Entrustment to Mary = Celebrating God's Merciful Love

My daughter went into labor on the Monday of Holy Week. Before I could pack up and drive even one hour of the five hour journey to the city she is living in, I received the text that her baby girl had been born, just a short 1 ½  hours after being admitted into the hospital! She had been considered a high risk pregnancy and we had a scare in January of a premature delivery. Prayers ensued, and miraculously [according to the neonatal specialists], she and baby held on 10 more weeks to deliver at week 35. The baby was 6.6lbs - a healthy weight for her gestation. She remained in the hospital the next 10 days to rid her jaundice and gain the weight she lost in the first few days. She is God’s beautiful creation, just how He designed her to be.

For me, it turned my final week of Lent upside down. Coming into Holy Week, I was ready to give my full attention to the special themes of each daily Mass, and then to participate in the Triduum as we do every year. Instead, I forgot to pack my prayer book, and only attended Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday Masses. My whole schedule was rearranged as I took on helping my daughter learn how to nurse and care for her baby, for I was fortunate to be able to stay with her in the hospital room. I felt uneasy during the adjustment of “not being in control” of my prayer life, exercise routine, and meal preparation. Basically I had to put aside my expectations of what the week should be, and just be! Once I surrendered to my Blessed Mom and entrusted to her my prayer, my desire, and my awaiting for Easter, I was then able to relax and concentrate on helping my daughter. It was freeing to drop my illusions of how I believed Holy Week was to be experienced. It was refreshing to acknowledge that God is in control and I only need to follow His lead. Just as my new little grandbaby required our love and care, God showed me how helpless I am and how I need the love and care of my Blessed Mom. She helps me see the truth about myself and with her WE then can call upon the abyss of Jesus’ merciful love. She helps me see how her Son died for my sins and through this merciful act rescues me. And with this Good News I may sing this Easter Season ~ Alleluia! Alleluia!

 

"An “old” person – someone who relies on his own calculations, who lists pros and cons – limits the possibility for God to act and sets limits on His love and mercy. Constantly calculating and predicting if one will be successful or not is a trait of old age. A child grasps for the moon and believes that he will get it – and God wants to give you more than the moon. He wants to give you His kingdom, but if you do not become a child, His hands will be tied."

 

Tadeusz Dajczer, TheGift of Faith, 3rd. ed. (Ft. Collins, CO: IAMF, 2012), 64.

Entrustment to Mary = Desiring to Be Merciful

I just started writing this week’s blog with the intention to write about being merciful. I actually had just typed out the words “I have watched with amazement how Blessed Mother has formed me over the last 14 years to desire to be more merciful.” No sooner were the words on the page typed when my 5-year old daughter pushed the lever on my office chair causing it to lower toward the ground. My button was pushed and I snapped! Like Marshmallow in the movie “Frozen” I increased in size and probably sounded like I was roaring my disapproval. My heart is still pounding from that momentary episode.  What for, MOM? What for?

My blog was headed in the wrong direction, obviously! When I talk about mercy I have to see it from all its aspects – and to really ponder the question, do I only think “mercy” is when I am allowed to look good in my own eyes? Am I only experiencing “mercy” when I am given the grace not to overreact? Perhaps “mercy” is something much broader – something much deeper and amazing. Perhaps “mercy” is when Blessed Mother helps me to see who I am so that I call out for “Divine Mercy” – so that I can realize the depth of needing a Redeemer, Her Son, my Savior!

The process of my entrustment to Mary has been this road of discovering just how deep Divine Mercy really is. Some have claimed my road is self-centered. I don’t think this is necessarily true. The last 14 years I have been getting a good view of my misery – and being reminded that I am loved as such. Until I am convinced of this, I believe that my ability to give mercy will be greatly limited. It has come from the depth of understanding who I am that I have just recently started accepting others for who they are. This grace, however, is not something I can ever possess. Instead, it is something I constantly have to await. No longer do I simply desire to “fix” myself or others. Now, my desire is that I (and everyone!) believe in TRUE LOVE!

Gratitude to God is born on the foundation of the truth about God’s forgiving love. It is also born on the truth about humility, which is the truth about us. Humility is the truth that tries to remove from our hearts the poisonous influences of the faith that we have in ourselves. The conviction that everything is “given” to us, that everything is a gift, can be born on the foundation of the truth about God’s unceasingly bestowing love and the truth about ourselves as people who need everything from this bestowing love. A cry of gratitude comes forth from the depth of a heart that is full of awe before the reality of God’s bestowal. (S.C. Biela, TheTwo Pillars, [Ft. Collins, CO: IAMF, 2006], 7.)

WE, Blessed Mother and I, have started a fundraiser for a friend in need. You can click here to read about it. Please consider participating in this mercy-raiser! My experience has been that I more easily discover God’s mercy through tangible acts of kindness and love – through a priest, family member, friend, co-worker, stranger…a PERSON!  I hope that my friend will get the message of mercy from the generosity of those MOM uses for that purpose! Please, at least say a prayer for her and her daughters today, and pass on the information. Thank you!! 

Entrustment to Mary = Not Being Allowed to Despise God's Love For Me

We just celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday, and I am so very grateful to St. John Paul II for establishing this great feast! What a rescue for us all, especially me! 

In my last blogpost I wrote about discovering God’s mercy.  It seems I need to get the message a little more loudly and clearly. I had shared about my struggles with high expectations and perfectionism.  And as a control freak, I am now obsessed with getting rid of these weaknesses.  But there lies the rub. I will not.  Ever.  This is who I am.  I have struggled with a distorted image of God for so many, many years and I am so grateful for the gradual discovery of Who God really is.  I know in my head that He is not judging me the way I so harshly judge myself.  He does not love me for how well I avoid weakness.  He does not love me for the good deeds I do.  He does not love me best when I see myself in the most flattering (albeit, disillusioned) light.  But my heart asks how God could possibly love me, especially as I see how wretched I really am (and I am only seeing a tiny sliver of that misery!). 

