"Suffering in itself has no value. The greatest gift we can enjoy is the possibility to share Christ's passion."

~Mother Teresa

Today's Daily Revelation

December 24

December 24, 1936. During Holy Mass today, I was united in a particular way with God and His Immaculate Mother. The humility and love of the Immaculate Virgin penetrated my soul. The more I imitate the Mother of God, the more deeply I get to know God. Oh, what infinite longing envelops my soul! Jesus, how can You still leave me in this exile? I am dying of longing for You. Every touch of my soul by You wounds me immensely. Love and suffering go together; yet I would not exchange this pain caused by You for any treasure, because it is the pain of incomprehensible delights, and these wounds of the soul are inflicted by a loving hand.

Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, 843

Christmas Eve 1937. After Holy Communion, the Mother of God gave me to experience the anxious concern she had in her heart because of the Son of God. But this anxiety was permeated with such fragrance of abandonment to the will of God that I should call it rather a delight than an anxiety. I understood how my soul ought to accept the will of God in all things. It is a pity I cannot write this the way I experienced it. My soul was plunged in deep recollection all day long. Nothing could tear me away from this recollection, neither duties, nor the business I had with lay people.

Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1437

http://marian.org/popups/revelation.php

He knows what He is about

"God has created me
to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission - I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for nothing. I shall do good, I shall do His work!

Therefore, I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am. I cannot be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;

in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;

if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
He does nothing in vain.
He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends;
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink,
hide my future from me - still He knows what He is about!"

~John Henry Newman

"Christ's Love is
the very death of death.
Hence it is said: O death! I will be your death! I will be your sting, O hell!
Our love for Christ is as strong as death, because
it is itself a kind of death:
destroying the old life,
rooting out vice,
and laying aside dead works."

~From a treatise by Baldwin, bishop of Canterbury

Dear Stragglers, please pray for all who have died recently!


My daughter, encourage souls to say the Chaplet which I have given you. It pleases me to grant everything they ask of Me by saying the chaplet.
~Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska 1541

Through the Chaplet you will obtain everything, if what you ask for is compatible with My will.
~Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1731


Pray the chaplet Stragglers!!

Pray for each other!

When you get no applause on earth, your work will be all the more welcome in Heaven!
~Saint Josemaría Escrivá - taken from "The Forge" - # 962


Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer. It is not necessary to always be meditating, nor to consciously experience the sensation that we are talking to God, no matter how nice this would be. What matters is being with him, living in Him, in His Will. To love with a pure heart, to love everybody, especially to love the poor, is a twenty-four-hour prayer!
~Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Get out of the Way!

Don't fall into a vicious circle.
You are thinking: when this is settled one way or another,
I will be very generous with my God.
Can't you see that Jesus is waiting for you to be generous
without any reservation,
so that He can settle things
far better than you imagine?

Your own will, your own judgment: that's what upsets you.

~Saint Josemaría Escrivá
taken from "The Way" - #s 776, 777

My God,
I offer you all
that I do today for the intentions and the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
I want to sanctify every beat of my heart, my thoughts and my simplest works by uniting them to his infinite merits! I want to repair for my faults by casting them into the furnace of His Mercy!
O my God! I ask you for myself and those dear to me the grace to fulfill perfectly your holy Will and to accept for love of you the joys and sorrows of this passing life so that one day we may be reunited
in Heaven for all eternity!
Amen.
~Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face!

On the Cross
Christ effected a great exchange.
There the purse containing the price to be paid for us was opened.
When the soldier's lance cut its way into his side, the price paid for
the whole world
flowed forth.
~Augustine

The courage and strength that are in me are not of me,
but of Him who lives in me - it is the Eucharist.

O my Jesus, the misunderstandings are so great; sometimes, were it not for the Eucharist, I would not have the courage to go any further along the way You have marked out for me along this Way of the Cross.

~Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, 91

MERCY!

When a great storm was approaching, I began to say the chaplet. Suddenly I heard the voice of an angel: "I cannot approach in this storm, because the light which comes from her mouth drives back both me and the storm." Such was the angel's complaint to God. I then recognized how much havoc he was to have made through this storm; but I also recognized that this prayer was pleasing to God, and that this chaplet was most powerful.
~Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1791


Let souls who are striving for perfection particularly adore my mercy, because the abundance of graces which I grant them flows from My mercy. I desire that these souls distinguish themselves by boundless trust in My mercy. I Myself will attend to the sanctification of such souls! I will provide them with everything they will need to attain sanctity. The graces of My mercy are drawn by the means of one vessel only, and that is — trust. The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. Souls that trust boundlessly are a great comfort to Me, because I pour all the treasures of My graces into them.

I rejoice that
they ask for much,
because it is My desire to give much, very much.
On the other hand,
I am sad when souls
ask for little, when they narrow their hearts.

~Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1578

Thérèse and Teresa

"Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that love comprises all vocations, that love is everything, that it embraces all times and all places because it is eternal!"
~Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

"When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. We have refused to be instruments of love in the hands of God to give the poor a piece of bread, to offer them a dress with which to ward off the cold. It has happened because we did not recognize Christ when, once more, he appeared under the guise of pain, identified with a man numb from the cold, dying of hunger, when he came in a lonely human being, in a lost child in search of a home."
~Mother Teresa