The
Victory in the Triumph of Divine Mercy
During the International Spiritual Exercises, at
Collevalenza – Sanctuary of Merciful Love (Madre Speranza), June 29
– July 5, 2003, Don Stefano Gobbi
offered to over 200 priests and to over 10 bishops of the Marian
Movement of Priests the following meditation. This is the FOURTH of four meditations given by Don
Stefano Gobbi during this week of Spiritual Exercises.
Note: the dates indicate when a message was given
to Don Stefano Gobbi which can be found in the Blue Book, “To
the Priests, Our Lady's Beloved Sons”
(http://our-lady-priests.blogspot.it/).
Many
bishops have given their Imprimatur to this book. You will find in
these messages of Our Lady revealed through Don Stefano Gobbi a
resemblance to the writings of Saint Louis de Montfort, Saint Therese
of the Child Jesus and to the messages of Our Lady of Fatima, with
the sweetness that only the Mother of God, and the Mother of each us,
could communicate to those open to the caresses of Our Lady!
The Bishop of Como, Italy, Msgr. Diego Coletti,
according to the Norm of Can. 322 sec. 1 and 2 CIC, approved the
Statutes of the Association of the “Marian Movement of Priests”
and conferred on this association the Juridical
Personality, July 10, 2013.
The FIRST
meditation can be found at:
The
Woman Clothed With the Sun and the Red Dragon
The SECOND
meditation can be found at:
The
Woman Clothed With The Sun In Search Of The Little Ones
The THIRD
meditation
can be found at:
The
Rosary: The Prayer of the Little Ones for the Victory
Note: the dates correspond to the dates in the
“Blue Book”, “To The Priests Our
Lady’s Beloved Sons”.
-
- - - - - -
The
Victory in the Triumph of Divine Mercy
Fourth
Meditation: July 4, 2003
The
Victory in the Triumph of Divine Mercy
(The
priests of the Marian Movement of Priests)
A
– I will make you love much the Church
C
- Where the priestly heart is born.
D
- The Saint Johns of Jesus Eucharist.
E
- The judgment of Love.
Praise
be Jesus Christ!
Brother priests, in serenity and peace we have arrived to the end of
the Cenacle, we have come to the last meditation.
I had warned you to live it in serenity. And I think we did it in
great peace, to receive the gifts that the Holy Spirit would give to
each, confirming us in our vocation.
We have arrived to the last meditation precisely on the first Friday
of the month dedicated to the adoration and the reparation to the
Heart of Jesus, almost at the same time when on Golgotha this Heart
was opened by the soldier's spear. And from this heart flowed down
blood and water, symbols of the Church's sacraments. Let us look at
the One whom they pierced! (Cfr. Jn 19:37). Let us look today at the
pierced and merciful Heart of Jesus, to be transformed by his divine
love. We need to be transformed by Love.
We are at the end of the Spiritual Exercises done in the form of the
Cenacle and I would like to ask each of you: have you made proposals?
I think so. Each of you has tried to see your defects and made
proposals to correct them. And then one realizes that every year we
find them still with us as our dearest friends that do not want us to
ever leave us. So I think that next to these defects that despite our
good will, we hardly succeed in correcting, I would like all of us to
make one only proposal: to let ourselves to be taken into the arms of
Mary as a child of two months and that She might hold us inside the
refuge of her Heart Immaculate. This is what counts, this is what She
want.
Our dear Father Michele finished up his two
meditations precisely on the eve of being hit by a serious illness,
with these words: "Perhaps you will
never be perfect, but all of you will always be mine."
We have seen, above all through the meditations of Don Ivan, in what
state the Church is in, what state humanity is in. Humanity has come
to such a state of degradation, that by now alone it can no longer
get up, if a great mercy does not raise it up.
If you remember in my first two meditations, I said that Our Lady
wants us little in order to prepare us for her victory, but that the
victory of her Immaculate Heart will coincide with the greatest
triumph of divine Mercy or of the merciful Love of Jesus. And this
merciful Love must triumph through us.
This is why Our Lady wants first of all to form in
us a priestly heart.
It is in the heart that She forms us. It is not at the character
level, at the psychological level. She wants to form us in the heart,
sp that we may have within us the same Heart of Jesus, meek, humble,
merciful.
