Sinners

With enough love, all sinners can become Saints.

Ora et Labora

To declare that God must do all, to deny human work, is sloth.  To believe that we can do all, to deny God's work, is pride.  So pray, as the Saints say, as if all depends on God, and work as if all depends on you.

Assumption

We should remember upon this Feast of the Assumption that all things of Mary point to Christ.  The Rosary is a prayer which draws us into Christ's life, reveals it to us through the eyes and experiences of Mary.  This is obvious for most of the Mysteries, but perhaps less so for today's, the Feast of the Assumption.  The Assumption is not about Mary, so much as it is about the perfection of our hope in the Easter promise.  Mary is not only a witness to the Risen Lord, her Assumption is the first fruits of the Resurrection, she is the first human besides Christ who is brought body and soul into Heaven by the power of God's love and Grace.  The meditation upon the Assumption is not meant to focus our eyes on Mary, but to focus them on the God who has brought her so totally to Himself, that we might truly "imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise."  She is the lens by which we see His desire for all of us, what He would make all of us to be, if we but cooperate.  On this Feast of the Assumption I give myself to Mary that she might bring me to Christ, for she herself has been brought completely to God, not through herself, but through that humility which says, "yes" wholly to the will of the Lord.  As she says, so say I.  Totus tuus Maria!

Mary

It is true that without Christ, there is no Mary.  It is also true that without Mary, there is no Christ.

The Potter and the Clay

Today's first reading talks about how God is like a potter, and Israel like the clay.  How apt a metaphor for the soul's conversion!  We are shaped by the Hands of divine Providence, He forms us, sculpts us, into images more beautiful than the Pieta, vessels into which He will pour His own Spirit through His own Sacred Blood.  We will not enjoy the shaping, indeed, we will often fight it, hardening ourselves against Him into flawed vessels that cannot withstand the flame of the kiln.  We surely will not enjoy the firing, when all flaws and impurities are purged, when we are completed as His work, which means we must also admit we are not our own.  Yet if we persevere and do not harden our hearts to Him, we will be made most beautiful, most holy, most wonderful.