The hour of darkness is approaching, the hour when you must drink the chalice which my Son has prepared for each one of you. But do not even think of this hour, that you may not be caught up in fear and anxiety.
Look only to my Immaculate Heart: take refuge and warm yourselves here, strengthen yourselves here. Feel yourselves in safety here!
Blue Book #70 g, h
But if we fall in love with the crucified one, we shall know something else as well. We shall know joy beyond all knowing. We shall have peace, the peace he promised. We shall be able to lift up all things before his face. We shall make up what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ, for the Body of Christ still suffers. Are we ready?
Grace in Every Season (April 5)
If we want to experience the Resurrection, then there is no evading the cross! But if we stay close to Our Blessed Mother, she will shelter us through whatever is to come.
We can’t focus on the storms that keep hitting us from every direction, which only lead us to fear, anxiety and further isolation.
We instead need to put on our blind folds, and set our face ‘like flint’ and look only to her Immaculate Heart where we will find warmth, strength, peace and yes, JOY!
With each day that passes, I will liberate you from your attachments, and I will make you more and more free, little, trusting and surrendered, until you are totally mine and my Immaculate Heart is in fact your only good. Then I will be able to act in you and carry out my work as Mother, which is that of making each one of you into a living copy of my Son Jesus. Entrust yourselves to me without fear. Every pain that you feel because of a new detachment will be soothed by me with a new gift of love. Each time that you detach yourself from a creature, you will feel your Mother closer to you.
Blue Book #69 g
Loneliness can be prayer, for every man and woman, married or single, in every vocation, at some time, is lonely. When that terrible loneliness comes upon you, a cry wells up deep in your heart like the cry of a mute person, and rises to God. That cry is prayer.
Grace in Every Season (April 4)
The pain of the detachment process and the resulting feeling of loneliness can be excruciating. But we can give it back to God in prayer. I believe that this is a part of the pain that Jesus had to undergo at the Garden of Gethsemene.
When we feel deep loss of someone, when betrayal and rejection bites us hard… it’s because we were attached too deeply.
I think ‘attachment’ carries with it expectation and expectation, disappointment. So it’s easier to forgive, love and serve others as God is dictating when our only attachment is to God Himself.
Even though we are required to love greatly, we are asked to not be too attached to anything or anyone on this earth and that includes mother, father, spouse, children.
I remember when my mom passed away the pain was so excruciating and it came like ocean waves that just tore at me. One time I prayed about it, and the answer I received was that I was holding on to the pain because I felt it was a way to hold on to her. I had to be willing to let her go. Of course it still comes unexpectedly once in a while, but I no longer wallow in it and can go on with life. And it turns out that I didn’t lose her at all…I have plenty of joyful memories, and life lessons that she taught me to see me through.
“Every pain that you feel because of a new detachment will be soothed by me with a new gift of love.” This is what we need to trust.
You yourselves must be the living Gospel in order to oppose with your light the great darkness which is growing ever denser throughout my Church.
Blue Book #68n
What can the world give me when I have Christ? I can give something to the world. I, in my empty hands, can give God.
Grace in Every Season (March 3)
This great Light that we are being asked to bring to the world at this very dark time, is God Himself. Empty hands are required to even receive Him fully… that entails constantly dying to ourselves and our own will and embracing the Father’s perfect will.
Today in my Catholic Women’s group I was reminded of Alphonsus Liguori’s Conformity with God’s Will. (If you haven’t yet read it, just click on the title and it will take you to it). There are many things that we can be doing at any one moment, but if they aren’t according to God’s Holy Will for us according to our state in life, even if they are good things, they can actually be detrimental to our spiritual growth.
Again we can ask Our Blessed Mother to help us, her humility and total dedication to doing the Father’s Will brought God to earth through her Son Jesus Christ.
You also will be persecuted: the time will come when you will be the only light left burning, and thus, through your fidelity to the Gospel and your sufferings, you will be able to point out the way of salvation to a vast number of souls. And through my intervention, this light of yours will never be completely extinguished.
Blue Book #67 n
When doubts assail you like a thousand flies buzzing in your ears and heart and mind and all around you, think about it. As a child, he was obedient to his parents, and later obedient unto death to his Father in heaven.
Grace in Every Season (April 1)
“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” 1 Peter 4:12
The assailments of the enemy never stop. And even though we are cautioned to not be surprised by it, when it happens it does take us by surprise every single time.