And so, today I ask right from the Heart of Jesus this grace: that He
might form our hearts like His, that He might form us in the heart,
that He might transform us in the heart, so that we can draw close to
today's humanity and to the Church of today with the divine mercy of
the Heart of Jesus. Only then, brother priests, we can become the
expression of love, that the Heart of Jesus today has for the Church
and for humanity.
“Participate
too in the sufferings of the Church as she lives through the hour of
her greatest abandonment. How ailing she is, this my most beloved
Daughter!
In
your hearts carry the sufferings of Jesus, and my sufferings as well,
for the agonizing condition in which the Church now finds herself in
every part of the world” (July 26, 1983).
First of all, Our Lady forms in us a merciful heart that carries
within it the sufferings of the Church. There is a difference between
those who see these sufferings, recognize them, maybe even fight
them, and those who carry them within himself.
The first attitude of our heart, which is a priestly heart, is to
carry within ourselves the sufferings of the Church. And what are
they?
“Error is being taught and propagated beneath
the ambiguous formulas of a new cultural interpretation of truth”
(July 26, 1983).
Of course, we must proclaim boldly the truth, but with the heart of
one who suffers deeply, because he sees how the apostasy is spreading
more and more within the interior of the Church, the Mystical Body of
Jesus.
“The spirit of the world is welcomed, which
spreads itself with its malignant influence and leads so many souls
to choose, to justify it and to live in sin”
(July 26, 1983).
Sin is welcomed, sin is justified, sin is no longer confessed: this
is today the great evil in the Church. We must have the urgency for
the salvation of souls, as we were told and feel the suffering, the
same that Our Lady manifested at Fatima, for many souls that are lost
and go to Hell because there is no one to pray for them.
“The loss of faith is becoming a deluge, …
The apostasy has now been spread into every part of a Church betrayed
even by some of her bishops, abandoned by many of her priests,
deserted by so very many of her children, and violated by my
Adversary” (July 26, 1983).
Faced with such a painful situation, our Movement is never called to
respond with criticism, with judgment and even less with
condemnation. The Movement does not share, in fact it refuses the
method today followed by many who publicly, also with the press,
criticizing in a bitter and bad way our holy Mother Church. She is
always Mother, we must love her, because she is Mother!
We must love more in these times, because it is a Mother who suffers
and, therefore, must be loved more by all her children. The help that
we must give to the Church as a Movement is that of a filial and
merciful love.
“I will bring you to love the Church very
much. Today the Church is going through times of great suffering
because it is loved less and less by its own children. Many would
like to renovate it and purify it solely by criticism and by violent
attacks on its institution. Nothing is ever renewed or purified
without love!” (November 9, 1975).
Fellow priests, the first proposal that we must make: to love the
Church with the Heart of Jesus, our Holy Mother! And therefore, that
our hearts be full of the same suffering that today fills the
Immaculate Heart of Mary.
“This is how I find the Church today, the
Mystical Body of Jesus Crucified. She too is climbing Calvary,
carrying a heavy cross; she too is experiencing the hour of such
abandonment and of betrayal; her body, also, is being tormented by
the scourges of the sins which strike at it and by sacrileges which
open up deep wounds in it...
This
is how I find my Daughter today. I am close to her in the painful
hour of her Good Friday. With John, who is living again in each of my
beloved sons consecrated to my Immaculate Heart, together let us be
willing to help her in this, her agony.
Let us kiss her hands, again transfixed; let us
cover with love her body, again stripped bare; let us pour balm upon
her numerous wounds; let us surround with prayer and hope the bloody
moments of her crucifixion” (April 9,
1982).
Brother priests, leaving this Cenacle, the Holy Spirit must give us
this gift: to love with the humble, meek and merciful Heart of Jesus
our Holy Mother Church,
B
- I want to manifest myself through you.
With the Heart of Jesus let us open ourselves to look at humanity and
carry in our hearts the suffering of all humanity. Only in this way
our heart can begin to dilate. We have a heart too small, it needs to
expand: to be dilated by the love of the Heart of Jesus, in order to
carry within us all our sufferings of humanity.
