Ave Maria Meditations
I am your Mother of Perpetual Help and I am the Mediatrix of all graces for my dear children. My eyes of mercy are turned toward you. My Heart is open to you. My hands are ever raised in prayer for you, or open over you, to shower abundant graces upon you and upon those for whom you pray.
I am pleased that you want to imitate my son Saint John in making your home with me, in opening to me every part of your life. In this way, you allow me to act upon you, but also you allow me to act with you and through you.
My presence and my action are revealed in gentleness, in sweetness, and in mercy. I want you to resemble me spiritually just as my Jesus resembled me physically. Jesus, looking at me, saw the perfect reflection of all the dispositions and virtues of His Adorable Heart. I, looking at you, want to see my own Immaculate Heart mirrored in yours. I want to communicate to you and to all my priest sons the virtues of my Heart. By consecrating yourself to me, you have made this possible, and already my transformation of you has begun.
My Son has given me sway over the hearts of His priests. I will transform, and purify, and sanctify the heart of every priest consecrated to me. Mine it is to change the souls of priests, to wash them, to lift them up into the heavenly places so that their conversation may be with my Son, and through Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit. For this reason am I rightly called Porta Caeli, the Gate of Heaven. It is the will of my Son that His priests should live, while they are yet on earth, in the heavenly places. He would have them enter with Him into the sanctuary of heaven, beyond the veil where, as Eternal High Priest, He offers Himself ceaselessly as a Victim of praise and propitiation to His Father.
The Holy Spirit is the living flame of this heavenly holocaust. All of heaven glows with the Fire of Love that burns in the Heart of the Son who stands before His Father as Eternal High Priest. I am for all my priest sons the Gate of Heaven. If any priest would ascend, even in this earthly life, into the glory of the heavenly liturgy ceaselessly celebrated by my Son before the Father’s Face, he need only approach me. I will open the way into the mysteries of heaven for him. I will teach him the reverence, the silence, the profound adoration that befits one called to serve at the altars of my Son, and in His place.
Let me be for you the Gate of Heaven. Come to me at every opportunity. Pray my Rosary. I will make you share in all that I hold in my Heart. I bless you now and I bless those for whom you have prayed to me. I bless my priest sons. I love them with all my Heart and I follow them in their comings and goings. When they fall I weep over them, and all my desire is to lift them up, to cleanse them, to heal their wounds, and to see them restored to the grace of friendship with my Son.
I am present to you and I hear the prayers you address to me. I will open my hands, full of graces and blessings, over the souls whom you recommended to me. I am ever willing to come quickly to the aid of my poor children. I am every ready to help them them, to lift them when they fall, to bind up their wounds, and even to intervene in such a way as to repair the effects of their wrongdoing.
I am not distant. I hear every prayer addressed to me. My maternal Heart is moved to pity when my children, and especially my priest sons, have recourse to me in their needs. I am the Mother of Mercy, Mater Misericordiae, honoured by the Church in her chant to me. I do turn towards you my eyes of mercy, and I am ever willing to help poor sinners. Let sinners come to me; I will never turn them away. Let them appeal to my Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart; they will never be disappointed.
As for you, dear son of mine, persevere in praying to me. Hold fast to my Rosary and beware of every ploy of the Evil One to separate you from it. My Rosary is your safeguard and your weapon in the fight against the forces of evil. At the same time, for you it is a remedy and a comfort. Do you not see how the Rosary has stabilized you? Do you not experience its healing and all its benefits? Pray my Rosary and teach others to do the same. Trust me for the nfolding of the plan of my Son.
From In Sinu Iesu, The Journal of a Priest
