And Elizabeth cried out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?”

Enlightened interiorly by the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth recognized her young cousin as the Mother of God, and deeply moved, breaks forth into words of praise and admiration. Mary makes no protest but listens with simplicity, knowing well that this praise is not due to her, but solely to the Almighty, who has done great things in her. Immediately her humble heart by a spontaneous movement, refers all Elizabeth’s praises to God. “My soul doth magnify the Lord!”

O Mary, how great is your humility when you hasten to serve others! If it is true that he who humbles himself will be exalted, who will be more exalted than you who have humbled yourself so much. But your profound humility in no way lessened your magnanimity; the greatness of your soul was not opposed to your humility. You, so small in your own eyes, were so magnanimous in your faith, in your hope in the Most High, that you never doubted His promises, and firmly believed that you would the Mother of the Son of God. Humility did not make you fainthearted; magnanimity did not make you proud, but these two virtues were perfectly combined in you.

O Mary, you cannot give me a share in your great privileges as Mother of God; these belong to you alone. But you want me to share in your virtues, giving me examples of them in yourself. If sincere humility, magnanimous faith, and delicate, sympathetic charity are lacking in me, how can I excuse myself?  O Mary , O Mother of mercy, you who are full of grace, nourish us, your poor little ones, with your virtues!

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen OCD: Divine Intimacy

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Presence of God:

I beg the Blessed Virgin Mary to allow me to enter in spirit the humble home at Nazareth, to contemplate Jesus’ most admirable life there.

Meditation:

1. On this day for the last time in the cycle of the liturgical year, the Church invites us to contemplate the mystery of Jesus’ humble, hidden life. A feeling of close intimacy and tenderness characterizes this Feast and is expressed in the liturgy of the day: “ . . . it is good for us to recall the little home at Nazareth and the humble life of those who lived there . . . . In it, Jesus learned Joseph’s humble trade, and grew in age, and was happy sharing the work of a carpenter…

Today’s liturgy particularly emphasizes one typical aspect of the humble life of this hidden God: obedience. “ Although He was the Son of God . . . He learned to obey; He humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death”. From Bethlehem to Calvary obedience was His companion. The Gospel (Lk 2, 42-52) stresses this obedience of Jesus at Nazareth in words which carry for all time the strength of their first utterance, “He was subject to them.” Let us ask ourselves with St. Bernard, “Who obeyed? Whom did He obey?” The Saint replies, “God obeyed man! Yes, the God to whom the angels are subject . . . was subject to Mary, and not only to Mary, but also to Joseph. For God to obey a woman is humility without parallel…Learn then, man, to obey; learn, O earth, to be submissive. God subjected Himself to men; and do you, desiring to rule others, place yourself above your Creator?”

2. “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Jesus, who was so humble and submissive, did not hesitate to make this reply to Mary when she gently questioned Him about having remained behind in the Temple without her or Joseph’s knowledge, while they in anguish had been seeking Him for three days.  These are the first words of Jesus which we find recorded in the Gospel. He spoke them in order to declare his mission and to affirm the primacy of the rights of God. When hardly an adolescent, Jesus taught us that God and the things of God must always come first. He must hold the first place in our lives, and we must obey Him regardless of all other considerations, even if it means sacrificing the rights of nature and of blood. Yielding to relatives and friends is no longer a virtue—and may even be sinful—if it leads us away from the will of God or hinders its fulfillment.

Giving precedence to the rights of God does not imply that we neglect our duties toward our neighbor. Today’s Feast calls our attention to these obligations, and especially to those concerning our family, natural or religious, inviting us to follow the example of the Holy Family of Nazareth. To this end, the Epistle (Col 3 ,12-17) shows us the virtues we should practice: “Clothe yourself . . . with mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, and patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another.”

