Thursday, June 13, 2013

St. Anthony Remained Her Great And Faithful Friend

On this the Feast of St. Anthony, blessed Feast Day to all of our readers~

In a manuscript entitled “St. Anthony”, Servant of God Luisa Cepollini (1880-1917)recounts the meticulous vigilance of the Saint over her soul, carried out by a teaching of the highest perfection. Until her death, St. Anthony remained her great and faithful Friend. Let us, therefore, draw from this precious “manuscript” some of the teachings given by St. Anthony to his privileged disciple:

Blessed are the pure of heart:

“On the evening of 7th March 1887- writes Luisa- I saw him for the first time. This meeting was the start of that relationship which would never end. Its immediate effect was the growth within me of the desire to know Jesus.” On the 17th of March she had a second visit from St. Anthony. “What are you thinking of that makes you weep thus?” asked the Saint. “Oh!...how I would love to know Jesus… You know Him so well, tell me something!” “Jesus… He alone is able to speak efficaciously to your soul, since He is the Word…but the good Master has said: Blessed are the pure of heart, because they will see God!” “And what is necessary in order to become pure?” “There are several degrees of purity… The degree that you must strive to procure consists in avoiding every voluntary fault.” Immediately the little girl, enlightened by a special grace, saw all her defects, which she did not even realize she had. She immediately became discouraged. But St. Anthony said to her: “Aim, my little daughter, at loving Jesus: it is the shortest way which leads to Him. It is the way which Jesus shows us by which we may come to know Him.”… “But is to love Jesus a virtue?...Oh, then I will have no difficulty…”. “Be careful, my little daughter – the Saint admonished- since you do not yet know well what it means to love God… Human love seeks to please itself in that which it loves; divine love desires that God is pleased with us, at our expense, and therefore lives a life of sacrifice. To love God means to forget oneself in order to think of Him, to overcome oneself so that He will triumph, to abandon oneself in order to be possessed by Him. Only by putting this into practice can it be understood and one’s whole life is not sufficient to put it into effect; eternity itself will not be long enough to do so fully, since we are to love a God Who is infinite, while our limited love, however much it may increase, can never reach the infinite.” These were the foundations of the spiritual edifice which Luisa received.


The source, and the rest of the article:

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/06/antonio-saint.html