A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary

The Offering of One’s Heart to Mary

THE SOUL: O Mary, O my dear Mother, I’ve come to the end of your month and I feel a regret within my heart: during this time I’ve entrusted myself to you, and like a good mother, you have taken me by the hand and have taught me so many truths. Now that the month is at an end, it seems that I am now almost abandoned to myself. I am inexperienced, weak and forlorn; I always need you, my Mother, and, hence, I entrust and consecrate to you my heart.

Here it is; I place it in your hands; I entrust it to your mercy. Will you accept it, O good Mother? I give it to you without reserve, because I know that in giving it to you, I give it to God. You are the mediatrix between him and creatures; you are the advocate of poor sinners; you are our hope!

MARY: Come, my little child; I receive you and welcome you into my Heart. Here is your refuge, your peaceful shelter; I seal you in it … come to me! This Heart of mine is the way to heaven; I make you pass through me in order to lead you one day into the bosom of God. Trust in me; be consoled! Your painful exile will pass and I myself will accompany you into the heavenly fatherland.

This month with me has ended, but not my love for you: I bless you.

Live in peace, in communion with the Eucharistic Jesus; live a life of submission to the will of God, of prayer and of charity; flee from sin; love virtue … one day you will see me in heaven and all of your anxieties and your sufferings will end. Amen.

ASPIRATION: Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation.

LITTLE WORK: Spend this day in an act of unconditional trust in Mary.

A Month with Mary

A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary

The Presence of God

MARY: Wherever you turn, God sees you! Whether you ascend into the heavens, whether you sink into the abyss, God always sees you! He sees you, but his glance is infinite love because he is present to sustain your life, to help you, to fill you with the graces of which you yourself are not even aware.

God sees you, even more, in him you are and you move; this is a great mercy. You ought to exult in the thought of being always in the presence of your God and in the meantime you forget it completely.

You not only forget him, but you live as if God did not exist, even under his glance, with the strength which he gives you, with the freedom which he grants you, you offend him and you insult him! What an outrage and what black ingratitude!

God sees you and you ought to remember this in order to love him and to refer to his glory all that he grants you. You are his creature, his temple, you are like a living altar, and with what delicate reverence you ought to care for your spiritual cleanliness, the internal order of your soul, the blazing torch of your love which burns in the presence of God!

God sees you and what an ugly sight you present him of yourself! … Oh, if you could see yourself as he sees you! … You are like a house blackened with smoke, all full of soot, all full of debris and dirt … And yet you know that God dwells in your heart! Get your house in order, live with the Eucharistic Jesus, live from him so that the glance of God is detained with delight on his divine Son!

You complain all too often that you are alone in the world and aspire to heaven! And yet you are not alone: God is around you, and within you, and living with you! Love him, then, with all your soul, with all your heart, with all your strength. Walk in his presence and be perfect; live before him with the trust of a son, with the simplicity of a small child.

ASPIRATION: I adore you, my God, here present, and I thank you that you look upon me with so much love.

LITTLE WORK: Resolutely eliminate from your soul, from your books, from your effects, all that could offend the gaze of God.

A Month with Mary

A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary

Death

THE SOUL: I am full of life and it seems as if I will never have to die. Fantastic! I want earthly joys; however, without a doubt the day will also come for me when I will lie immobile and lifeless on my bed of pain and the scene of this world will forever disappear from me! … A few days of illness will prepare my last day … perhaps that day will also come upon me unexpectedly, maybe even violently … I don’t know. What I do know for certain is that this life will pass away and that I will find myself in the presence of God where I will give an account of everything, even of a vain or idle word!

What a terrible thing the moment of death will be for me: the body will weaken, oppressive anguish will take away my breath, memories of my life will upset me, the demon will assault me with great rage …

O Mary, my mother, will you come close to my bed of pain, will you soothe the terrible anguish of those moments? Oh, I await you because that hour will be too bitter for me when I remember nothing but the ingratitude and sins of my life!

The thought of death doesn’t have to be fruitless for me now that I still have time and can prepare myself for it from now on. I want to detach myself from all that can cause me suffering in death; I want to renounce all vanities; I want to live in a Christian way in order to have then a treasure of merits. Help me, O Mary, to live well so that I will not then be oppressed by my great responsibility.

