Death and Taxes-Divine Mercy Miracles Meditations

Death and Taxes

Monday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 17:22-27

As Jesus and his disciples were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is to be handed over to men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day." And they were overwhelmed with grief. When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter and said, "Doesn´t your teacher pay the temple tax?" "Yes," he said. When he came into the house, before he had time to speak, Jesus asked him, "What is your opinion, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take tolls or census tax? From their subjects or from foreigners?" When he said, "From foreigners," Jesus said to him, "Then the subjects are exempt. But that we may not offend them, go to the sea, drop in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up. Open its mouth and you will find a coin worth twice the temple tax. Give that to them for me and for you."

Introductory Prayer: Lord God, I believe in Your presence here with me as I begin this moment of prayer. I hope in You. I know that You will always take care of me. I want this time with You to be a sign of my love for You. I seek only to please You, without desiring any spiritual consolation for myself.

Petition: Lord, help me to acknowledge Your greatness with my words and actions.

1. No Tax Loopholes, Not Even for Jesus: Jesus draws from Peter the admission that collectors of the Temple Tax did not consider him the Son of God, and that they did not consider the Temple the house of his Father. They therefore thought he was subject to the tax. In effect, by obliging him to pay the tax they implied that they considered him a subject or a foreigner. Joined with Jesus’ prediction of his Passion, the scene harkens back to the line from the opening of John’s Gospel, “He was in the world and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him” (John 1:10-11). How this must have broken the heart of Christ to find himself unwelcome among those he came to save. And how often we leave Christ alone in our churches and chapels, with no one to visit him or acknowledge his presence there.

2. A Place Where Christ Is Welcome: What does it mean for us to welcome Christ into our life? It must be more than a warm emotion. Rather it must be opening ourselves to the presence of him who comes to make his home among us and share our lives. We have a God who is so close to us and wants a relationship with us. He wants our time and our attention. Welcoming Christ into our life means recognizing him not as a foreigner who comes from afar to impose himself, but as our personal Lord -- as our master, and our savior. It is his will that must rule in our life and direct our behavior. We must acknowledge that only he has the word of life and we must turn our lives to him in loving obedience. The fruit of this will be interior peace and profound joy.

3. A Society Without Christ Is Empty and Confused: Today we see how frequently Christ is refused entry into the world, and how frequently he is marginalized by so many of those who have great influence in society and in our culture. He is deliberately excluded from the world of politics, from the world of science, the arts, of business, law, and medicine. Often he is treated in the media only when it chooses to ridicule him. As followers of Christ, we must bring him and his word of life back into every sphere of human activity, for a world without Christ is a world that knows neither its origin nor its destiny and will turn against man himself.

Conversation with Christ: Jesus, give me courage to make Your presence felt in the world around me. Let me not be afraid to show that my faith in You is the center of my life and gives meaning to all I do. Let me give witness of the joy I experience in living by Your law in my life.

Resolution: I will find time to spend with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament today or find a way to give witness to Christ in the midst of my daily occupations, manifesting my faith publicly.

Excerpts from the DIARY of Saint Faustina Kowalska

62 O life so dull and monotonous, how many treasures you contain! When I look at everything with the eyes of faith, no two hours are alike, and the dullness and monotony disappear. The grace which is given me in this hour will not be repeated in the next. It may be given me again, but it will not be the same grace. Time goes on, never to return again. Whatever is enclosed in it will never change; it seals with a seal for eternity.

66 O inexhaustible treasure of purity of intention which makes all our actions perfect and so pleasing to God!

O Jesus, You know how weak I am; be then ever with me; guide my actions and my whole being, You who are my very best Teacher! Truly, Jesus, I become frightened when I look at my own misery, but at the same time I am reassured by Your unfathomable mercy, which exceeds my misery by the measure of all eternity. This disposition of soul clothes me in Your power. O joy that flows from the knowledge of one's self! O unchanging Truth, Your constancy is everlasting!

69 +O Jesus, eternal Truth, strengthen my feeble forces; You can do all things, Lord. I know that without You all my efforts are in vain. O Jesus, do not hide from me, for I cannot live without You. Listen to the cry of my soul. Your mercy has not been exhausted, Lord, so have pity on my misery. Your mercy surpasses the understanding of all Angels and people put together; and so, although it seems to me that You do not hear me, I put my trust in the ocean of Your mercy, and I know that my hope will not be deceived.

