The Redeeming Cross

Mary

My child, listen and try to understand. I wish to teach you a doctrine which is all the more difficult to grasp because you imagine you are quite familiar with it: the doctrine of salvation by the cross. All those who take part in the Christian apostolate know that suffering plays a paramount role in the saving of souls; they know that Jesus delivered the world from the bondage of sin by His passion and death, that I had to become the Mother of Sorrows in order to become the Co- Redemptrix, and that all great apostles passed through great tribulations. But when it is upon them that suffering comes, they forget its significance. They are surprised and discouraged. For them, as for the Jews, the cross remains a stumbling-block. Do they imagine that they can take part in Christ’s redeeming action unless they also share in His redeeming passion?

2. As for yourself, look courageously at the cross which awaits you.
You will have to make difficult sacrifices. You will have to labor and to suffer, to spend and exhaust yourself in the service of souls—and that, not only during a few hours or days, but just as long as there will be souls to save; not only in moments of enthusiasm and success, but also in moments of difficulty and disgust.

3. To these trials, which are the price that must be paid for any apostolate, even a natural one, you will have to add voluntary sacrifices. To the hard labors of the three years of His public ministry Jesus chose to add the sufferings of His passion and death. He longed for this baptism of blood; He offered Himself because He wanted to do so. Like Him you will have to make yourself a victim in behalf of the souls that you wish to redeem. Before every apostolic effort, in addition to praying, offer some sacrifice. If the work is particularly difficult, prepare and accompany it with particularly hard sacrifices. If you have not succeeded after the use of ordinary means, do not say: “I have worked, preached, pleaded, and prayed; I have done all I could.” So long as you have not really sacrificed yourself, you have no right to say that. And if you repeat it to yourself to console yourself in failure, you are a weakling and a hypocrite.

4. To an apostle who makes generous sacrifices God sends all sorts of trials as a special reward: sickness, poverty, disappointments, dryness, darkness, the impression he is nothing but a hindrance, failures due to his character, ignorance, or imprudence. These crosses, if accepted with faith, humility, and love, purify him of all self-seeking, show his absolute personal incapacity, make him cast himself into the arms of God as his last hope, and thus render his efforts incomparably more fruitful than do the mortifications of his own choosing.

5. Are you ready to embrace these crosses? Perhaps you are.
But there is another cross much more difficult to carry because it is so disconcerting. Your intentions will be misunderstood, your plans ridiculed, your activity blamed. Those to whom you might look for aid will prove indifferent to your work or else will go about tearing down what you have tried to build up. Those who should encourage you will disown you and put a stop to your enterprises. All kinds of obstacles will be raised against you, and people will declare with satisfaction: “I always said he would fail!” The cross of your own choosing you carry joyfully enough. The cross imposed upon you by sickness or poverty you succeed in accepting with resignation. But the cross prepared for you by the ignorance, the stupidity, or the malice of men threatens to disgust you.
Still, it is just this last cross which has the greatest redemptive power.

6. Look at Jesus. Was it self-imposed suffering with which He saved you? Was it not rather the suffering caused by the ignorance, the stupidity, and the maliciousness of men—of the very men whose functions and profession should have prompted them to aid Him in the work of redeeming their nation?

7. Do not be astonished if the devil tries to ruin your work. When he attacks my soldiers, he is really attacking me. Keep up your confidence and courage. As a result his defeat will be all the more complete: I have crushed his head, and I will continue to crush it forever.

8. But remember that suffering has no redemptive power of itself, but only when united with the sufferings of Jesus. The same law holds for your suffering as for your person. Alone, you are only a weak sinner; united to Jesus, you participate in His Divine nature. So also, suffering by itself remains unfruitful, but once it is united to the sufferings of Jesus, it participates in their Divine efficacy.

9. When sorrow comes to you in your apostolic labors, come and press closer to me. Together we shall climb up to Calvary. There, close to the cross of the Redeemer, you will understand the infinite value of that suffering which puzzled and crushed you previously. In the shadow of the cross, even the suffering caused by the stupid and malicious men will become sweet to you. In it you will consider not the men who cause it, but Jesus and your Mother who thus invite you to participate in their redeeming mission; in it you will consider the souls which this redeeming mission will enable you to save.

10. This is a severe doctrine that I am preaching to you, my child, but it is a doctrine of faith, of love, and of victory. Did I go too far when I presumed you were able to understand it?

The Faithful Soul:
O Mother, you know my cowardice and fear of suffering; but you also know my desire to love you and to assist you in your mission.
When trials overwhelm me, you will be my support, and then I shall be capable of suffering all that you desire, because you desire it, cost what it may!