MARY: My child, remember that Jesus has given you a treasure that should serve you precisely at death and it is the Holy Viaticum and the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. When you realize that your life is declining, claim this Sacrament for yourself because it is too easy for the false and cruel compassion of your family members to deprive you of it. Live every day, then, as if you were to die and measure your desires and vanities against this thought. In this way death will find you prepared and you will draw your last breath in the Heart of Jesus and in mine and you will be safe forever.

ASPIRATION: From eternal death, deliver me, O Lord.

LITTLE WORK: Say a prayer for the dying.

A Month with Mary

A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary

The Goodness of God in Forgiveness

MARY: Do you want to give yourself an idea of the goodness of God and the hardness of creatures? Consider how God acts when he is offended and how men act! Oh how slight is human mercy, even non-existent! Man pretends to pardon, but in reality does nothing but treat his offender harshly while always remembering the offense. He forgives when he no longer feels the impact and the anger; he forgives with difficulty. Yet the offender is a being like him, perhaps better than him.

Look at how inflexible man is when he punishes: the guilty person repents, begs, weeps, but the law strikes him, obliterates him, deprives him of freedom and is not placated until he has paid in full.

God is infinite, he who offends him is a poor worm. The offense which he receives is incommensurable, yet God calls the sinner to his heart, he entices him with the most delicate expressions, he searches for him like a lost treasure, like a little lamb from his own fold, like a beloved son. If God wants him to confess his sin, it is for the benefit of the sinner, so that, by humiliating himself, he may feel free of his weight and deserve forgiveness and may look on this as a blessed right and not a humiliating concession.

God does not despise the sinner, he does not look on him with severity nor reprove him, but embraces him, enriches him with grace, reclothes him with the garments of justice, puts on the ring of sonship on his finger and prepares the solemn banquet of the Eucharist for him. One single sincere word of love, one single sigh of the soul is enough to reconcile him to God, even before mildly humbling himself before God’s minister.

It is true that adversities befall sinners, but it is not God who wills the punishment and death of the wicked, it is rather the wicked who brings the adversities and disasters upon himself … And even these serve God’s purpose to call the sinner to himself when he doesn’t listen to the voice of love. Oh how great is God’s mercy! And you are still unsure about him? Do you not know that he considers himself greatly offended by lack of trust precisely because he is infinite goodness? Throw yourself into his arms, then, weep at his feet. In him you will always find the most tender and loving of fathers.

ASPIRATION: Forgive me, O Jesus, and have mercy on me in your great mercy.

LITTLE WORK: Forgive the one who has offended you so that God will forgive you in the same measure.

A Month with Mary

A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary

The Medicine of the Soul

THE SOUL: Even with so many means of sanctification and salvation, I recognize, unfortunately, that I am weak and empty. At the first occasions of sin I vacillate miserably and fall. Do I have recourse to Jesus in the Eucharist? But if my fall made me unworthy of him, that food of life becomes for me the condemnation to death!

Oh how good Jesus is! He has provided for my mortal infirmity and has given me the effective remedy to cleanse me from my iniquities: holy Confession. In the Eucharist he comes to me living and true, substantially, and makes himself my food and drink; in Confession instead he has himself represented by a man invested with his power so that I may have no reluctance to lay at his feet my abhorrent burden.

I kneel at the feet of that man, but it is always Jesus who receives me … it is Jesus who makes himself anew my Redeemer, who appears to me in human vesture, who takes pity on my weaknesses, who counsels me, comforts me, helps me, heals me. I am not afraid of his presence, and even if I find it repugnant to speak to a mortal man, he changes my repugnance into expiation and fills me with secret consolation.

O Jesus, do not allow me to render so great a Sacrament vain! So many times I have gone to Confession almost by rote; perhaps I tried to minimize my faults; I found so many excuses to avoid humiliating myself for them! O Mary, Mother of grace and of mercy, accompany me to the feet of the priest and grant that I may emerge renewed by this Sacrament of spiritual resurrection.

ASPIRATION: O Jesus, give me the grace to confess well.

LITTLE WORK: Prod some soul whom you know to be in mortal sin to go to Confession.

A Month with Mary

A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary

The Transformation of the Soul

JESUS: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my Blood will have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day … He who feeds on me lives because of me … Your fathers ate the manna and died, but he who feeds on me will not die … I am the bread of life come down from heaven.”

Here are the words with which I prepared faithful souls for the great mystery of love; here is the meaning and the nature of this great Sacrament of life. The human soul in contact with mine becomes transformed; it becomes one with me; it lives because of me. It becomes transformed not by an instantaneous miracle, but gradually and precisely in the same manner that physical life is supplied with food.

