1 CORINTHIANS 16:13
“Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong.”
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PICCARRETA:
Aug. 31. “It is well known how easily creatures change – today they smile at us, tomorrow they will turn their back on us. We can trust God and our Queen alone, because they really love us, without the shadow of interest. They love us because they want to see us happy and holy.”
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Book of Heaven
Vol. 29 June 5, 1931
“Now, has this not been a wholeness, a resemblance, of my Life, in your painful state of humiliation, of calumnies and scorns that you have gone through? I felt in you the nail of the abandonment and dispersion of my Apostles being repeated to Me, in seeing those who had been so keen to assist you disperse themselves from you, and with the will of abandoning you.
And in seeing you abandoned, I saw you all alone in my arms, with the nail of the abandonment of those who were to sustain you; and in my sorrow I said:
“Bad world, how well you know how to repeat the scenes of my Passion in my children.‟
And I offered your bitterness for the triumph of my Will and for the help of those who should make It known. Therefore, courage in the painful circumstances of life.
However, know that your Jesus will never abandon you – I don’t know how to do these things; my Love is not voluble by nature, but firm and constant, and what I say with my mouth comes out from the life of my Heart. Creatures, instead – they say one thing and feel another in their hearts; they mix many human ends also in making friends, and this is why they change according to the circumstances.
So, the dispersion of those who seemed to want to lay down their lives in the good times, and who cravenly run away in the time of humiliations and scorns – they are all effects of the human will. The human will is the true prison of the creature, and is clever in the art of being able to form many small rooms – but all without windows, because it is not skilled at forming openings in order to receive the good of light.
Therefore, passions, weaknesses, fear, excessive worries, inconstancy, are as many dark rooms of its prison, and she remains now hampered in one, now in another; and fear makes her fear and move away from the one is laying down his life for love of her.
On the other hand, one in whom my Will reigns lives in my royal palace, in which there is so much light, that the pains, the humiliations, the calumnies, are nothing other than stairs of triumphs and of glory, and completion of great and divine works.
So, instead of running away from the poor martyr who has been cast into dust by the human perversity, she draws closer to him, waiting with patience for the hour of the new triumph.”
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PRAYER OF THE DAY:
” My Jesus, may You truly reign in me, so I may be firm in trial, with a firmness which is not inconstant, but always equal to itself. May I be firm in good, in suffering, in working, so I may enlarge the field around me, and You may find in me Your shelf and support, and the place in which to extend Your graces.
My beloved Jesus, I surround You with Your own firmness, with which You operated for the salvation of our souls. May You remain in my heart in sweet rest as I provide You shelter. ”
Adapted from
12th Hour of the Passion
Reflections and Practices