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Behold the servant of the Lord…

Behold the servant of the Lord: Nothing is impossible for God

“If you truly want My Will as life, it does not take too much; more so, since united to yours there is Mine that wants it if in all things you will conduct yourself as the possessor of a Divine Will.”

9/17/2018

The love of our Heavenly Father for us is greater than our expectations and ignores the canons and perspectives with which we usually observe and consider the course of events. In the relationship between man and God, history becomes the place where the signs of His omnipotence are revealed. In other words, the Word becomes history in the moment in which it is pronounced and accepted. When the Father asks for our collaboration, our will, our willingness to use the talents that we possess, trusting exclusively of Him, He does not do this to take away from us something or to make us poor, but to lead us to the most high achievement, to perfection. The Lord proposes to us a model of life, which in the Virgin Mary found leaving implementation. He does not want to curb us, to stifle our desires, but to help us discover and live our dignity fully as His children, who were redeemed by the blood shed on the cross by Christ His Son. The Father tirelessly pours over us the overabundance of His Spirit and calls us to become His living temple. Therefore, let’s put aside all fear and uncertainty, because we are not alone. He will fill us with wisdom and courage, He will support our steps and accompany us on the journey of life.

If we welcome the Word with humility and purity of spirit and allow it to break the armor of our sin, it will produce amazing things in us, it will change our existence and as a result it will direct the history of humanity to new horizons. We, men and women of all times, are called to host in our flesh Jesus who comes;  we are called to generate Him in faith. We should give birth to Jesus within us, in our every choice, whatever it may be small or large, meaningless or fundamental. If we choose Christ, if we truly want to follow Him, this choice of ours should be manifested in our actions and in our words. God should have the primacy over everything.

Mary looks down. Her heart is a turmoil of conflicting feelings. The decision she should make is difficult, it requires the courage to face unpredictable consequences. Mary will have to stake her life, her affections. The realization of the Father’s plan on her will involve renunciations, persecutions, prejudices and convictions. The relationship with Joseph could be completely devastated, destroyed, she could find herself alone with a child. God asks her something absurd, contrary to common sense, unseemly, ‘out of place’ and not according to current morality. It is madness! She knows that she will have to fight and overcome obstacles of all kinds, but she shows a boundless trust in her Lord.

God also asks us great, incredible and ‘out of place’ things, that men judge true follies, but God defines them as His Will. To trust the Lord you must be crazy. His call does not require training, it requires being ready to anything that might happen. The Father has great plans on us, but we are too attached to our past and at the same time we are afraid of what will happen to us, we are afraid to put our future in His hands and to lose control of ourselves. We need courage to change, we should realize that so far we have deceived ourselves, we have considered as precious what is empty, false and illusory, we should have the courage to leave our old faith, abandon the old God and give birth the New One. If we stop to evaluate how much it costs us, we will not go anywhere. If we then think that we can succeed alone, we are engaging in self-deceit. Mary teaches us to abandon nostalgia and personal programs and to keep our gaze fixed on Christ, trusting in his Word. If we count only on ourselves, even what is possible will become impossible. Instead, if we will fuse with God, what is impossible will become possible.

In the passage of March 19, 1935, Luisa described an interior attitude that at that time she was experienced with Jesus.

She felt as though she was being swept into the eternal waves of the Divine Volition. She felt Its continuous motion, murmuring continuously as life. But what did It murmur? It murmured love and gave love to all, It murmured and gave happiness, It murmured and fortified, It murmured and gave light, It murmured and gave life to all, preserved all and formed the act of all, invested everything, enveloped and hid everything within Itself, so as to give Itself to all and receive everything. How Luisa wished to possess God as life inside her soul, live in Him, to know no other life but that of Jesus. But while she was thinking that, Jesus told her that If she truly wanted that, everything was done. In fact, God’s love and ardent desire for the creature to possess His Will as life, to make her live of It, is so great that as soon as her human will truly wants it, so does His own fill the human volition with His Supreme Volition, to form in it Its life and live in her as in Its own center.

The Divine Will and the human will are two spiritual powers: the Divine, immense, of an unreachable power; the human, small power. But, however small, it does have its power. And since both are spiritual, one can pour itself into the other and form one single life. All the power is in the wanting, and, it being a spiritual power, it has the capacity to be able to place inside of itself the good it wants, and also the evil. So, whatever the will wants, that is what it finds within itself. If it wants self-esteem, glory, love of pleasures or riches, it will find inside the will the life of self-esteem, of glory, the life of pleasures, of riches; and if it wants sin, even sin will form its life.