70 Only Jesus knows how burdensome and difficult it is to accomplish one's duties when the soul is so interiorly tortured, the physical powers so weakened and the mind darkened. In the silence of my heart I kept saying to myself, "O Christ, may delights, honor and glory be Yours, and suffering be mine. I will not lag one step behind as I follow You, though thorns wound my feet."

73 O my Jesus, despite the deep night that is all around me and the dark clouds which hide the horizon, I know that the sun never goes out. O Lord, though I cannot comprehend You and do not understand Your ways, I nonetheless trust in Your mercy. If it is Your will, Lord, that I live always in such darkness, may You be blessed. I ask You only one thing, Jesus: do not allow me to offend You in any way. O my Jesus, You alone know the longings and the sufferings of my heart. I am glad I can suffer for You, however little. When I feel that the suffering is more than I can bear, I take refuge in the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and I speak to Him with profound silence.

78 Once when I was being crushed by these dreadful sufferings, I went into the chapel and said from the bottom of my soul, "Do what You will with me, O Jesus; I will adore You in everything. May Your will be done in me, O my Lord and my God, and I will praise Your infinite mercy." Through this act of submission, these terrible torments left me. Suddenly I saw Jesus, who said to me, I am always in your heart. An inconceivable joy entered my soul, and a great love of God set my heart aflame. I see that God never tries us beyond what we are able to suffer. Oh, I fear nothing; if God sends such great suffering to a soul, He upholds it with an even greater grace, although we are not aware of it. One act of trust at such moments gives greater glory to God than whole hours passed in prayer filled with consolations. Now I see that if God wants to keep a soul in darkness, no book, no confessor can bring it light.

80 O Jesus, Divine Prisoner of Love, when I consider Your love and how You emptied Yourself for me, my senses fail me. You hide Your inconceivable majesty and lower Yourself to miserable me. O King of Glory, though You hide Your beauty, yet the eye of my soul rends the veil. I see the angelic choirs giving You honor without cease, and all the heavenly Powers praising You without cease, and without cease they are saying: Holy, Holy, Holy.

Oh, who will comprehend Your love and Your unfathomable mercy toward us! O Prisoner of Love, I lock up my poor heart in this tabernacle, that it may adore You without cease night and day. I know of no obstacle in this adoration, and even though I be physically distant, my heart is always with You. Nothing can put a stop to my love for You. No obstacles exist for me. O my Jesus, I will console You for all the ingratitude, the blasphemies, the coldness, the hatred of the wicked, the sacrileges. O Jesus, I want to burn as 'a pure offering and to be consumed before the throne of Your hiddenness. I plead with You unceasingly for poor dying sinners.

81 O Holy Trinity, One and Indivisible God, may You be blessed for this great gift and testament of mercy. My Jesus, to atone for blasphemers I will keep silent when unjustly reprimanded and in this way make partial amends to You. I am singing within my soul an unending hymn to You, and no one will suspect or understand this. The song of my soul is known to You alone, O my Creator and Lord!

82 I will not allow myself to be so absorbed in the whirlwind of work as to forget about God. I will spend all my free moments at the feet of the Master hidden in the Blessed Sacrament. He has been tutoring me from my most tender years.

91 O my Jesus, You alone know what persecutions I suffer, and this only because I am being faithful to You and following Your orders. You are my strength; sustain me that I may always carry out what You ask of me. Of myself I can do nothing, but when You sustain me, all difficulties are nothing for me. O my Lord, I can see very well that from the time when my soul first received the capacity to know You, my life has been a continual struggle which has become increasingly intense.

Every morning during meditation, I prepare myself for the whole day's struggle. Holy Communion assures me that I will win the victory; and so it is. I fear the day when I do not receive Holy Communion. This Bread of t lie Strong gives me all the strength I need to carry on my mission and the courage to do whatever the Lord asks of me. The courage and strength that are in me are not of me, but of Him who lives in me - it is the Eucharist.

O my Jesus, the misunderstandings are so great; sometimes, were it not for the Eucharist, I would not have the courage to go any further along the way You have marked out for me.

92 Humiliation is my daily food. I understand that the bride must herself share in everything that is the groom's; and so His cloak of mockery must cover me, too. At those times when I suffer much, I try to remain silent, as I do not trust my tongue which, at such moments, is inclined to talk for itself, while its duty is to help me praise God for all the blessings and gifts which He has given me. When I receive Jesus in Holy Communion, I ask Him fervently to deign to heal my tongue so that I would offend neither God nor neighbor by it. I want my tongue to praise God without cease. Great are the faults committed by the tongue. The soul will not attain sanctity if it does not keep watch over its tongue.