Colloquy:

O Jesus, how I love to contemplate You as a Child, in the poor house at Nazareth, with Mary and Joseph! Your simple, humble life was just like that of any other child of Your age. You, the splendor of the Father, did not wish anything to distinguish You from the children of men; You, uncreated wisdom, wished to learn from Mary and Joseph, Your creatures, the ordinary little details of life.  Joseph showed You how to handle his tools and You watched Him attentively, You learned and You obeyed. Mary taught You holy hymns and recounted tales from the Sacred Scriptures; You listened to her like a humble disciple, You who are the one true Teacher, You who are Truth itself. No one, neither Your relatives nor Your fellow townspeople, knew who You really were. Everyone believed You to be the carpenter’s son and paid no more attention to You than they would have paid to an ordinary apprentice.

Only Mary and Joseph knew; they knew by divine revelation that You were the Son of the Most High, the Savior of the world, and yet they knew it more by faith than by experience. Your ordinary way of life concealed Your majesty and divinity from them so completely that when, without their knowledge, You remained among the doctors in the Temple, they could not understand the reason for Your unusual behavior. That incident, however, was an isolated one; immediately afterward, You wished to return to the hiddenness of Your most humble life. You went back with them, and were subject to them. And this, day by day, until You were thirty years old.

O most sweet Jesus, grant that I may imitate, at least to some degree, Your infinite humility! You, the Creator, were obedient to Your creatures. Teach me to bow my proud head and willingly obey my superiors. You came down from heaven to earth. Give me the grace to humble myself, to come down, once and for all, from the pedestal of my pride! How can I bear the sight of Your humility and self-effacement,O my God and my Creator, when I, who am nothingness and sin, use the gifts I have received to set myself above others, to prefer myself even to my superiors?

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene? (Divine Intimacy)

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Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem: for thy light us come….And the gentiles shall walk in thy light, and kings in the brightness of thy rising….All they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense, and showing forth praise to the Lord. (Isaias 60, 1-6)

A star often appears in the heaven of our souls; it is the inspiration from God, clear and intimate, urging us to greater generosity and calling us to a life of closer union with Him. Like the Magi, we too must always follow our star with faith, promptness and selfless generosity. If we allow it to guide us, it will certainly lead us to God; it will bring us to the One whom we are seeking.

The Magi did not give up their quest, although the star- at one point- disappeared from their sight. We should follow their example and their perseverance, even when we are in interior darkness. This is a trial of faith which is overcome only by the exercise of pure, naked faith. I know that He wills it, I know that God is calling, and this suffices for me: Scio cui credidi et certus sum (2 Timothy 1:12); I know whom I have believed. No matter what happens, I shall trust Him.

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene (Divine Intimacy)

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“Hidden God, devoutly I adore Thee, truly present beneath these veils: all my heart subdues itself before Thee, since all before Thee faints and fails.” (cf. Adoro Te Devote)

 Meditation

1. “Verbum caro factum est” (John 1, 14). The Incarnation of the Word, the ineffable mystery of the merciful love of God, who so loved man that He became “flesh” for his salvation, is, in a way, prolonged and extended through the ages, and will be until the end of time, by the Eucharist, the Sacrament by means of which the Incarnate Word became Himself our “food”. God was not content with giving us His only Son once for all, willing Him to take flesh in the womb of the Virgin — flesh like ours, so that He might suffer and die for us on the Cross — but He wished Him to remain with us forever, perpetuating His real presence and His sacrifice in the Eucharist.

Aided by the Gospel narrative we can reconstruct and relive in our heart the sweet mysteries of the life of Jesus. Had we nothing but the Gospel, however, we would have only nostalgic memories; Jesus would no longer be with us, but only in heaven at the right hand of the Father, having definitively left earth on the day of His Ascension. With what regret we would think of the thirty-three years of our Saviour’s earthly life passed centuries ago! Oh, how different the reality! The Eucharist makes the presence of Jesus with us a permanent one. In the consecrated Host we find the same Jesus whom Mary brought into the world, whom the shepherds found wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger; whom Mary and Joseph nurtured and watched over as He grew before their eyes; the Jesus who called the Apostles to follow Him, who captivated and taught the multitudes, who performed the most startling miracles; who said He was the “light” and “life” of the world, who forgave Magdalen and raised Lazarus from the dead; who for love us sweat blood, received the kiss of a traitor, was made one enormous wound, and died on the Cross; that same Jesus who rose again and appeared to the Apostles and in whose wounds Thomas put his finger; who ascended into heaven, who now is seated in glory at the right hand of His Father, and who, in union with the Father, sends us the Holy Spirit.

