(c)Josip Zubac 2013
Great graces!!
J.M.J.
February 11, 2013
Our Lady of Lourdes
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! Also today I call you to open yourselves to prayer. Little children, you live in a time in which God gives great graces but you do not know how to make good use of them. You are concerned about everything else, but the least for the soul and spiritual life. Awaken from the tired sleep of your soul and say yes to God with all your strength. Decide for conversion and holiness. I am with you, little children, and I call you to perfection of your soul and of everything you do. Thank you for having responded to my call." (March 25, 2001)
As we near the blessed season of Lent, these words of Our Lady can help us. Lent is a season of great graces, enormous graces! The Church offers these graces liberally from her treasury! Conversion, repentance, reconciliation, purification, greater unity with the Lord and one another...the list is long! Seen from an eternal perspective, these graces are like gold and jewels, even like winning the lottery! The treasures made available during Lent will win for us an eternal kingdom of joy and peace, an unending life of happiness.
But, seen from a temporal perspective, these graces look entirely different. They come to us in the most amazing disguise. Fasting, abstinence, self-denial, hours of prayer, confession, works of mercy, alms-giving, and acceptance of the many crosses that life brings...this list is long as well! The Way of the Cross is not inviting, at least on the natural level. It goes against our nature, against our self-love, against our instinct to protect our own life. And we may not see the underlying treasures at first glance. All may seem quite dark to us as we begin the journey of Lent.
Our Lady tells us how to adjust our sights. She gives us spiritual glasses to see what is really going on in Lent. "You are concerned about everything else, but the least for the soul and spiritual life." We are looking at the wrong things. We are longing for everything but what is necessary. Like Martha, we are busy about many things, all of them temporal. But one thing is necessary, and Mary has chosen it. We need to be looking at Jesus, who wants to give us eternal life, the life that our soul longs for, the life we were made for. We need to be looking beyond the "many things" to the one thing that alone will remain, our immortal soul. And we need to be making ourselves ready to live forever with God in heaven.
Our Lady shows us the way: "Awaken from the tired sleep of your soul and say yes to God with all your strength. Decide for conversion and holiness. I am with you, little children, and I call you to perfection of your soul and of everything you do."Wake up!! Say Yes!! Convert! Be Holy!! She will help us. She is with us! With her, we can do it.
So, when we remember that we are dust and to dust we will return, let's look past the dust to our eternal homeland, the place where our immortal soul is going and where our resurrected bodies will appear one day. And let's see this Lent for what it is, a time of great graces!!
St. Bernadette, pray for us!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2013
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