Notes for this theme
Reading comfort
GRM 7.7
Intelligence is not given to everybody in the same way and at the same time. The Church has fixed the age of reason at six years of age, because that is the age when even a backward child can tell good from evil, at least in basically important matters. But there are children who long before that age are capable of discerning and understanding and wanting with sufficiently developed discretion.
GRM 7.8
7.8 What is reason? A gift of God. God can therefore give it as He wishes, to whom He wishes and when He wishes. Reason in fact is one of the things that makes you more like God, the Intelligent and Reasoning Spirit. Reason and intelligence were graces given by God to Man in the Earthly Paradise. How full of life they were, when Grace was alive, still intact and active in the spirit of the first two Parents!
The Book of Jesus Ben Sirach states: “All wisdom is from the Lord, and it is His own forever”. What wisdom, therefore, would men have had, had they remained children of God?
Book of Ben Sira the Wise
Si 1, 1 : All Wisdom comes from the Lord, and remains with Him forever.
GRM 7.8
The gaps in your intelligence are the natural fruits of your fall from Grace and honesty. By losing Grace you banished Wisdom for centuries. As a meteor, which is hidden behind masses of clouds, Wisdom no longer reached you with its bright flashes, but through mist which your prevarications have rendered thicker and thicker.
GRM 7.8
Then Christ came and He restored Grace, the supreme gift of the love of God. But do you know how to keep this gem clear and pure? No, you do not. When you do not crush it with your individual will in sinning, you soil it with your continuous minor faults, your weaknesses, your attachment to vice. Such attempts, even if they are not a proper marriage with the septiform vice, are a weakening of the light of Grace and of its activity. And then, to weaken the magnificent light of intelligence that God had given the First Parents, you have centuries and centuries of corruption, which exert a harmful influence on the body and on the mind.
GRM 8.7
When a priest talks in name of God, "his order is a sacred one."
GRM 8.8
He who possesses purity possesses love, he who possesses love possesses wisdom, he who possesses wisdom possesses generosity and heroism, because he knows why he makes a sacrifice.
GRM 8.8
But for you, My little Mary, has your Teacher nothing special to tell you? “Walk in My presence, be therefore perfect”. I am slightly modifying the sacred phrase and I am giving it to you as an order. Be perfect in love, perfect in generosity, perfect in suffering.
Look once again at Mother. And consider what so many ignore or wish to ignore, because sorrow is too irksome to their taste and their spirit. Sorrow. Mary suffered from the very first hour of Her life. To be perfect as She was, implied the possession of a perfect sensitivity. Consequently sacrifice was to be more piercing. And thus more meritorious. He who possesses purity possesses love, he who possesses love possesses wisdom, he who possesses wisdom possesses generosity and heroism, because he knows why he makes a sacrifice.
Raise your spirit, even if the cross bends you, breaks you and kills you. God is with you.»
GRM 9.3
The sacred fear of God is the root of the tree of wisdom, that thrusts its branches far and wide to reach with its top tranquil love in its peace, peaceful love in its security, secure love in its faithfulness, faithful love in its intensity: the total, generous, effective love of saints.
GRM 9.3
“He who loves her [Wisdom], loves life and will inherit Life” says Ecclesiasticus. This sentence is linked with Mine20: “He who loses his life for My sake, will save it”. Because we are not referring to the poor life of this world, but to the eternal life, not to the joys of one hour, but to the immortal ones.
Book of Ben Sira the Wise 4, 12-13
Si 4, 12-13 : To love her is to love life; those who seek her from the dawn will be filled with happiness; he who possesses her will obtain glory as an inheritance; where he enters, the Lord gives his blessing.
Gospel of Matthew 16:25
Mt 16, 25 : For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Gospel of Mark 8:35 and Gospel of Luke 9:24
Mk 8:35 / Lk 9:24: For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospel's will save it.
See EMV 346.9.
GRM 9.3
Children belong first to God and then to their parents. Every son can say what I said[3] to My Mother: “Do you not know that I must be busy with My Father’s affairs?” And every father, every mother must learn the attitude to be maintained looking at Mary and Joseph in the Temple, at Anne and Joachim in the house of Nazareth, a house which was becoming more and more forlorn and sad, but where one thing never diminished, but increased continuously: the holiness of two hearts, the holiness of a marriage.
What light is left to Joachim, an invalid, and to his sorrowful wife, in the long and silent nights of two old people who feel they are about to die? Only the little dresses, the first pair of little sandals, the simple toys of their little daughter, now far away, and memories of Her, memories… And peace when they say: “We are suffering, but we have done our duty of love towards God”.
Children belong to God before they belong to their parents. Every child can therefore repeat what I said to my Mother: "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house? "In Luke 2:49 (cf. EMV 41.12).
Gospel of Luke 2, 49
Lk 2, 49 : He said to them, "How is it that you sought me out? Did you not know that I must be at my Father's house?"