As I was preparing this blogpost, I saw this repeated theme of struggling with controlling – my behavior, my loved ones, my God. 

I am more of a Control Freak than I had even thought. This is deep-rooted.  And God wants me to realize that I will not get “better.”  I have only been made aware recently that the saints were sinners who knew their need for God.   They were not strong on their own.  They did not love on their own.  They did not do courageous and generous acts of love on their own. They saw their weakness, were open to true contrition and gratitude, grew in humility, and made room for God to love and live through them, for them, with them, all for His greater glory (pretty much all of them with the assistance of our Blessed Mother at one point or another). 

As I am so obviously not a saint, I see that whenever I get a glimpse of the truth about myself, I am horrified and want to make it go away.  I want to be good.  I want to be loving.  I want to be someone God would be “proud of” (going back to my distorted image of how God loves).  But I am going about it all the wrong way, because I will only love when God loves through me.  I will only be a saint when God lives and dwells within me.  I am so busy relying on myself and pushing Him away until I fix myself that I fall deeper and deeper in this miserable pit.  Lately I have been so unhappy because I see my ugliness.  But I need to look at it in the arms of my Blessed Mama, because on my own, I become so very, very discouraged.  I am so tempted to turn away from God in shame. I doubt His love for me.  I see that in the past (before entrusted to the Blessed Mother) that my life could’ve been viewed as one very blessed and easy.  I now see how little faith I have, and God must have preserved me from difficult trials because I would’ve run away from him for good.  I can choose to look at the truth about myself now, because Blessed Mama won’t allow me to run very far or for very long.  I praise God for that. Truly.  I would be a complete mess without Her. 

You must not forget that Mary suffers with great pain the torment that your sin causes Christ.  For her, it is excruciatingly painful when you despise His love, when you abuse your own dignity and show contempt to God who loves you extremely and without end.  In spite of this great suffering, she does not let you go from her embrace.  If in this moment she would abandon you to your own possibilities – you would perish.  (S.C. Biela, In the Arms of Mary, 2^nd. Ed, rev [Ft. Collins, CO:  IAMF, 2005], 175. 

Entrustment To Mary= A "Good" Lent

So here we are - we have made the journey through Lent and are ready to rejoice and sing Alleluia to our resurrected Lord. As most of my Lenten seasons go, I tried to carry out my sacrifices on my own, which led me to see a lot of my misery and come once again to the same conclusion that I can do nothing without Jesus - my Savior.

This year it was interesting how I was handed two temptations in the realm of my chosen fasting foods and on both occasions I failed - at least in the world's eyes. First, when I ordered a taco from a food cart I asked the server not to give me the chips that came with the meal. When my dinner basket arrived it included the chips. I looked at them as a special gift from God, and started to munch away. Then when I contemplated what had happened, I realized it could have been a good opportunity for me to ask Jesus to help me refrain from eating them.

Second, a patient's wife bought for me a big delicious looking peanut-butter cookie. Not wanting to hurt her feelings by refusing it, I gobbled it up. Then I reflected on how much I worry about offending humans over offending my God. Surprisingly for me, in both instances, with grace, I did not walk away sad, which usually my bruised pride prompts me to do. But instead, with my Blessed Mother, WE asked for mercy on my self-centered soul, and thanked God for his unconditional love.

So, I can say this was a good Lent. Through numerous humiliations, God trusted me to see my weaknesses and gave me the grace not to run away like this Scaredy Cat normally would do. With God's grace along with my entrustment to the Blessed Mother, a small crack has formed in my hardened heart, allowing Divine Mercy rays to penetrate through in order to rescue me. Yes, this was a very good Lent indeed!

If at least a fissure appears in the armor of your distrust, then God, Who is always fighting for you, will try to take advantage of it. He will use this fissure to build an entry way into your firmly fortified world. Your egotistical reign is closed before God because you continually fear that He will diminish the reign of your I and that He will limit your lordship. That is why even the existence of the smallest Divine fissure is important because it can eventually be enlarged so that there will be more and more space in you for the light of Divine grace that saves you. [1]

For the time being, the light is faint. Even this faint light, however, shows us certain fragments of the truth - the truth about ourselves in relationship to God, to ourselves, and to the world. Even though amid shadows one cannot see much, this experience is already shocking and painful. In one's gradual discovery of the difficult truth about himself, one can see God's great gentleness and love for the soul that could otherwise become terrified and rebel. God trusts that we will not run away from this light, but rather accept it as a gift. This gift is difficult to receive, but God must give such a gift in order to rescue the beloved soul from the unconscious lie in which it is living. When we begin to see the truth about ourselves in the Divine light, we will also begin to understand that the perfection, which was the source of our self-satisfaction, was an illusion. [2]

[1] S.C. Biela, Behold I Stand at the Door and Knock, (Ft. Collins, CO: IAMF, 2005), 11.

[2] Ibid, 9.

Entrustment To Mary = Celebrating The Easter Season

The Contributors to this blog are taking a hiatus - celebrating this most joyous Easter week. How are we celebrating you may ask? - Sugar stupors, coffee adrenalin rushes, spending too much time back on Facebook, and one of us got to go on an exotic vacation! But whatever the indulgence may be - we are thanking our risen Savior for loving us no matter what, and for giving us his mother who keeps us safe in her loving arms.

May God bless you with His Divine Mercy!