O Jesus, You are always with us, “yesterday and today and the same forever!” (Hebrews 13, 8). Always the same in eternity by the immutability of Your divine Person; always the same in time, by the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

2. Jesus is present in the Eucharist with all His divinity and all His humanity. Although His humanity is present “per modum substantiae“, that is, in substance and not in corporeal extension, it is whole and entire in the consecrated Host — body and soul, and this latter with its faculties of intellect and will. Therefore our Eucharistic Lord knows and loves us as God and as Man. He is not a passive object for our adoration but He is living; He sees us, listens to us, answers our prayers with His graces. Thus we may have, with the gentle Master of the Gospel, living, concrete relations which, although imperceptible to our senses, are similar to those which His contemporaries had with Him. It is true that in the Eucharist not only His divinity but even His humanity is hidden; however, faith supplies for the senses, it substitutes for what we do not see or touch; “sola fides sufficit” says St Thomas, faith alone is sufficient (Pange Lingua). As Jesus, disguised as a traveller, once taught the disciples of Emmaus, and inflamed their hearts, so too, Jesus hidden under the Eucharistic veil illumines our souls, inflames them with His love and inclines them ever more effectively toward sanctity.

Jesus is there, in the consecrated Host, true God and true Man; as He became incarnate for us, so for us too, has He hidden Himself under the Sacred Species. There He waits for us, longs for us, is always ready to welcome and listen to us. And we need Him so much! God, pure Spirit, is present everywhere, it is true; and in His Unity and Trinity, He even deigns to dwell within our souls, vivified by grace. Nevertheless, we always have need of contact with Jesus, the Word made Flesh, God made Man, our Mediator, our Saviour, our Brother, and we find Him present in the Eucharist. Here on earth we are never closer to Him than when we are in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament of the altar.

Colloquy

“O Lord, wealth of the poor, how admirably You can sustain souls, revealing Your great riches to them gradually and not permitting them to see them all at once. When I see Your great Majesty hidden in so small a thing as the Host, I cannot but marvel at Your great wisdom.

“O my God, if You did not conceal Your grandeur, who would dare to come to You so often, to unite with your ineffable Majesty a soul so stained and miserable? Be forever blessed, O Lord! May the angels and all creatures praise You for having deigned to adapt Your mysteries to our weakness, so that we might enjoy Your treasures without being frightened by Your infinite power. Otherwise, poor, weak creatures like ourselves would never dare to approach You.

“How would I, a poor sinner, who have so often offended You, dare to approach You, O Lord, if I beheld You in all Your Majesty? Under the appearances of bread, however, it is easy to approach You, for if a king disguises himself, it seems as if we do not have to talk to him with so much circumspection and ceremony. If You were not hidden, O Lord, who would dare to approach You with such coldness, so unworthily, and with so many imperfections?

“Besides, I cannot doubt at all about Your real presence in the Eucharist. You have given me such a lively faith that, when I hear others say they wish they had been living when You were on earth, I laugh to myself, for I know that I possess You as truly in the Blessed Sacrament as people did then, and I wonder what more anyone could possibly want.” (St Teresa of Jesus, Life, 38 — cf Way of Perfection, 34).

+Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen (Divine Intimacy)

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At the foot of Your Cross, O Jesus, I confess my sins. Pour over me Your Precious Blood that it may purify my soul.

Meditation

Colloquy

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O Jesus, help me to enter into the mystery of Your Passion; deign to associate me with it, so that I may participate in Your Resurrection.

