16. The Mother must be loved and lived
Remain in my Heart, my son, and do not think at all of what you are to say today. I myself will speak, through you, to these children of mine. I will tell them all that my Heart desires and I will help them to emerge from their great aridity and weariness. (…) I will tell them, through you, that to honour Me one must pray more and chatter less. I want the hearts and the souls of my sons; I want to fill them with love for Me. (…)
Speak to them about my Priestly Movement: there are among those present here, some good Priests whom I have brought here for this purpose. These Priests are beautiful souls whom I have been preparing for some time to enter Into my Movement.
They are awaiting this call like the parched land awaits a drop of dew. They will welcome my invitation and join my Movement.
Some Thoughts:
Today is the day we celebrate the Immaculate Conception. The fact that Mary herself was born without original sin. Her Son, our Savior, is her Savior too…but her salvation was applied retroactively. Last night I was pondering the Angel’s greeting to Mary at the Annunciation.“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you”
Luke 1:26-28 – In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”
At this moment the angels himself declares the Immaculate Conception. To be full of grace implies that maximum capacity, the only thing that detracts one from fullness of grace is of course sin. All of humanity carries with it the stain of sin from our first parents, it’s called ‘original sin’. It is wiped away at the moment of our Baptism, when through faith we are brought to God. Mary however had this stain wiped from her from the very moment of her conception in her mother’s womb. She was set apart for the role that she would be asked to fulfill. So when the angel approached her, she was ‘full of grace’, sinless. And her yes was profound and free.
The Immaculate Conception (Catechism of the Catholic Church)
490 To become the mother of the Savior, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.”132 The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace”.133 In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.
491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God,134 was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
- The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.135
492 The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”.136 The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.137
493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia), and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature”.138 By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.