At my evening examination of conscience I go through the past day peacefully, checking to see if I was neglectful and have left God in my soul unnoticed for too long a time. In doing so, I discover that I was most troubled with mistakes when my neglect of God was most prolonged. While grace perfects its work in us, let us help it along as much as we can. We strive with human means to bring an intense interior life to fulfillment and further development. Thus, for example we seek through reading and study to penetrate more deeply into the truths of holy Church, especially its lofty teaching about the divine filiation of souls called to participate in divine life.
Above all else, I shall make use of the most excellent means, the holy sacraments. I shall l receive them as often as possible and with the greatest possible love and self- surrender. For the humanity of our Savior is the gateway to his divinity. No one comes to God the Father except through Jesus his Son.
In a mysterious way, Jesus purifies us from our sins and failures in holy absolution. In the Holy Eucharist he approaches us with his humanity and leads us ever deeper into his divinity. And when the sacramental species are no longer present in us, we can continue our communion, our union with the divinity of our Redeemer, until the next sacramental bonding. Our thanksgiving does not limit itself to a few minutes. With the disciples of Emmaus, we ask our divine Savior after Holy Communion: “Lord, stay with us!” (Lk ’24:29). Thus it becomes the unsurpassable source of our inner life: its efficacy expands to our whole day and fills us with ever new zeal. Let us raise our eyes filled with trust to the loving Mother of God, who is also our mother. She has given us the life of the Redeemer and she will also lead us to supernatural life, until, having grown to maturity in her son Jesus, we reach the perfection of unity with him.
Mary, mother of fairest love, lead us to Jesus! A. Carthusian ‘Life in God’s Presence’
MARY, MOTHER OF FAIREST LOVE painted by Father William Hart McNichols
“…Strike that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp arrow of longing love, and on no account whatever think of giving up.” Cloud of Unknowing as quoted by Father McNichols In the Life of the Blessed Virgin (taken out of the 4 volumes of the life of Christ ) there is the true sign given to Elijah in 1 Kings 18 : 44 of one single cloud appearing in the sky, which ends a terrible drought. Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich sees the cloud as symbolic of the Blessed Mother herself ; Mary’s entrance into our world ends the drought of waiting for the Messiah.
