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CLJ5 – A Cleaned Heart – ‘Come, Lord Jesus’ by Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C.

An excerpt from Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of Waiting:

A Cleaned Heart

My dear Sisters, in the second week of Advent we have so rich a liturgy encompassing the great solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and rounding its weekly cycle off with the tender feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is enough to make one feel drunk with new wine just to think about all that is opening out before us in this week. We want to linger especially today on that great solemnity of our Immaculate Mother. It could be that this great solemnity which is meant to bring us so close to our Mother could really separate us from her if we did not enter profoundly into its meaning. She was immaculate; she was born without sin, and she lived without sin; and death could not hold her in the tomb because she was without sin and therefore the penalty of death had nothing to do with her.

And so, we could think, what does this have to do with me? I, who have a whole life of accumulation of sin and dreary faults committed again and again. What do we mean—in that prayer of the Church—that we should come with clean hearts to God? How can we ever come with a clean heart to God? Is this not something reserved to our Immaculate Mother? We just seem to get dirtier and dirtier all the time. How can this be a real prayer, a sincere prayer? It seems that no sooner have we got a little bit clean than we are soiled again; and Scripture itself could seem very depressing when it says the just man, the man in perfect holiness, falls seven times a day. We could sit back and say, “Oh, dear!”—and then we want to pray to come to God with a clean heart?

None of us would stand up and say, “Well, I None of us would stand up and say, “Well, I None of us would stand up and say, “Well, I am the just woman.” But even then I would fall seven times a day!

Francis P.C.C., Mother Mary. Come, Lord Jesus (p. 77-78). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

 

Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C., (1921-2006) was for more than forty years the abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, New Mexico. She became recognized as an authoritative voice for the renewal of religious life through her many books, including A Right to Be Merry, But I Have Called You Friends, and Anima Christi.  To learn more about Mother Mary Francis and the Poor Clare Nuns of Roswell, NM visit their website at https://poorclares-roswell.org

Discerning Hearts is grateful to Cluny Media whose permission was obtained to record these audio selections from this published work.

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CLJ4 – Faith, Hope, Love – ‘Come, Lord Jesus’ by Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C.

An excerpt from Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of Waiting:

CLJ4 – Faith, Hope, Love

“When Jesus saw their faith he said, “As for you, your sins are forgiven” (Lk 5:20).

“My dear Sisters, today in the Gospel our Lord praises the faith of those who lowered the paralytic through the roof so that Jesus could heal him. Let us continue to reflect on the theme we had in the Sunday readings of giving evidence that we wish to reform our lives, and let us examine the evidence of our own willingness to be healed, which pertains to faith, hope, and charity. To reform literally means, not to make a new form, but to go back to the original form. The Cistercian abbot Dom Gabriel Sortais, O.C.S.O., said, “Our Lady was exactly as God dreamed her.”

She never had to be reshaped; the form never had to be reintegrated. Unfortunately, we often need to be reshaped and reformed. Yet that, too, is beautiful: that we are formed again, not in a different way, but back to that dream (a lovely expression) that God has of each one of us, that dream-form in the mind and the heart of God of what he intends each of us to be. This is what we mean by reform. Faith, we are told in Scripture, is the substance of things unseen. It is easy to say, “I believe in God.”

But to say that “I believe that God is in control” can be very hard—to really give him the evidence of the heart, of the soul bowed down before him, sometimes in confusion at what he seems to be doing (and not doing) and sometimes in real anguish—and to believe. This is the evidence he is asking of us. We tend to think of faith as a lovely thing. Faith is not just a matter of speaking, but it is a matter of believing when it is difficult to believe.”

Francis P.C.C., Mother Mary. Come, Lord Jesus (pp. 86-87). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C., (1921-2006) was for more than forty years the abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, New Mexico. She became recognized as an authoritative voice for the renewal of religious life through her many books, including A Right to Be Merry, But I Have Called You Friends, and Anima Christi.  To learn more about Mother Mary Francis and the Poor Clare Nuns of Roswell, NM visit their website at https://poorclares-roswell.org

Discerning Hearts is grateful to Cluny Media whose permission was obtained to record these audio selections from this published work.