MOTHER OF MERCY
August 15, 1940
My Heart feels the need to speak to you of Mary whose help in Redemption is so perfect it has led the Church justly to invoke Her under the title Mother of Mercy.
To assist Me in my great work of mercy, be Mary’s continuators, just as Mary was my continuator, “continuators of Mary Co-Redemptrix.”
My Mother’s mission here below had ended with her glorious Assumption, but her distinctive legacy is the legacy of love that She has conferred in my Name upon all her terrestrial children in these times, and upon you especially, consecrated souls.
Have you never fully understood the honor of this legacy? — the legacy’s value? — the responsibility of this legacy? Isn’t the theme of my “appeal” all here?
The life of a continuator is no longer its own; it no longer breathes for itself: It is no longer I who live . . .
Life whose entire course is to die in order to prolong and expand the life of another, the only life that matters, the life of Christ, of crucified Love: . . . but Jesus Christ who lives in me.
The supremely unselfish life of the sacred Host, that can say in all truthfulness: Vivo jam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus, and that through Me lives on to pursue its redemptive work.
Life that was Mary’s sole life, from my last breath on Calvary until her last breath on earth. Life that She bequeathed, bequeathing to each of you the right and grace to prolong this life during your earth-ly sojourn.
This life of co-redemptive continuation that She lived by the per-fect exercise of her two inseparable functions as spouse and mother.
As spouse, with her own quality of “intimacy”: a contemplative in-timacy that draws breath within.
As mother, with her own quality of “fecundity”: a radiating fecundity that bears fruit without.
Learn from Her that love’s perfect intimacy cannot be had without identity of loves, without perfect fusion of all the feelings, all the affections, all the desires and wishes of the heart; this is the beating of hearts in unison that my “appeal” speaks of.
Is yours one with Hers, consecrated souls? Is there any dissonance between your heart and Mary’s, and thus between your heart and Mine?
In the same way, learn from Her that there can be no fecundity in love unless my love is communicated to souls, a communication which presupposes that your apostolic hearts possess my love to overflowing, and that you therefore renounce your own love.
For, understand this well, fruitful apostolicity is not the gift of self to souls, but the gift of Me — the gift of souls to my Heart through the gift of Me to souls.
How perfectly Mary realized this indispensable condition of spir-itual maternity!
Do not forget I have told you that on the day of her Assumption, She bequeathed to you simultaneously the grace, the duty and the model of this maternity. Draw from her Heart and be for Me continuators of Mary Co-Redemptrix.
Through her maternal grace, be for Me spouses that are ever more mothers, mothers that are ever more spouses, with an intimacy ever more intimate, with a fecundity ever more fertile.
For I cannot keep Myself from repeating this to you: “To give souls to Me, you have to give Me to souls.”
To give birth spiritually to other Christs, other Me’s, true children of my Father, I and not self, not you, am the One who must be given to them. It is my Life, my great Life of Love that must be communicated to them, you being no longer yourselves but my very pure, animated “continuators.”
If I insist so much, it’s that consecrated souls who claim to be my apostles have not fully understood the true, great and profound meaning of this spiritual maternity of souls. With many, too many, the dominant note being played is their own personal activity. As well as attachments to their own ways of seeing and doing, the egoistic habit of insisting upon their own interests and points of view! Have they never pondered — so as to act on it — the sublime “impersonality” of the sacred “Hosst”?
August 29, 1940
To imitate and touch the Mercy of your heavenly Father and by it to draw Mercy down upon the poor world, be merciful like your heavenly Father, and do not grow weary gazing at the Heart of Mary, the most accessible model I have given.
Mistress as well as Mother of Mercy. Learn from Her to be like Her, each of you, to be merciful mother to souls. Go to her school: She will teach you the great secret of maternal mercy.
See most particularly the child in every soul, a potential Jesus, a Jesus to be realized, a Christ to be engendered so that the circle of the Father’s great family may be widened. Work of love that inspires pity and compassion because this potential Jesus in every soul in some way is a Jesus in peril, a Jesus exposed to contradiction, attacked, oppressed by thousands of enemies stirred up by my great enemy, Satan.
A Jesus awaiting deliverance, therefore well-deserving of attract-ing a mother’s compassion, who thus sees in each soul a Jesus to be saved, a Jesus to be freed from the foe’s captivity, a Jesus to make flourish in some way, a Jesus to be raised up, as this word so profoundly puts it, an ascension of life rising from the depths of a life created in the divine image. And finally, a Jesus to be offered to the Father.
The art and the secret of the maternal apostolate of Mary is to bring forth souls to the Father by bringing forth Jesus in souls. All the love that She has for her Infant-God She bears to all the children of God, brothers of her Jesus, and especially to consecrated souls, they who are privileged among the privileged.
Aides of her maternal love, meditate and meditate again on the sweet gentleness of charity, goodness, and condescension that you must have for souls that I have given you to defend, souls in which my Life is ever more in peril in this hour of such infernal, satanic contradiction!
