Louise Therese de Montaignac, foundress of the Oblates of the Sacred Heart, wrote one day, "If Our Lord said to you, 'Would you consent to be riveted to the cross and to be freed only by death,' could you say 'Yes, with my whole heart!'"
While still very young, she had made several resolutions: "Every day on awaking, after making the sign of the cross, and raising my heart to God, I will address to Him these words which must be a sincere expression of the disposition of my soul: Pater, ecce venio... behold, I am ready to do Your Holy Will, that is the sole purpose of my life. If I foresee a difficult task, I will repeat with humility and abandonment the words of the most holy Virgin, Ecce Ancilla."
She could have said after that - in a humorous but singularly expressive way, "I have always done what I wanted, because I have always done the will of God." Is that not equivalent to saying that her ego, completely crucified, no longer existed; that
the wish expressed by St. Paul for every truly Christian soul was verified: I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me? (Gal. ii, 20.)
One day while she was complaining to Our Lord that she possessed Him so little, He answered, "It is enough that I possess you. To possess is to dispose freely of a thing in order to derive all the profit one wishes from it. It is to use it when and how one pleases."
"Lord, take complete possession of me."
That is death to oneself in all the beauty of its plenitude. And I, how far am I from such complete abandonment?
_________________
Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)
No comments:
Post a Comment