MIRROR OF LOVE

 

It all began when Bl. Maria Celeste Crostarosa received a revelation while she was still a novice to, “Stamp on your spirit the features of his life and the resemblance of him that comes from imitation.   Be on earth living and inspired images of my beloved Son.  Carry him about as the life of your heart and as the goal of your existence and as the Master of your spirit.” Intent of the Father  “This instruction was for her soul like a polished mirror into which, she remained gazing continually at the dazzling light of the sun (Son) and found herself at once drawn into the divine splendor of her Well-Beloved.” Autobiography    Celeste, and the Order which she was to found, was called from the beginning to be for the world a Mirror of God’s Love.

Likewise, we are called to fix our gaze on the Son and, as if gazing in a mirror, see not only the splendor of His Being but in our own being a living reflection of God’s eternal love.   “It is in this that the Redeemer is able today to accomplish His work of salvation in us and through us.”  Const. 5    For, “The more we strive to live the love of Christ, the more the thoughts and feelings of Christ will fill our spirit and our heart, the more we will become His faithful images.”  Const.6

Like a double exposure of a photograph, one superimposed on the other, we endeavor to be Christ the Redeemer to one another:  “To be a living copy and faithful portrait of Jesus so that he might find himself in you, and you recognize yourself in him, your God through faith.”  Florilegium 6.

Bl. Celeste had a creative spirit.  Just reading her works gives us insight into the richness

of her inner life by the way she uses imagery in her writings.  She was also pliable in the hand of God by opening her heart and allowing God to shape and mold her, transform her into the image of the Son.

Everyone is called to remain moist and be shaped by God.  And by that transformation, we follow the Redeemer and make his saving action alive in our own time and place. This became clear to Bl Celeste when she marveled, “I no longer saw myself, but I saw You in my very self and myself transformed into You, my Most Pure Love.”

Jesus invited Celeste, and us, with these words, "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross each day and follow me." (Luke 9:23)  Celeste’s response was, “Oh with what love I embraced the cross, loved it, desired it and took pleasure in it -- all for your love.”  She continues, “Likewise those who love bind themselves to the cross…savor the true and solid sweetness of God and the true peace found therein.”  Florilegium 118.

Celeste describes Jesus the Redeemer as the mirror of the Father.   She invites us to look into this mirror of the Son, saying, “Those who are pure of heart know the Father because they look upon the Redeemer fixedly with a gaze of love.” and adds: “They are children of the light because with the vision of right intention, they gaze into the mirror of the divine perfections of their God.”   The Mystic Who Remembered’ by Joseph Opptiz, CSsR      Let us be Mirrors of Love, of the Redeemer, of our God.

Question:      
How am I a ‘Mirror of Love’ witnessing to the world God’s love?

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.’