Meditation

Today Passiontide begins, a time especially consecrated to the remembrance and loving contemplation of the sorrows of Jesus. The veiled crucifix and statues, the absence of the Gloria in the Mass and the Gloria Patri responsories of the Divine Office, the suppression of the psalm Judica me at the beginning of Mass — are all signs of mourning by which the Church commemorates Our Lord’s Passion.

Pope St Leo exhorts us to participate “in the Cross of Christ, in order that we also may do something which will unite us to what He has done for us, for as the Apostle says, ‘if we suffer with Him, we shall be glorified with Him.'” Therefore, we must not only meditate on Jesus’ sufferings, but also take part in them; only by bearing His Passion in our heart and in our body (cf. 2 Cor 4,10) shall we be able to share in its fruits.

So it is that in the liturgy of this season the Church repeats more insistently than ever: “If you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts.” The voice of the Lord makes itself hear these days, not by words, but by the eloquent testimony of deeds, by the great events of the Passion — a mystery which gives us the most convincing proof of His infinite love for us. Let us, therefore, open our heart to the sublime lessons of the Passion: let us see how much Jesus has loved us and how much we ought to love Him in return; let us learn that, if we wish to follow Him, we, too, must suffer and bear the Cross with Him and after Him. At the same time, let us open our heart to a lively hope; for our salvation is in the Passion of Jesus. In today’s Epistle (Heb 9,11-15) St Paul presents to us the majestic figure of Christ, the Eternal High Priest, who “by His Blood, entered once into the holies, [that is, heaven] having obtained eternal redemption.” The Passion of Jesus has redeemed us; it has opened once again our Father’s house to us; it is then the motive for our hope.

Prayer:

Praise be to You, O most merciful God, who willed to redeem us and restore us by the Passion, the sufferings, the scorn, and the poverty of Your Son, when we were wretched outcasts and condemned prisoners. I run to Your Cross, O Christ — to suffering, scorn, and poverty; with all my strength I desire to be transformed in You, O suffering God-Man, who loved me so much that You endured a horrible, shameful death for the sole purpose of saving me, and to give me an example, so that I would be able to endure adversity for love of You.

It is the perfection and true proof of love to conform myself to You, O Crucified One, who for my sins willed to undergo a cruel death, delivering Yourself entirely to tortures, as a victim. O my suffering God, only by reading the book of Your life and death shall I be able to know You and to penetrate Your mystery. Grant me, then, a profound spirit of pray, a pious, humble, attentive prayer, springing not only from my lips, but also from my heart and soul, so that I shall be able to understand the lessons of Your Passion!   (Bl. Angela of Foligno).

+Fr. Gabriel of St.Mary Magdalen

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There is no limit to God’s mercy. He never rejects us because of our sins, He never grows weary of our infidelities, never

refuses to forgive us. He is always ready to forgive our offenses and to repay our ingratitude with graces. He never

reproaches us for our offenses, even when we fall again immediately after being forgiven. He is never angered by our

repeated failures or weakness in the practice of virtue, but always stretches out His hand to us, wanting to help us.

When men condemn us, God shows mercy to us; He absolves us and sends us away justified, as Jesus did with the woman taken in adultery. “Go, and now sin no more”(Jn.8:11). By His words and example, Jesus has shown us the inexhaustible depths of God’s mercy. Let us think of the prodigal son, the lost sheep, Magdalene, and the good thief. But He has also said to us: “Be ye therefore merciful, as Your Father also is merciful” (Lk.6:36).

How far does our mercy go? How much compassion do we have for the faults of others? The measure of our mercy toward our neighbor will be the measure of God’s mercy toward us, for Jesus said, “With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Mt. 7:2) God does not require us to be sinless but that He may shower upon us the fullness of His mercy, but He does require us to be merciful to our neighbor, and moreover, to be humble.                         In fact to be sinners is not enough to attract divine mercy; we must also humbly acknowledge our sins and turn to God with complete confidence.

