1/3 Feast of the Epiphany

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May Christ bless this House…
All who dwell and pray in it…
And All Whom they Welcome in His Name

BLESSING OF A HOME AT EPIPHANY

Epiphany, the 12th day after Christmas, celebrates the visit of the three kings or wise men to the Christ Child, signifying the extension of salvation to the Gentiles.  Epiphany is traditionally celebrated on January 6th.

V. On entering the house the Magi found the child Jesus with Mary his mother.

R. They did him homage and presented to Jesus symbolic gifts: gold to the great king, incense to the true God, and myrrh as a foreshadowing of his suffering and death. Let us pray, God, our Father, by the guidance of a star, you revealed your only Son as the Savior of all nations. Grant that we who already know you by faith, may be brought to the contemplation of your glory in our heavenly home. We ask this through Christ your Son Our Lord. Amen.

All may recite the Canticle of the Blessed Virgin Mary (The MAGNIFICAT) by which Mary praised God at the time of her Visitation to the house of Elizabeth. St. Luke’s Gospel Chapter 1, verses 46-55.

My soul glorifies the Lord, 
my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.
He looks on His servant in her lowliness;
henceforth all ages will call me Blessed. 

The Almightly works marvels for me.
Holy is His Name!
His Mercy is from age to age,
on those who fear Him.

He puts forth His arm in strength
and scatters the proud-hearted.
He casts the mighty from their thrones
and raises the lowly.

He fills the starving with good things,
sends the rich away empty.

He protects Israel, His servant,
remembering His Mercy,
the Mercy promised to our fathers,
to Abraham and his sons forever. 

V. Be enlightened, O Jerusalem, and shine forth for your light has come.
R. And upon you is risen the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary. V. All nations shall walk in your light and kings in the splendor of your birth.
R. And upon you is risen the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary.

Reading of the Gospel for the Solemnity of the Epiphany of Our Lord. St. Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 2, verses 1 to 12

V. Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, has appeared and been revealed to the nations. R. The prophets foretold his coming, and the angels and shepherds adored him.
V. The Magi rejoiced to find him and they lay their treasures before him.
R. All you nations and peoples, come and adore him.

All recite the OUR FATHER as the rooms of the house are sprinkled with holy water.

Let us pray.
Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have received all benefits.

Come, visit and bless + this house so that it may be a shelter of health, chastity, self-conquest, humility, goodness, mildness, obedience to the Commandments, – and thanksgiving to God, – The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.

May the love and blessings of God, + The Father, and + The Son, and + The Holy Spirit, descend upon this house, all those who reside within it, and upon all those whom they welcome in the Name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And may God’s grace and peace remain with all of them forever. Amen.

The initials of the names ascribed by tradition to the Magi (Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar), and the numerals of the current year are written with the blessed chalk upon the entry doors of the house in the following manner:

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Some interpret the letters to stand for Christus Mansioni Benedicat! May Christ bless this house! 

As we begin this New Jubilee Year 2016…

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…let us resolve to read from the Writings of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta  every day

Our Lord:   in these times so stormy and with a vertiginous race in evil, I could not give Greater Grace than making known that I want to give the Great Gift of the Kingdom of the Supreme Fiat. And as a confirmation of this, I am preparing It within you (the Servant of God, Luisa Piccarreta) with so many Knowledges and Gifts, so that nothing may be lacking to the Triumph of My Will. Therefore, be attentive on the deposit of this Kingdom which I am making in you (Luisa).”

Volume 19 – September 9, 1926

September 9, 1926
When Jesus speaks, He gives the good which His word encloses. In the Divine Will there will be neither slaves, nor rebels, nor laws, nor commands.

I was thinking: “How much Power, how many Goods are enclosed in the Holy Divine Will. How everything is Peace in It, everything is Happiness, nor does one need commands in order to operate, but one’s own nature feels so much strength of Good within itself that it cannot help doing it. What Happiness, to feel one’s own nature converted into Good, into Sanctity, into Strength. So, in the Kingdom of the Supreme Will there will be no laws, but everything will be Love, and one’s nature will be converted into Divine Law, in such a way that, of its own, it will want to do what the Supreme Fiat wants it to do.”

