TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
Flowers of Contemplation from the Heart of the Queen of Heaven
collection of brief reflections
inspired by the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to
The present collection consists of brief reflections which have been recorded since 1997 by Myriam van Nazareth during and subsequent upon contemplative prayer and mystical union with the Heart of Mary, the Queen of Heaven and earth.
These reflections are strewn into the souls like Heavenly seeds intended to develop within the souls a deeper faith and to educate them in the knowledge and awareness of the laws of spiritual life. To the extent to which the soul allows Mary to till her soil, this seed will sprout to turn into Heavenly flowers. These flowers are offered to the souls as brief lessons in the Science of Divine Life and as incitements towards a purely spiritual approach to life.
The order in which these little flowers are introduced, is not the order in which they were brought to bloom in the heart of Myriam van Nazareth by the Mother of God; it will be set according to Mary’s wishes, in view of Her needs as to the shaping of souls into true sanctity.
May the souls accept these flowers as a bridal bouquet the Mistress of all souls wants to arrange in order to prepare the garden of Divine Life within them for Eternal Spring.
At the service of the Mistress of all souls,
Myriam, June 2009
Contents
- Little Flower 1: The Heavenly cash box and the Heavenly savings account
- Little Flower 2: The shadow on the path of life
- Little Flower 3: The luggage on the the path of our life
- Little Flower 4: The soul as a gift of Love
- Little Flower 5: The robe of the soul consecrated to Mary
- Little Flower 6: Wearing the robe of Mary’s servant in dignity
- Little Flower 7: The archive of spiritual life
- Little Flower 8: The artificial world of darkness
- Little Flower 9: Sunrise in the soul
- Little Flower 10: The field of free will
- Little Flower 11: Veneration – The soul as a gardener
- Little Flower 12: The inner sun
www.maria-domina-animarum.net
TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 1:
The Heavenly cash box and the Heavenly savings account
Imagine you have but little means, but you are in desperate need of something. It takes great pains for you to put coin after coin into a cash box in order to raise the necessary amount of money.
Your cash box can contain a fortune. Let us assume you can never see how much is actually in it. Thus, right before it will actually be full, you are in fact a wealthy person. However, you do not know you are, nor to what extent.
This is exactly what happens when you are making great efforts praying and making sacrifices to obtain a conversion or some other special grace: prayer after prayer, sacrifice after sacrifice the moment when you will be heard is drawing nearer, yet you do not notice a thing until your cash box is completely full.
If you consecrate you entire life and your entire being to Mary, She becomes the Administrator of your savings. You undertake to allow Her to dispose of your savings for the rest of your life. She will use your savings to pay for all kinds of Works God is performing. The purpose of you saving money may be one of them.
Be aware, moreover, that without your knowing, God adds Heavenly interests to your savings to the extent to which you leave your savings at Mary’s disposal, and do not constantly wonder how much your cash box contains and when it will be full at last.
This is the secret of a payable investment for God’s Works:
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Moreover, every saver (= every soul on earth) gets from God, as a gift that goes unnoticed, a savings account in Heaven.
The capital on this savings account increases with every action, word, thought, feeling and wish springing from you and having a positive impact on the accomplishment of God’s Works and Plans.
The more you put your savings at Mary’s disposal to serve Her purposes, and do so unselfishly, the higher will be the interest rate God will apply to this Heavenly savings account.
Your Heavenly savings account will therefore increase each time you are the source of something beneficial to God’s Plan of Salvation for all souls, and you transfer all fruits of your efforts, trials and sufferings to Mary.
Do realize that this savings account will constitute the richness of your soul in Eternal Life.
www.maria-domina-animarum.net
TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 2:
The Shadow on the Path of Life
The path of life is a path conceived by God in such a way as to guide the soul towards the gate of Paradise. On this path the sun shines on the soul’s face, as long as she keeps looking forward and allows the sun to guide all her steps.
Due to human nature the soul casts a shadow behind her: the more the soul holds on to her human nature, her attachments to worldly matters, the more she will eclipse the sun (Divine Light) for her surroundings. In proportion as the soul actively contributes to her sanctification by leading a virtuous life, she will enable larger amounts of Divine Light to shine through her.
As long as the soul orients herself by the sun, she does not see the darkness: her shadow then falls behind her, in other words: she leaves her darkness behind in the past.
Often the soul stops moving on the path of her life just to look back (= to dwell upon her past, the past not only meaning years long gone, but also yesterday and even the minute which has just ended). In so doing she turns her back on the Light, so to speak. Thus what she sees in front of her, us not the sun, but darkness, for she is then looking at her own shadow, which is darkening the field of her vision. She no longer sees the sun, and falls prey to the temptation to believe that the light is hiding from her and that darkness dominates everything on her path.
Human and worldly feeling and thinking often nestles between Divine Light and the soul, and envelops her path in darkness. The path of life that is overshadowed, thus seems to lose its true colour and beauty. Wherever Divine Light is forced back by the shadows of the world, the overshadowed elements lose their radiance and their charm. They are no longer nourished by the Light, and they lose their true vital force. In everything in which Divine Light loses its dominance, Love is weakened.
The soul that gets attached to the innumerable influences from the world, as well as to her own past, her memories and all the pains, sorrows and wounds they convey, delivers the path of her life – and thereby her travelling plan, and even her luggage and food for the road – to the darkness, and thereby loses the key to true happiness.
The soul that keeps looking back on the path of her life (to her past and to the things of the world which are not illuminated by Divine Light), decreases her richness before God:
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she slows down her own journey to Paradise, for each time she looks back, she stops travelling towards the gate of Heaven. This increases the odds that, in the hour when God calls out for her to meet Him, she will not have accomplished the things which were expected from her on the path of her life;
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She has attached more importance to the darkness than to the Light: she has opted for the things of the world, and allowed the details of her life to lead lives of their own. The past is like an uncovered cheque with a bank which no longer exists: after the soul has learned her lessons from it, it no longer has any value whatsoever.