“What pleases God,” said St. Therese of Lisieux, ” is to see me love my littleness and poverty; it is the blind hope I have in His mercy. This is my sole treasure.” This is the treasure which supplies for all our miseries,

weaknesses, relapses and infidelities, because by means of this humility and confidence we shall obtain the divine Mercy. And with this at our disposal, how can our wretchedness discourage us?

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene (Divine Intimacy)

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May I find You within me, O my God, in the little heaven of my soul!

Meditation

1. St Teresa of Jesus warmly recommends to interior souls another kind of prayer, much simpler and more profitable — the prayer of recollection. The foundation of this prayer is the divine presence in our souls: the presence of immensity, by which God is in us as Creator and Preserver in so real and essential a manner that “in Him we live, and move, and are” (Acts 17:28), so that if He ceased to be present in us as a Father, as a Friend and as a sweet Guest, who invites that soul to dwell with the three divine Persons: with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the consoling promise of Jesus to the soul who loves Him: “If anyone love Me… My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and will make our abode with him.” (John 14:23)

The prayer of recollection consists in the realization of this great truth: God is in me, my soul is His temple; I recollect myself in the intimacy of this temple to adore Him, love Him, and unite myself to Him. “O soul, most beautiful of all creatures,” exclaims St John of the Cross, “that so greatly desireth to know the place where your Beloved is, in order to seek Him and be united with Him…. It is a matter of great contentment and joy for you to see that He is so near you as to be within you. Rejoice and be glad in your inward recollection with Him, since you have Him so near. There desire Him, there adore Him, and do not go to seek Him outside yourself.” (Spiritual Canticle, 1, 7-8) The soul who has the sense of the presence of God within it, possesses one of the most efficacious means of making prayer. “Do you believe,” says St Teresa of Jesus, “that it is of little importance to a soul wo is easily distracted, to understand this truth [that God is in it] and to know that, in order to speak with its heavenly Father and to enjoy His company, it does not have to go up to heaven or even to raise its voice? No matter how softly it speaks, He always hears it, because He is so near. It does not need wings to go to contemplate Him in itself.” (Way of Perfection, 28)

2. Although the prayer of recollection is the highest of the active forms of prayer, St Teresa notes that we can obtain it for ourselves, “for this is not a supernatural state [a passive recollection which can only be produced by divine motion], but depends upon our own volition; and by God’s favour, we can enter it of our own accord.” (ibid, 29)

Therefore, it is important to know what the soul should do in order to practise this prayer, and this can be reduced to two things: “The soul collects together all its faculties and enters within itself to be with its God” (ibid, 28). Our senses, imagination, and intellect tend spontaneously toward exterior things, on which they are dispersed; therefore, the soul, by a prolonged, resolute act of the will, ought to withdraw them from these exterior things in order to concentrate them on interior things — in this little heaven of the soul where the Blessed Trinity dwells. This exercise, especially in the beginning, requires effort and energy and it will not be easy at first. However, the Saint teaches, “let the soul try to cultivate the habit, despite the fatigue entailed in recollecting itself and overcoming the body which is trying to reclaim its rights.” Little by little, “as a reward for the violence which it had previously done to itself” (ibid.), recollection will become easy and delightful; the senses will obey promptly; and even if the soul is not entirely from distractions, it will not be so hard to overcome them.

In this way, the soul will be able to concentrate entirely on God present within us, and there at His feet will be able to converse with Him to our heart’s delight. It will not be difficult to spend even the whole time of prayer in acts of faith, love and adoration, admiring and contemplating the great mystery of the indwelling of the Trinity in our poor heart, and offering our humble homage to the three divine Persons. But if this is not enough, we can also use other practices: “Hidden there within our soul, we can think about the Passion, and picture the Son, and offer Him to the Father, without tiring the mind by going to seek Him on Mount Calvary, or in the Garden, or at the Column”; or else, more simply, we can “speak with Him as with a Father, a Brother, a Lord, and a Spouse — sometimes in one way, sometimes in another … we can tell Him our troubles, beg to be called His child” (ibid.) And the Saint concludes with these words: “Those who are able to shut themselves up in this way within this little heaven of the soul, where dwells the Maker of heaven and earth … may be sure that they are walking on an excellent road and will come without fail to drink of the water of the fountain.” (ibid.)