Now, while I was thinking of this, my always lovable Jesus, with His usual light which He sent forth from His intelligence, told me: “My daughter, everything I have told you about My Will has been gifts that I have given you. Knowledge is not enough if one does not possess the good which that very knowledge contains. If it were not so, the Knowledge would render you unhappy, because knowing a Good and not possessing it is always a sorrow. More so, since I do not know how to leave things half-done, but only fully complete; therefore, first I dispose the soul, I expand her capacity, and then I give the knowledge together with the good it contains. And since the Knowledges about My Will are Divine, this is why her nature remains endowed with the likeness of the Divine Nature and, more than a daughter, she does not wait for a command but, without being told, feels honored to do what her Father wants.

“Laws and commands are for servants, for slaves, for rebels. In the Kingdom of the Supreme Fiat there will be no servants, no slaves, no rebels, but one will be the Will – that of God and that of the creature – and therefore one will be the Life. This is also the reason why I am saying so much and so many things about My Will – to abound in Gifts, not only for you, but for any soul who wants to come to Live in My Kingdom, so that she may lack nothing, need nothing, but possess the Source of Goods within herself. I would not act as the God that I am – Great, Powerful, Rich, Magnanimous – if in having to constitute the Kingdom of My Will I did not Endow those who must Live in It with the Prerogatives and Qualities that My very Will possesses. Even more, You Must Know that just as all things have come out of that Single Act of God, so must everything return to that Single Act which has no succession of acts. But only the one who leaves everything to Live only of My Will can return to that Single Act, because as the soul Lives in It, everything she does converts into Light, and her acts are naturally incorporated and identified with the Eternal Light of the Sun of My Will, and, as a consequence, they become one Single Act with the single act of It. On the other hand, in one who operates outside of It one can see, not Light, but each of the materials that her work contains, which cannot be incorporated with the Light of the Single Act of God, and therefore it will show immediately that it is not Our thing – that it does not belong to Us. So, anything which is not done by virtue of the Divine Fiat will not be recognized by God.

“Suppose you wanted to unite light and darkness, copper and gold, rocks and earth: would one not distinguish with clarity the light from the darkness, the copper from the gold, the rocks from the earth? And this, because these are materials, one different from the other. But if you united, all together, light with light, darkness with darkness, gold with gold, you would not be able to distinguish nor separate the first light from the second, the first darkness from the second, the first mass of gold from the second. So it is with My Will: what It Itself does in the creature is Light, and it is no wonder that it becomes incorporated in the Single Act of Its Eternal Light. Therefore, in these times so stormy and with a vertiginous race in evil, I could not give Greater Grace than making known that I want to give the Great Gift of the Kingdom of the Supreme Fiat. And as a confirmation of this, I am preparing It within you (the Servant of God, Luisa Piccarreta) with so many Knowledges and Gifts, so that nothing may be lacking to the Triumph of My Will. Therefore, be attentive on the deposit of this Kingdom which I am making in you (Luisa).”

After this, I felt concerned because holy obedience had imposed on me not to neglect even one word of that which my sweet Jesus might say to me, while I easily leave them out because I am convinced that it is not necessary to write and to entrust to the paper certain intimate things, certain outpourings that Jesus makes to my poor soul, but that they should remain in the depths of the heart. So I was praying that He would give me the Grace not to fail the obedience. And Jesus, moving in my interior, told me: “My daughter, if the one who guides you and directs you gives you this obedience, it means that he has understood that it is I who speaks to you, as well as the Value that even a single word of Mine contains. My Word is Light, and is Full of Life, and one who possesses Life can give it; more so, since My Word contains the Creative Strength, and therefore a single Word of Mine can create innumerable Lives of Grace, Lives of Love, Lives of Light, Lives of My Will within souls. You yourself will not be able to comprehend the long way that a single Word of Mine can cover. Those who have ears will listen; those who have heart will be wounded. So, the one who guides you is right in giving you this obedience. Ah! you do not know how I assist him and remain around him while he reads My Writings and yours about My Will, so as to make him comprehend all the Strength of the Truths and of the Great Good contained in them. And he turns around My Will, and by Virtue of the Light that he feels, he is sending you this obedience. Therefore, be attentive, and I will help you and facilitate that which seems difficult to you.