What to do? Go full throttle obedient! That’s how Jesus overcame the enemy on our behalf… and that’s what we are called to also.
Priests, look only to me because the days when all that I predicted will take place, word for word, are very near. O priests specially beloved by me, offer yourselves each and all, upon my Immaculate Heart, as a clean oblation for the sacrifice with which this world must be renewed in blood, that it may be purified and made ready for the birth of a new world, illumined by the light and the love of my Son Jesus!
Blue Book #66i
Since we are baptized into the death and life of Jesus Christ, we should not allow the night to fall on our anger. We should beg forgiveness and forgive every day. Let us pray that we may forgive, because no one forgives these days, nationally and internationally speaking, and perhaps also personally. That is why we have the mess that we have.
Grace in Every Season (March 31)
And what a mess … it’s every where, try as we may to stay positive, it just tugs at us constantly. Come Lord Jesus, we cry! However, the only job assigned to us individually is to keep doing as He asks each moment. Our Blessed Mother who so powerfully knew how to say YES can teach us how.
That’s why Marian Consecration is SO important right now, she brought Jesus into the world the first time and she’s the one to help us usher in His second coming with our own FIAT!
The Bible tells us that her words were ‘do whatever He tells you’… and yes that’s still her message. But when we consecrate our selves to her Immaculate Heart, she shows us exactly what that is! You think you know Jesus’ will perfectly? Check your pride!
Do not be afraid if the world does not understand you and does not accept you; there is always the Heart of the Mother which will be your home and your refuge.
Blue Book #64 n
If we enter into his passion, and are ready to be crucified with the nails of rejection which hurt so much, we will know the joy of Christ. As St. Paul said, we can make up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ do we remember that? So when we are in pain–physical, psychological, spiritual- -we are capable of understanding why this pain was given to us. Then we lift our pains (and the pain of rejection is the hardest) into his cupped hands. It is like the water that is added to the wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. The Lord takes our pain, especially the pain of rejection, and he uses it to help others across the earth.
Grace in Every Season (March 30)
Yesterday I posted on Facebook a photo of myself from 8th grade and so many emotions popped up. I’ve never felt accepted by my peers, and to this day I struggle to understand why. I think kids fear what is different… and I admittedly was.
As an immigrant, pretty much my entire existence was and continues to be different. I remember going back ‘home’ a couple of years after having moved here when I was seven, the hope was that I’d finally fit. But that’s not what I encountered… here I was ‘the Portuguese girl’ and there I was the ‘American’… SO bizarre. Nobody wanted to claim me.
But guess what… my Catholic faith did claim me, and I got to bring it with me to a new land when I was little and keep it with me as I moved from one form of rejection to another.
Even now, I sense there’s still some healing that needs to happen in this area because just when I least expect it, it pops up and the enemy uses it to tell me how useless and unloved I am and to drag me back into deep depression. Yes the pain of rejection is real and so very dark, because it comes from the pit of hell.
But God gives us an answer… Himself, and His family. And He invites to be part of this family and thereby He will be able to use us to be part of the healing of others. We don’t even need to know exactly how this will be…just trust.
Our pain is not part of His ‘perfect will’, He is not a Sadist, sitting there enjoying our hurt. But it is part of His ‘permissive will’, meaning that He does allow it, because He knows that He can use it for a greater good. We need to embrace that and keep it always in the front of our minds, and keep handing it over for Him to use. He will not snatch it out of our hands though.
You will not be rich in other affections. Your only affection will be mine, that of your Mother. And I, as your Mother, will bring you to love my Son Jesus with a total love. I will lead you to such a degree of love that you will not be able to live without Him. I will make love for Him your very life, and He will truly be able to live again in you!
Blue Book #64 l
Can you direct your heart to his love? The infinite; incomprehensible, incredible God became man and shrouded himself with death. It entered my heart just how precious we are. Stop and think: the vilest sinner, the greatest saint and everybody in between is infinitely precious. For Christ became mortal by becoming man, out of love for you and me! Not just love of “humanity”, but of each of us individually.
Grace in Every Season (March 28)
I’ve been doing Catechism in a Year with Fr. Mike (videos on YouTube). Last night, it touched on this very subject… “there is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer. He has so much life and love and joy that he wants for the entire world, including other peoples, including other people of other faiths, including our next door neighbors, and including ourselves because there is so much in our hearts that is tempted to disqualify ourselves.”
