DAILY MEDITATION (SATURDAY, JULY 25)

MEDITATION OF THE DAY

Wishing to Drink the Cup

Yes, my Jesus, here I am. It is my earnest wish during the hour that I am going to spend at your feet to multiply my demands, my desires, and my acts of love. What do I ask of you, O my sweetest Jesus? I ask you for a heart like yours. I ask for your own Heart. I ask you, O Jesus, to possess only you. Lord, many things disturb me, trouble me, distract me, hurt me, because they separate me from you.

O my Jesus, I am very poor. I come to your altar to receive light…to receive the strength to conquer my passions, to beat down my pride, to crucify my flesh and my affections, to sacrifice my will and my opinions…. My Jesus, I desire to see you known and imitated…. I desire to suffer much for you who have suffered so much for me. I desire to give you millions of souls, cost what they may, and to buy them with the price of suffering.

I ask you to give me a pure soul, transparent as crystal, in which your divinity and your holy humanity are reflected. I want them to be imprinted on it with ineffaceable marks. O that I were another Jesus crucified, with his patience, his gentleness, and his charity for others! I desire to be enriched by you, that in my turn I may enrich others. I desire to receive light from you, grace, life, fervor, love, so that I may communicate them to others…. I desire most ardently the salvation of souls and to suffer martyrdom when I realize my powerlessness to snatch them from sin and perdition.

I desire, above all things, to love you immeasurably, and I wish to speak to you now of the love that I wish I could have for you. O my sweetest fire of love! O life of my soul, and heart of my heart! This is what I want to ask of you: to love you and that you may be my only Love…. Come to me, for without you I am utterly incapable of loving you. O Mary, obtain for me the ability to love him who is Love itself!

Blessed Concepción Cabrera de Armida

Blessed Concepción, “Conchita” († 1937), was a wife, mother, and widow in Mexico. She was the first Mexican laywoman to be beatified. [From Before the Altar: A Hundred Visits to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. © 2000, Ediciones Cimiento, CMJ Marian Publishers, Oak Lawn, IL. www.cmjbooks.com. Used with permission.]