You Must Know that My Heart is swollen, It agonizes and sighs because I want to make known the Kingdom of the Supreme Fiat, the Great Goods which are in It, and the Great Good which those who will possess It will receive. It is precisely in my Heart that I keep It, and I feel My Heart explode for I want to let It out. Don’t you want, then, to give Me this relief, so that, by letting It out, My Heart may deflate, and so It will not have to agonize and sigh with sorrowful sighs any more? And you will do this by making known what I manifest to you about My Will, because when you do this, you give Me the field in order to open the ways and prepare the place in which I must lay the Kingdom of My Will. And if you do not manifest what I say to you, you close these ways and My Heart swells even more. Therefore, let Me do, and you – follow Me and do not be concerned.”

Association Little Children of the Divine Will. Advent retreat: Luisa Piccareta

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Sunday, December 15, 2015 the Association Little Children of the Divine Will lived its new day of Advent Retreat in the light of the Divine Will.

Advent: a time of waiting and preparing for every Christian who truly feels the call for a transformation of inner life, to do the so-called “quantum leap”. Living it together means feeling that this desire is present and alive in all of us.

The retreat, which was held at the Parish Center “Luisa Piccarreta” of the Church Santa Maria Greca at  Corato, saw the participation of all the groups belonging to the Association and that of the group from Termoli that, with the Association, follows the same journey of faith.

• After the opening prayer, led by Sister Assunta with the praises to the Divine Will by Don Benedetto Calvi, the Holy Mass presided over by Fr. Sergio Pellegrini followed and then a reflection on the theme of Mercy and Justice.

The theme of Mercy is, as we know, at the base of the Jubilee opened last December 8 by Pope Francis and it is clearly analyzed and explained in his Bull of Indiction  Misericordiae Vultus. As he explained in an interview with the weekly magazine “Credere”, Mercy is the life of the Church: Paul VI anticipated it in the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II highlighted it in his encyclical letter Dives in Misericordia.

God never fails to show His Mercy to creatures, knowing their limitations and weaknesses, their continuous wandering between “falls” and desire to “get up.”

Sin, Fr. Sergio says, horrifies us only when we experiences God, for having opened our hearts to Him; when we are in front of the Deity, we acknowledge our fault and that’s when the cry of the sinner who fears the total abandonment by God arose. In His humanity, Jesus lived and comprehended everything in the garden of Gethsemane: the enormity of sin and even the abandonment by His own Father.

Jesus’ death would be certain, If Mary, his Mother, had not sustained him by Her own Will, by Her own Mercy just as any mother would do with her son when he asks for help.

But Justice corresponds with Mercy  and that is where Luisa, the little servant of the Divine Will, is called to carry out her office of “victim soul” to prevent the Divine Justice from unloading Itself upon all creatures when they insist on doing their own.

In short Mercy and Justice come to constitute the “supports” on which the humanity of Christ rests and those two supports are Mary and Luisa respectively, because by living in the Divine Will, they lived of His attributes, of His virtues, contributing to the fulfillment of the Supreme Fiat and the good (salvation) of mankind.

In the second part of the retreat we couldn’t leave out the reflection on the theme of Christmas and the value of this great feast that has its own roots in the Incarnation and prodigies that come with it.

• Starting from the Gospel of John, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (1:14), and in the light of the Divine Will, God’s descent from Heaven is an unstoppable flow of power, of wonders, of wisdom that His infinite love come to pour upon the earth.

It’s impossible for creatures to understand it fully, but the Supreme Being who possesses His incessant motion by nature and therefore the life of all things created in heaven and on earth, can’t stop His motion, otherwise all Creation would remain paralyze.

The Incarnation, therefore, departed from this incessant motion, the first and only motion, that multiplies itself enormously, and forms so many divine lives for how many creatures exist, since it is the Divinity itself that,  for justice, comes to redo every single life to return to the Father the glory and praise of all men.

And so much is the ardor of Jesus’ love for the creature that He takes no account of her ingratitude and in order to fulfill His great works He covers, for mercy, all her miseries with His Love, with His Will. Jesus come into the world to redeem all of us that were bought with a price because of His Love. So, it’s with the Incarnation and birth of Jesus that Christmas takes on its true meaning and the feast becomes the Feast of the Divine Will.

With these new meditations the day of Advent Retreat 2015 ends with the intention also, if we strongly desire this, to renew hope and experience the joy that the darkness can be converted into the light: Come, Lord Jesus, You are the light of the World!

 

Riccardina