Mother St. Paul

“ Mary shares His joy; she is absorbed by one thought—soon she will look upon His Face—and that thought is so great that there is scarcely room for any other in her heart. And Joseph? Can we imagine him anxious and disturbed and worried? No, it is impossible—he is with Jesus and Mary, he has lived his life close to them for nine months, he has imbibed their spirit. If his joy is not as intense as theirs, his peace is unruffled; he has brought the Mother with her Child to Bethlehem as he was told to do, and he knows that God will take care of His own. ”

“ Why does He hide Himself? Why does He deliberately set up obstacles which prevent the soul from seeing Him? Why does a mother hide from her child? Is it not for the joy of seeing it look for her and for the consolation she is going to give it in letting herself be found? It is the same with our God Who hides Himself. He wants to make us look for Him, He wants to increase our love, our desire and our merit, He wants to make us strong in faith and confidence, while acknowledging our helplessness and dependence and nothingness without Him. ”

“ When joy is absent from me, it is because faith in His nearness is absent. When clouds hide the Sun of Justice, and I am disposed to be sad and despondent, let me make an Act of Faith in His Presence: My God, I know that Thou art within my soul, because I have reason to believe that I am in the state of grace. My Jesus, I believe that Thou art there in the Tabernacle. My God, I believe that Thou art truly present behind every person and every circumstance and every trial. My Jesus, I believe that it may be to-day that Thou wilt summon me to stand before Thee as my Judge.... ”

“ He it is Who is now leading the whole world and placing everybody in his own city. He it is Who is leading Joseph away from Nazareth. He it is Who is leading His own Mother over every step of that difficult and tiring journey, letting the joy in His own Heart overflow into hers; and He is my Leader too. With such a General, nothing will be overlooked in my life; everything will be arranged in wisdom and love. ”

“ All the joy that the Incarnation brought to the Blessed Trinity, Mary to a great extent must have shared. There was the joy of God the Father, because He saw His designs in creating man fulfilled, His justice satisfied and a human creature doing Him perfect homage and bringing Him so much glory. There was the joy of God the Son, because at last He was united to our human nature, because He being God had nevertheless a human Soul and a human Body, to which He could unite all the Divine perfections, and by means of which He could carry out all His Father's designs for the lost human race. ”

“ O Orient, come and enlighten those that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death with the light of faith. It is faith that is needed on the earth, it is faith that is needed in each individual soul. It is faith that I need, more faith, more confidence in Thy dealings. Many shadows are still cast on my soul by sin—even a wilful imperfection casts a shadow. ”

“ I am always getting humiliations, some people are, but I gladly accept them! All such speeches have their source, not in humility but in pride. Can we imagine Mary talking like this? Humiliations will never do their blessed work of making me humble if I thus use them to attract attention to my supposed virtue. A humiliation is spoiled the moment it sees the light; it has no strength left in it wherewith to produce humility. Do I want to be humble? Then let me go to that quiet retreat where Jesus is humiliating Himself for me, let me take all my humiliations there. ”

“ To do a hard thing just because it is hard, to keep silent when I could say something sarcastic or clever but not quite charitable, to bear little physical sufferings without letting everybody know about them, to be cheerful and bright when I am feeling tired and moody, to accept all that happens to me as coming straight from God's Hands, especially all the little crosses that come to me through others—these are the things that will make me a saint and I cannot keep Advent or any other season better than by practicing them. Nothing is too small for my King to notice. ”

“ Thomas who comes to-day to revive our flagging faith, to introduce us to the Babe of Bethlehem and tell us that He is indeed the Orient though He is hiding His light, to warn us to give no heed to temptations against the faith, to tell us that when we are contemplating the humility and nothingness of our God and the temptation comes to us, as it did to him to say: Unless I see for myself, "I will not believe," to remember the words of the Master: "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed." ”

“ Come, then, little Jesus, set up Thy Royal Standard, come, tarry no longer. I am longing to show Thee that I am not going to be a soldier in name only; longing to show Thee that I understand that a soldier who has pledged himself to fight under Thy Standard must adopt Thy methods, that if I would be a soldier on whom Thou canst count, I must be really mortified, really poor, really ready to give up my own will and my own methods, really anxious to have humiliations because I know that there is no other way of attaining the beautiful virtue of humility. ”

“ Elizabeth heard the salutation first, but it was the leaping of the Babe in her womb which made her understand that the Incarnation had taken place, and cry with a loud voice: "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb."
If the zeal of Jesus was so powerful during the first hours of His life, what must it not have effected during the nine months! How many souls without knowing (as St. John the Baptist did) the cause, were brought nearer to Heaven by the presence of the Incarnate God in the world! ”

“ My God, I want to be perfectly submissive, perfectly humble, a perfect victim, but great though my desires are, I cannot arrive at the perfection which Thou dost require. Oh, look upon my Brother incarnate for me, accept all His perfections; let me offer my little struggles and desires and efforts with all that He is doing, for is it not all for me? "Through Him and with Him and in Him."
Let me go to Nazareth to Mary; she will welcome me for she knows that He has become incarnate for me. The Angel has just left her to take back her Fiat to Heaven. ”

