Please walk with me and together we shall climb the road to Calvary.
Transcription Notes Our Blessed Mother Mary 4/2 Friday 8:15am msg. #1723
http://littlemary.excerptsofinri.com/
My daughter, in all that you do, remember Jesus’ suffering. In this you will find consolation. Jesus suffered for each of you because of His love and mercy for you. So reflect today on Jesus’ passion and you will find strength. All who are close to Heaven will suffer, just as my son. For God purifies and chastises all those He loves. God uses those who are willing, to make the truth known. Those who speak the truth and are willing to carry their cross will be persecuted by those who refuse to come to know Jesus. It is through suffering and humility that one is led closer to Christ, so be willing, dear children, to do all that you can to save souls.
Be courageous not fearful. Be willing to make the gospel known. Be willing to do what is right and not be like everyone else, for then you will become more like us. Be willing to suffer and believe with your whole heart that God knows how much each of you can endure. Do not become angry when trials come your way. By accepting each new cross, then joy and peace will not leave you. Without joy and love in your heart, others will not see Christ in you. … Much will remain a mystery to you and at times it will be hard to accept your cross. But you will be shown in time and what you must believe is that one day you will be free of all pain and suffering. Without total faith in God… Without total belief in God you will not be able to bear each new cross. Without trust and confidence in our Lord… So believe dear children, that God knows what is best for your soul. Believe so you do not doubt in God’s love for you. Believe so your heart stays open to what ever it is that God is asking you. Believe so that you do not question God when all is not going your way. Those who are weak will not understand what God is asking of them. They cannot understand because they do not spend the time needed to come to know Jesus.
Many today are relying on themselves instead of allowing God to be in control. Many are unwilling to pick up their cross because they do not want to suffer. Many today are choosing the easier road because they do not want to give up their selfish desires. Many are giving in to sin because they are refusing God’s grace. True happiness is only given to those who are living their lives for Christ, to those who are willing to carry their cross.
My children, I want each of you to be happy, but this will only happen if you spend time with Jesus. This will only happen if you pray and accept each new cross. It will only happen if you do the Fathers Will and accept God’s love and mercy for you. This will only happen if you obey all God’s commandments. Sin will cause turmoil in your life. Sin will eventually cause you much pain. Sin is what will separate you from God. Sin will cause you to be weak in all areas of your life because when you sin, you are refusing God’s help and grace. … Today I ask that you meditate on our Lord’s passion. I ask that you never forget what happened on Calvary. I ask you to look at Jesus’ wounds so you will understand and see how much pain He endured for each of you. I ask that you give up your pleasure today and spend time kneeling before the crucifix, for through this you will feel and understand God’s love for you. … You will become more accepting of each new cross you must bear if you meditate on our Lord’s passion.
Today I want each of you to truly know how much God loves you. I want you to be truly sorry for your sins. I want each of you to say yes to God, instead of refusing to carry your cross. I want the best for all my children but it will take effort on your part. It will take a prayerful life and willingness… … It will take a change of heart and true devotion to Christ. It will take commitment and discipline to be loyal to serve Christ. It will take total trust and belief in God. If you want true happiness then please take my hand now. Please allow me to assist you for then it will be easier for you. I will shower you with my grace. I will protect you and I will give you the encouragement you need. I will remind you just as any good mother would do. So, please accept my hand. In time, I will lead you closer to Christ. … In time, true happiness will then be given to you and nothing else on this earth will matter to you. For God will dwell in each child who believes and who turns away from sin.
My heart is open, so please accept my love for you. Please allow me to assist you. Please walk with me and together we shall climb the road to Calvary. … I am here for each of you. Now take time to ask God to show you how you can help heal Jesus’ wounds. Ask God and you will be given strength to do what truly pleases God. Amen.
The Carrying of the Cross – Fr. Robert J. Fox – Marian Manuel
Did the fallen evil angels know, as Jesus is presented the wood of the Cross, that it would be the very altar upon which He would redeem the world? If they did know, their hatred and pride with which they influenced men to reject Jesus did not stop them. How could it? In their intellectual pride at the time of their own trial when they foresaw all the consequences of their revolt, they still went ahead. In the heavens they fought St. Michael the Archangel and the good holy angels. The knowledge of what their decision would bring did not deter them from rejecting God.
Any sin of man is terrible, large or small. Mortal sin in which man dies unrepentant will lead him to hell for all eternity. It is for this the evil angels work. The good holy angels however, work to lead people to faith in the Blessed Trinity, to faith and love in Jesus Christ, to faith and love for His Church and the Mother of the Church.
The intellect of man was never as great as that of the angels. That is why God’s mercy is lavished abundantly upon man so that he can sin repeatedly and repent and the good holy angels rejoice. Man does not see all the consequences of his sin as did the angels at their trial.
How the holy angels rejoice at any human person who repents after sinning! To see the mercy of God bestowed upon a human being is their joy. Jesus said, “I say to you that, even so, there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, more than over ninety-nine just who have no need of repentance”
(Lk. 15:7). Christ repeated the thought again. “Even so, I say to you, there will be joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Lk. 15:10).
While the devils of hell are intensely active in stirring up hatred among the soldiers and Pharisees who line the streets as Jesus carries the heavy Cross in the direction of Calvary, the good holy angels marvel at such infinite mercy of their God become man who permits all this and endures all this for sinful creatures whom He loves even unto death on the Cross.
As Jesus falls under the weight of the Cross, under the weight of mankind’s sins, we can see the good holy angels interceding for His human strength to rise again, just as the Angel in the garden gave Him human strength.
