Perhaps no other appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary has captured people’s hearts and imaginations like those she made to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France in 1858. Our Lady appeared eighteen times that year to an impoverished, uneducated fourteen-year-old girl who lived with her family in an old jail. Since that time, more than five thousand healings are reported to have taken place in the spot where the Blessed Mother appeared; sixty-four of them the Catholic Church has proclaimed “miraculous.”
February 11
"Today people are suffering from poverty, but also from lack of love."
-Pope Francis
Today's Reflection:
Where am I lacking in love in my life? When I say that I love something or someone, what do I really mean? Ask God to open your heart to scatter more love wherever you go, love that only He can provide.
Woman of Grace: St. Scholastica (480 – 543)
St. Gregory the Great recounts this story from the life of St. Benedict’s beloved twin sister, St. Scholastica, which shows how expressing our petitions to God with childlike faith and confidence sometimes yields immediate and amazing results.
After Benedict founded a monastery for men, Scholastica remained very close to her brother, founding a convent for women some miles away. Every year Scholastica went to visit Benedict at a little place just outside the monastery gate.
February 10
"Love is not a sentiment or feeling. Love is actively willing the good of the other."
-Bishop Robert Barron
Today's Reflection:
Often times, we think that love is simply a feeling towards another, an emotional response to a person. However, as Bishop Barron tells us, love is to actively will the good of the other. Wow! What a beautiful definition. Today, ask God to show you where you can turn your love for someone, especially Him, into action.
February 6
"Our Lord loves you and loves you tenderly; and if He does not let you feel the sweetness of His love, it is to make you more humble and abject in your own eyes."
-St. Pio of Pietrelcino
Today's Reflection
What are your reactions to God's love? Do you embrace it and accept it, regardless of whether you feel its sweetness? Or do you reject it when you do not feel its consolations? Spend some time letting God love you today, even if you do not feel it initially.
February 5
"Jesus does not say 'no' to the authentic demands of the heart, but only a clear, loud 'yes' to life, to love, to freedom, to peace and to hope. With Him no goal is impossible and even a small act of generosity grows and can lead to change."
-St. John Paul the Great
Today's Reflection
What are the demands of my heart? Are they demands that desire God's will alone, or are they demands that have grown from my own desires to serve myself?