Where there is Light, there is also shadow. The Light flows from God’s Heart, the shadow is the realm of darkness. Blessed is the soul that is in love with the Light, and aims at uniting with the Light in everything she does, for her seed will harvest Heavenly fruitfulness.
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TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 3:
The luggage on the path of our life
God created you for one life only. This one life is your only opportunity to gain eternal bliss in Heaven. Make full use of it. Only one way leads to heaven: the path of virtue. This path winds its way upward and seems to get steeper and narrower as the soul is climbing the path of virtue. All along the journey the road is bordered by an abyss (sin). Right beyond the wayside, already on the mountain slope, you can see endless rows of fruit trees and flowers (temptation and seduction). They do look beautiful, yet they are poisonous. On the verge of the path you can see fruit trees, which are not poisonous (the fruits of Divine Providence), and flowers (the graces of God’s constant encouragements).
All the way long you carry a back bag. The content of this bag is unknown to you, because it can not be opened as long as you are travelling. The weight is made up of all burdens, trials, illnesses, pains, sorrows, and the disappointments of life.
If you lug it reluctantly or even despisingly, you will discover at the end of the road, when arriving at the Gate of Eternal Life, that you have been carrying stones all the way long. If, on the contrary, you have been carrying it with love and self-sacrifice, you will discover that the contents of your back bag partially consists of silver and gold, depending on the extent of your love and of your willingness to sacrifice. If, however, underway you have also helped your fellow person carry his/her back bag, you will establish that yours is filled with diamonds.
If, at the end of the road, you want to possess a treasure enabling you to buy never-ending Bliss, then become a master of charity. Be grateful for any sacrifice you get the opportunity to make for the benefit of your fellow person, for this is a privilege of which the incalculable value will be revealed to you no sooner than upon your arrival at the Gate of Eternal Life.
www.maria-domina-animarum.net
TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 4:
The soul as a gift of Love
A virtuous life is a gift of love to God: God gives man a soul, and at the end of his life man returns his soul to God, so to speak. If man has led a virtuous life, he is in a position to give God back a soul that is pure. If, however, he has sinned excessively, and he has failed to have his sins washed away through confession, repentance and reparation, he returns a stained soul to God. Whoever truly loves God, applies himself to keeping his soul (God’s gift!) as pure and beautiful as possible, for he knows neither the day nor the hour when God will call his soul back to appear before Him.
Blessed he who, in the hour of his death, is found in a state of grace and holiness, for his soul will be a joy in God’s eyes and constitute to Him a token of Love. The soul in a state of disgrace, however, is like an insult to God, or at least represents a lack of love towards God and his fellow person: the soul in whom the virtues (the components of sanctity!) have reached a high stage of development, lives much more 'on God’s wavelength' and is therefore in a position to obtain many more graces, which, as God decreed, first of all benefit her fellow person. Thus we can say that a soul is fruitful for the world, for her fellow people and for God’s Plan of Salvation, to the extent to which she lives in a state of grace (and consequently, in a state of sanctity). A holy soul is therefore a gift of love towards God, as well as toward her fellow person, in whom God resides.
All this shows how much God has intended spiritual life as an exchange of Love: He creates the soul, and waits to see how the latter is going to accomplish her task in this world. For the soul to be able to show her love towards Him by allowing all the gifts she has received from Him to yield the highest possible benefit, God keeps nourishing her day after day with the flows of His Love in the form of graces, guidance, and inspirations for a pure way of dealing with all situations of life. When, eventually, time has come to depart from this world, the soul presents herself before God, and for every expression of love towards her fellow creatures – man, animal and nature as a whole – she will be rewarded a hundredfold with Divine Love, which will either immediately take her up into the bliss of Eternal Life, or immerse her in a powerful purification, which will prepare her for this eternal bliss.
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TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 5:
The robe of the soul consecrated to Mary
Consecration to Mary is a bond by virtue of which the soul puts herself and every detail of her life in Mary’s service. God has put the Most Blessed Virgin in command over the battle waged by God’s Light against every force of darkness and every work of darkness on earth, in order that this world may truly become God’s Kingdom, and true Divine peace and Love may prevail among all creatures. Through all her trials and burdens of life, the soul that puts her entire being and her entire life in Mary’s service provides the Queen of Heaven and earth with the raw materials which help maintain the flow of Divine Graces.
One could imagine the pool of Divine Graces as being a gigantic pond filled with the infinite merits of the Sufferings of Jesus, the Sorrows and extraordinary merits of Mary, the merits of all saints and martyrs, and... the merits of all souls on earth that offer up or consecrate their sufferings, trials and burdens. Having regard to the fact that God has put Mary in command over the host of Light, and has made Her the Mediatrix of Graces and Mistress of all souls, it is 'Divine logic' that we should offer our soul, our thoughts, our feelings, our words, everything we do or do not do, all events and burdens of daily life, our entire past with all its trials and torments, and not least our will, totally and unconditionally to Mary, so that She may be able to rule over everything. This is total consecration. The soul surrenders totally to Mary, and in exchange Mary leads this soul in a special way towards sanctity, but... to that end She needs the soul’s persevering collaboration, genuine love, obedience and self-sacrifice.
