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.
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.’