“ He offers Himself also to bear all the effects of His oblation and to drink the chalice to the dregs. He offers Himself as a Surety for the whole human race and for it He offers all His merits and satisfactions. He keeps nothing back—the whole of the life just begun is offered for the glory of God and the salvation of the world. It is a whole burnt-offering, a holocaust offered at its very beginning to Him Who "spared not even His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." ”

“ Faith, as it always does, lets a streak of light into the darkness; God is there and it is only to make the soul more sure of this that He permits the darkness. If the soul can find and recognize God in the darkness then it knows Him very intimately and this is what God wants—a love so great that it detects the Beloved One at once. Does darkness make any difference to the intercourse of those who love? They rather prefer it, so that all may be shut out except each other. This is what God wants from those whom He is teaching to be interior—He puts them into prison and leaves them in the dark. ”

“ There are further beauties as we gaze—a heavenly Dew is resting on the Flower, it is the Holy Spirit Himself, Who at that blest moment when He overshadowed the Branch poured out all His choicest gifts upon the Flower. As God, the seven-fold gifts were His from all eternity, and directly the Humanity was united to the Eternal Word, the divine perfections belonged to it, so that as man "He was made unto us the Wisdom of God" and could understand all mysteries. By the gift of Understanding He knew and entered into all God's plans for the Redemption of the world. ”

“ Certainly I am not, but the consolation is that the work is co-operative. As soon as I pray: Stir up my will, O God, because I want to bring forth fruit to Thy glory; He will be there giving me "more abundant helps" from His mercy. God does not expect me to work alone, nor to suffer alone, nor to make efforts alone. What He wants is a good will. He is coming "to men of good will," and nothing can prove that I am one of them, better than a fervent prayer that my will may be stirred up, cost what it may. ”

“ And why, O Orient, Splendour of the Light Eternal, why dost Thou not cast Thy bright beams over the whole world at once that all may know and recognize Thee as the Dayspring which has risen?
Because, My child, I love faith and it is by faith that I intend men to know Me. I do enlighten "every man that cometh into this world" (St. John i. 9) , that is I give to each sufficient light to save his soul, to one more, to another less, and I shall judge according to the light I have given ”

“ O King of nations, as I look back through the ages and see the Child and His Mother so clearly set forth in promise and prophecy, in type and example, when I think of Thy plans for the redemption of the world, made from all eternity and gradually unfolding [Pg 125] as the fulness of time approached, when I think of the nations all desiring Thy coming, when I think of the intense desire of Thy loving Heart, there is one thing that seems to jar and to be out of harmony with the rest, and that is the lamentable want of desire in my own heart! ”

“ If the sight of self does not lead me instinctively to look at Christ, it is a very dangerous thing, for it can only lead to despondency and discouragement. The object of looking at self and its deeds is so to look that everything good or evil may shrivel up and disappear, till self is there no longer, but Christ only and all He has done either for or through me. As I gaze now at the picture, I no longer see the places on earth which have known me for short periods of time, but my place in Heaven which by His mercy, if I persevere to the end, is to know me through all eternity ”

“ If I want to live an interior life, I must model it on the life of Jesus hidden in the womb of His Mother. He wants me to lead it for He is ever saying: Learn of Me Who led this life for you. An interior life must be essentially a life of oblation. This is its foundation: the offering of the soul as a holocaust to God and then regarding itself as a victim, all it has and does and is and thinks and plans, belonging not to itself but to God. It lies on the altar waiting to be consumed ”

“ If only I can make myself believe that the darkness is permitted by Him there will be a ray of light at once in the darkness because God is there, "Surely God is in this place." But how can I be sure that the darkness is permitted by Him? If I am living the interior life, if my intention is to please Him in all that I do, and if, however badly I succeed, I never willingly take back that intention, then I am pleasing God ”

“ May the sight of the empty crib remind me to look well into my preparations to-day to see that nothing is wanting in the welcome I am going to give to the King!
Colloquy with our Emmanuel. At the Incarnation, at Thy birth, all through Thy life, Thou didst dwell with us; on every altar Thou hast promised to be with us all days; in Holy Communion Thou hast said I will dwell with them; in the hour of death I will fear no evil for Thou wilt be with me; and Thou hast secured Heaven for me by Thy prayer: "Father, I will that those whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am." ”

“ Jesus is waiting, Mary is waiting, the Angels are waiting, all nations, all the earth, and Heaven too is waiting—waiting for our Emmanuel to come and save us. The empty manger speaks of the Church's expectation to-day. We can count the hours now, all things are ready. Oh! come and save us! Come and begin Thy blessed work over again, come and save the many who as yet know Thee not and who are expecting everything this Christmas except a Saviour. ”