allow Him to shift and discard the residual dross of our past sins that silences the Voice of the Divine Three Who dwell so humbly within our souls in love beyond all telling. 

When we give Him our permission to purify us during our Lenten pathway, Spirit Lord begins to transform us into the glorified being whom God has chosen to be His instruments of love:

"The Fire that purifies is an Intelligent Fire. It regulates the violence of Its Flame according to the effect It wants to produce."

Spirit Lord is the Flame. He knows what we look like in our glorified state in Heaven and the trials and the sufferings God permits us to endure are His tools of purification which will transform us into the glorified being God ordained us to be. 

Sufferings conform us to Christ Crucified. Yet at times, a quiet taunt of complaint may enter our thoughts....

"Does He not see our anguish and the burden that weighs us down? Why does He not come and comfort us? ...

He knows that it is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself, and to become ourselves Divine!

"God already sees us in glory and rejoices in our everlasting bliss. I understand now why He lets us suffer."

During our Lenten purification, smiling through spiritual pain and suffering is difficult because in our weak and fragile humanity, spiritual trials may bruise us, and we find ourselves confronting that weapon so well utilized by satan ... discouragement. 

"Our whole being objects to the announced suffering. Our poor human nature and our faith need to be sustained. Let us say to Our Lord: Show me the distant light at the end of the tunnel so that we might walk towards this luminous point shining in the dark." 

And little Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face reminds us of some "how to" ways to walk away from discouragement and to walk to towards that luminous point in our darkness of purification, to assure Jesus Lord of our love for Him and to join Therese in winning souls for Him ... when she suffered much, instead of wearing a melancholy look, she would wear a smile; when she was in a state of spiritual dryness and couldn't pray, she looked for smallest trifles to please Jesus, like not crossing her ankles during long hours of community prayer; or speaking a kindly word when she would rather be silent; or when we have been wrongly accused we do not defend ourselves and so allow God to mete out the justice. 

Our Mother Mary, the Immaculata of the Holy Spirit, concludes our thoughts as we strain toward Ash Wednesday and our Lent of Transformation.

Blessed Marie-Eugene imagines the way our dear Mother looked at the dead body of her son Jesus taken down from the Cross and laid in her arms. 

Fr Marie-Eugene offers us a Lenten meditation:

"Maternally, you look at his wounds, his face, you discover his majesty and you kiss him. Allow us to kiss him after you: his forehead, his feet and his hands, the wound of his heart."

          Our Lenten journey into self-abandonment. self-emptiness and self-surrender to God's Will begins as we stand, silently, beside Christ's Mother and our Mother.

                 * ALL QUOTATIONS ARE FROM ST THERESE OF THE CHILD JESUS AND THE HOLY FACE (OCD) AND FROM BLESSED MARIE-EUGENE OF THE CHILD JESUS (OCD)

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Anna Rae-Kelly OCDS
www.annaprae.com