+ J.M.J. August 1, 2012 St. Alphonsus Liguori Dear Family of Mary! "Dear children! Today I call you to the 'good'. Be carriers of peace and goodness in this world. Pray that God may give you the strength so that hope and pride may always reign in your heart and life because you are God's children and carriers of His hope to this world that is without joy in the heart, and is without a future, because it does not have its heart open to God who is your salvation. Thank you for having responded to my call." (July 25, 2012) "Pray that God may give you the strength so that hope and pride may always reign in your heart and life because you are God's children and carriers of His hope to this world..." I can't seem to stop thinking about this amazing directive from Our Lady. She tells us to pray for strength. What is this strength? It is a strength of heart, a strength of will, a strength of faith such that we will always have hope and pride [the clear understanding of our worth] because we are God's children and we carry His hope. We need to be strong in order to live in the truth of our dignity as children of God, and to share that dignity with our brothers and sister. We need to be strong to let hope and dignity reign in our hearts. Why this need for strength? Most assuredly, it is because we have an enemy that would like to take that hope and dignity away from us. We have an enemy who longs to denigrate us, to steal our dignity, our hope, to convince us that we are not loved by God and that we should rebel against Him. In the Garden of Eden, this very enemy lied to Eve and convinced her that God did not have her best interest in mind, and that she should grasp for her dignity, for her hope, for her God-likeness by her own power. She should rebel against God, and make herself her own queen by eating of the forbidden fruit. This distrust of the Father brought about the fall of all mankind. And it is this very same tactic that the enemy is using on us in this day. He wants to lie to us, and convince us that God does not love us, that God does not have our best interest in mind, that our dignity must be won by our own efforts and that our only hope is to deny God. And so Our Lady entreats us to pray. She tells us to pray for strength. We need strength to stay faithful to God, to repel the enemy, to choose the good, to choose to believe that the Father has only good things for us and desires to make us very much like Himself. We need the strength to believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and their heavenly plans for us. This strength is called Fortitude. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines fortitude in this way: Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life. The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause. "The Lord is my strength and my song" (Ps. 118:14). "In the world you have tribulations; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (Jn 16:33). (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n 1808) Fortitude tells us the "be of good cheer!" We are children of God! We are chosen by the Father. We have an eternal future with God in heaven! We have been rescued by Jesus, and given a new life! Be of good cheer!! This is exactly what Our Lady hopes we will arrive at, through prayer. Prayer is our passage into the joy of heaven. Through prayer, we will receive the fortitude we need to stand tall for Jesus! "Pray that God may give you the strength so that hope and pride may always reign in your heart and life because you are God's children and carriers of His hope to this world..." In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan ©Mary TV 2012 |
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