Your soul, too, my child will be transformed into me; don’t be in a hurry to see yourself perfect all at once. The Eucharist does not burn sensibly; it was not instituted to give you superficial gratification, but to give you life. You must live from me, identify with me, abandon yourself to me and hence you must experience your emptiness, your nothingness, your inertia in profound humiliation.

Even material food is of itself effective in supplying life, even though it does not produce the same effects in each one. One eats and visibly grows because the body assimilates the food well. Another eats and with the nourishment comes the strength to avoid an illness, to prevent a collapse, to expel noxious or infected germs from the organism. To these food might seem unnecessary, but it is not so.

I will change you completely, but I will not do violence to your nature; I will penetrate into you gently and virtually without making you aware. Do not tire of me … always come to me; never stop seeking me because in me you will find life.

THE SOUL: O my Jesus, you know my misery well and you know that I am only nothingness! Here is my soul, I place it in your hands: you transform me!

Bread of life, give me the life that will reinvigorate me in you!

Bread of love, set me on fire with that love which annihilates in me what is mine and fills me with what is yours!

ASPIRATION: O Sacramental Jesus, transform me into yourself.

LITTLE WORK: Make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament to attest to your love for him.

A Month with Mary

A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary

The Eucharist

MARY: Jesus was not content merely to open to you the channels of grace with the Sacraments; he wished to give you himself so that you could live totally by him and in him. At the vigil of his sufferings he wished to leave you a perpetual reminder of love; he took some bread, broke it and gave it to his disciples saying: “Take this and eat it, this is my Body.” Likewise he took the chalice with wine, blessed it and gave it to his disciples saying: “Take and drink, this is my Blood.” From that moment the world possessed the greatest marvel: bread transubstantiated into his Body and wine transubstantiated into his Blood! With the Body and with the Blood are also the soul and the divinity, in such a way that when you eat of this bread of life, you receive the whole Jesus as he is now, glorious in heaven.

Jesus did not give himself to you in vain: he comes to you in order to incorporate you into himself, to give you his very life, to supply for your weakness, to sustain your soul. You should not, then, complain uselessly of being destitute of every virtue, but you must go to the banquet of life to be healed of your spiritual sicknesses. Jesus is not upset to see you cold when he sees you humble and constant … He is there precisely to warm your coldness. Don’t put obstacles before him, but offer yourself to him totally and rest in his goodness. Certainly your Communion will not remain fruitless when you go to Jesus with at least a humiliated heart, but you cannot always be aware of the fruitfulness of your Communion.

Alas! Your miseries are so many and you do not know them, but Jesus patiently eliminates a few of them each time. You are not aware of this secret work and you would just like to be conscious of sensible fervour and thus to please yourself. Thus you believe that your Communion is without fruit and that is not true! If Jesus gave you the relish and the fervour without first rooting love in you, you would be a barren soul, a fantasy flame! …

Entrust yourself to him, never back away from him. The more you are in his company, the sooner you will be filled with his life. Don’t satisfy yourself merely with receiving him; go to visit him, prostrate yourself before his glorious throne, implore his blessing, direct your thought to him during the day, desire him spiritually in your heart, pray, pray that he may reign in you.

ASPIRATION: O Sacrament most holy, O Sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine!

LITTLE WORK: Make a Communion of reparation for one who is far from the Holy Eucharist.

A Month with Mary

A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary

A Canticle of Love

(According to the Spirituality of the Canticle of Canticles)

THE SOUL: O Jesus … the only desire of my soul, only good of my being, come!

With the sighs of my soul I call upon you because you are the only true beauty, come!

My beloved is snow-white as a lily, ruddy as a rose … his flowing disheveled hair attracts me … how beautiful you are, O beloved of my soul! … Come! …

Everything becomes a voice that calls me to you alone because where you pass you strew a thousand allurements of love! … You smiled upon creation and it became a delightful harmony that speaks of you … Come!

I am an exile and pilgrim in this vale of tears, but you have shown yourself to me as my all … come, O Jesus, yes, come!

My voice is weak, but I unite it to the concert of all creation; it becomes strong with your very merits … come, O my Spouse!

I went wandering the ways of the world, but couldn’t find you … I asked the sentries about you … but they only keep watch over little human miseries … I kept walking and walking and then in the solitude of the lilies I saw you!