In a private revelation the Mistress of all souls once described total consecration to Her as follows:
If, at a given point of time, a soul feels the desire to consecrate herself to Mary, she will, generally speaking, first of all say a prayer of consecration to Mary. Now consider Mary as the Queen of Heaven and earth, the Mistress of all souls, the Commander of the host of Divine Light. Let us imagine Her, sitting on the throne God has given Her. Now let us see what happens when the soul says her first prayer of consecration:
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In life on earth, nothing is perfectly static. In general the soul consecrated to Mary will often have to leave the throne room and return to the forecourt in order to be washed and clothed again. The return to the forecourt will be necessary every time the soul has given in to a temptation, has let herself be discouraged, has neglected the service to Mary – and thus to God’s Plan –, and thus in one way or another has stained the 'robe of the servant of Mary' or has let herself be robbed of it.
In the next little flower from Mary’s Heart we will consider how the soul is to wear the robe of her consecration to Mary with dignity.
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TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 6:
Wearing the robe of Mary’s servant in dignity
(continued from Mary’s little flower nr. 5)
Being clothed in the robe of the soul consecrated to Mary is a very great thing. It marks more than ever the beginning of a life on God’s paths through surrender of oneself to the Queen of Heaven and earth with a view to accomplishing God’s great Plan of Salvation. Man is weak, however. That which, initially, seems attractive, can soon fade if the soul experiences this graceful way to be also a way of heavy trials. A great many among those who consecrate themselves to Mary, afterwards fail to live up to this consecration. These souls are like a person who gets to try on the wonderful robe of Mary’s servant, yet casts it off right away to wear his worldly robe again. This is actually an insult to God’s Love, for true consecration is able to lead a soul to an extraordinary grade of sanctity. True sanctity means fruitfulness in doing God’s Works, and a great extent of unity with God’s Heart, the Source of all Love and Peace.
Being clothed in Mary’s robe entails an important obligation. It is absolutely necessary that the soul is very well aware of the importance and the sanctity of the covenant which is entered into by being clothed in this robe. Apart from the great number of souls that soon cast off the robe of a servant of Mary, there are those who tear their robe of Mary’s servant. This happens if the soul indulges in:
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romanticizing: the soul raves about Mary as though she were lovesick, yet in reality she appears not to be willing to actually follow or copy Mary, and often her acting, thinking and speaking even present an accumulation of vice. The soul’s actual love for Mary and for God’s Works, which should be demonstrated in day-to-day living, proves but very superficial, whereas this soul is generally quite convinced that she loves Mary and God much more ardently than other souls do;
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arrogance and pride: the presumptuous and the proud soul can not be real servants of Mary, for they do not succeed in fully denying themselves for the benefit of the accomplishment of God’s Plan. Arrogance is a characteristic which is generally also part and parcel of the romanticizing soul, for the latter lets herself be led so much by fantasies about 'being elected' by God, that she fails to see that true fruitfulness for God’s Kingdom is not given to the soul as a present because of her speaking romanticizing words, yet has to be merited by heavy trials and by the willingness to make unrelenting efforts in the experience of true virtue;
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selfishness: as soon as a soul is focused on herself even just a little bit more than on her fellow creatures, she is no longer serving Mary and God, but herself. This means a breach in the holy covenant of her consecration to Mary.
The soul that truly gives herself to Mary and lives according to this surrender, is in the deep sense of the word clothed by God. Indeed, God clothes the naked, and the true naked are those who have cast off the robe of worldly attachments in an act of voluntary consecration.
This act of 'changing clothes' is like a rebirth. The ultimate goal of total consecration to Mary is 'rebirth from the Spirit' for the true, Divine Life. In a revelation of July 13, 2006, the Mistress of all souls said: "If perfume is sprinkled onto a robe which has become filthy, the latter will not thereby get a fresh smell, in many cases it will become even more revolting".
So the soul’s old robe, which has been spoiled by the countless traces of worldly living, must be replaced by a new robe altogether, which (like Mary says in the same revelation) "is a light robe, which does not weigh on the soul nor hinders her, yet caresses and warms her, and of which the smell will regularly remind her of her Mistress", whereas the robe of the world weighs heavily and is perceived by God as being a source of foul smell.
The 'robe of Mary’s servant' comes in many different kinds, according to the specific vocation in Mary’s service. The soul can serve Mary in many different ways, and how exactly she is going to do this, will to a great extent be determined by her vocation in life and by her specific talents and gifts, but also by the nature of the personal weaknesses she has got to overcome, and by the developments and events that Divine Providence brings onto the path of her life.
In point of fact, the robe is a reflection of the soul’s inner state. One could phrase it like this: The soul radiates more intensely in proportion as she bears God’s Light within herself and allows it to glow there in the power of true Love, and in proportion as she possesses the purity to allow this Light to radiate without any restrictions.
To conclude with, it is also possible for the soul to steal the robe of a servant of Mary. This is what happens if, on the surface, the soul acts as though she were consecrated to Mary, without her making any actual efforts to acquire the necessary spiritual 'luggage' and to put the latter to use for the accomplishment of God’s Works. The fact that a person steals a soldier’s outfit, does not make him fit to be deployed at the front. Not the superficial appearance makes the soul a true servant of Mary, but the effort to educate herself spiritually and to perfect herself in the art of Divine Life. Thus it is possible that a soul regularly says prayers of consecration, lights candles, goes on pilgrimages etcetera, but nevertheless does not keep up a daily lifestyle that could allow her to make any contribution to the fulfillment of God’s Plan of Salvation.
For the soul on earth it is impossible to wear the robe of the servant of Mary in an absolute dignity, because of the fact life on earth is automatically exposed to many 'polluting' influences. Mary Herself considers to be worthy, the soul that:
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TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 7:
The archive of spiritual life
We could look at the life of the soul as being controlled from an 'archive'. In this archive everything the soul needs to fruitfully accomplish the journey of her life, is stored: gifts, talents, the seed of her deepest abilities (some – sometimes many – of which are not even known to her and often remain hidden and unused her whole life long), as well as the knowledge and insights the Holy Spirit sometimes pours into the soul in a supernatural way and those with which the soul was born. At her creation, every soul is indeed equipped by God with a subconscious knowledge of her true vocation, of God’s Plans and Works, of the nature of the soul and her relation to God, etcetera. Also the soul’s daily experiences are stored somewhere in this archive.
