Marian Cross - Transparent Background
Part III: Transformation Into Jesus

Three Essential Dispositions

My Ideal, Jesus Son of Mary
Madonna and Child - Bartolome Esteban Murillo - 1670

Mary

My child, the exterior means I have indicated will be useful only insofar as you join to them certain interior dispositions. The same practices lead one soul to sanctity but leave another in mediocrity. “It is the spirit that quickeneth.” Listen to what this spirit requires of you.

2. First of all, self-sacrifice. You need it in order to combat your predominant fault relentlessly. You need it in order to renounce yourself in everything so as not to hinder the action of Jesus in you. You need it in order to consent to the efforts required for reproducing the dispositions of Jesus.

3. If filial love for me consisted merely in praying to me, in singing hymns in my honor, and in rejoicing with me, it would hardly require self-sacrifice of you. But filial love should lead you to identify yourself with Jesus, and this can be accomplished only at the price of complete self-sacrifice. You cannot serve two masters. The master will be either Jesus or yourself. You must make the choice. I can help you to renounce yourself; I cannot dispense you from doing so.

4. In the second place, this spirit requires constancy. I can more easily find a hundred souls ready to make a heroic sacrifice in a moment of fervor than one soul capable of persevering every day in the ordinary efforts that fidelity to its resolutions demands. How often will you not be tempted to abandon such or such a practice which I have suggested to you! Be faithful, cost what it may! Should you suppress a practice today for some good pretext, tomorrow you will omit it for the first one that comes to mind, and finally you will abandon it entirely without any pretext at all. Shorten when necessary, but never suppress anything entirely. That is a condition of success.

5. Finally, and above all, you need generosity. There are two sorts of generosity. The first consists in giving Jesus unhesitatingly not only all He demands but likewise all that pleases Him, even if there is no obligation to do so. Such was the generosity practiced by your Mother, and, in varying degrees, by all saintly persons. You must aim at it with all your might.

6. The second kind of generosity consists in regularly making up for your faults and negligences. If you have committed a fault, offer in compensation a special effort, one which you would not make, if you had nothing to expiate. Put into that effort so much love that after your act of reparation you will love Jesus as much as, and even more than you would, if you had not saddened Him.

7. The difference between mediocre and holy souls is not that the former commit faults whereas the latter commit none,—for both have their faults,—but in this, that the former are content simply to notice their failings, whereas the latter endeavor to love Jesus all the more for having loved Him less in the past. As for yourself, imitate the holy souls in their reparation.

8. In particular make up for any omissions and negligences in your daily conversations with Jesus, in your spiritual renewals, in your daily examinations, and in your retreats.

9. Make your act of reparation follow as quickly as possible upon your fault. A short but immediate act of reparation is worth much more than a prolonged but tardy one.

10. Do you wish to know how to go about these reparations? Consult me after you have fallen or been negligent, and I will teach you how to make of each of your faults a felix culpa—a happy fault. And mind what I say: if you can persevere in being generous as I have just explained, then, despite your sins, defects, temptations, and weakness, I promise to make of you a saint and an apostle.

The Faithful Soul:
O Mary, all my activities, all my time, my whole being is yours. Remind me of my consecration to you when I am tempted to be negligent and grant me the generosity of the saints.

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