“Feel in your hearts the deep wounds caused
me by the millions of infants slaughtered in the wombs of their
mothers; by sin which overabounds and seduces souls; by immorality
which, like a terrible cancer, corrupts consciences; by the
disorientation of the youthful victims of vice, drugs and violence;
by the breakdown of so many households”
(July 26, 1983).
The commitment of the Marian Movement of Priests is that of
participating in the great suffering of the world, to make it our
own, to feel all the weight and to enclose it in the Immaculate Heart
of Mary, so that it might be offered by Her to the Lord, like an
immense cry that invokes on humanity the dew of divine mercy.
“The
more the human conscience succumbs to secularization, loses its sense
of the very meaning of the word "mercy," moves away from
God and distances itself from the mystery of mercy, the more the
Church has the right and the duty to appeal to the God of mercy "with
loud cries" (cfr. Heb 5:7).
These
"loud cries" should be the mark of the Church of our times,
cries uttered to God to implore His mercy…
Everything
that I have said in the present document on mercy should therefore be
continually transformed into an ardent prayer: into a cry that
implores mercy according to the needs of man in the modern world”
(Encyclical, Dives In Misericordia, 15).
And
we can carry within us this mercy, if we let ourselves be formed by
Mary, Mother of Mercy. So that, She might be able, through us, to
bring her motherly mercy to all her children.
And so you understand, without doubt, why Our Lady asks us to
consecrate ourselves to Her, she asks us to live in her Immaculate
Heart, because she wants to communicate to us all of her motherly
love, and she wants to act through us and spread His mercy on
everyone. Only on the basis of this does she ask us so insistently
the consecration to her Immaculate Heart.
“I have come down from heaven to manifest
myself, through you, along all the roadways of the world: along those
traversed by the poor and the desperate, along those grievous roads
of the sinners and the wanderers, along those of the sick, the
agonizing and the dying” (May 13,
1981).
“The time has come when I wish to live in you
and to manifest myself to all through you”
(July 1, 1981).
Brother priests, Father John told me yesterday that many of you, as
soon as they saw him, ran to ask: is this message true, is it true
this visionary ...? And Father John said to me, try to bring a little
inner balance to your priests.
But what need do we have to run after so many seers? Fellow priests,
the time has come in which Our Lady wants to live in you and manifest
herself to everyone, not with apparitions, but through you.
Our Lady wants that all you might be visionaries of Mary. For this
reason she has called you to consecrate yourselves to her Immaculate
Heart. But not in the sense that you see Our Lady with your eyes, but
in the sense that Our Lady looks through you. You do not see her, She
sees by way of you. Those who see you, must see Her.
This is how you must leave this Cenacle; this is why she has called
you from all continents. What satisfaction does Our Lady get in
making you spend a lot of money and to make you travel thousands of
kilometers? What satisfaction is there in this?
“I want to love with your heart, to gaze with
your eyes, to console and encourage with your lips, to assist with
your hands, to walk with your feet, to follow your bloodied
footprints and to suffer with your crucified body”
(July 1, 1981).
Maybe it's a sign that Father Michael, after his meditation, was hit?
It is perhaps a sign that we will be called to become more and more
victims, sacrificed on the altar of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
“I am with you on all the by-ways of the
world. With maternal mercy I help those of my little ones who find
themselves in greater need; I save the perishing, restore health to
the sick, console the afflicted, encourage the down-hearted, raise up
those who have fallen, find those who have lost the way”
(September 3, 1983).
Our Lady manifesting herself in you, can infuse her motherly mercy on
all her children. This is why our Lord has entrusted to us his Mother
and wants us to enter into her Immaculate Heart.
C
- Where the priestly heart is born.
A prayer that Jesus loves very much, it is this: "Jesus, give me
your Heart, that I may love the Blessed Mother as You love her."
Brothers priests, there is a saying "De Maria numquam satis":
do not be afraid to exaggerate to much in loving Mary; but do not
worry, because it you will never be able to love Mary as Jesus love
her. Jesus grant us your heart to love, your Mother, as you love her.