Colloquy

“Give me the grace to recollect myself in the little heaven of my soul where You have established Your dwelling. There You let me find You, there I feel that You are closer to me than anywhere else, and there You prepare my understanding that all the things of the world are but toys, seems all of a sudden to rise above everything created and escape it…. My God, if I could only recall often that You are dwelling within my soul, I think that it would be impossible for me to give myself up to the things of the world, for compared with what I have within me, they seem to me to have no value at all.

“Help me, O Lord, to withdraw my senses from exterior things, make them docile to the commands of my will, so that when I want to converse with You, they will retire at once, like bees shutting themselves up in the hive in order to make honey.” (cf. St Teresa of Jesus, Way of Perfection, 28).

“O Lord, You say to my soul, ‘My kingdom is within you.’ It is very comforting to know that You never leave me, and that I cannot exist without You. What more do you want, O my soul, and what do you seek elsewhere, since you possess within yourslef your wealth, your love, your peace, your plenitude, and your kingdom, that is, the Beloved whom you desire and for whom you sigh?” (cf. St John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, 1, 7-8)

“O my God, You are in me and I am in You. I have found my heaven and earth, since heaven is You, O Lord, and You are in my soul. I can find You there always; even when I do not feel Your presence, You are there nevertheless, and I like to seek You there. Oh! if only I could never leave You alone!” (cf. Sr Elizabeth of the Trinity, Letters)

+Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen (Divine Intimacy)

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Just as the Holy Spirit dwelt in the most holy soul of Christ in order to bring it to God, so He abides in our souls for the same purpose. In Jesus He found a completely docile will, one that He could control perfectly, whereas in us He often meets resistance, the fruit of human weakness; therefore, He desists from the work of our sanctification because He will not do violence to our liberty. He, the Spirit of love, waits for us to co-operate lovingly in His work, yielding our soul to His sanctifying action freely and ardently. In order to become saints, we must concur in the work of the Holy Spirit; but since effective concurrence is impossible without an understanding of the promoter’s actions, it is necessary for us to learn how the divine Paraclete, the promoter of our sanctification, works in us.

We must realize that the Holy Spirit is ever active in our souls, from the earliest stages of the spiritual life and even from its very beginning, although at that time in a more hidden and imperceptible way. However, His very precious action was there, and it consisted especially in the preparing and encouraging of our first attempts to acquire perfection. By giving us grace, without which we could have done nothing to attain sanctity, the Holy Spirit inaugurated His work in us: He elevated us to the supernatural state. Grace comes from God; it is a gift from all three Persons of the Blessed Trinity: a gift created by the Father, merited by the Son in consequence of His Incarnation, Passion and death, and diffused in our souls by the Holy Spirit. But is to the latter, to the Spirit of love, that the work of our sanctification is attributed in a very special manner.

When we were baptized, we were justified “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; nevertheless, Sacred Scripture particularly attributes this work of regeneration and divine filiation to the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself pointed out to us that Baptism is a rebirth “of … the Holy Spirit” (John 3,5), and St Paul stated: “For in one Spirit were we all baptized” and “the Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God” (1 Corinthians 12, 13 — Romans 8,16). Therefore, it is the Holy Spirit who has prepared and disposed our souls for the supernatural life by pouring forth grace in us.

