The Autobiography Of St Margaret Mary Aloque

I am by no means an expert and I don't mean this in a dismissive way, as suffering is hell. I am one of the worst when it comes to picking up my cross. But I often wonder if a person keeps picking up their cross time and again consistently, they start to see the Kingdom. It's like a pathway there, as horrible as it is.

 

I think maybe if we understood everything we knew about the Cross we were handed, I mean if we understood it inside out, it would not really be much of a Cross. It becomes a real Cross because we really don;t understand it.

The mystery that most brings this home to me in the Rosary is Mary and Joseph loosing Jesus in the Temple and Mary asking Jesus the simple question, 'Did you not know that your father and I were looking for you?' Jesus answers in a reply that is a full reply without being explanatory says, 'Did you not know I must be about my Fathers buisiness?' Which I think is another way of saying, 'You'll have to trust me on this one'. With any real Cross this is what God often tells us, 'You'll have to trust me on this one.' I'm God and I know what I'm doing. You may not but I do. Trust me.

 

It really comes down to the fact that God doesn't owe us anything; anything at all. Everything He does give is pure gift. I think in a real way the Path to holiness lies in discovering or rediscovering that fact. Which can be described as humility.Nothing teaches humility like the Cross.

Margaret Mary is most certainly one of the very most humble souls I have ever come across. She reminds me of accounts of the Virgin Mary in the Temple.

 

This is so true.

 

This answers it quite well. Saints don't necessarily try to understand their crosses but they keep picking them up without a whole lot of gripping.

I honestly believe that in some ways saints hold a different point of perspective. It's like when Fulton Sheen spoke about the athiest doctor who became a priest, his whole perspective shifted in an instant. All of his wife's suffering, suddenly opened his eyes.

 

Even Jesus fell under His cross, and needed help in carrying it. He even asked for it to be taken away. But He never rejected it. I think that’s the only standard we can expect to hold ourselves to. We can’t always control whether we can carry the suffering in our life. All we can do is accept that God will lift it from us when He chooses to.

I don’t know what people think of Julian of Norwich around here, but there’s a passage towards the end of her Revelations of Divine Love that has always stuck with me:

“AFORE this time I had great longing and desire of God’s gift to be delivered of this world and of this life. For oftentimes I beheld the woe that is here, and the weal and the bliss that is being there: (and if there had been no pain in this life but the absence of our Lord, methought it was some-time more than I might bear and this made me to mourn, and eagerly to long. And also from mine own wretchedness, sloth, and weakness, me liked not to live and to travail, as me fell to do.

And to all this our courteous Lord answered for comfort and patience, and said these words: Suddenly thou shalt be taken from all thy pain, from all thy sickness, from all thy distress and from all thy woe. And thou shalt come up above and thou shalt have me to thy meed, and thou shalt be fulfilled of love and of bliss. And thou shalt never have no manner of pain, no manner of misliking, no wanting of will; but ever
joy and bliss without end. What should it then aggrieve thee to suffer awhile, seeing that it is my will and my worship?”

 

This reminds me of the Scripture we read at funerals:

Revelation 21:4




4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’a]">[a] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

I think because suffering is so much a part of life we often don't see it. For instance if we were to look back and see the very happiest moment in our lives ,even that was passing. It would not last. For us to conceive a time and place of no suffering such as heaven is impossible for us.

When my mother was dying of cancer we talked about heaven and what it might be like. But we both agreed we could not imagine a place of no suffering. The closest we could come to it was to imagine a place were we simply ceased to exist. An end to suffering. To imagine a place were there is no suffering is utterly impossible for us.

I know this sounds miserable to write of these things but it is true. I think as you get older you accept that suffering is twined into the very weft and woove of the cloth of life. It simply is. The true joy is to know and love God. Love is the closest we ever manage to get to true joy in this life. But we all, even the very best of us love so very,very imperfectly. We are like little tiny birds that try to fly but never quite manage it.

That is what is so inspiring about the lives of the saints that they did at least manage to flap their wings a little and fly. They show us what is possible.

 

Saint Margaret Mary had a vision one time of Seraphs angels of fire, of love, flying high about her in the courtyard of her convent. Angels are divided into nine choirs of angels with Seraphs being the very highest. There nine choirs can themselves be divided into three orders of three choirs each. So three parts consisting of three levels each, all reflecting the Blessed Trinity. Just as human families reflect the Trinity, father mother and children.