“Mamma, give me you Heart to love Jesus as you
love Him”. Because no one has ever loved Jesus as his Mother loved
Him. For which the end to which the act of consecration to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary is to arrive to the purity and the fullness
of the love of Jesus. It is to arrive to love Jesus with the
delicacy, with the tenderness, with the fullness with which His
Mother loved Him.
You
understand how the more you entrust yourselves to Her, the more She
transforms you, so that you might be able to love more Jesus. And
this love for Jesus become a transforming love: it transforms you in
to Him. It is here where the priestly heart is born.
“In my Immaculate Heart the Son assimilates
you to make you more completely resemble Himself and to associate you
with his own life. It is in my heavenly garden that the wonder of
your transformation takes place”
(June 11, 1983).
This prodigy happens, you know. We see ourselves always the same: we
are the same physically. We become a little older, a few more hairs
fall from our head. But spiritually we are transformed, we are no
longer the same. There has been a maturing in us at the spirit level.
Our Lady has accomplished in us this maturation, because she has lead
us more and more to love Jesus.
The prodigy of transformation “is
above all through me that this happens; through me because Jesus,
finding me to be as it were the purest and most supple clay, molded
me so perfectly in his image that no other creature will ever be able
to produce that image as did your heavenly Mother.
And so it is that I, though Mother, became the
Daughter of my Son; and so it is that I became the first and most
perfect of his disciples; and so too it is that, while I am leading
you to Jesus, I am able to manifest myself to you as a model for
imitation, if you want to succeed in reliving his life in your own…
“Entering
in the gate of heaven of my Heart, each day I render you more
conformed to the image of my Son Jesus…
I form you in his likeness in your minds, and I
obtain the Spirit of Wisdom for you, to lead you to seek and receive,
to meditate upon and to preserve, his divine word. In this way it is
possible for you to live the Gospel with the simplicity of little
children, with the fidelity of the martyrs, and with the heroism of
the saints.
I form you in your hearts and bring you to the
plenitude of love for God, so that you may love all your brothers
with the same divine charity. For this I make you always more
sensitive, purer, more understanding and merciful, more compassionate
and meek, more humble and strong”
(June 11, 1983).
“Every day Jesus enters through the gate of
this, my heavenly garden, to experience the great joy of seeing
Himself imitated and relived by all of you, my sons and his little
brothers” (June 11, 1983).
“Ascend with Me the holy mountain of His
Heart, so that you may bf transformed by the burning bush of his
divine Charity. Then your hearts will be dilated and molded after
his, and in the world you will be the very pulsations themselves of
the Heart of Jesus, which seeks above all those who are furthest
away, and wishes to envelop all in the flames of his infinite mercy.
You will become meek and humble of heart; you
will be truly able to love; you will pour balm on the grievous wounds
of the suffering and of those most in need; you will give your
priestly help especially to those who have lost themselves along the
road of iniquity and sin. In this way with your love, you will bring
an immense number of my children to the path of salvation”
(July 16, 1983).
The salvation of souls is the work that Jesus has entrusted to us;
but the souls are saved like this:
“Ascend
with Me the holy mountain of his divine Humanity, in order to become
reflections of his perennial immolation for you: his eyes in your
eyes, his hands in your hands, his Heart in your hearts, his
sufferings in your sufferings, his wounds in your wounds, his Cross
in your cross.
In
this way you will become the potent presence of Jesus who, by means
of you, can still today work mightily to bring all to salvation”
(July 16, 1983).
D
- The Saint Johns of Jesus Eucharist.
The place where Mary forms our
priestly heart, is the Eucharistic
Heart of Jesus. It is Jesus in the Eucharist that forms in us the
priestly heart.
Here, brothers, I invite you to read and to live the encyclical of
John Paul II on the Eucharist, which is almost a repetition of what
is written in the Eucharistic messages of the book which are of
incomparable beauty.
“My
beloved ones and children consecrated to my Heart, it is you who must
be today a clarion call for the full return of the whole Church
Militant to Jesus present in the Eucharist.
Because
there alone is to be found the spring of living water which will
purify its aridity and renew the desert to which it has been reduced;
there alone is to be found the secret of life which will open up for
it a second Pentecost of grace and of light; there alone is to be
found the fount of its renewed holiness: Jesus in the Eucharist!
