(Feast of the Annunciation)
“Oh, how precious are our souls to Jesus and Mary, our blood Brother and our mother. The best expression of our gratitude for such love is the irrevocable consecration of ourselves to them – in the gloom of uncertainty, in the anguish of doubt, in the heart-riving loneliness of interior desolation, when God seems to desert us, by complete abandonment to the divine will.”
“Mary’s holiness kept pace with her labor. Through her faithful performance of her ordinary duties, she may be said to have attained, in the solitude of Nazareth, her greatest sanctity.”
Bear Your Sufferings with Christ
“The way of the Cross is the only pathway to peace of mind here and to eternal peace hereafter...Only in the school of the cross can we learn the truest wisdom, the knowledge of Jesus Christ and Him crucified...”
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”
C.S. Lewis
Remain Serene Even When Misunderstood, Day 2
“In the trials most repugnant to our natural selves, when we are misunderstood, misrepresented, or calumniated, let us be silent and, like Jesus and Mary, make no attempt at justification... The soul that is dead to itself has mastered the fine art of living.”
Remain Serene Even When Misunderstood, Day 1
“When, through the reception of God’s favors, we are placed in a false light, we should rejoice that God has enabled us to overturn the idol of our self-love and thus to love Him above all things for His own love-worthy sake.”
Bear Yourself Toward Others as Mary did, Day 2
“The house of Elizabeth, under the blessed influence of Mary, became a school of perfect sanctity in which everything was said and done from religious principle, thus enabling the mother of the Baptist to progress in holiness and allowing the virtues of Christ’s precursor to develop...”
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