Excerpts of Mary the Co-Sufferer – Excerpts by Professor Courtenay Bartholomew, M.D. March 21 2009
http://www.motherofallpeoples.com/articles/marian-private-revelation/mary-the-co-sufferer.html
Close to his death, he made his last will and testament and bequeathed his mother to be our mother also, our spiritual mother. “Woman, behold your son … Behold your mother,” he said first to his mother and then to John (John 19:26-27). “Woman, behold your son,” he said to her. He was obviously referring to her as the “woman” first spoken of in Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; she will crush your head ” Indeed, it was on this hill called Calvary that this verse in Genesis was fulfilled. The word Calvary is from the Latin word Calvaria, meaning skull. The hill was also called Golgatha, the Hebrew word from the Greek Kranion, a skull. The Cross of the Redeemer was firmly crushed into the ground. And so, the “skull” was “crushed” by the man on the Cross, the Redeemer (“her seed”), and beneath that rugged Cross was the Co-redemptrix (not co-equal); one suffering woman, suffering with God who in turn was suffering for mankind and from them. Redemption begun at the Annunciation was completed on Calvary. It was 3:00 p.m. on a Friday.
But do we really understand and appreciate what it means to be “at the foot of the Cross” for three hours? Hers was the most spiritual, the most intense and incomparable suffering ever known; one solitary creature suffering with God, who in turn was suffering for all mankind and from them. She was a martyr whom God preserved from dying! That was the meaning of being the second Eve. That was the price of being Co-redemptrix, for from the very beginning of Creation she was thus chosen. But it was as though God had predetermined that one had to be a “Mary” to have the privilege of standing beneath the Cross. John speaks of that congregation: “Standing by the cross were his mother (Mary), and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (Jn 19:25).
Redemption had to come from suffering, and so, he needed a body to suffer. His mother gave him that body. No human father was involved in that conception. “You who wanted no sacrifice or oblation, prepared a body for me” (Heb 10:5). On that joyous day when he was born she wrapped his tiny body in swaddling clothes and placed him in his crib (Lk 2:12). But on that Friday at the foot of the Cross, 33 years later, she received a body, tattered and torn and swaddled with blood as he took upon himself the sins of the world. It was not a pretty sight but neither is sin in the eyes of God! It was the blood of the new and everlasting covenant which was shed for all so that sins may be forgiven.
Her suffering too was minimized. Words cannot fully describe and adequately measure Mary’s anguish on that day. Perhaps it can be appreciated somewhat better if every mother were to contemplate her own son on the cross in place of the son of Mary. Yet, if there were a thousand such mothers standing at the feet of a thousand crosses bearing their thousand crucified sons, the sum total of their anguish could not in any way equate the pain and suffering of that Mother of Sorrows on that hill on that Friday that some men call “Good.” She too was being crucified!
So said, in 1373, Lady Julian of Norwich, in her book Revelations of Divine Love, which records her privileged visions from God, says of Mary: “I saw part of the love and suffering of Our Lady Saint Mary, for she and Christ were so joined in love that the greatness of their love caused the greatness of her grief … for the higher, the greater, and the sweeter the love is, so the greater the grief it is for those who love, to see their loved one suffer.”
What is also not appreciated by many is that spiritual and mental suffering can also be as agonizing as physical pain, and at times even more so. For example, the emotional pain of a patient suffering from depression and the spiritual dryness of the “desert”, the so-called “dark night of the soul,” which a few prayerful people experience, can parallel or exceed physical pain, albeit measured on different scales and parameters of human suffering. There are also many cases, for example, of elderly spouses of happy and longstanding marriages, dying within hours or days of each other from the sheer anguish of the death of their loved one and from the unbearable and emotional pain of the separation. So it would have been with the Mother of Love on that Friday had she not been preserved from death by God. Indeed, the Church recognizes her as a martyr, the Queen of the martyrs, but one who was not allowed to die!
But the most important moment of His life, of course, was on Calvary; and it is there that we need to make sure we are united with Him. Most of us run from Calvary rather than running to Calvary.
Are we willing to take up the Cross, to deny ourselves, to walk all the way to Calvary, and to be blessed by the Cross in the fullness of what that means: to be united with Jesus Christ in His Passion, in His Death, and in His Resurrection?
An excerpt of a Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Friday August 9, 2002
http://desertvoice.excerptsofinri.com/
“Whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.” These are not easy words when we stop to think about what Our Lord’s Cross required of Him and all of the things that happened to Him as He carried His Cross on the way to Calvary. But then He tells us that if we want to come after Him this is the only way. We know that if we are going to follow the Lord, it is to follow Him to Calvary, it is to be crucified with Him.
This is not something which is a popular idea in a society which upholds pleasure and ease, to hear about having to suffer and to have to take up the Cross, to deny the self in a society which tells us exactly the opposite. To indulge yourself is the virtue of America, but there is no virtue in that at all. It is to deny the self that we have to be about, and that is not something which comes naturally to any of us either; that is something which has to be a choice on our part; it is something that each one of us needs to make an act of the will to do. It is something we have to decide over and over and over, which is why Our Lord tells us that we have to deny ourselves everyday. That is what He tells us in Saint Luke’s Gospel: “You must deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Me.”
If you really want to find the life that God created you to have, it is to be united with Christ. And to be united with Christ is to be united with Him in everything – everything from Bethlehem to Calvary and into, finally, His Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven. It is to be united with Jesus Christ in every aspect of His life.
