TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !

GOD, HIS LANGUAGE AND HIS MOUTHPIECES

Brief meditation inspired by the Mistress of all souls to Myriam van Nazareth

Many souls believe that God has never spoken one single word to them. Yet He keeps speaking volumes in each and every heart. He has spread out the dictionary of His Love all over His Creation, and He has endowed the creatures with the faculty of reading to each other from this Divine Book. Let us behold the treasures of nature, the enchanting beauty a landscape possesses as long as no human being has altered it in any way according to their own (human) views, the scent of flowers and blossoms when spring is here again, the countless healing powers the Creator has hidden in equally countless herbs and plants. God is constantly speaking quite unequivocally to us through the animals, as long as their nature is not distorted by any negative contacts with human beings.

Rather often the Creator seems to veil the words He is speaking. He does not do so because He would want to remain an unfathomable Mystery to His creatures, but in an endeavour to incite the souls to fully develop the wondrous ability of understanding, an ability with which He has endowed them. The soul has received the ability to recognize the ways of the Light as well as those of the darkness, in order that she might reach her eventual destination and that she might recognize the bandits on her journey towards this destination. A soul who is longing to find God, to come closer to Him and to gain a better understanding of His Works, bears resemblance to a spring bloomer which opens itself up to the sunlight in an attempt to drink up the bearers of Life. God gives Himself in abundance to the soul that is longing for Him. He does not impose upon those who do not long for Him. This is why He so often seems to hide Himself and His Works of grace behind a veil.

The soul that opens up to the Mysteries of true Life will easily learn to find out how much God is speaking to us in all Works from His hands. One of the Works of God nobody could ever overlook is obviously the creation of the animal kingdom. We are all surrounded by animals. The behaviour displayed by an animal in our vicinity is very much less meaningless as we are sometimes prone to believe. Very often Divine Providence tries to teach the soul a thing or two about her inner dispositions through the behaviour of animals and their encounters with the soul, thereby also trying to open up the soul to the effects of His Love. Nevertheless man so often tends to disregard the animals and the ways they behave.

The book entitled The Brooklets of Salvation [the English translation of which is still in progress] could be used as a guide to discover how God is trying to speak to the human souls through the animals, how, through this channel, He is trying to convince the souls of His Love; how the souls can use these gifts for the benefit of their eternal salvation, and how it is exactly their ways of dealing with the animals, as well as their emotional dispositions towards the animals, that can in a multitude of ways serve them as mirrors showing them the actual state of their spiritual development. It is barely known, and therefore hardly ever taken into account, how tremendously important the human soul’s associations with the animals, and her dispositions of heart towards them, can become as sources of the soul’s perfecting and sanctifying herself, but also as sources of sin. But very few have truly understood that the presence of the animals in this world, all encounters between human souls and animals, and the ways in which human souls treat the animals, are all part of an essential course in all virtues and therefore in the sanctification of the souls, and that this course is set up by none other than God Himself.

God does speak through His creatures, and not only through those which human intelligence tends to regard as the highest ranking, but even through the most silent ones, which tend to let themselves be guided primarily by their Creator’s Intelligence inside of them rather than by their own 'thinking': the animals. Why should any soul be surprised at this, having regard to the fact that God even speaks through the vegetable kingdom, that He has hidden inside each flower the sighs of His Love, and that every tree, through the changes it sustains as the seasons succeed one another, tells God’s story of Life itself...? God’s language is Love. Love is God’s Light. If light is broken up, one obtains the main colours as well as their mutual transitions. If one analyzes Love one obtains all virtues. All of this is present as yet undeveloped seeds in every flower, in every tree, in every bush, in every plant, in every animal, in every human soul, but part of the vital lesson lies in the following understanding: It is not only inherent to the human soul.

Seed is, in a manner of speaking, the fruit’s cradle. For the fruit to come about, the seed needs to accomplish a process of development: The seed must be opened up. In each encounter with nature, particularly with an animal, Divine Providence brings a human soul into contact with a small seed. If this seed is ignored it is of no use to the soul. If the seed is treated badly its process of development is harmed and the principle of fruitfulness contained in it is 'nipped in the bud'. In plain terms: God’s Love is gradually (sometimes even suddenly and irreversibly) prevented from being opened up and from producing any more effects.

