J.M.J. "O good Jesus, how generously have You given us, on the Cross, all You had! To Your executioners, Your loving prayer; to the thief, Paradise; to Your Mother, a son, and to the son, a Mother; to the dead, You gave back life, and You placed Your soul in Your Father's hands; You showed Your power to the entire world, and shed, through Your wide and numerous wounds, not a few drops, but all Your Blood, to redeem a slave! . . . O meek Lord and Savior of the world, how can we thank You worthily?"
--Saint Bonaventure
Today, when we contemplate Our Lady who always believed that her Son would keep His sacred word and rise from the dead, we remember the Feast of the Annunciation, which recalls the announcement of the Incarnation of Jesus.
Thanks to Missy for sharing the following reflection from the German Dominican, John Tauler (+1361), which appeared in Magnificat.
Today, when we contemplate Our Lady who always believed that her Son would keep His sacred word and rise from the dead, we remember the Feast of the Annunciation, which recalls the announcement of the Incarnation of Jesus.
Thanks to Missy for sharing the following reflection from the German Dominican, John Tauler (+1361), which appeared in Magnificat.
In this feast we
celebrate the eternal and overflowing love of God, the Lord of lords, and the
Master of all, by which He had mercy on us poor human beings, sinful and
condemned…
According to her name, Mary was rapt
into God and made one spirit with Him in the three powers of her soul. And she was all moved and guided by Him,
being absorbed in His blessed will, intensely devoted to His honor-moved and
guided by Him as a tool in the hand of a workman. She was poor in spirit. She was lifted up to God from a fathomless
humility. She was self-annihilated,
will-less, passive, and without any longing except for God. And it was by reason of this state of her
soul that God found an entrance to her in soul and body. She was clean of spirit; for she did not
cleave to any gifts of God, nor did she use them for her joy. She was clean of soul: she felt no attraction
towards any created thing, but her soul was adorned with all virtues. She was an interior spirit: her sweet affectionate
yearnings were all upward towards God, and the outgushing waves of the divine
love poured down from the Holy Trinity into her soul. She was deeply recollected: all the powers of
her soul were constantly employed in God’s praises. She was a faithful heart: her Heart was
enflamed with love’s fiery longings to be lost in the incomprehensible abyss of
the Godhead.
Thus had she found her Beloved. She had penetrated the sovereign majesty with
her sweetness; she had wounded the eternal wisdom with her comeliness; she had
drawn to herself the eternal goodness with her love. Thus had God been poured into her with all His infinitude of being, and thus had He placed her over all His kingdom. She did not live her own self, but she lived
only to Him who is the life of all the living. All her beginning and ending, all her doing and not doing, was in God,
and was full of purely divine intention. For she was ever united to God, turning away from His holy presence
never a single instant…
Poor, clean, interior, Godlike, more
a creature of heaven than of earth was Mary. In her spirit she was the paradise of God, God’s heaven in her soul,
God’s palace in her body. God’s light
shone through and through her. Between
her soul and God there was union without a medium.
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