Ave Maria!— September’s Theme: The Cross
5- “My face blushes with shame. I know very well that the cross is a pledge of love, that the cross is a payment of pardon, and that love, which is not fed and nurtured by the cross, is not true love; it is fire in the hay (fuoco di paglia). And yet, with such knowledge, this false disciple of the Nazarene feels the cross weigh enormously on his heart, and many times he goes in search of the merciful Cyrenean who will console and comfort him.”
6- “I have a very great desire to suffer for love of Jesus, but how is it that when there is a trial, I seek comfort against my will? How much strength and violence I must do to myself in these trials to reduce my nature to silence, so to speak, which loudly demands to be consoled! I would not like to fell this battle; many times it makes me cry like a baby because it seems to me to be a lack of love and correspondence.”
7-“ How sweet is the name cross! Here, at the foot of the cross of Jesus, souls are clothed anew with light, they are inflamed with love; here they put on wings to rise to the loftiest flights. May the cross always be for us, as well, the bed of our repose, the school of perfection, our beloved heredity. To that end, let us take care not to separate the cross from the love of Jesus. Otherwise, the one without the other would become an unbearable weight to our weakness.”
8- “If you have neither a sufficient amount of gold nor a sufficient amount of silver to offer to Jesus, you will at least have the myrrh of bitterness. And it consoles me to know that He accepts it willingly, as if with this fruit of life He wanted to be placed in the myrrh of bitterness, both in His and in His death. Jesus glorified is beautiful; but to me He seems to be even more so when He is crucified.”
9- “Love being on the cross more than being at the foot of it; love agonizing with Jesus in the garden more than compassionating Him, because all the more you will resemble the divine Prototype. In what circumstances can you make acts of constant union of your heart and of your soul to the holy Will of God, [acts] of mortification of your ego and [acts] of love of your crucifixion, if not in the bitter and rigorous assaults that the our enemies wage against you?
