Day #10: The Grace of God
MARY: The mercy of God never abandons you, little creature; it has a way of overcoming your wretchedness and encompasses you with grace.
Grace is a supernatural gift of God with which he penetrates hearts, renews them, elevates them, transforms them into himself. What water is to the arid earth grace is for your heart. The Holy Spirit, who is the substantial love of the Father and the Son, consumes your misery with his gifts if only you cast it into those divine flames and thus he transforms you into a new being.
Grace is the support of human freedom because it is its guide, its help, its lifting up … Your soul is well established when it is under the influence of this divine grace.
Do you feel drowsy in your spirit? Lift your eyes up to God, call upon the Holy Spirit and beg him to awaken you to life and to divine love.
Do you feel depressed and disheartened? Call upon this infinite love in order to be lifted up; thus you will become accustomed to live in a spirit of continual offering and you will touch with your hand what is impossible to you, but very possible to the grace of God!
You see me so rich and great. You are astounded at this, yet all of this greatness was the work of the grace of God; you say this to me yourself in your greeting: Hail Mary, full of grace.
The grace of God is not frugal or stingy because it is the expansion of love.
You must, therefore, distrust yourself and trust much in the grace of God … Come to me, little flower of Jesus; I will rearrange your little leaves, I will revive you, I will immerse you in the mercy of Jesus. God has made me the channel of that grace which must enrich and enliven you.
ASPIRATION: Mary, Mother of grace, have pity on me.
LITTLE WORK: Recite five Hail Marys to beg from the Heart of Mary a treasure of graces.
About the Meditations
The daily School of Mary meditations come from the book, A Month with Mary, written by a holy Italian priest Father Dolindo Ruotolo (1882-1970). Originally written as spiritual thoughts to his spiritual daughter, the work is comprised of thirty-one meditations for the month of May.
Father Dolindo wrote A Month with Mary on pocket-sized pages joined into small fascicles of 8 to 12 pages. He sent them to Laura de Rosis every two to three days and later transcribed them with some modifications in volume III of his autobiography: The Story of My Life in the Plan of the Great Mercy of God, pp. 1140ff (cf. Epistolario 1:212n, 218n). This work is from 1912: one of those years which passed in the life of Father Dolindo with the cadence of a ‘Way of the Cross’. But he, serene as ever, loved Christ the more, loved Our Lady the more and reflected on this love in these few pages to which he wished to give the significant title: A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary. These meditations are written in the style of the Imitation of Christ. (90pp. laminated gloss, saddle stitch)
To obtain a copy of A Month with Mary or other books published by the Academy of the Immaculate, visit our on-line bookstore at http://www.marymediatrix.com/bookstore/academy
Ave Maria!