What a vision of love! Your clothing was snow-white; around your head there was an aureole of glory and from your lips came a word of love! … How beautiful you are! …

My step is slight; I sigh for you with all of the impulse of my soul, come, O Jesus! My soul loves you, it loves you … it loves you, O infinite God because you are my only desire … Come! …

O don’t distract me from my Beloved, o little things of the earth; you are a fatuous light and I find in you only coldness and death! It is only my Jesus that I desire … Come, O Jesus! …

I want love in this poor soul of mine and you alone give it to me: come, O Jesus!

I desire sufferings because through the sufferings I will love you the more. The sufferings you send are only a path of charity; come, bring me the cross, come into my soul!

I love you, O my only true good! Please don’t gaze on me any more … the heart inflames me with love and then leaves me desolate and poor! I will then love you between the delightful beatings of my heart with a disinterested love … Come, O Jesus!

I love you, Jesus, and because I love you I desire only you!

Let the creatures torment me; they only drive me closer to you … Among the contradictions which they will cause me, you will hear all the better the voice of my love … Come! …

They despise me as inept and I really am because I am nothing but misery! But to my nothingness you are a support, you are peace, you are all because you are Jesus! … Come! …

Jesus, my Jesus, your little creature gets disturbed, but does little; you know me well … hence come to me and raise me up in your mercy … Come, O Jesus! …

Love, love, how delightful you are when you are born of that Heart of divine fire, of my Jesus! Look at me, O my Angels; Jesus has already bound me to him … My love, give me a kiss of mercy and of love! …

O Jesus, you have already come … O that I might die, then, in a cry of love … I love you! …

The bonds that bind us are sealed in your Blood … you will cast me away from you no more for you are too good! …

O Jesus, O Jesus, O my love … you alone! …

You are here in my heart! … you alone! …

You are king of my soul! … you alone! …

You are my peace! … you alone! …

You are all, O my love! … you alone! …

I no longer have the strength to speak … my Love! …

Praise God from the heavens; praise him, O Angels, praise him, all creatures; praise him, O Mary! … God alone! …

ASPIRATION: Long live Jesus! … Thank you, O Jesus, who live in my soul!

LITTLE WORK: Seek pardon of the person you have most offended or who has a grudge against you so that the aversion and upset do not block love.

A Month with Mary

A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary

The Aspirations of the Heart

MARY: A soldier who wants to keep himself really faithful to his duty should not be one who serves under constraint; he should have an ideal toward which he aspires. In moments of danger in which it seems as if life is slipping away, in which he feels the full impact of the adversary, the soldier takes up his arms and at the outcry of his ideal, he musters all of his energy and wins.

Look for a moment at your heart, my child, and study it with regard to its supreme aspirations …

You gaze on me, your eyes contemplate the immaculate candour of my soul and you sense all the beauty of purity.

You see me in profound recollection; in my countenance you read the life of infinite Love which attracts me and you want to fly, fly, like a little bird that flutters anxiously when it sees the magnificent flight of its mother! …

You see me with downcast countenance … desolate from the bitter grief of Calvary. Expand your heart and cry out: Mother, grant me to weep with you!

You, therefore, must aspire to innocence, to the infinite, to the sacrifice which will lead you to these two harbors of true happiness!

I saw you so many times involved in worldly affairs, but you were not happy with them and you remember now with regret. As you advance in years, you perceive in life something more elevated than what appears … you want God! Nothing satisfies you; nothing consoles you; all of your castles in the air begin to crumble and collapse; you desire God! Only his charity convinces you; only his love satisfies you; only his friendship gives you peace!

Lift yourself up, then, in great purity of heart: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Jealously preserve the innocence which Jesus has given you back in the Baptism of his blood when he received the tears of your repentance and purified you. Flee the frivolous company of creatures because you will not find God in the hubbub of human affairs.

Recollect yourself in your nothingness because God only stoops down to holy humility, as he lowered himself even to me, because he looked upon me in my interior annihilation.

Don’t flee the cross, rather carry it willingly close to Jesus. It is the key of heaven; it is the door that introduces you into the kingdom of the eternal aspirations of your soul …

The little human things will soon pass away; they will fall into oblivion … I will garner you like a lily of the valleys to adorn the heavenly garden.

ASPIRATION: O Jesus, may your kingdom come soon!

LITTLE WORK: Avoid saying useless words in order to maintain the holy recollection of the soul.

A Month with Mary