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My Soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!"
J.M.J.
April 29, 2015
St. Catherine of Siena
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! I am with you also today to lead you to salvation. Your soul is restless because your spirit is weak and tired from all worldly things. You, little children, pray to the Holy Spirit that He may transform you and fill you with His strength of faith and hope, so that you may be firm in this battle against evil. I am with you and intercede for you before my Son Jesus. Thank you for having responded to my call." (April 25, 2015)
Many
of you have suggested that a key to this message is in the first two
lines of the Magnificat, Our Lady's song of joy. I agree! Let's take
some time that Scripture.
"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." (Luke 1: 46-47)
Clearly
Our Lady refers to her soul and her spirit individually. She is aware
of these two facets of her person. And what does she say about each?
"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord..."
Our Lady's soul proclaims. To proclaim is to "announce officially or
publicly." Another definition says, "declare something one considers
important with due emphasis." To proclaim is a public act, a way of
spreading the news. It is social in nature since a proclamation must
have an audience. And it is saying something with certainty, putting
your name and your person behind it. So Our Lady was declaring with
great conviction that the Lord is great! And this was an act of her
soul.
I
like that part of it. Our soul is the seat of our person, the place
where our unique being exists, with all our faculties and higher gifts.
Our soul is associated with our heart, the center of our being, with our
mind and our will and our senses and emotions. So proclaiming something
from the soul is saying it with one's entire being. It is putting
everything on the line for that proclamation. Doesn't this sound like
Our Lady? She loves God with her whole heart, her whole soul and her
whole strength. And with all of herself she honors God as great!
Okay, now for the next line: "And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."
Our Lady's spirit rejoices in God her Savior. The meaning of rejoice:
"feel or show great joy or delight." I like this list of synonyms:
"happiness, pleasure, joy, gladness, delight, elation, jubilation,
exuberance, exultation, celebration, revelry and merrymaking." Clearly
her spirit is capable of feeling, of experiencing the joy of knowing
God. Her spirit encounters God and is filled with joy. She knows her
Lord. And that knowledge fills her with delight.
I
like this so much! It makes sense to me. Our Lady's spirit communicates
with God and receives from Him so much grace that the joy is
uncontainable. It tells us something about the spirit's function. Our
spirits are what make us able to experience God, who is Spirit. Our
spirits know and communicate with God. This is how we pray, how we
worship, how we adore. Our spirit reaches out to God in prayer.
So what does this tell us? Well, Our Lady told us something about our souls and spirits: "Your soul is restless because your spirit is weak and tired from all worldly things."
Our souls are restless. It is as if they are attention deficit. They
are not focused. Our Lady's soul was focused on one thing, God. And it
was capable of proclaiming the greatness of God. Our Lady's soul was not
restless, it was busy loving and praising God.
Our
Lady also tells us our spirits are weak and tired from all worldly
things. Our Lady's spirit was anything but weak or tired. Her spirit was
rejoicing in the Lord. It was filled with joy, elation, happiness. No
tiredness here. Our souls are weak and tired because they do not
encounter God. They are left to be helplessly bombarded with worldly
affairs. Why? Because we don't pray, we don't put God in the first
place, we are preoccupied with temporal affairs, and we are worldly. Our
Lady is anything but these things.
I
think Our Lady's spirit of joy in God is what is feeding her soul with
truth and wonder, so that she can proclaim the greatness of God.
I
think our spirits are full of the world which is feeding our souls
garbage and that is why our souls are upset, restless, aimless and lost.
So, the answer for us is still the same: "You,
little children, pray to the Holy Spirit that He may transform you and
fill you with His strength of faith and hope, so that you may be firm in
this battle against evil."
If
we want to have spirits and souls like Mary, we need to call on the
Holy Spirit in prayer and repent of our worldliness. We need His
strength of faith and hope so we can fight off the temptations that our
enemy constantly is throwing at us. We need to fill our spirits with God
and feed our souls with the wonder and knowledge of the greatness of
God. Then we will be able to magnify the Lord like our Mother.
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2015
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Saint John Paul II
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