The soul’s archive is more than that which we refer to as the 'subconscious': it is a kind of 'memory of the soul’s spiritual life'. Every experience the soul makes is processed in the soul’s archive even during the experience. This processing means that the experience is related to the package of gifts, talents, abilities, and knowledge and insights in the field of Divine Life and God’s Laws.
Thus the soul tries to control all her daily actions, words, thoughts and feelings from this archive, which, in point of fact, is a kind of private treasury which was constructed by God within the soul and which is also filled by Him – in collaboration (largely unwittingly) with the soul herself.
The soul can set the interests and needs of her worldly life as the true goal in her life. She can, however, also focus completely on her true, deepest need, which is: returning to God in an Eternal Life in His Presence, and leading a life at the service of His Plans (the achievement of His Plan of Salvation for all souls and the foundation of God’s Kingdom on earth). In the latter case the soul tries to lead a life the way God has foreseen it: the worldly things constitute but a very small part of God’s Reality, a part that is very short, whereas the larger part of God’s Reality concerns the soul’s life in eternity.
As long as the soul gears her life on earth to Eternal Life which comes afterwards, she will be guided from her spiritual archive in a fairly pure way. It is as though the Holy Spirit Himself is then the 'Keeper of the Archives', who, with every daily experience, immediately emits the appropriate signals for a behaviour which brings the soul another step closer to accomplishing her life’s work, and thus another step closer to God.
Every experience is itself stored in the soul’s archive, linked to the lesson the soul has learned from it with a view to her growth towards perfection in Divine Life: true sanctity – which is every soul’s true destination.
The more frequently a soul looks for worldly experiences (i.e.: for experiences which are not able to help her grow towards the state of sanctity, but aim solely at the satisfaction of her ephemeral worldly needs), the more impure will be the 'telephone line' from the soul’s archive to her conscious behaviour and her conscious thinking and feeling. The soul is ever less exclusively guided by the Holy Spirit and by the Laws of Divine Life. All her acts gradually become less fruitful within the framework of God’s Works, and the soul begins to suffer from vague feelings of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. This state of mind also begins to express itself through feelings of being high strung, lack of softness and buoyancy, disinclination, 'weariness of the soul', loss of faith and hope, and often indifference as regards her fellow creatures.
The soul in this spiritual state seems to be decreasingly able to link her experiences up with the God-given unconscious knowledge of the Divine Laws and of the mysteries of spiritual life. This lack of linkage can be defined as 'inability to duly process experiences'. Duly processing an experience from daily life, means this experience is stored in the right place within the soul’s archive, so that it no longer unconsciously keeps putting a strain on the soul’s spiritual life, but on the contrary is able to serve as useful material to make better use of new experiences towards the accomplishment of the soul’s true mission in life (that which God expects from the soul in this life).
If a soul does not process experiences, the latter have an effect upon the soul’s archive similar to that of books pulled from the shelves and lying about randomly on the floor, so that the information they contain is no longer of any use for the soul’s further spiritual life. If the soul processes experiences in a bad way, the latter have an effect like information stored in wrong places and therefore responsible for an utterly disorganised spiritual life, and therefore arousing within the soul patterns of behaviour which deviate from God’s Law altogether. The result is chaos in inner life, leading to a behaviour which fails to efficiently guide the soul to her destination. It is as though the soul wanders around aimlessly on the path of her life, increasingly exhausting herself without actually making any progress.
A soul’s archive in a state of chaos is the cause of a life without a well-defined goal, a life without any direction, during which the soul keeps questioning herself as to the meaning of life, beginning to believe that everything is pointless, and... that there is no God, because everything is in a state of chaos and life has neither purpose nor sense. This soul is no longer able to see that the only thing in chaos is herself, as well as the many other souls living in a similar state. God is and remains the same: Source of perfect, infallible Wisdom, Life and Love.
God’s Intelligence, Wisdom and Providence keep controlling the reins without fail, with a view to keeping creation as a whole viable. To that end His Wisdom is constantly looking for new states of balance: the more archives of souls are in a state of chaos, the more the system of creation is disrupted, because many millions of souls perform acts that are no longer controlled from the knowledge of God’s Laws. God respects free will, and lets it happen, but...
He is now calling upon the souls to restore the sanctity of their spiritual archives. He does so through the Bridge between His Wisdom and the souls: Mary, whom He has elevated to be the Mistress of all souls, the only immaculate soul creation has ever seen, who has been given knowledge of, and access to, all souls’ archives, in order to be able to tidy the latter and to restore them. That is exactly why She is the Bride of the Holy Spirit, the Bride of the Sanctifier and Giver of Life.
Innumerable are the souls whose archive is in a state of disorder because they have failed to duly process certain experiences on the path of their life. These souls continue their way with a heavy load on their backs. They do not find inner peace, and gradually lose faith, trust and hope. Unconsciously they try to restore order in their inner lives by brooding over things that are long gone, over things which have hurt them, over the 'how' and 'why' of experiences which fill them with pain or bitterness. However, they will never find their lost inner peace along these paths, because actual processing of experiences is not done through thinking but through redevelopment of the inner faculties of the soul through the contact between the soul’s free will and the Holy Spirit.
