Mar.18 - Wk 3 - Day 1 - "seek to understand Jesus Christ better"

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today we begin our final week of preparation for Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary, following St. Louis de Montfort’s "True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin:

1. During the third week they should seek to understand Jesus Christ better. They may read and meditate on what we have already said about Him. They may say the prayer of St. Augustine which they will find at the beginning of the second part of this book. Again with St. Augustine, they may pray repeatedly, “Lord, that I may know you,” or “Lord, that I may see.” As during the previous week, they should recite the Litany of the Holy Spirit and the Ave Maris Stella, adding every day the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus.

Please note that St. Louis de Montfort is only using the word “should” in regard to praying the Litany to the Holy Spirit, the Ave Maris Stella and adding every day the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus. In suggesting other helps such as reading what he has already written in True Devotion and the prayer of St. Augustine, St. Louis uses the word “may” - to indicate these are options, while the three prayers we “should” pray are essential. Why?

The Holy Spirit brings us into the fullness of Truth - Whom we “see” by faith in Jesus, the Word made Flesh. Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit conceived the Incarnate Son of God in her womb. Jesus came to us through her. The Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus reveals Him to us in many ways.

Today’s Gospel on this optional Memorial of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem is especially appropriate for us to hear, as we begin this week seeking to understand Jesus better. In John 15: 1-8, Jesus tells us to “Remain in Him”!

Litany of the Holy Spirit: see HERE

Ave Maris Stella: see HERE

Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus: see HERE

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear KBS, Stephie and patricius,

Thanks so much for your “faith-full” hearts, as we begin our final week of preparation for Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary on March 25. Besides praying the Litany to the Holy Spirit, the Ave Maris Stella and especially pondering the titles of Jesus in the Litany of His Holy Name, I took some time also to pray over the first five verses of Jn 15, listening to Jesus’ words:

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does, He prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in Me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without Me you can do nothing…

Have you ever had that experience when listening to God’s Word, that suddenly you hear something that you cannot remember having heard in such a way before? It is difficult to explain, but in listening to the words of Jesus which I put into bold print above:

"…Remain in Me, as I remain in you

It was particularly, the second part of that sentence, the words “as I remain in you” that I seemed to hear as if I’d never heard them before, although I know I have heard them many times, but simply not in the same way.

Perhaps in the past I had focused so much on what “I” was supposed to do – that is I was to remain in Jesus, that I had ignored or sadly neglected what Jesus was already doing.

By God’s Grace, I trust Mary is interceding for me and for all of us as we seek to understand Jesus better. May we continue to prayerfully listen to His word in Scripture as Mary listened to all He said and did, and as St. Louis de Montfort and the Saints listened and learned from Jesus also.

Jesus, Meek and Humble of Heart, make our hearts like Yours.

 

[hazcompat]

1. In the salvific design of the Most Holy Trinity, the mystery of the Incarnation constitutes the superabundant fulfillment of the promise made by God to man after original sin, after that first sin whose effects oppress the whole earthly history of man (cf. Gen. 3:15). And so, there comes into the world a Son, “the seed of the woman” who will crush the evil of sin in its very origins: “he will crush the head of the serpent.” As we see from the words of the Protogospel, the victory of the woman’s Son will not take place without a hard struggle, a struggle that is to extend through the whole of human history. The “enmity,” foretold at the beginning, is confirmed in the Apocalypse 7 (the book of the final events of the Church and the world), in which there recurs the sign of the “woman,” this time “clothed with the sun” (Rev. 12:1).
   Mary, Mother of the Incarnate Word, is placed at the very center of that enmity, that struggle which accompanies the history of humanity on earth and the history of salvation itself. In this central place, she who belongs to the “weak and poor of the Lord” bears in herself, like no other member of the human race, that “glory of grace” which the Father “has bestowed on us in his beloved Son,” and this grace determines the extraordinary greatness and beauty of her whole being. Mary thus remains before God, and also before the whole of humanity, as the unchangeable and inviolable sign of God’s election, spoken of in Paul’s letter: “in Christ…he chose us…before the foundation of the world,…he destined us…to be his sons” (Eph. 1:4, 5). This election is more powerful than any experience of evil and sin, than all that “enmity” which marks the history of man. In this history Mary remains a sign of sure hope. 2. Blessed is she who believed

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear hazcompat,

Thanks again for quoting Pope St. John Paul II in his Encyclical on “The Mother of the Redeemer” (Redemptoris Mater). The more one reads the works of this Pope and other Saints on the role of Mary, the more he or she begins to see why the Church teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that the Church’s devotion to Mary is intrinsic to Christian worship!

St. Pope St. John Paul II, points us to this powerful truth in the paragraph concerning Mary:

> …she who belongs to the “weak and poor of the Lord” bears in herself, like no other member of the human race, that “glory of grace” which the Father “has bestowed on us in his beloved Son,” and this grace determines the extraordinary greatness and beauty of her whole being…