MATTHEW 10:38
“And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me”.
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PICCARRETA:
Oct. 16. “Without a cross we are like unripened fruits – like sterile plants, which do more harm than good.”
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BOH VOL 12 June 16, 1919
There is no sanctity without the cross. No virtue is acquired without union with pains.
I was thinking in my interior: “Where are the pains that my sweet Jesus had told me He would let me take part in – while I am suffering almost nothing?‟
And my always lovable Jesus told me: “My daughter, how you deceive yourself; you calculate the corporal pains, and I calculate the corporal and moral pains. Every time you have been without Me, it was a death that you felt, and I felt Myself repaired for the many deaths that creatures give themselves with sin, and you took part in the many deaths that I suffered.
When you felt cold, it was another little death you felt, and you came to take part in the coldness of creatures, who would want to cool down my love. But my love, triumphing of their coldness, absorbs it in Me, to feel the death of their coldness; and I give to them more ardent love.
The same with all your other pains: they were the evils opposite to those of creatures, which, like many little deaths, made you take part in my deaths. And then, don’t you know that my Justice, when It is forced by the wickedness of the peoples to pour new scourges, suspends your pains?
The evils will be so grave as to be horrifying. I know that this is a pain for you, but I too had this pain; I would have wanted to free creatures from all pains, both in time and in eternity, but this was not granted to Me by the Wisdom of the Father, and I had to resign Myself. Would you perhaps want to surpass my very Humanity?
Ah! daughter, no kind of sanctity is without cross; no virtue is acquired without union with pains. Know, however, that I will repay you at usury for all my privations, and for the very pains which you would want to suffer, and do not suffer.”
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PRAYER OF THE DAY:
“Ah, Lord, I pray You to keep me always nailed to the cross, so that, having this divine mirror ever before me, I may clean all my stains and embellish myself ever more in your likeness.”
BOH VOL 3 April 20, 1900