The soul that has fallen prey to a disorderly inner life must first of all again gain pure access to the archive of her spiritual life. To that end she will need the hand that has power over the key: Mary. An intense, trustful consecration to the Mistress of all souls brings the soul into deep contact with the Holy Spirit. The only things expected from the soul are: trust, and detachment from memories, in the genuine conviction that they have no importance whatsoever for the soul’s further life, but are only able to make her sick – if the soul makes this possible by going over the unprocessed experience in her mind time and time again.
In the intense and trustful consecration to Mary the unprocessed experiences are healed because the soul gains completely new insights into the matter and learns to approach the experiences in an entirely different way. Mary transforms the soul’s entire scale of values: the soul starts to consider worldly matters as ever less important, and focuses ever more on the true mission God has given her for her life on earth. True consecration as the key to a perfectly sound spiritual life begins with Mary’s golden rule: think ever less, feel ever more, and consider all worldly experiences to be steps on the way leading to God: no single step is significant in itself. What matters, is only the final goal of the journey of life.
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TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 8:
The artificial world of darkness
The darkness is constantly trying to take souls away from God. God is the Source of Light and Truth. In proportion as Light and Truth mature within the soul, the experience of true happiness may bloom in her. The darkness therefore tries first of all to disrupt the soul by tearing her away from the Light and from the Truth. For this process to be fruitful, the darkness does so by befogging the soul, thus blinding her and totally distorting her perception of life. Mary shows you the following image:
Satan – source of all darkness – tries to extinguish within the soul any longing for God and true Light, by leading her through a garden he has conceived himself. This garden is an illusion, consisting of artificial flowers. Satan displays these flowers to the soul as easily accessible sources of satisfaction for her numerous worldly needs, with the intention that she may long ever less for the real flowers of grace. While doing this he tries to convince the souls that his 'flowers' are real.
Do consider these 'flowers', however. They do not blossom, they are not fragrant, and they possess neither life nor fruitfulness. The essential difference is this:
God creates, Satan imitates. Only the real flowers out of God’s hand live by:
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nutrients from the soil (= the germs of Divine Life)
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oxygen (= the force animating Life)
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sunlight (= the Light of the only Truth)
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water (= graces maintaining Life and making it effective)
Thus, the real flowers from God’s hand are bearers of Divine Life, the Light of Truth, constant animation and graces.
Everything originating with Satan, is imitation. He is not able to create, he merely imitates, and his 'creations' lack all vital force. He does, however, spread the illusion that his 'creation' is real. The artificial garden Satan displays to the souls, lacks:
- the germ (nourishment) of Life:
God gives nourishment, Satan gives poison.
- animation:
God gives the soul oxygen, Satan gives fermentation and suffocation.
- Truth:
God gives Light, Satan gives darkness and illusion.
- grace:
God gives life supporting grace,
Satan gives destruction, inner storm and passion leading away from God.
God is the Source of all Life, and His goal consists in preserving and maintaining this Life, and in nourishing and strengthening it. To that end He gives Love, Peace and Wisdom. Satan has got his antitheses for these gifts, too:
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As a counterpart to LOVE Satan inspires:
self-glorification and swarming. The soul believes to have great Love, yet it is hollow, for the soul’s willingness to make sacrifices, do penance and practise detachments for the 'Beloved One' (God or Mary) is limited (conditional), and she protests against the trials. She hides this lack of surrender behind a front of ardent words. She puts herself on a pedestal, and turns so blind to her own shortcomings that she can hardly accept she is not infallible. -
As a counterpart to inner PEACE Satan inspires:
passions (all emotions leading the soul away from God, making her unfruitful and deceiving her because they are not in accordance with God’s Plan with the souls). Passions unsettle the soul and provoke a state of fever in her emotional life. - As a counterpart to WISDOM Satan inspires:
illusion, fantasy, self-deceit, a dream world. In certain cases Satan manipulates the soul to such an extent as to make her convinced she has a special spiritual predestination and that her entire behaviour is based on pure heavenly inspirations. In this frame of mind the soul can be whipped up to such a degree of arrogance as to make her press home her own truth and fight against the only real Truth, depicting the latter as heresy, because she feels threatened and attacked by the real Truth.
This is how the darkness leads the soul away from LOVE (the mother of true vital strength within the soul), HOPE (the mother of true Peace within the soul) and FAITH (the mother of Wisdom and Light within the soul). Thus darkness inspires its counterparts:
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as a counterpart of LOVE it inspires selfishness
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as a counterpart of HOPE it inspires deep rooted anxiety, inner fever
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as a counterpart of FAITH it inspires pseudo faith, faith in a pseudo reality and in a fantasy world of one’s own.
Through these works of distortion and blinding wrought by darkness, the soul is cast adrift and sinks into a pseudo world. The soul is convinced that her Love, Faith and Hope are perfect and that she has reached full fruitfulness for God’s Kingdom. In reality she becomes totally unfruitful and also threatens the fruitfulness of other souls in that darkness leads her away from true animation by the Light. This soul waters the artificial flowers believing them to be real, and thereby actually glorifies the darkness and all and any works paving the path to the soul’s spiritual death.
In the next little flower we will consider how the soul can learn to recognize her darkness and blindness, and how she can clear the way for a new sunrise within herself.
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TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 9:
Sunrise in the soul
(continued from Mary’s Little Flower nr. 8)
Satan’s power has become so great because he has found ways and means to project before the souls’ eyes images of a fake 'reality', which has got but very little to do with God’s all-embracing Reality. In other words: He knows how to make souls blind to the real Truth.
There are many degrees of blindness. As long as the soul opens herself up in humility to the inspirations from God’s Spirit, and keeps recognizing the fact she is not infallible, she can be guided back to the right track over and over again. Mary teaches us how we can help speed up the rise of the sun of God’s Light above the darkened, befogged landscape of our soul.
