Nov. 30 - Day 3 on Journey toward Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today is the Feast of St. Andrew Apostle, brother of St. Peter who became our first Pope. In the Liturgy of the Hours, for Morning Prayer, we have a reading which I found very appropriate for our Journey toward the Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary which St. Louis de Montfort teaches in his “True Devotion”:

You are no longer aliens or foreign visitors: you are citizens like all the saints, and part of God’s household. You are part of a building that has the apostles and prophets for its foundations, and Christ Jesus Himself for its main cornerstone. As every structure is aligned on Him, all grow into one holy temple in the Lord; and you too, in Him, are being built into a house where God lives, in the Spirit. – Ephesians 2:19-22

Those renewing their Act of Consecration at the end of our Journey, may remember a phrase in the “Act of Total Consecration”. After addressing his prayer to: “Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom, most lovable and adorable Jesus, true God and true Man, only Son of the eternal Father and of Mary, always Virgin…” St Louis de Montfort speaks also to Mary and the phrase that impressed me most recently is his calling Mary “living Tabernacle of God”.

How well St. Louis de Montfort knew God’s Word! The reading from Ephesians calls the Church to “grow into one holy temple in the Lord” Mary is the Model of the Church. Mary was the first in Whom Jesus lived! Mary is a Living Tabernacle as we are called to become though her by the power of God’s Grace!

St. Louis de Montfort suggests no specific prayers for us to offer during these 12 days, as he will suggest prayers later on, but he points us to God’s Truth: “We cannot serve God and the world” we will either hate the one and love the other or love the other and hate the one to Whom we owe everything.

This Advent let us ponder Mary in Whom Jesus dwelt physically for 9 months, and ask her to help us learn from her to “empty oursleves” and become “a living tabernacle of God”. Come Holy Spirit fill the hearts of your faithful, kindle in us the Fire of Your Love. Jesus, we trust in You! Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.

These 12 days of “emptying ourselves of the spirit of the world which opposes the Spirit of Jesus” are important – we need to pray for God’s Grace to “see” by the Supernatural Faith given to us in Baptism how to “empty ourselves”. We need to Listen to God in His Word as St. Louis de Montfort listened and lived the Truth he heard. Perhaps some of us talk too much instead of listening to God speak to us. We may ask but not listen for His Answer!

 

[hazcompat]

IOANNES PAULUS PP. II
REDEMPTORIS MATER
On the Blessed Virgin Mary
in the life of the Pilgrim Church

Blessing

Venerable Brothers and dear Sons and Daughters,
Health and the Apostolic Blessing.

INTRODUCTION

1. The Mother of the Redeemer has a precise place in the plan of salvation, for “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:4-6)

With these words of the Apostle Paul, which the Second Vatican Council takes up at the beginning of its treatment of the Blessed Virgin Mary,1 I too wish to begin my reflection on the role of Mary in the mystery of Christ and on her active and exemplary presence in the life of the Church. For they are words which celebrate together the love of the Father, the mission of the Son, the gift of the Spirit, the role of the woman from whom the Redeemer was born, and our own divine filiation, in the mystery of the "fullness of time."2

This “fullness” indicates the moment fixed from all eternity when the Father sent his Son “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16). It denotes the blessed moment when the Word that “was with God…became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn. 1:1, 14), and made himself our brother. It marks the moment when the Holy Spirit, who had already infused the fullness of grace into Mary of Nazareth, formed in her virginal womb the human nature of Christ. This “fullness” marks the moment when, with the entrance of the eternal into time, time itself is redeemed, and being filled with the mystery of Christ becomes definitively “salvation time.” Finally, this “fullness” designates the hidden beginning of the Church’s journey. In the liturgy the Church salutes Mary of Nazareth as the Church’s own beginning,3 for in the event of the Immaculate Conception the Church sees projected, and anticipated in her most noble member, the saving grace of Easter. And above all, in the Incarnation she encounters Christ and Mary indissolubly joined: he who is the Church’s Lord and Head and she who, uttering the first fiat of the New Covenant, prefigures the Church’s condition as spouse and mother.

Peace

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear hazcompat,

Thanks for another great excerpt from Pope St. John
Paul II’ s encyclical : REDEMPTORIS MATER
On the Blessed Virgin Mary in the life of the Pilgrim Church.
The paragraph that blessed me most was this one:

…It marks the moment when the Holy Spirit, who had already infused the fullness of grace into Mary of Nazareth, formed in her virginal womb the human nature of Christ. This “fullness” marks the moment when, with the entrance of the eternal into time, time itself is redeemed, and being filled with the mystery of Christ becomes definitively “salvation time.” Finally, this “fullness” designates the hidden beginning of the Church’s journey…

God gave St. Louis de Montfort great Wisdom in writing his “True Devotion” so the Church would know and love Mary better and thus come closer to Jesus the Incarnate Son of God. Pope St. John Paul II wrote that his own reading of True Devotion as a young man was a turning point in his life. Pope St. John Paul II lived the Truth he heard from God in reading True Devotion and lived that Truth courageously, and lovingly for the rest of his life.

Hopefully, by God’s Grace, all of us on this 33 day journey toward our own “Total Consecration” (renewal of first time), will grow in holiness this Advent and find it a “turning point” in our lives, leading us to becoming the Saints, God created us to be! “Totus Tuus” meaning “All Yours” was the Papal Motto of Pope St. JPII and he heard those words in “True Devotion”!