It is not your pastoral plans (Our
Lady does not say to not do them; do them, they will tire you) and
your discussions; it is not the human means on which you put reliance
and so much assurance, but it is only Jesus in the Eucharist which
will give to the whole Church the strength of a complete renewal,
which will lead it to be poor, evangelical, chaste, stripped of all
those supports on which it relies, holy, beautiful and without spot
or wrinkle, in imitation of your heavenly Mother”
(August 8, 1986).
“The Church lives the Eucharist, the
Eucharist forms the Church” (Ecclesia
de Eucarestia, 1).
And she forms it on the model of that which Jesus wanted as his
mystical Body. And look how well she forms it: she leads it to be
poor, evangelical, chaste, stripped of all supports in which it
trusts, holy, beautiful, without spot or wrinkle, in imitation of Her
heavenly Mother.
“My dearest little children, let your heart
be completely immersed in his Eucharistic Heart, that you may enter
into a personal intimacy of life with Him.
Jesus then takes your little heart, opens it,
expands it and fills it with his love. He loves in you, and you love
in Him; and thus, you become more and more immersed in the stupendous
vortex of his divine and perfect charity.
Then, just as John was the beloved apostle,
called to a profound intimacy of life with Jesus, living in his human
body, so too, you become a new John, called to have a profound
intimacy of life with Jesus in his glorified body, really present in
the condition of a victim and hidden under the appearance of
consecrated Bread, which is kept in every tabernacle of the earth”
(March 31, 1988).
“It
is the responsibility of Pastors to encourage, also by their personal
witness, the practice of Eucharistic adoration, and exposition of the
Blessed Sacrament in particular, as well as prayer of adoration
before Christ present under the Eucharistic species.
It
is pleasant to spend time with him, to lie close to his breast like
the Beloved Disciple (cf. Jn 13:25) and to feel the infinite love
present in his heart. If in our time Christians must be distinguished
above all by the “art of prayer”,48 how can we not feel a renewed
need to spend time in spiritual converse, in silent adoration, in
heartfelt love before Christ present in the Most Holy Sacrament? How
often, dear brother and sisters, have I experienced this, and drawn
from it strength, consolation and support!” (Ecclesia de
Eucaristia, 25).
Then the Pope speaks of the necessity of the Eucharist. He speaks
about the fact that the Eucharist is always offered in the name of
the Church and for humanity.
“It (pastoral
charity) “flows mainly from the
Eucharistic Sacrifice, which is therefore the centre and root of the
whole priestly life” (Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests
Presbyterorum Ordinis, 14). We can understand, then, how important it
is for the spiritual life of the priest, as well as for the good of
the Church and the world, that priests follow the Council's
recommendation to celebrate the Eucharist daily: “for even if the
faithful are unable to be present, it is an act of Christ and the
Church” (Ibid., 13; cf. Code of Canon Law, Canon 904; Code of
Canons of the Eastern Churches, Canon 378)” (John
Paul II, Ecclesia
de Eucaristia, 25).
Today there is added the new habit, strange enough, the so-called
"Eucharistic fast." This is a snare of the devil, look how
clever he is. Before the Council reform the Eucharistic fast was from
midnight until the time of receiving Holy Communion. The fast was
even broken by taking a sip of water; it was very rigorous. Now we
hear of some priests and even bishops (I could give you the name of
an archbishop, cardinal, who introduced among his priests to do the
"Eucharistic fast") that sometimes they skip the Mass,
sometimes they refuse to celebrate. And I tell you, there are so many
priests, who do not celebrate due to this false idea of the
Eucharistic fast.
Saint Bede, Venerable (d 735), monk and doctor of
the Church wrote: “Sacerdos non legitime
impeditus, celebrare ommitens, quantum in se, privat Sanctam
Trinitatem laude et gloria, angelos laetitia, peccatores venia,
iustos subsidio et gratia, in purgatorio existentes refrigerio.
Ecclesiam spirituali Christi beneficio et seipsum medicina et
remedio”.
(THE priest, with no valid excuse, who fails to celebrate the Mass,
thereby deprives the Most Holy Trinity of praise and glory, of
delight for the angels, of the remission for sinners, of help and of
grace for the just, of relief for the souls in purgatory, of
spiritual benefit for the Church and of medicine and healing for
himself).