January 30, 1937. One-day retreat.

903 I am coming to know God's greatness more and more and to rejoice in Him. I remain unceasingly with Him in the depths of my heart. It is in my own soul that I most easily find God.

904 During my meditation, I heard these words: My daughter, you give Me most glory by patiently submitting to My will, and you win for yourself greater merit than that which any fast or mortification could ever gain for you. Know, My daughter, that if you submit your will to Mine, you draw upon yourself My special delight. This sacrifice is pleasing to Me and full of sweetness. I take great pleasure in it; there is power in it.

923 February 7, [1937]. Today, the Lord said to me, I demand of you a perfect and whole-burnt offering; an offering of the will. No other sacrifice can compare with this one. I myself am directing your life and arranging things in such a way that you will be for Me a continual sacrifice and will always do My will. And for the accomplishment of this offering, you will unite yourself with Me on the Cross. I know what you can do. I myself will give you many orders directly, but I will delay the possibility of their being carried out and make it depend on others. But what the superiors will not manage to do, I myself will accomplish directly in your soul. And in the most hidden depths of your soul, a perfect holocaust will be carried out, not just for a while, but know, My daughter, that this offering will last until your death. But there is time, so that I the Lord will fulfill all your wishes. I delight in you as in a living host; let nothing terrify you; I am with you.

930 + O my Jesus, although I will go to You, and You will fill me with Yourself, and that will make my happiness complete, I will nevertheless not forget about humanity. I desire to draw aside the veils of heaven, so that the earth would have no doubts about The Divine Mercy. My repose is in proclaiming Your mercy. The soul gives the greatest glory to its Creator when it turns with trust to The Divine Mercy.

944 + There are moments when I mistrust myself, when I feel my own weakness and wretchedness in the most profound depths of my own being, and I have noticed that I can endure such moments only by trusting in the infinite mercy of God. Patience, prayer and silence-these are what give strength to the soul. There are moments when one should be silent, and when it would be inappropriate to talk with creatures; these are the moments when one is dissatisfied with oneself, and when the soul feels as weak as a little child. Then the soul clings to God with all its might. At such times, I live solely by faith, and when I feel strengthened by God's grace, then I am more courageous in speaking and communicating with my neighbors.

946 February 12, [1937]. Today, the presence of God is piercing me through and through, like a ray from the sun. My soul is longing for God so intensely that I fall into a swoon every now and then. I feel Eternal Love touching my heart, and my littleness cannot bear it, and this causes me to swoon. Still, my interior strength is great, and my soul wants to match the Love with which it is loved. The soul at such moments has a very deep knowledge of God, and the more it comes to know Him, the purer and more fervent does its love for Him become. How unfathomable are the mysteries of the soul and God!

947 Sometimes there are whole hours when my soul is lost in wonder at seeing the infinite majesty of God abasing Itself to the level of my soul. Unending is my interior astonishment that the Most High Lord is pleased in me and tells me so Himself. And I immerse myself even deeper in my nothingness, because I know what I am of myself. Still I must say that I, in return, love my Creator to folly with every beat of my heart and with every nerve; my soul unconsciously drowns, drowns... in Him. I feel that nothing will separate me from the Lord, neither heaven nor earth, neither the present nor the future. Everything may change, but love never, never; it is always the same. He, the Immortal Mighty One, makes His will known to me that I may love Him very specially, and He himself makes my soul capable of the kind of love with which He wants me to love Him. I bury myself more and more in Him, and I fear nothing.

Love has overtaken my whole heart, and even if I were to be told of God's justice and of how even the pure spirits tremble and cover their faces before Him, saying endlessly, "Holy," which would seem to suggest that my familiarity with God would be to the detriment of His honor and majesty, [I would reply,] "O no, no, and once again, no!" In pure love, there is room for everything: the highest praise and the deepest adoration, yet the soul is immersed in Him in deepest peace through love; and the words of people, speaking from the exterior, have no effect upon that soul. What they tell the soul about God is but a pale shadow in comparison to its own experience of Him; and it is often surprised how other people can be struck with admiration at what someone else says about God when, for this soul, it is nothing special, as it knows that what can be put into words is not yet that great. So this soul listens to everything with respect, but has its own special life in God.

+ J.M.J. February 12, 1937

+ The Love of God is the flower - Mercy the fruit.

