14 March 2012: Arms with which to conquer temptations

If we are to overcome temptation we will have to repeat confidently over and over again the petition in the ‘Our Father’: “and lead us not into temptation ...” Since it is our Lord himself who puts such a petition on our lips, it would be good for us to repeat it continually ...
“We struggle against temptation by speaking openly about it to our spiritual director; making it thus known is almost overcoming it. He who reveals his own temptations to his spiritual director can be certain that God grants the spiritual director the grace needed to direct him well.” (Dom Benedict Baur, “In Silence with God”)
We can always count on God’s grace. “But do not forget, my friend, you need weapons in this spiritual battle.
Your weapons have to be: continuous prayer; sincerity and frankness with your spiritual director; the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance; a generous spirit of Christian mortification which will bring you to flee from the occasion of sin and to avoid idleness; humility of heart, and a tender and filial devotion to Our Lady, ‘Comforter of the afflicted’, ‘Refuge of sinners’. Always turn confidently to Our Lady and say: ‘My Mother, I trust in you’.” (Salvatore Canals, “Jesus as Friend”, 72)
Ref: Cf F Fernandez, “In Conversation with God”, 2:30

With Baptism, Walk in a New Life
Baptism finds its deepest meaning in the fact that we are bringing a new and extraordinary relationship of grace into being between God and creatures ...
With this Sacrament, God’s Fatherhood is imparted in a new way, and whoever receives it acquires a fresh relationship of preference in His regard. A condition of intimate communion with Him is actually set up which represents the overcoming of all interior alienation because of sin and, as St Paul writes, formation of a “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17).
We rejoice keenly with profound spiritual delight. Ours is the joy of the divine family.
A number of new members enter to become part of the family of God; and while they acquire a new Father in Him, they also find new brethren in us, ready to receive them, with concern and exultation, into the great community of the children of God.
After His Baptism, Jesus “went about doing good works and healing all” (Acts 10:38). Baptism must be made ‘manifest in concrete living’, with luminous and adequate testimony.
“Through baptism into his death, we were buried with him so, just as Christ was raised from the dead ... we, too might live a new life.” (cf Rom 6:4) Let us ask the Lord to “strengthen us inwardly through the power of his Spirit” (Eph 3:16), to live always for his greater glory. Amen.
Ref: Cf “Prayers and Devotions from Pope John Paul II”, 1984, p55

The Return to the Father’s House
Lent is the time for a particularly loving meeting on our Father’s part with each and every one of us, so that even the most prodigal son may still take account of the waste he has perpetrated, call his sin by its name, and finally make his way with complete sincerity back to God, to the Father’s house.
The way is through ‘examination of conscience, repentance, and resolve to improve; need for confession’ arises in him. Our reconciliation with God, the return to the Father’s house, is accomplished through Christ.
His suffering and death on the cross stand between every human conscience, every human sin, and the Father’s boundless Love. Such Love is prompt to raise and pardon; nothing else than Mercy.
In personal conversion, in repentance, in firm resolve to reform, and finally in confession, each of us agrees to perform a personal spiritual labor.
This labor is an extension and prolonged reverberation of the labor of salvation which our Redeemer undertook. As the Apostle of reconciliation with God said: “For your sakes God made him who did not know sin, to be sin, so that in him we might become the very holiness of God.” (2 Cor 5:21)
So let us undertake our labor of conversion and penitence for Him, with Him and in Him. Unless we undertake it, we are not worthy of the name of Christ; we are not worthy of the inheritance of the Redemption.
Ref: Cf Pope John Paul II, “Prayers and Devotions”, 1994, p137

Eternal Life Begins Now
The dignity of this life is linked not only to its beginning, to the fact that it comes from God, but also to its final end, to its destiny of fellowship with God in knowledge and love of him. ...
The love which every human being has for life cannot be reduced simply to a desire to have sufficient space for self-expression and entering into relationships with others; rather, it develops into a joyous awareness that life can become the “place” where God manifests himself, where we meet him and enter into communion with him.
The life which Jesus gives in no way lessens the value of our existence in time; it takes it and directs it to its final destiny:
“I am the resurrection and the life ... Whoever is alive and believes in me will never die.” (Jn 11:25-26)
Ref: “Breakfast with the Pope, Daily Readings”, Pope John Paul II, 1995, 105

• Our Lady “de la Breche”, at Chartres, where a procession takes place every year, in thanksgiving for Our Lady’s having delivered the city, when besieged by heretics, in the year 1568. It was during this siege that not a cannon or musket ball fired by the besiegers at the image of Our Lady, placed upon the Drouaise gate, struck it, although the marks of them are still seen two or three inches from it. — Sebastien Rouillard, Parthenie, o. 3. (“Catholic Gems or Treasures of the Church” Historical Calendar; www.bethlehemobserver.com)
• Our Lady of the Breach (“Notre Dame de la Breche”). Chartres, France. 1568. Picture of the church. (www.marylinks.org/Mary-Calendar.htm)
• Our Lady “de la Breche”, Chartres, France (1568). (www/divinewill.org/feastsofourlady.html); (www.iskandar.com/ourlady/ourladyfeasts.html)
• Our Lady of the Breach (Chartres, France). (maryfest.htm / www.starharbor.com/santiago/m_feasts.html)
• Our Lady of the Breach. Chartres, France 1568. (www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/calendar/index.html)
• Our Lady of Kostrama (Russia). (maryfest.htm / www.starharbor.com/santiago/m_feasts.html); (www.marylinks.org/Mary-Calendar.htm); (www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/calendar/index.html); (http://mariedenazareth.com)