Entrustment to Mary = Being Grateful For Everything

Only a person who has faith is able to be grateful for everything. This gratitude will be visible on your face as joy, for everything may be changed into good. [1]

 

It was easy to thank God when my husband and I survived driving the wrong way down a three lane one-way road. Miraculously the cars we were facing dispersed and we were able to turn 180* and head in the right direction, praising God as we did so.

 

It is easy to thank God for His blessings of a warm house, food to eat, employment, and family visiting during the holiday season.

 

It has not been easy to be grateful for my daughter being served divorce papers after only four months of marriage.

 

Although I am a person who has faith, it is not so easy for me to be grateful for everything. I do not always appreciate difficult trials; nor am I thankful for my weaknesses. I am currently reading the book How to Profit from Your Faults. It is based on the writings of St. Francis De Sales and discusses the positive side of one’s faults and failings. I am learning to have gratitude for my weaknesses as it is through them that I come to see how much I need God and His mercy. It is through my humiliations that I grow in my awareness of “who” I am not. It is when I can see my misery and stand in the truth and admit my unfaithfulness to God that I become open to allowing Him to rescue me. And who wouldn’t be grateful for that!?

The seeing, admitting, and opening myself up to my God is not easy for me. That is where my entrustment to Mary comes in, for on my own I cannot, and would not, admit the truth about myself. But in my Blessed Mom’s arms WE can thank God for everything, for WE can trust that everything may be changed into good!

 

Jesus is never sad when looking at your life that may be filled with failures, problems, conflicts, unfulfilled plans, everyday difficulties, and spiritual difficulties. He is joyful because He expects all those things to bear fruit. He expects that you will take advantage of them and you will be joyful and grateful for everything He gives you.[2]
[1][2]Tadeusz Dajczer, The Gift of Faith, 3rd. ed. (Ft. Collins, CO: IAMF, 2012), 13.

 

On behalf of High Hopes, Control Freak, and Scaredy Cat we wish all of our readers a most blessed Thanksgiving and Advent Season. Thank you for sharing in our revelations of the many ways God loves us all as we are!

  

Toward Gratitude: The List that Never Ends....

With it being Thanksgiving, which for some turns into Black Friday, which for some turns into hectic travel, which for some turns into anxiety and fear of falling behind, we decided to give you a quote from one of S.C. Biela's most beautiful books The Two Pillars.  This book guides the reader toward contrition and gratitude. There is still time for us to stop and remember that we are utterly and completely immersed in LOVE!

“It is necessary to open our eyes and our hearts widely, to look at our lives as far back as we can remember – to childhood – and try to see how much good, love, care, and forgiveness is in everything that the Loving Presence gives us. The gift contains the interior call to respond to it. The gift demands gratitude.

What if we overheard a prayer lifted up to the Blessed Mother by a young American student who calls herself tiny (crumb)? This prayer is so simple, yet simultaneously astonishing, in the way it shows how she perceives God’s gifts in the areas of life where God’s bestowals are corroded by routine and, therefore, normally illegible for us. Perhaps our lack of discretion will be forgiven us if, because of it, we begin to discover bestowals whose dimensions can reach the size of a continent – a continent of bestowals.

Dearest Mommy,

Thank You for everything:

For sitting with me on the subway as we returned from school.

For brushing my teeth with me.

For cleaning with me.

For giving me the grace of loneliness, so that I can better understand how You love me so much.

For my entire past and for everything that has led me to this moment of grace, thanks to which I constantly remember about Your loving presence.

For allowing my pride and my illusions to crush me to the point of depression, such that now I can understand and desire Your love and truth.

For Your constant friendship, even when I still didn’t know where You were.

For the fact that I do not have to try to achieve anything in the eyes of this world.

I thank You for the fact that I am constantly rejected by others, so that only You can be the Queen of my heart.

For laughing with me when I stumble and fall on this way because of my weaknesses.

For crying with me when I helplessly tried to understand, instead of simply entrusting myself to Your love.

I thank You, Mommy, that I am not tall and that I cannot see a lot of things because of this.

For all of the girls in the dormitory who look at me and giggle because I do not drink or sleep with boys.

For gathering up all of the graces that I receive and for safeguarding them with Your care so that they are not wasted.

For preserving me from so many sins because You know that without You I am capable of doing the most heinous and evil things.

For everything, Mommy, I am grateful.

For the abyss of my spiritual misery and for the abyss of Your love that fills it.

For the tininess of my entire being and for Your greatness.

For being my only home and refuge.

For our communion of hearts.      

For simplicity.

For silence, but also, for noise.

For the ocean of mercy that is outpoured over the earth.

For taking me and carrying me in Your arms anew, even after I wound You and Your Son.

For loving me so much that You desire my sanctification.

For showing me that, on our path of life, everything is and always will be grace.

Mommy, I thank You that this list will never end…

Your beloved, little

tiny”   

(S.C. Biela, The Two Pillars, [Ft.Collins, CO: IAMF, 2006], 71-73. Used with permission.)

Entrustment to Mary = Praying with the Eyes of Faith

From the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops website:

"Lord, we thank you
for the goodness of our people
and for the spirit of justice
that fills this nation.
We thank you for the beauty and fullness of the
land and the challenge of the cities.

We thank you for our work and our rest,
for one another, and for our homes.
We thank you, Lord:
accept our thanksgiving on this day.
We pray and give thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord.
R: Amen."

—from Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers.

Now, go back and when you say "We" think "WE - Mary and I." For me, entrustment to Mary is about learning what it is like to have Mary's Hope, Mary's Eyes, Mary's Love...for my neighbor, for my family, for my GOD!

May you all be having a lovely Thanksgiving weekend.