Tuesday, March 13, 2012

A Letter to the Virgin-Mother

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner

***

Dear Mama Mary,
we know from the Annunciation that love is a choice. We praise and thank Almighty God for giving His most excellent gifts to you so that you may respond completely and utterly, as no creature had done before, to His Most Holy Will. Pray, my Fair One, that you will help me at all times to make the choice to love God as you did. I give you my poor heart, dear Lady, just as Saint Gemma and Saint Grignon did, and I invoke their intercession so that, like them, I may give it with complete and utter surrender.

Take it, I beg you. I know it is not fit to adorn the tower of David, which is "built with elegance; on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors." But, as the Mother of Mercy, I know you would not refuse.

And in the void that remains, dear Mother, if I may speak so boldly to my Queen, place your own heart so that I may adore, love, thank, and praise Jesus, your Son, perfectly as you did. AMEN.

***


Saint Louis Grignon de Montfort, pray for us!

***


"I no longer have a heart; I gave it to Jesus' Mom."


Saint Gemma Galgani, pray for us!

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Reflection on the Reflection

I had a thought on my way home from church. As I looked at the moon, I thought, Mary! During the darkest night of history, when all but a few have forgotten about Christ, it will be the light of Mary that illumine mankind back to God.

"Then they went on to predict that, when the world would reject Our Lord as it has done today, on that Dark Night the light of His Mother would arise to illumine the darkness and lead the world to peace."
Taken from Archbishop (soon to be Saint) Fulton J. Sheen's masterpiece The World's First Love