Dear friends, Guards of Honor and dear faithful readers,
Holy Year to each and all your families!
As with every new year, we extend our best wishes to our loved ones and to all those we meet … But dare we say to them: “This year put all your trust in God, for without Him you will be able to do nothing ” ? That would disconcert more than one! Yet this would be for many a beautiful testimony of trust and hope. Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart Bernaud never hesitated to say the truths of Faith, which should give us a beautiful vitality for the year that opens:
“Without me you can do nothing” (John 15: 5)
Of all the words of Jesus, none is more serious, more instructive, and more consoling than this: “Without me, you can do nothing. “
Our existence consists of a succession of rapid instants such as lightning for each of which, if God did not intervene in us now continuously in life, we would immediately fall back into nothingness. Therefore, to think, to will and to act, we must have the constant assistance of our Creator, hence the just word of Jesus, “without me you can do nothing. “
If we weighed this consideration, we could penetrate this truth and make it our rule of conduct. Perhaps it is for want of not having seriously reflected that our soul is so languid, our life so unfruitful: we have wanted to act, to pray, to fight … alone, and failures, lassitude, and discouragement have overwhelmed us: “I do not know how to pray … I can not forgive … I let myself be tempted not such pleasure, by the material …. I am jealous of so-and-so. I have not the courage to fight against my faults. What pity these cowardly hearts who succumb before they have seriously fought because they have relied on their own strength forgetting to rely on Jesus alone!
These souls, like fertile trees planted by the hand of God in the garden of the holy Church, will bear fruit only if they are fertilized by the divine sap which only Jesus can communicate to them! If grace does not circulate abundantly in our souls, none of our works will be a fruit worthy of eternal reward. In the days of his earthly life, Jesus said: “I am the vine, and you, the branches. He that abideth in me, and dwelleth in me, giveth much fruit, for outside of me ye can do nothing. If anyone does not dwell in me, it is like a branch that has been thrown out and dried up. Dry branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask all that ye will, and ye shall obtain it. (John 15: 5-7)
Let us apply ourselves in the daily practice of this consoling doctrine, it will help us wonderfully to supernaturalize us … whether it is to go to work, to face difficulties, to undergo trials of all kinds, strengthen our courage afterwards I can not do everything, but I can do everything in Him who strengthens me. “. (Sr Marie of the Sacred Heart Bernaud)