DAILY MEDITATION (TUESDAY, JANUARY 26)
MEDITATION OF THE DAY
Learning the Will of God from Jesus and Mary
His Father and souls! These were Jesus’ constant concerns, his dominant passions, so to say, his sublime loves. Ever forgetful of himself, before anything else he sought to fulfill the most holy will of his beloved Father. He also sought after the lost sheep until he was able to place it on his shoulders so that he could return it to its Master. Jesus was always seeking the glory of his Father. I do not seek my own glory, he said, I honor my Father and I always do what is pleasing to him. His heart was consumed with desire as it burned in holy zeal for the salvation of souls. For thirty years, he held this within himself, until there arrived the hour destined by the Father for his apostolate…. His heart burned with love for us in his concern for our salvation.
[O Jesus,] You have told me that you have loved me in the way that the Father loved you. That is the reason for your knowing how to love with such tenderness, with such forgetfulness of self, with such faithfulness as no one else has ever loved me. If your commandment is that we love our neighbor as your Father has loved you, how are we to love you so as to respond to that incomparable tenderness? Jesus loves us with the same love with which he loves his Father and with which his Father has loved him. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Can one imagine a greater love for souls? We must love others in the same way.
Should we love souls only on the condition that they love us? No. That is not God’s way. We must love others in spite of all ingratitude, in spite of all betrayals, in spite of the poverty of the human heart. With a love that, transcending time, goes to lose itself in the immensity of God. Such is Jesus’ love. Jesus is like that. People who come into our lives are as pieces of canvas on which we must paint the image of Jesus. We are to think that what we do for them, we are doing for him.
You, Mary, who loved the eternal Father with a flame so intense that you could not live except in accordance with his adorable will, please grant us your fidelity and your generosity of soul, so that we might embrace its dispositions even should they sacrifice us and that we might use all the strength of our hearts in loving him and in giving him thousands of souls who might love him. Amen.
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 What Jesus Is Like, Most Rev. Donald W. Montrose, Tr. © 2008, The Fathers and Brothers of the Society of St. Paul, ST PAULS/Alba House, Staten Island, NY. www.stpauls.us. Used with permission.
