Thursday, February 1, 2024

THE LENTEN PUZZLE OF LOVE

 



Blessed Celeste was a mystic and a prolific writer who was never 
at a loss for words.   And she shared regularly with her community
her experiences laying out 
all the pieces of God’s love. 

During Lent, we too strive to put together all the pieces of God’s extravagant love
which fills our days and our lives on our journey of salvation.  Here are some of Celeste’s pieces.

Bl. Celeste says: ‘As soon as you rise from sleep, thank the Creator for all the blessings of this day and offer to God all your words, actions and sufferings, abandoning yourself into God’s blessed hands.’

Jesus, in turn, said to Celeste as he held his divine heart in his hands, and says to us now: ‘Receive my heart to love me with my own love forever.  Embrace in my heart all my creatures and give to those souls all the love of my heart.’

During Lent we strive to have the heart of Jesus by loving as Jesus did.  Celeste says, ‘Make your life an echo of Jesus’ love.’  From the moment we wake up in the morning until we lay your head on the pillow at night we strive to echo Christ’s redemptive love.  In our busy schedules we are called to abandon ourselves into the hands of our Creator as we offer a sacrifice of love, praise and intercession that reaches out to embrace in our hearts all of God’s creatures and creation. Our mission as Redemptoristines is to be transformed into pure love.   Celeste often quoted Jesus in saying, ‘If someone asks you who I am, tell them I am Pure Love.’

Jesus said to Celeste and now says to us, ‘If you wish to give me pleasure, imitate that prayer which I offered in the Garden of Olives before my Passion, placing my whole spirit in my Father's hands!’   

Celeste says, ‘The just soul who loves takes delight in death at the hands of its Beloved.  Jesus lived dying and it is the living memory of Jesus’ dying that will be your life.’

How do we remember Jesus’ dying in our daily lives?  Remember what Jesus says at the Last Supper before he died, ‘Do this in memory of me.’   Every day at the holy sacrifice of the Mass we stretch out our hands as an offering to receive the Body of Christ.  This reminds me of a time when I was the Eucharistic minister; a woman, instead of saying ‘Amen’ to the ‘The Body of Christ,’ responded saying, ‘I am.’  What a profound statement.  To me, her reply was a confident, yet humble pledge of love.  We are then nourished by Christ, who lives and dies and rises in us for the life of the world.  In presenting our hands we give our whole self so that Jesus may live and work and pray in us. 

To unite earth with heaven, Jesus stretched out his hands on the cross to embrace everyone and everything with his redeeming love.  By our life of prayer. we stretch out our hands to embrace and support family, friends, benefactors and all of creation.

In regularly taking time to pray, we give ourselves the puzzle piece which binds the whole together, as the psalmist says, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Ps 46:11      This pray of quiet pleases God, soothes the soul and enables us to share in the viva memoria as participants in the life of Jesus who lived dying so that the world may be redeemed and rise to new life.   

United with Jesus, we offer our hearts to God at the service of God’s divine plan of mercy and love.  Trusting that Jesus has completed the puzzle of love in our lives, we pray with grateful hearts with Celeste, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for my very beginning and my very end.’ 

 

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