| May 10, 2011 Dear Family of Mary! "Dear children! God the Father is sending me to show you the way of salvation, because He, my children, desires to save you and not to condemn you. That is why I, as a mother, am gathering you around me, because with my motherly love I desire to help you to be free of the dirtiness of the past and to begin to live anew and differently. I am calling you to resurrect in my Son. Along with confession of sins renounce everything that has distanced you from my Son and that has made your life empty and unsuccessful. Say 'yes' to the Father with the heart and set out on the way of salvation to which He is calling you through the Holy Spirit. Thank you. I am especially praying for the shepherds, for God to help them to be alongside you with a fullness of heart." (May 2, 2011) Saying "yes" to the Father with the heart is the center of a holy life! Our Lady said "yes" to the Father at the Annunciation with her whole heart. She demonstrated for us the way of holiness, the way of salvation. Mary did not initiate this moment, this call to be the Mother of God. She would never have dreamt of such a thing. No, the Father sent Gabriel to her, to invite her into His grand plan of salvation. She received the angel, listened to him, asked some questions, and then responded. In this beautiful conversation with St. Gabriel, Our Lady modeled for us the process of saying "yes" to God, of responding to His inspirations! Mary showed a great detachment in the Annunciation. She must have had ideas, plans, and thoughts about her future. She was betrothed to Joseph. Decisions had been made. But she didn't allow those plans and ideas to block her from saying yes to the Father. With great dignity and freedom, she let go of those plans and agreed to follow the Lord, no matter the cost. She was detached from her own will and her own life. What an example for us. Father Philippe writes about such detachment as necessary if we are going to respond to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit: "We cannot receive the motions of the Holy Spirit if we are rigidly attached to our possessions, our ideas, or our point of view. To allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit of God, we need great compliance and adaptability, and we can acquire these little by little by practicing detachment. We should make an effort not to 'hang on to' anything, either materially, or affectively, or even spiritually. The detachment we should aim for is not that of saying 'to hell with all of it,' or of becoming indifferent to everything, or of practicing a sort of forced asceticism and stripping ourselves of everything that makes up our lives; that kind of detachment is not what our Lord normally asks for. "But we need to keep our hearts in an attitude of detachment, maintaining a sort of freedom, a distance, an inner reserve that will mean that if some particular thing, or habit, or relationship, or personal plan is taken from us, we don't make a drama out of being deprived of it. Such detachment should be exercised in all aspects of our lives. But it is not the material aspect that is the most important. We are sometimes far more hampered in our spiritual progress by attachments to our own ideas, points of view, and ways of doing things.... "Even when the goals we are aiming at are excellent in themselves, attachments to our own 'wisdom' may be a seriously bad obstacle in the way of docility to the Holy Spirit. Such an obstacle is all the greater in that this kind of attachment often goes unnoticed, because it is obviously easier to be unaware that we are attached to our own will when what we want is good in itself. Since the object we are aiming at is good, we feel justified in wanting it with a stubbornness that blinds us; and we don't realize that the way we want our idea to come about is not necessarily in accordance with God's plans. "Our wisdom and God's practically never coincide perfectly; and this lack of congruence means that at any stage of our spiritual journey, we shall never be dispensed from practicing detachment from our personal ideas, however well-intentioned these may be." (Rev. Jacques Philippe. In the School of the Holy Spirit. New York. Scepter Publishing, 2007. P. 35-37) Our Lady was perfectly detached. That doesn't mean she didn't have her own ideas or desires. It means that she could let go of them at a moment's notice, when God presented her with His ideas and desires. She was ready to die to herself in order to live for Christ! And didn't she do it! So perfectly! May we become more able to drop our own plans and ideas when we receive an inspiration from the Lord that communicates His most perfect plans! May we learn to say "yes" to the Father! In Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Blessed John Paul II!
Cathy Nolan © Mary TV 2011 |
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