[MaryVitamin] Lourdes

 

Mary Vitamin for February 10th   Topic: Our Lady of Lourdes February 11   Quote: Our Lady to St. Bernadette Would you have the graciousness to come here for fifteen days? I do not promise you happiness in this world but in the next.   Meditation: Our Lady was always at the service of her neighbors, not seeking happiness in this life, but seeking the Will of God. One can easily imagine the Holy Mother of God engaged in various acts of charity: bringing a poor neighbor some of her own food, nursing the daughter of a neighbor back to health, sharing in the grief of a dying son. Our Lady must have ceaselessly placed herself at the service of the people of Nazareth, her neighbors, at all times and at all places.   At the appointed time, Mary’s Son entered the synagogue of Nazareth and proclaimed His arrival as the Messiah,    Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.    How did the people of Nazareth respond? The Scriptures then record:  They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.   How indescribably sad that day must have been for the Mother of Our Lord! It must have impressed Her deeply, to witness Her own townspeople, who had been the beneficiaries time and again of Her acts of kindness and charity, to demand the death of Her very own Son!   So tradition has pondered on the Mother; and to commemorate this first deep shadow of what in no long time was to befall her in real earnest, a chapel in her honour stands in its little garden, crowning the hill where her Son would not yet allow His own to drive Him to death. It is called the Chapel of Mary Weeping. Archbishop Goodier, S.J., The Public Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, (Burnes, Oates &Washbourne: London, 1941)138.   Resolution: It is those who are closest to us who can cause us the greatest pains. When I feel the sting of ingratitude, I will remember Our Lady's words to St. Bernadette,  which also seem to reflect Our Lady's personal experience, “I do not promise you happiness in this life but in the next.”     Marian Vow: St. Bernadette understood the meaning of "total consecration to the Immaculate as Her thing and property". After the apparitions concluded St. Bernadette became a nun.  The Saint referred to herself as the broom of Our Lady. Bernadette was used at one time for the purpose of the message of Lourdes and then later put away and not used.   I give this resolution to the Blessed Virgin Mary.   Thanks be to God for graces received.   Related site: Castle of the Immaculate, MaryVitamin Twitter & AirMaria

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