To get the sun to really break through the fog of spiritual blindness, the soul must mainly work on the three following levels:
1. Acquiring true self-knowledge: A great many souls do not know themselves the way they actually are. Many do not know their vocation, many hardly know their talents and shortcomings. Many are not able to determine their position within God’s Plan of Salvation, and consequently are not able to make an accurate assessment of their actual state of grace. This situation is quite dangerous, for satan blinds many through the venom of pride, thereby rendering them unfruitful for God’s Works. Nothing promotes the works of darkness more than a soul going on the assumption she is infallible and/or has been placed far above the others by God Himself.
Self-knowledge is a grace. Originally God had endowed the souls with a perfect understanding of their own beings and of many elements constituting the Divine Mysteries. The original sin cast a veil over many elements of knowledge and understanding: the soul now sees God’s Light, as it were, through glass possessing varying degrees of transparency, depending on the extent to which the soul succeeds in maintaining her purity.
The surest way to a pure understanding of one’s own nature, properties and constitution, and of all the things God expects from a specific soul, starts with the total consecration of the soul to Mary. As soon as the Queen of all creation and Mistress of all souls is enabled to truly rule the soul, She guides her towards knowledge of herself, because without this knowledge the soul can be compared with a balloon:
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bursting with all kinds of things of which the content is not actually known to her, so that it seems to her as if she had no content at all ('thin air' which she is unable to see);
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floating about without anything to cling on to, and without any real foundation, driven by every force from outside, rudderless; and
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very vulnerable: just like a balloon can easily be punctured and then pops, the soul lacking a solid knowledge of herself is even more vulnerable to the pinpricks of temptation than souls that are perfectly aware of who and what they are.
Beg Mary daily for the grace of self-knowledge, so that the warmth of Her Heavenly Love may make the fog surrounding your soul lift. To that end you can, for instance, make use of the following brief prayers:
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"O Holy Spirit, open up to me the very depths of my own soul. Lead me towards knowledge of myself. Do make me see who I really am".
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"O Mary, teach me how to see the world, my life and my own being through Your eyes".
As soon as a soul learns how to fathom herself, she has got to collaborate with Mary so as to contribute towards her own rebirth. Surrender your old 'self' totally to Mary, and persistently pray for a rebirth. To that end you must first of all acquire a clear insight into your personal needs. This brings us to the second level:
2. Working toward a shifting of your needs: Souls are especially vulnerable to Satan’s actions on account of their need to keep up a pretty self-image, and of their many material needs. Man’s needs on earth can be compared with a weight hanging from his feet. The stronger the grip exerted by a specific need, the heavier the weight gets, so that the soul is hardly able to detach herself from the ground. The big aim consists herein, that these weights should be made ever lighter, so that their power over the soul keeps decreasing. The way to the liberation from the slavery towards these needs consists of the implementation of the following measures together with, and under the guidance of, Mary:
- Prevent Satan from leaving his signature on your soul. His true signature is pride and conceit (the property which brought himself to fall when he was still an angel). The soul can be blinded to herself, but it becomes really dangerous as soon as the soul falls prey to pride and opens herself ever less to the possibility she is at all subject to making mistakes. Get used to reacting in the following ways:
* You have done something good: thank God and Mary by speaking the words: "Thank You for the opportunity to spread Your Light. May it glorify Your sublimity". * You have done something less good: do not hesitate to admit your mistake, and pray as follows: "O Mary, obtain for me forgiveness, and the strength, the Love and the understanding not to make this mistake again".
Stay aware that humility is the key to many Heavenly gates, among which the gate of Graces and the gate of Wisdom, which can teach you how to distinguish God’s Truth from the deceptions by the darkness.
- Prevent yourself from being swamped by your material needs (needs of nourishment, possessions, sexuality, empty pleasures, etc.). The more you succeed in controlling your physical needs and your lust for possession and pleasure, the more your heart will be freed for the understanding of God’s intentions and secrets behind everything that surrounds you, the less will become the power of worldly things over your thoughts, feelings and longings, and the less you will be susceptible to the pitfalls of spiritual blindness. The soul that discovers the beauties of the Light will soon detest the darkness, and will become free for her rise towards the things of eternal value.
3. Transforming your view of life. The soul is easily misled as to the real meaning of the things she perceives around her. This disrupted perception is often a source of sin and vice. Hence Mary’s following advice. Constantly bear in mind:
Constantly bear in mind:
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Let us lay down the following prayer at Mary’s feet every day:
"O Mary, Bearer of the most holy Light of Love and Wisdom,
Obtain for me the grace of seeing through the fiction of the numerous worldly temptations and deceptions.
Obtain for me the true understanding of God’s only Truth.
Teach me how to see my fellow man, my life and the world the way they really are and the way God sees them, so that I may be able to approach all of this in the most fruitful way.
I totally and completely surrender to Your powerful rule, so that You may be enabled to bathe me in the endless stream of the Light of Eternal Truth.
I long so much to be a mirror of God’s Glory that will help the Sun of Eternal Wisdom shine through the mist by which the darkness is veiling the eyes of God’s souls, so that they might not see the Well of true happiness.
Therefore, do illuminate my eyes and my heart in the glow of Your perfect sanctity, so that I may see what really IS".
The soul that allows herself to be transformed into a small sun, enjoys the privilege of helping to make visible the treasures of God’s Kingdom, after she will have begun to open these treasures up within herself.
www.maria-domina-animarum.net
TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 10:
The field of free will
At her creation each soul receives from God a free will of her own. The latter enables her at every moment of her life on earth, to decide freely in every situation how she is going to deal with it, how she is going to react to it, and in general: what she is going to do with her life.
