To Imitate Me, Love My Mother: The Way

Jesus:

2. The Way

My brother, do you really love her whom I love so much, and who loves you so much? You believe you do, for you feel joy when you speak to her and enthusiasm when you sing her praises. But on earth love does not mean joy and enthusiasm principally but rather work and suffering.

2. If you love Mary you will want to work for her. You will be glad to give her your activity, your time, your efforts. No labor will be too painful for you when there is question of her glory, no enterprise will seem impossible for you when there is question of promoting her interests. The day when you find some Marian task beyond your strength, tell yourself that you have ceased to love her! Now, My Mother does reserve a task for you, a very noble, and at times a very difficult one.

3. If you love Mary you will want to suffer for her. He who no longer loves Mary when he must suffer for her has never truly loved her; he has merely loved himself in the consolations she has given him. Do not refuse to suffer, for you would be refusing to love. Do not merely accept suffering; love it. Are you not glad to be able to show your love? Are you not glad to be able to love more?

4. In order to learn how to love always more and more, put into practice the four means which I am going to indicate to you. a) Apply yourself to accomplish your thousand little daily duties and sacrifices with the greatest possible love. If you succeed in never saying “No” to your Mother in little things, you will never say “No” to her in great things. b) Do not cease to study your Mother. Learn from books all that you can about her privileges, her mission, her life, and the lives of those who have loved and served her. Then reflect on what you have learned.
You will never finish studying her because you will never finish understanding what I have done for her and what she has done for Me and for you. c) Live constantly in union with her. You cannot live in intimacy with her without finding her more lovable and without loving her more day by day. I shall explain to you later how you can live always united to her, in imitation of Me. d) Finally, ask of Me the grace of loving her and of growing constantly in this love. 

The love of My Mother is a grace—a choice grace. But grace is obtained by prayer: “Ask and you shall receive.”  Ask without hesitating, for this grace cannot fail to be conformable to My designs. To hesitate would be to blaspheme My Mother and Myself; it would amount to supposing that I could want you not to love her.
Is not your very desire of loving her due to My inspiration? Would I have inspired such a desire, if I did not wish to satisfy it?

Ask for this grace every day. Ask for it above all when I come and unite Myself to you in the Holy Eucharist. At that moment I come to you as Mary’s Son, clothed in the human nature which I received from her and by which I make you participate in My divinity.

“He that eateth Me, the same also shall live by Me.” To love My Mother with the same love as I bear her, is not that living by Me? It is especially in Holy Communion that I cause the love of My Mother to pass from My heart into yours; there, especially, it is no longer you who live, it is I who live in you; and it is no longer you who love Mary, it is I who love her in you. Hitherto you have hardly ever asked Me for this grace; ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full.

The Faithful Soul:
O good Jesus, by the love with which Thou lovest Thy Mother, grant

me, I beseech Thee, to love her truly, as Thou truly lovest her and wishest her to be loved.
—Saint Anselm