Our Lady’s joy should be ours because she gave us JOY itself, God, her divine son. But she is our joy, too in herself. The thought of our Lady simply resting in our minds, gives steadiness to our joy. We need not even think ABOUT her, just think OF her. We all know what the purity of the atmosphere is after a quiet steady snowfall----so does the thought of our Lady clarify the soul; removing perplexity, foreboding, unrest, diffidence----we may not see our way out, but we have the certainty that it will come.
The awe of God’s Presence would make us silent and strengthened by silence…Hope is also strengthened by it, since the silent soul is best instructed by the Sacred Heart; so also it has our Lord’s own private teaching of the Holy Ghost---and those always bring hope and sweetness to the soul.
It is in the tending to be last and the appreciation of service, of renunciation, that we shall verify the working of a problem---how far we have understood and how far “the mind is in us which was also in Christ Jesus …Our life must be of giving, not of desiring. We must pour out our lives to the extent of our capacity for Him, for others, as taking His place.
We must remember that it is better to begin a great work than to finish a small one…the work in the rough…may look ugly and yet be full of promise…A piece of finished insignificance is no true success…Our education is not meant to turn the children out small and finished, but seriously begun on a wide basis. Therefore they must leave us with some self-knowledge, some energy, some purpose…If they leave us without these three things they drift with the stream of life.
It was at Christmas that our Lord as it were took His first plunge into the heart of our troubles, of our difficulties, of our experiences, into the heart of the life we are leading. And that, not as someone standing at a distance, but as thrown into the stream---feeling the shock, the human astonishment at what took place around Him---feeling the poverty, the pain, the isolation in which He was left. He loves that we should sympathise with Him in it.
Lady, elect
As the cedar and palm,
On thy virginal arm
Is His throne.
Show us thy Child
On the day of His birth,
Fair fruit of this earth.
God and man.
Show Him again,
Whom creation adores,
As the sun in his course,
To our eyes.
Show Him at last,
As the eventide falls,
As the curfew bell calls
To the Compline of rest. …
Where, evermore,
To the exile of years
The vision appears,
Salve! O Salve! At last.
The only thing that satisfies in an ordinary Christian standard is the charity that will do and give and suffer, and forget itself, and when it has done all make little of it. The connection between charity and poverty is noticeable. The poor are reckless and courageous in their gifts and services.
We change too easily under joy or sorrow. They take us off our duty, we lose balance in joy or we give up the struggle and let ourselves go to sadness. Our Lady did not change anything in the course of her life and duties. We cannot imagine her sitting down with the Child in her arms to grieve over Simeon’s prophecy, or dream of His future greatness. She was at her duties with the same gentleness as if she had not the sword of sorrow in her heart. All the power of the joy and sorrow went out into doing the daily duty with entire submission to the will of God.
Epochs of transition keep us on the alert. They ask us to keep our eyes open on distant horizons, our minds listening to seize every indication that can enlighten us; reading, reflecting, searching must never stop; the mind must keep flexible in order to lose nothing, to acquire any knowledge that can aid our mission or serve for our development.
To hide in the Wounds of Christ, to dwell in His Sacred Heart are the most spiritual expressions with which the senses have nothing to do. If they mean anything, they mean that what is most spiritual and inward in our life…our inward life in the most intimate sense, is so united with Him that He is like a habitation or mansion to it; that our thoughts and desires go in and out from there, and that when not called elsewhere by necessity it is there that our soul, our thinking and loving soul, returns to meditate and be at rest in its centre. Not in the material wounds, but in the life of Christ which is laid open to us by them.
Remember that whatever happens…you must say to yourself, according to circumstances, joyfully and thankfully or humbly and submissively or bravely or if need be, defiantly to the troubles within, “This is part of the story and the story of God’s love for you and yours for Him.”
There are two ways of preparing children for the government of themselves in after-life, one direct and the other indirect. The first has its merits; it is quick in results, often very successful. It fosters piety, inculcates some clear principles, dictates the main lines of action, and by rule and maxim, fits the being into its place in the world, and gives it means to do its duty creditably. The indirect method is longer and less clearly defined. It aims at giving a guiding light within, and power to climb a difficult path, and pick a way through unknown country by that light. This must be waited for, and slowly developed, but in the end it is of greater worth. The training of the Sacred Heart aims at this.
Thou who hast given, O Lord, these souls to me,
Each one a chosen gift, each one alone,
Yet hast not made us many, but the same
One thing, one thing with thee, with thee in one
O sweetest Love! Let not Thy enemy
Snatch them from Thee, from me. not one, not one;
I hold in fee for Heaven their fealty,
Their homage blent in mine, one with my own.
Most ardent crimson Rose, the Blood of Christ!
Stainless white Rose of God, Eternal Will!
Create and re-create them for Thyself,
Then with Thy Truth and Love their being fill.
To Thee, O Father, to our final end
May we, made perfect in Thy love, attain,
There in Communion---find our unity,
And---made one thing---for ever one remain.
