From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
    True lovers of God.    
      
    When a true lover of God suffers at the hands of his fellow men, he   
   is strengthened through the grace of the Holy Spirit and is made so   
   truly humble and patient and peaceable that, whatever wrong or injury   
   he suffers, he always retains his humility. He does not despise his   
   persecutors or speak ill of them, but prays for them with pity and   
   compassion more tenderly than for those who never harmed him. And he   
   does indeed love them more, and more fervently desires their   
   salvation, because he sees that he will have such great spiritual gain   
   from their evil deed, even though they never intended that he should.   
   But this kind of love and humility, which are beyond human nature, are   
   only brought about by the Holy Spirit in those whom he makes true   
   lovers of God.   
   --Walter Hilton   
      
      
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   May 31st - Feast of the Visitation   
      
   And Mary rising up in those days went into the hill country with   
   haste, into a city of Juda. [Lk. 1:39]   
      
   How lyrical that is, the opening sentence of St. Luke’s description of   
   the Visitation. We can feel the rush of warmth and kindness, the   
   sudden urgency of love that sent that girl hurrying over the hills.   
   “Those days” in which she rose on that impulse were the days in which   
   Christ was being formed in her, the impulse was His impulse. Many   
   women, if they were expecting a child, would refuse to hurry over the   
   hills on a visit of pure kindness.  They would say they had a duty to   
   themselves and to their unborn child which came before anything or   
   anyone else.   
      
   The Mother of God considered no such thing. Elizabeth was going to   
   have a child, too and although Mary’s own child was God, she could not   
   forget Elizabeth’s need--almost incredible to us, but characteristic   
   of her. She greeted her cousin Elizabeth and at the sound of her   
   voice, John quickened in his mother’s womb and leapt for joy.   
      
   I am come, said Christ, that they may have life and may have it more   
   abundantly. [Jn. 10, 10] Even before He was born His presence gave   
   life.   
      
   With what piercing shoots of joy does this story of Christ unfold!   
   First the conception of a child in a child’s heart and then this first   
   salutation, an infant leaping for joy in his mother’s womb, knowing   
   the hidden Christ and leaping into life.   
      
   How did Elizabeth herself know what had happened to Our Lady?  What   
   made her realize that this little cousin who was so familiar to her   
   was the mother of her God? She knew it by the child within herself, by   
   the quickening into life which was a leap of joy.   
      
   If we practice this contemplation taught and shown to us by Our Lady,   
   we will find that our experience is like hers.  If Christ is growing   
   in us, if we are at peace, recollected, because we know that however   
   insignificant our life seems to be, from it He is forming Himself;  if   
   we go with eager wills, “in haste,” to wherever our circumstances   
   compel us because we believe that He desires to be in that place, we   
   shall find that we are driven more and more to act on the impulse of   
   His love.   
      
   And the answer we shall get from others to those impulses will be an   
   awakening into life  or the leap into joy of the already wakened life   
   within them.  Excerpted from The Reed of God, Caryll Houselander   
      
      
   Bible Quote:   
   “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my   
   Savior. Because he that is mighty, hath done great things to me, and   
   holy is His name” (Lk. 1:46).   
      
      
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   Arise Mary, Mother of God!   
      
   It is the time for your Visitation.   
   Arise Mary, and go forth in your strength   
   into that north country,   
   which once was your own,   
   and take possession of a land   
   which knows you not.   
   Arise, Mother of God,   
   and with your thrilling voice,   
   speak to those who labour with child,   
   and are in pain,   
   till the babe of grace leaps within them!   
   Amen   
   --Blessed Cardinal JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (1801-1890)--   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)