I attended my parish’s Women’s Group for the second time yesterday, and was overwhelmed with the feeling of belonging, even as I looked around and listened to the varying ways the ladies had of contributing. It was evident that we were at different places in our lives and had different ‘divine pedagogy’ (my new favorite word). But yet here we all were with a great love for the Lord.
Our Blessed Mother has brought me (still is probably) to this amazing place of acceptance … first of all my self and the road I’ve been on (‘has no one condemned you’ John 8:10)… then of others. Allowing me to place a greater trust in the Holy Spirit and His Divine plan for each of us, including those closest to me.
If you are struggling in this area, please allow Our Blessed Mother to bring you and your loved ones to her Son! The rosary is a powerful weapon.
Yes, failure is painful, but without pain there is no living in love. So then, go through the arches of Christ’s pain and enter into the joy of his heart. In the process, there will be many times when you fail. You will fall flat on your face- even as he did on the way to the cross. Alleluia!
Grace in Every Season (March 27)
Your poverty which makes you only and always such a little child your total poverty: of goods, of attachments, of ideas, of affections. To be poor means precisely to possess this nothingness. It is this nothingness which attracts God’s pleasure and which is alone capable of receiving it.
Blue Book #64 h
The process of being detached from ourselves and the world around us can often be experienced by us as failure. We may be even be feeling right now like we have failed at Lent. Yet if we examine it carefully, we may see that it was our own wishes and desires that we were aiming to attain. That if we truly entrust our entire lives to Him, that we can’t fail. It may not look like what we had planned, but He can use it all and make good out of it. To bring us graces that we could never imagine. But we need to do our part… we need to commit ourselves to Him.
In today’s Gospel Jesus says “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” He says ‘Whoever follows me’, He doesn’t tells us to just hang in there that everything will eventually work out, and just think good thoughts…or whatever other platitudes our society has come up with to take His place. He tells us what WE must do… Follow Him!
Therefore, in order to recognize this action of mine, you must have the eyes of a little child, the mind of a little child, the heart of a little child. You must again become simple, humble, recollected, poor, innocent. You must truly become once again those little children to whom alone will be revealed the plans of God, the mysteries of the kingdom of God.
Blue Book #63h
The Gospel is so simple. The more your head is filled with theology and what have-you, the less you understand the Gospel. For the Gospel has been told and written for the the little ones. One must be simple and humble when one reads the Gospel.
Grace in Every Season (March 26)
Everyone is out there in this out of control world ‘acting big’, and faking it til they make it. So the last thing anyone wants to hear is ‘be little’. But yet that’s exactly what’s needed to be part of the Kingdom.
This is not a reflection to have us look around and see how puffed up everyone else is. It’s one to have us glance inwards. What are we still holding on to? What areas aren’t we being true to what God is calling us to? Sometimes we may even be exhibiting a false show of humility.
Humility is not playing small and just cowering in a corner not saying a word, or showcasing your God given talent; it could instead be stepping out when you know that what you have to contribute will not be readily accepted or may even be mocked. it’s about obedience even when it’s risky.
So this isn’t an acting game… like todays blue book passage says “You must truly become once again those little children to whom alone will be revealed the plans of God, the mysteries of the kingdom of God.”
Let Our Blessed Mother help you truly become little.
Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”
One day, out of nowhere, while Mary was busy with her chores, an angel spoke to her and gave her a fantastic, incredible message: she would be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah. She accepted this role with simple words, saying she was ready to do God’s will. She said fiat… “let it be done.”
That was only the first of ten-thousand fiats she had to say.
Grace in Every Season (March 25)
Have no fear. I myself am gathering these sons from all parts of the world into my cohort; all are now responding to my call!
If now and then you meet up with some obstacles, with difficulties or with misunderstandings, offer everything to my Heart.
Blue Book #63 c,d
Today’s we celebrate Mary’s Fiat… her YES to the Lord, but the celebration doesn’t end there. We get to carry it with us, and with the help of the Holy Spirit through the Immaculate Heart of Mary we are empowered to do the same… to say YES Lord… to all the Divine assignments that are ours to fulfill. And to keep saying YES, even when things get tough.
