Day #26: The Transformation of the Soul
JESUS: ?He who eats my flesh and drinks my Blood will have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day … He who feeds on me lives because of me … Your fathers ate the manna and died, but he who feeds on me will not die … I am the bread of life come down from heaven.?
Here are the words with which I prepared faithful souls for the great mystery of love; here is the meaning and the nature of this great Sacrament of life. The human soul in contact with mine becomes transformed; it becomes one with me; it lives because of me. It becomes transformed not by an instantaneous miracle, but gradually and precisely in the same manner that physical life is supplied with food.
Your soul, too, my child will be transformed into me; don?t be in a hurry to see yourself perfect all at once. The Eucharist does not burn sensibly; it was not instituted to give you superficial gratification, but to give you life. You must live from me, identify with me, abandon yourself to me and hence you must experience your emptiness, your nothingness, your inertia in profound humiliation.
Even material food is of itself effective in supplying life, even though it does not produce the same effects in each one. One eats and visibly grows because the body assimilates the food well. Another eats and with the nourishment comes the strength to avoid an illness, to prevent a collapse, to expel noxious or infected germs from the organism. To these food might seem unnecessary, but it is not so.
I will change you completely, but I will not do violence to your nature; I will penetrate into you gently and virtually without making you aware. Do not tire of me … always come to me; never stop seeking me because in me you will find life.
THE SOUL: O my Jesus, you know my misery well and you know that I am only nothingness! Here is my soul, I place it in your hands: you transform me!
Bread of life, give me the life that will reinvigorate me in you!
Bread of love, set me on fire with that love which annihilates in me what is mine and fills me with what is yours!
ASPIRATION: O Sacramental Jesus, transform me into yourself.
LITTLE WORK: Make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament to attest to your love for him.
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!