Besides this, in order to enable us to perform the supernatural acts, the Holy Spirit comes to strengthen our powers — the intellect and the will — by the infused virtues: charity, together with the other theological virtues of faith and hope, and the moral virtues. Thus, through His intervention, we become capable of performing supernatural acts. But the Holy Spirit does not stop there; like a good teacher, He continues to help us in our work, urging us to do good and sustaining our efforts. He invites us by His interior inspirations, as well as by exterior means, especially Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church. Sacred Scripture is the word of God, written by men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is the divine Paraclete who speaks to us therein, enlightening our intellects with His light and spurring our wills by His motions; hence, meditation on the sacred texts is somewhat like “attending the school” of the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, the Holy Spirit continually teaches us and stimulates us to do good by the living word of the Church, since all those in the Church who have the mission to teach are under His influence when they expound sacred doctrine to the faithful. If we listen to the inspirations of the divine Paraclete, and accept His invitations, He unites Himself to us, aiding us by actual graces, so that we are able to perform virtuous acts. It is clear, therefore, that even when the spiritual life is in its first stages, and is concentrated on the correcting of faults and acquiring of virtues, the activity of the soul is entirely permeated and sustained by the action of the Holy Spirit. We give too little attention to this truth and therefore, in practice, we tend to ignore the constant work of the divine Spirit in our souls. Let us give thought to this, lest His inspirations and impulses go unheeded. “By the grace of God, I am what I am” said St Paul, and he could add: “His grace in me hath not been void.” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

Colloquy

“O Holy Spirit, divine Guest of our souls, You are the noblest and most worthy of all guests! With the agility of Your goodness and love for us, You fly rapidly to all souls who are disposed to receive You. And who can tell the wonderful effects produced by you when you are welcomed? You speak, but without noise of words, and Your sublime silence is heard everywhere. You are always motionless, yet always in movement, and in Your mobile immobility, You communicate Yourself to all. You are always at rest, yet ever working; and in Your rest You perform the greatest, worthiest and most admirable works. You are always moving, but You never change Your place. You penetrate, strengthen and preserve all. Your immense, penetrating omniscience knows all, understands all, penetrates all. Without listening to anything, You hear the least word spoken in the most secret recesses of our hearts.

“O Holy Spirit, You stay everywhere unless You are driven out, because You communicate Yourself to everyone, except to sinners who do not want to rise from the mire of their sins; in them You can find no place to rest, nor can You endure the evil emanating from a heart which obstinately persists in wrongdoing. But You remain in the creatures who, by their purity, make themselves receptive to Your gifts. And You rest in me by communication, operation, wisdom, power, liberality, benignity, charity, love, purity; Your creature, You Yourself prepare him suitably to receive You.” (St Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi)

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One of the greatest obstacles to full conformity of our will to God’s is our attachment to our own desires and inclinations. Obedience, because it asks us to be governed by the will of another, is the best way of accustoming ourselves to renounce our own will, of detaching us from it, and of making us cling to the divine will as revealed in the orders of our superiors.

The stricter the form of obedience to which we submit — that is, the more it tends to govern not only some particular detail but our whole life — the more intense will its practice be, and the more surely will it make us conform to the will of God. This is the great value of obedience: to unite man’s life with the will of God: to give man in every circumstance, the opportunity to govern himself, not according to his weak, fragile will, which is so subject to error, blindness and human limitations, but according to the will of God. This divine will has such goodness, perfection and holiness that it can never be mistaken nor will what is evil; it aims only at the good — not the transitory good, which today is and tomorrow is not — but the eternal, imperishable good.

Obedience makes us this happy exchange: renunciation of our own will for God’s will. For this reason the saints loved obedience. It is said of St Teresa Margaret of the Heart of Jesus that, not only did she obey orders promptly, but she experienced intense pleasure in doing so — her whole aspect expressing the joy she found in obeying.

If it is costly to nature to give up one’s own will, to renounce a plan, a project, or a much cherished work, the interior soul will not stop at this act of renunciation, but will realize that by suffering and struggling to overcome itself, it will be carried much further. The soul is fixed in the will of God which comes hidden in the voice of obedience and it tends toward this will with all its strength, for to embrace the will of God is to embrace God Himself.

+Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen

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