Since, in every situation, the soul decides perfectly freely as to the direction she is going to give to the path of her life, the soul decides herself on virtue and vice, on sin and sanctification, on guilt and merit, in other words: on the extent to which her life will be fruitful. A soul’s fruitfulness is the extent to which she actually contributes to the achievement of God’s Plans and Works, for the only reason why a soul is born on earth, lies in the role she is to play here in order to help accomplish God’s Plans and Works for the salvation of all mankind.
It is the fruitfulness of her life which determines what the soul’s eternal life is going to look like. How does the soul acquire this fruitfulness? In other words: How does she earn herself Heavenly bliss?
On the path of her life the soul is guided by numerous circumstances, by her own mind, her memories, the way in which she perceives her surroundings and the path of her life, the reactions and behaviour of other living beings, her own feelings, her expectations, and any inspirations from the forces of evil. On the basis of His Wisdom and Love God tries to direct all this through the inspirations and signs of His Providence, through which He hopes to gear the soul’s behaviour towards meeting the needs of His great Plan of Salvation.
The decisive factor for the decisions the soul will eventually make, are her own desires, her free will. It is the free will which determines to what extent the soul meets the inspirations given by God’s Love and Wisdom.
Let us consider the following image. We could compare our free will with a field. Every sign, every inspiration from Divine Providence is a small seed which is cast into this field, many times a day. The field may not open up to this seed, or it may take it up, to varying degrees.
Each time when the soul’s free will is prepared to assimilate a heavenly seed, the marriage between the human soul and her God is confirmed by the intercourse between the human will and the Divine Will. The seed fertilizes the field, a new life is generated: The soul commits an action, speaks a word, cherishes a thought or a wish, thereby preparing a fruit for the orchard of the Kingdom of God.
Thus God’s Will, the Source of all Life, visits the nuptial chamber of His souls many times a day, in order to engender fruits for His Kingdom and to lift the 'bride' (the human soul) up to true Divine Life. The more frequently the human soul brings her free will in line with God’s Will, the more fruitful she becomes. To grow in God’s image and likeness, is essentially nothing else but to have one’s free will merge with God’s Will altogether. God only aims at completing within the crown of His creation (the human soul) Redemption and Sanctification.
With each visit by the Divide Groom the bride (the soul) gets the opportunity to become increasingly one with Him. The more Divine fruits she bears, the more she is herself 'deified'. Throughout the ages this process was only once accomplished to the degree of absolute perfection: in the mystical marriage between God and Mary, who was made the Queen of creation because the field of Her free will was absolutely united with the Will of God, and was therefore the bearer of a fruitfulness which made Her the Bearer of supreme sanctity.
In the total, unconditional and everlasting consecration to Mary the soul receives the key to her complete opening, so that her free will, too, may become a nuptial chamber, in which Divine fruits are engendered uninterruptedly, a field of holy crops for the Kingdom of God.
www.maria-domina-animarum.net
TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 11:
Veneration – The soul as a gardener
It is part of the duty of each soul to give veneration, glorification, to God and to the major Works of His hands. Especially veneration to God (as the Triune Deity or as one of the Divine Persons – Eternal Father, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit) and to Mary (the Queen of Heaven and earth and Mistress of all souls, clothed by God with innumerable characteristics to the degree of perfection) sets invisible forces in motion throughout creation.
The Mistress of al souls teaches that the soul, by venerating a certain being (for example, a saint), partakes in the merits acquired by this being. Many prayers are said to saints. The most gracious intention when doing so, is not the one through which the soul venerates a certain saint with a view to obtaining specific worldly favours (for instance, the healing of a certain illness), but the one through which the soul venerates this saint because of the spiritual merits the latter has acquired during his or her life on earth. God replies to such veneration by preparing the soul to be able to develop the characteristics of the venerated saint within herself.
This is one of the reasons why the soul can also achieve the highest spiritual development through a constant ardent veneration of Mary, the Mother of God. Not one created soul ever carried within herself so many characteristics in such absolute perfection as Mary did. If the soul consecrates herself to Mary and puts herself completely at Her service, she thereby brings the highest possible glorification to Mary, the Mirror of God’s Glory, clothed with the highest possible perfection in the order of grace.
Mary aims at completely transforming ('re-creating') the soul that gives Herself to Her in total consecration, into the pattern of Her own soul. This is how She tries to lift up the souls consecrated to Her, towards the level of Her own spiritual perfection, to the extent to which the soul actually puts herself at Mary’s service in every detail of daily life, and to which the soul really wants to look like Mary. By wanting to be like Mary, the soul helps to transform herself after Mary’s model. We are familiar with this phenomenon in worldly respect, too: Man tends to assuming the properties and traits of the one he loves in a special way.
We could imagine the soul bringing veneration, to be a gardener. Veneration grants the soul a more direct share in the effects of the traits she finds in the one she venerates. If we should imagine a saint to be a flower, Mary would be a garden of flowers, a paradise. Venerating Mary could then be regarded as watering the flowers in this paradise. All these flowers are all elements of sanctity and merits characterizing Mary. By watering these flowers one comes into closer contact with them, so to speak, and takes up their beauties and Heavenly scents more deeply. By doing so the soul thus derives more benefit from these characteristics and traits for herself.
The more ardently the soul venerates Mary in her heart, the more vital energy will be contained in the water she sprinkles onto the flowers in Mary’s paradise. The true vital force throughout creation is Love. In the same manner it is Love which determines the value of veneration (or: increases the vital energy of the water). So the soul allows ever growing shares of herself to flow into the flowers, and in her turn takes up into herself ever growing shares of the flowers. The more intense and the more constant the souls’ contacts with Mary become, the more the scent of this Heavenly Flower Garden will keep lingering all around her, and the more her heart and mind will be filled with the images and impressions the unparalleled beauty of this Heavenly Paradise leave behind within her.