949 Let the doubting soul read these considerations on Divine Mercy and become trusting. [171]

Divine Mercy, gushing forth from the bosom of the Father, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, greatest attribute of God, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, incomprehensible mystery, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, fount gushing forth from the mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, unfathomed by any intellect, human or angelic, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, from which wells forth all life and happiness, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, better than the heavens, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, source of miracles and wonders, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, encompassing the whole universe, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, descending to earth in the Person of the Incarnate Word, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, which flowed out from the open wound of the Heart of Jesus, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, enclosed in the Heart of Jesus for us, and especially for sinners, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, unfathomed in the institution of the Sacred Host, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, in the founding of Holy Church, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, in our justification through Jesus Christ, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, accompanying us through our whole life, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, embracing us especially at the hour of death, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, endowing us with immortal life, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, accompanying us every moment of our life, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, shielding us from the fire of hell, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, in the conversion of hardened sinners, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, astonishment for Angels, incomprehensible to Saints, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, unfathomed in all the mysteries of God, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, lifting us out of every misery, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, source of our happiness and joy, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, in calling us forth from nothingness to existence, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, embracing all the works of His hands, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, crown of all of God's handiwork, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, in which we are all immersed, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, sweet relief for anguished hearts, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, only hope of despairing souls, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, repose of hearts, peace amidst fear, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, delight and ecstasy of holy souls, I trust in You.

Divine Mercy, inspiring hope against all hope, I trust in You.

950 + Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.

1001 + J.M.J.
Thank You, O Lord, my Master,
That You have transformed me entirely into Yourself,
And accompany me through life's toils and labors;
I fear nothing when I have You in my heart.

+ J. M. J.

1002 The Lord's Supper is laid,
Jesus sits down at table with His Apostles,
His Being all transformed into love,
For such was the Holy Trinity's counsel.

With great desire, I desire to eat with you,
Before I suffer death.
About to leave you, love holds Me in your midst.
He sheds His Blood, gives His life, for He loves immensely.

Love hides beneath the appearance of bread,
Departing, He remains with us.
Such self-abasement was not needed,
Yet burning love hid Him under these species.

Over the bread and wine He says these words:
"This is My Blood, this is My Body."
Although mysterious, these are words of love.
Then He passes the Cup among His disciples.

Jesus grew deeply troubled within
And said, "One of you will betray his Master."
They fell silent, with a silence as of the tomb,
And John inclined his head on His breast.

The supper is ended.
Let us go to Gethsemane.
Love is satisfied, And there the traitor is waiting.

+ J.M.J.

1003 O Divine Will, You are my nourishment, You are my delight. Hasten, O Lord, the Feast of Mercy that souls may recognize the fountain of Your goodness.

God and souls.

Sister M. Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament.
Cracow, March 1, 1937.

1004 O will of the Omnipotent God,
You are my delight,
You are my joy.
Whatever the hand of my Lord holds out to me
I will accept with gladness, submission and love.

Your holy will is my repose;
In it is contained all my sanctity,
And all my eternal salvation,
For doing God's will is the greatest glory.

The will of God-those are His various wishes
Which my soul carries out without reserve,
Because such are His divine desires,
In those moments when God shares His confidences with me.

Do with me as You will, Lord.
I place no obstacles, I make no reservations.
For You are my whole delight and the love of my soul,
And to You, in turn, I pour out the confidences of my heart.

+ J.M.J. Cracow, March 1, 1937.
+ Third Notebook God and Souls.

1005 Let the glory and praise to The Divine Mercy rise from every creature throughout all ages and times.

1006 + O my Lord and God, You command me to write about the graces You grant me. O my Jesus, were it not for a clear command from my confessors,[178] that I am to write down what goes on in my soul, I would not, of my own choice, write a single word. And so, if I do write about myself, it is at the formal command of holy obedience.

1007 + Praise and glory be to You, O Holy Trinity, Eternal God. May the mercy springing from Your very bowels protect us from Your just anger. Let the praise of Your incomprehensible mercy resound everywhere. All Your works bear the seal of Your unfathomable mercy, O God.

(Diary of Sister Faustina Kowalska Notebook-I-62, 66, 69-70, 73, 78, 80-82, 91-92)

(Diary of Sister Faustina Kowalska Notebook-II-904, 923, 930, 944, 946, 947, 949-950)

(Diary of Sister Faustina Kowalska Notebook-III-1001-1007)

http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/semanal.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=866

http://www.saint-faustina.com/Diary/DMIMS10.shtml