A human soul’s life on earth is intended by God to be a school for perfecting the soul’s sanctification. For the soul to be able to accomplish the process of sanctification to the extent God has intended her to accomplish, she must make the very best of every encounter with every seed, because... let us reflect upon the following for a moment: Sanctification is a process of opening up fruitfulness, in other words: Sanctification is accomplished to the extent to which the soul voluntarily brings to bloom and to maturity every seed supplied to her by God, for the process of sanctification is nourished by God’s Love alone, which flows to the soul through various channels: through Heavenly intervention, through the animals, through nature.

If we truly understand that the soul can only be nourished by God’s Love and can only build herself up on the foundation of Love, and that she can only do so to the extent to which she processes Love within herself and allows it to flow, we must realize that in every encounter with an animal, in which she fails to take up the seed supplied to her and to help her open up (i.e.: in which she does not treat the animal with Love, thus allowing insufficient amounts of Love to flow towards the animal), she is actually declining a Divine food. God speaks through every encounter, including encounters with animals. How painful is it then, if the soul is deaf to a sigh of Love from her Creator.

All contacts between a soul and animals are part and parcel of the education, the nourishment and the perfection God is granting to this soul. Blessed is the soul who realizes in due time that the teachings given by the Mistress of all souls with respect to the animals and the role they play in the lives of human souls, in their spiritual development and therefore in every human soul’s opening up her Salvation, as well as in the deliverance of this world from the oppressing rule of darkness, are anything but far-fetched but quite on the contrary are among the most important chapters God has ever had impressed upon the souls.

We should regard this knowledge, which is a key to perfectly new understandings, as an act of Mercy, as a special attempt made by God to open the human souls up to the final offensive of Love through which the works of darkness in this world are to be rendered ineffective. Probably no soul on earth does not let the organisation of her life be guided primarily by the need to be delivered from all misery. Lasting happiness and lasting deliverance from all misery can only be accomplished on the level of spiritual life. All of this can only be successful to the extent to which the soul actively and voluntarily allows herself to be integrated into the flow of True Love like a pure little river.

A considerable part of the works of darkness the evil one manages to accomplish day after day through willing souls consists of a multitude of different expressions of lack of Love for the animals. After all, it is his intention to render Love ineffective, due to the fact it is the tool through which God creates, redeems, sanctifies and heals. Moreover there can hardly be a single soul that would not notice how disrespectful mankind is treating God’s creation, exactly because the evil one is very anxious to cripple and distort God’s Works and to inspire souls to leave the tremendous amounts of Love contained in those Works unused, to – in a manner of speaking – throw this Love back in God’s Face, or – whenever it appears to be possible at all – to destroy it altogether.

Where is all this lack of Love coming from? This abomination in God’s eyes is maintained because of the human souls being blind to the effects of their behaviour and to their deepest dispositions, and because of the souls setting themselves goals in life which are not beneficial to the bloom of true Love, and also because of the souls failing to realize the importance of the way they ought to deal with their fellow creatures. Why should souls fail to realize this? Because they have blown up the roads along which God is trying to breathe Life into them.

This is why the inspiration entitled The Brooklets of Salvation should be regarded as what it was really meant to be: as a unique fire for the souls, which is trying to pour out into the souls the warmth of true Love and the Light of an understanding that makes them rise for a perfectly new Life.

God’s language is Love. This Love expresses itself in countless ways, which together constitute God’s dictionary. Just like no soul is able to ever even master her own mother tongue to absolute perfection, a great many words from God’s dictionary remain unknown to many souls for their entire lives. God’s omnipotence expresses itself, among others, in the fact He speaks to the souls through countless mysterious channels, and that the power of His Works does not depend on the words but on the souls’ will to learn to understand those words and to learn how to apply them.

Myriam, June 2012