Even more so, if it wants the life of the Divine Will into its own – wanted, commanded by God with such great longing – if it truly wants It, it will have the great good of possessing His Will as life. And if it were not so, the sanctity of living in the Divine Will would be a difficult sanctity, and almost impossible, while neither does Jesus know how to teach difficult things, nor does He want impossible things. On the contrary, it is His usual way to facilitate, as much as it is possible for the creature, the most difficult things and the hardest sacrifices; and if needed, Jesus puts something of His own so that the small power of her will may be sustained, aided, animated by the invincible power of His, and in this way render easy the good or the life of the Divine Volition that the creature wants to possess. And Jesus’ love is so great, that in order to facilitate her even more, He whispers to the ear of her heart: ‘If you really want to do this good, I Myself will do it together with you, I will not leave you alone, I will place at your disposal my grace, my strength, my light, my sanctity; it will be the two of us doing the good you want to possess.’

Therefore, it does not take too much to live of the Divine Will; the ‘too much’ is in wanting it, but if the creature makes up her mind and wants it, firmly and perseveringly, she has already won the Divine Will and has made It her own.

How many things can the human will enclose. It being spiritual power, that collects much and disperses nothing, it resembles the light of the sun: how many things does the sun not enclose while one can see nothing but light and heat? Yet, the goods it encloses are almost innumerable, and it shows how as soon as it touches the earth, so does it communicate admirable goods. Yet, one sees nothing but light. Such is the human will: how many goods can it not enclose if it wants to? It can enclose love, sanctity, light, reparation, patience, all of the virtues, and even its Creator Himself. Being spiritual power, it has the virtue and capacity of enclosing everything it wants; and it has not only the power to enclose the good it wants, but that of being transmuted into the good it encloses. So, the human will changes into the nature of the good it wants; and even though it might not do many of the things it truly wants, in the will they remain as though done, and it shows how, when the occasion arises to do that good it wanted, by possessing the life of it, with promptness, with all love, without hesitating a bit, it does that good it had been wanting to do for a long time. This is symbolized by the sun which, finding neither the seed nor the flower, it does not give the good of maturing the seed, or the good of coloring the flowers; but as soon as it is given the chance to touch them with its light, by possessing the life, it immediately gives maturation to the seed, and color to the flowers. 

The human will possesses, with indelible characters, everything it does and wants to do; and if the memory forgets, the will loses nothing, it contains the deposit of all of its acts, unable to disperse anything. Therefore it can be said that the whole of man is in his will: if the will is holy, even the most indifferent things are holy for him; but if it is evil, maybe even good itself changes for him into a perverted act.

So, if we truly want the Divine Will as life, it does not take too much; more so, since united to ours there is that of God that wants it, there is a power that can do anything; and on our part it will show by deeds if in all things we will conduct ourselves as the possessor of a Divine Will.

The little Girl from Nazareth decides to trust the creative Word, the omnipotence of the Lord, God of Israel. « Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word ».

Those are simple words that reveal an inexhaustible abyss of faith. Mary, accustomed to a poor and austere life, abandons her dreams, her projects and surrenders to a different dream, which belongs to her as she is a daughter of the people chosen by God. She pronounces her “Fiat”, she abandons herself to the will of the Father, as a supreme gesture of love of the creature to her Creator. Mary knows that she will be able to count on God’s faithfulness, on His help and on His protection. God will think of everything. Mary acts without calculations, without considering the consequences. She gets involved and agrees to become a living casket of the living God. Mary considers the mission that God entrusted to her not as a privilege, but as a service to others, to those near and far. God needs Mary, her availability. Mary becomes the Lord’s servant because she humbly accepts God’s plan, even if she fails she can not understand it in all its greatness and in all its possible implications. Let it be to her according to Angel’s words. Mary’s words express the courage to accept the call of the Lord that will give a new meaning and an unexpected direction to her existence, united to the ardent desire and the lively enthusiasm to see accomplished what God proposed to her. As her life was all a yes to God, she decides to collaborate on God’s unique and great project.

don Marco

Permanent link to this article: https://bookofheaven.org/2018/09/23/behold-the-servant-of-the-lord/