Thus veneration can become a stepping stone leading the soul to an ever growing unity with the venerated Being, in that this Being, by virtue of God’s Law, thereby gets the opportunity to let ever increasing parts of Himself or Herself flow into the venerating soul. This system enables us to understand it is out of pure Love that God wishes the soul to bring veneration, worship and glorification: The more, and the more ardently, she does so, the more he will be able to pour the graces of perfection into the soul. It is exactly these graces of which Mary, when speaking to Saint Catherine Labouré, regretted they are so seldom asked for.
www.maria-domina-animarum.net
TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
MARY’S LITTLE FLOWERS
LITTLE FLOWER nr. 12:
The inner sun
Just like a flower needs the sun to live, to bloom and to achieve the summit of its beauty, each soul needs God’s Light to fully develop and to reach her ultimate destination: sanctity, the fullness of Divine Life.
At some earlier time I already described Divine Light as the whole of God’s guidance and of the inspirations from His Holy Spirit. It is the latter which enable the soul to accomplish Divine Life within herself and attempt to steer it into the right direction. They can only do so insofar as the soul allows God’s Presence in her life.
The soul is exposed to the worldly influences from everyday life, which is not focused on God, nor on His Works and Eternal Salvation, but makes man, his everyday worldly activities and his achievements in the fields of science and technology the very centre of life. This is why, in a manner of speaking, worldly life covers the sky above the soul with dark clouds, which prevent God’s Light from reaching the soul. The soul also develops darkness from within: All thoughts, memories, feelings and longings that are linked to worldly things, as well as every negative disposition of the heart, tend to separate the soul from the Light that shines upon her from God’s Heart. These inner phenomena could be compared with fermentation releasing fumes, which envelop the soul and lock her up inside of a darkened little world of her own. This is exactly what the Most Blessed Virgin Mary means when She says that every attachment to the world and to her own past makes the soul ill.
The soul will hardly be able to free herself from this darkness under her own steam, because darkness can only be expelled by light, and light is exactly what is lacking for the soul in these dark states of mind. God alone can bring this true, liberating, healing Light into the soul. In these Last Times He prefers to do so through Mary, who in our days is called upon, in Her capacity as the Mistress of all souls, to bring the fullness of Truth, the Light of hope and the warmth of true Love into the souls.
The Mistress of all souls has already compared Herself with the beams of the sun. Just like the sun touches the earth through its beams, and sets free the fertility contained within the earth, God touches the souls through Mary in order to set free their true fertility. When the soul prostrates herself at the feet of the Mistress of all souls and surrenders to Her completely, the sunbeams from God’s Heart enter into the heart and the soul, Mary starts major cleaning within the very core of the soul’s being, and erects Her throne within her. This is the beginning of the rule of Light, which was deposited in the soul through Jesus Christ’s Work of Redemption, but which has got to be 'woken up'.
The Most Blessed Virgin raises God’s qualities to life within the centre of the soul that completely surrenders to Her. Provided the soul gives Her an unlimited freedom to do so, She develops within the soul Her own qualities to such an extent that She starts radiating them from the soul’s very heart, thus dispelling the fumes and darkness all around. She frees each dark component of the soul’s life from its darkness. Thus She purifies the entire soul in all of her specific traits, so that the soul may blossom ever more and that she may come closer and closer to the ideal God has foreseen for her: that she may grow after His image, in the fullness of Divine Life. This is what Mary refers to as the accomplishment of Redemption, the path of sanctification. Like the sun opens up the soil to wake its fertility, Mary opens up the soul and brings her to bloom from within.
Each soul is under the holy obligation to fully develop Jesus’ Work of Redemption within herself. This is exactly what she needs Mary’s help and guidance for, who helps complete within the soul the latter’s liberation by transforming her to such an extent as to enable her to free herself from ever more darkness and to gradually expel every tendency to allow new elements of darkness to take root within her. The Mistress of all souls demonstrates Her power over a soul by turning the latter into a clean mirror of the Sun, a beaming Light of peace and buoyancy, and a warm source of Love and softness. In the soul in whom Mary rules, the Law of God’s only Truth prevails, in which virtue is loved and vice and sin are detested. Thus the soul turns into a living Light spreading around herself an atmosphere of freedom and peace. The soul, however, that holds on to her darkness and keeps turning to sources of new darkness (the worldly elements of life), seems to rob her surroundings of all Light, and spreads dissatisfaction and uneasiness.
In proportion as the fog and clouds of attachments to the world and to one’s own past are dissipated, heaven around the soul breaks open, so that the soul gets to see ever more clearly the Sun (God) and His Works (the fullness of Truth and all signs of God’s Presence), and She is increasingly able to become aware of God and His Works. Thus, what is referred to as the blooming of the soul, essentially is a matter of all darkness being replaced by Light, and of the breaking of all attachments to that which does not carry Light for the soul and consequently leads her away from Divine Life.
Mary brings the soul Light, warmth, awareness and freedom from within. Her intermediary must then not be regarded as a mere passive cleaning and completing whatever is lacking in the soul, but must be regarded as a transformation, a 're-creation' through which the soul herself gradually develops the frames of mind which keep new elements of darkness from blooming within her. Mary’s rule within the soul is that of God’s Representative (God being compared here with the Sun), who attempts to transform the soul step by step into a little sun herself, so that she may be able to free herself from within of any dark states of mind, any dark tendencies and attachments, and to turn into a mirror of Light, which helps God’s Presence and Works find their way towards her fellow creatures. This is why the soul that has surrendered herself completely to Mary and is consecrated to Her in all elements of everyday life, is able to make her fellow creatures feel as though the sun rises wherever she appears.