Fellow priests, let us celebrate the Mass every day even if we are
alone. Let us celebrate it, live it, because in the Eucharist Jesus
fulfills our transformation and especially the transformation of the
heart, working in us that which is our priestly holiness. Priestly
holiness is achieved before Jesus in the Eucharist, listening to what
He tells us, reliving it in our lives and in our ministry.
“You must go before the tabernacle to gather
the fruit of the prayer and of the communion of life with Jesus which
develops and matures into your holiness.
Beloved sons, the more your life revolves
wholly and entirely at the foot of the tabernacle, in intimate union
with Jesus in the Eucharist, the more you will increase in holiness.
The Eucharistic Jesus becomes the model and the
form of your holiness.
He
brings you to purity of heart, to humility which is sought and
desired, to a lived-out confidence, to loving and filial abandonment.
The
Eucharistic Jesus becomes the new form of your priestly holiness
which you attain by means of a daily and hidden immolation, of a
continual presence of love toward your brothers, of a capacity to
welcome in your own person the sufferings and the crosses of all, of
a possibility to transform evil into good and to act profoundly that
souls, who have been entrusted to you, may be led by you to
salvation.
For this reason I say to you: The times have
come when I want you all before the tabernacle, and above all I want
you priests who are the beloved sons of a Mother who is ever in an
act of perpetual adoration and of unceasing reparation.
Through
you, I desire that the cult of the Eucharist again flourish in all
the Church in an ever more powerful way.
As for now there must be an end to this
profound crisis in regard to devotion to the Eucharist, a crisis
which has contaminated the entire Church and which has been at the
root of so much infidelity and of the diffusion of such a widespread
apostasy” (August 21, 1987).
E
- The judgment of Love.
Brother priests, then we will love, with the Heart of Jesus and we
will become merciful presence, because we will know how to love. What
matters in our life is to love. St. John of the Cross wrote that in
the evening of life we shall be judged on love and St. Teresa of the
Child Jesus said that at the end of life we will be judged on love.
Not on the fruits that we will have brought forth, because remember
we are useless servants and alone we can not do anything. We are like
the apostles who went to fish all night. They worked without catching
a fish. We work, not that we sleep, it's not that we are accused of
sleeping. If anything one could be accused of working too much. But
if we work alone you will see that we will catch very few fish. "In
nomine meo". In the name of Jesus, the apostles go fishing, and
the net is full of fish. Brothers priests, we will be judged on love,
when we will appear before Jesus after our death.
I think that if for a priest of the Marian Movement of Priests it was
so beautiful to live, it will be even more beautiful to die. We do
not see the fruits of our apostolic labors on this earth, we will see
them up there. Sometimes people who we have never approached,
distant, we will find them in heaven. But how did they get in:
perhaps they bribed Saint Peter? No. Your love, your prayers, your
suffering saved them. Jesus through your love.
When you present yourselves before Him, do not be afraid of your
defects, of your falls. The devil in these times uses these in a
furious way against priests of the Movement precisely to discourage
you, and he especially tempts you against purity and sometimes he
gets you to fall. Do not be afraid of your falls. When you will
appear before Jesus, God's mercy towards his priests will be so
great, that His mercy will cover you completely. Then you will
experience what the Merciful Love of Jesus means.
Jesus at that moment will ask you only one question. And Mary will be
next to you, because it is She who brings you before Jesus who will
ask you: "Did you love Me? Did you love the people that I
entrusted to you?".
You would want to say yes, but in one moment you will see your whole
existence, all the lack of correspondence, all the falls, all the
acts of selfishness, and so, while you would want to say yes, you are
held back by fear seeing in one moment your whole life. This is your
judgement.
But Our Lady who carries you in her arms, gently as a Mother will
tell you: "My son, repeat now what I taught you to say in each
moment of your life. Repeat it even now!" And we, being
encouraged by the Mother will say:" Yes, Jesus, I have loved
you, yes Jesus, I love you." Then Jesus will take us by the
hand: "Enter into the joy of your Love, enter into the house of
your Lord."
Praise
be Jesus Christ.
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