O Sweet Virgin Mary

Is Faith More Than Believing?

Having faith in God does not just believe that He exists. The demons and Satan himself knows God exist, and we can’t actually call them faithful to God.

Having faith in God not just mean believing in Him and His words, but realizing them. Making them real! It has no use in believing in God and setting Him aside in your life like everything else. There is no use hearing His words if we do not listen to it. Having faith in God is to accept that HE IS GOD! That means He owns you and you have to submit yourself to Him.

Having faith is to rearrange one’s life in accordance to God and His designs. Faith does not only happen in our intellect, but in our very being. To have faith is to obey!

Why is Abraham called the "father of all who believe"? Because he obeyed God even though God was asking something improbable.  At the ripe age of 99, God asked Abraham to move out of the city into the desert and make him the “father of all nations.” At pass 100 years old, God promised that we would bear a son. And Abraham believed.

The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment of faith. Why? Because God asked something impossible of her, virgin birth. And she believed and said “Fiat” (Be done to me according to your word).

Faith calls us to submit. Faith calls us to obey.  That is what real faith is.

If your faith is just something that happens in your head or in your mouth, chances are, it is not real.

For faith to be real, it has to be seen in our lives and our being. It cannot be “put under a basket”.

To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment. (#144 Catechism of the Catholic Church)

The Secret of Mary:The Way to Divine Union - By Saint Louis DeMontfort

One must will to become the total possession and property of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This requires us to adopt the soul of Mary as the spiritual chapel for the prayers and offerings of our own soul.

The secret requires that, for the rest of our lives, we perform all of our actions as slaves of love for Mary and that we trust her entirely for everything. The chief difficulty is to enter into the spirit of this devotion, which requires adopting an interior dependence on Mary. I have met many people who, with admirable zeal, have set about exteriorly practicing this holy devotion to Jesus through Mary, but I have met only a few who have actually understood the true secret of its interior spirit of total dependence, and fewer still who have persevered in it.

Read the Secret of Mary here

Has All Your Hurrying Led You Somewhere?

We live in the society who is on “the go”. We are always hurrying somewhere and rushing something. The last thing you can say about our society is lazy.

But I am saying it.

We are a lazy society!

What?

We work more than 8 hours a day, even on weekends. We have sacrificed our families for the sake of work. How could we be lazy?

We are lazy. We are lazy in the important things in life. We are busybodies on things that are fleeting and unsubstantial. We are “on the go” and going nowhere.

Our being busy is just an excuse for our laziness for the things that matter. Like loving God and our neighbor. We create an atmosphere where we can excuse ourselves not to help our needy brothers and sisters. We are even too busy that we have no time to pray.

Yet we always have time to “chill out” or “unwind”. We say we deserve it, and maybe we do. But it is amazing how much down time we can afford. Yet when it comes to visiting an orphanage or a shelter, we are simply just too busy for it. “I need that time to rest.” is our excuse. But when it comes to going out, even sleep deprivation cannot hinder us.

Our Holy Mother Mary teaches us about the right hurrying.

"In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah" to help her pregnant cousin Elizabeth. Even though Mary herself was pregnant, she endured the long hours of travel and harsh landscape just to help her cousin who was in need. She set aside her own inconvenience for the sake charity.

And she went in “haste”. Mary did not procrastinate nor made excuses, which she could have since she was pregnant. But she did not. We are so unlike our Mother. We find a bit of traveling already an excuse not help. It took days for Mary to reach Elizabeth. And she was riding a donkey! And we find a bit of commuting bothersome.

Mary is the model of service. Her service does not delay. Her service goes out to the needy and does not wait for the needy to come to her.

True love hurries towards the beloved.

Love is not passive, but active.

Love does not sit lazily at home. Love goes out seeking those who are unloved and unwanted.

Let us be like our Mother Mary, who is always in “haste” in loving us.

Written by Daxx Bondoc