Saturday of Our Lady

Photo: R. Massaro-Lourdes, France

An excerpt from Pilgrims With Mary by John Maloney, P.P.


Round the whole life of Mary there is the serene calm of a great silence. The great things of God are done in silence. When the night was on its way and all the world was asleep the Savior was born. Right through the story Mary was ever present, but nearly always silent.

She must have loved the silence of the hills, the lovely calm of those hidden years. Jesus also loved the quiet of the hills. There in the early morning and through the nights He found refreshment, alone in the prayer of God.

Ours is a world of noise; and we tend to need the companionship of noise. And unless we are careful our souls become like a crowded inn, and the gentle knocking of God at the door is drowned in a babel of voices clamoring for attention. 

Prayer:

Immaculate Virgin, grant me something of that silence full of love and peace which always filled your soul. Make my ear always attentive to God's word. 


Peace be with you!
Rosemarie, OCDS

ADVENT MEDITATION

If we are to witness to Christ in today's marketplaces, where there are constant demands on our whole person, we need silence. If we are to be always available, not only physically, but by empathy, sympathy, friendship, understanding and boundless caritas, we need silence. To be able to give joyous, unflagging hospitality, not only of house and food, but of mind, heart, body and soul, we need silence.

True silence is the search of man for God.

True silence is a suspension bridge that a soul in love with God builds to cross the dark, frightening gullies of its own mind, the strange chasms of temptation, the depthless precipices of its own fears that impede its way to God.

True silence is the speech of lovers.  For only love knows its beauty, completeness, and utter joy. True silence is a garden enclosed, where alone the soul can meet its God. It is a sealed fountain that he alone can unseal to slacken the soul's infinite thirst for him.

True silence is a key to the immense and flaming heart of God. It is the beginning of a divine courtship that will end only in the immense, creative, fruitful, loving silence of final union with the Beloved.

Yes, such silence is holy, a prayer beyond all prayers, leading to the final prayer of constant presence of God, to the heights of contemplation, when the soul, finally at peace, lives by the will of him whom she loves totally, utterly, and completely.

This silence, then, will break forth in a charity that overflows in the service of the neighbor without counting the cost. It will witness to Christ anywhere, always. Availability will become delightsome and easy, for in each person the soul will see the face of her Love. Hospitality will be deep and real, for a silent heart is a loving heart, and a loving heart is a hospice to the world.

From Poustinia by Catherine de Hueck Doherty


Peace be with you!
Rosemarie, ocds