33 Days to Morning Glory: Day 21

What is the purpose of consecrating to Mary?  To "be the one".

The Offertory verse (Psalm 68:21) for the Mass of the Feast of the Sacred Heart is one of the most compelling and painful calls to action from Jesus.  This verse sums up Jesus' thirst for love and for souls.

"My heart had expected reproach and misery.  And I looked for one that would grieve together with me, and there was none; and I sought one that would console me, and I found none."

Sniff!  If that does not compel you to do something, I don't know what will.  Doesn't that just make you want to scream (or sing), "Let me be the one!"

We respond to this in two-fold:

1. To console Jesus, the Head of His Mystical Body - "By being apostles of joy, which means "to console Jesus through joy ..." Mother Teresa addresses this through her three key virtues: total surrender to God, loving trust, and perfect cheerfulness."
2. To console Jesus in the members of His Body - "By recognizing their thirst.  Everyone thirsts: rich and poor, young and old, believer and unbeliever.  Everyone has a restless heart for God, for man is a restless thirst.  To console Jesus in others is to respond to their suffering, especially to that deepest, most universal suffering:  the thirst for love.  We should respond to this thirst in others not with indifference but with a gentle smile that says, 'I delight that you exist, and I, too, understand the pain of your thirst'."  

This is the same constant battlecry by Pope Francis:

"Only when we too can cry about the things you said can we come close to answering that question ... Dear young boys and girls, today’s world doesn’t know how to cry ... Those who are discarded are crying. But we don’t understand much about these people in need. Certain realities of life we only see through eyes cleansed by our tears." - Empathy that moves us to concrete positive action.

Mother Teresa explains:

"The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one's neighbor ... [P]eople today are hungry for love, for understanding love which is much greater and which is the only answer to loneliness and great poverty."

I end with a conversation from a book I read more than a couple of years ago - A Wind in the Door.

Progo:  "... if you've been assigned to me, I suppose you must be some kind of a Namer, too, even if a primitive one."

Meg: "Well, then, if I'm a Namer, what does that mean?  What does a Namer do?"

Progo:  "When I was memorizing the names of the stars, part of the purpose was to help them each to be more particularly the particular star each one was supposed to be.  That's basically a Namer's job.  Maybe you're supposed to make earthlings feel more human."

Meg: "What's that supposed to mean?"

Progo: "Love. That's what makes persons know who they are.  You're full of love, Meg, but you don't know how to stay within it when it's not easy."