The three highest choirs of angels are the Seraphim , Cherubim and Thrones, reflecting Father , Son and Holy Spirit. At the time of the Great Rebellion in heaven one third of the angels led by Lucifer fell from heaven and we humans who will be saved are called to occupy the places in the heavenly choirs lost by the Fallen angels.

It is a pious Catholic believe that some of the saints such as St Francis of Assisi now occupy the highest place in the heavenly choir that of Seraph. From the writings of Margaret Mary it seems clear that she, too, not occupies a place in the Seraphic choir.

 

St Margaret Mary and her sufferings remind me of a true story I heard years ago from my own home city. A young very successful nurse, very good at her job and already with several promotions and the world at her feet took a holiday to Egypt. In her hotel bedroom there were very heavy black out curtains and when you pulled them in the evening the room was totally dark, not a chink of light. So when she woke up in the morning she was not surprised to find everything in darkness. But when she pulled the curtains it was still total darkness and that is when she started to scream realising she had gone blind overnight.

What had happened a little fly from the river Nile had gotten into her eyes and left her blind forever.

In a sense her life had ended and a new one begun,

But how does someone cope with something like that except through Faith, through Grace?

It was the same with Saint Margaret Mary, she coped through Faith, through Grace..

 

Saint Margaret Mary very much did not want to write her spiritual tell all autobiography. She asked to destroy it on many occasions even on her death bed. The only reason she wrote it was that she was ordered to by her Superiors as it was for instance with St Therese of Liseaux. Why the reluctance? Well I think in the first place humility. Ask this was all very, very personal and sacred to her. Here most private moments. Also perhaps she was afraid of not being believed of being ridiculed. But this is all fairly common with the saints and they mostly seem to have the same reaction, of not wanting to reveal these things. Poor St Bernadette was sick and tired of having to repeat accounts of the Lourdes apparitions but still they made her.

But I am so glad they forced Margaret Mary to write all this. A rich vein of mystical gold.

 

Everything happens for a reason and it was a great blessing that I have been reading Margaret Mary recently. Twice recently I had short periods of great darkness. As though all the Light had gone out inside me. This can be disconcerting at any time but on my own in strange country it was disconcerting. My usual way of talking to Jesus is simply to let my heart beat with His , contemplative prayer. But I decided to speak to Him more directly about this and to my great relief He told me the darkness was not permanent and would go away quickly. However He also added that I should accpet this Cross and asked if I really wanted a life without a Cross and without suffering and of what use would this be?

This ties in so well with Margaret Mary. she actually regarded suffering as a great blessing form God! She regarded, for instance the great persecution given to her from her fellow nuns as a huge gift.

She is the most wonderful teacher on how to approach suffering in our own lives and how to put it in context.

How does this relate to devotion to the Sacred Heart? Well if you look at the picture above, the heart if pierced and surround by thorn and the hands have the marks of nails. So the Cross is everywhere.

 

I just came to the best part of the book last night the part of the Great Apparition of the Sacred Heart where Jesus says,

'Behold this heart that so loves men...'

But as soon as I read these words my tablet went of Kindle and I could read no more. I tried seven or eight more times to open kindles and every time I tried to read the book it just switched off. Later in the night I was woken by what seemed like an army of cats screeching and fighting their hearts out outside my window.

The picture of the Sacred Heart is said to be very,very powerful against demons. No wonder the devil hates it so much.

"Behold the Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love … But what I feel most keenly is that it is hearts which are consecrated to Me, that treat Me thus. Therefore, I ask of you that the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi be set apart for a special Feast to honor My Heart, by communicating on that day, and making reparation to It by a solemn act, in order to make amends for the indignities which It has received during the time It has been exposed on the altars. I promise you that My Heart shall expand Itself to shed in abundance the influence of Its Divine Love upon those who shall thus honor It, and cause It to be honored."

 

Margaret Mary writes about a Benedictine priest who once heard her confession visiting her from Purgatory after his death. He was in flames and Margaret Mary felt and endured some of the heat. Another soul visited her from Purgatory who had been a nun. Jesus said of her, 'She was a nun in name only' . She had been one of a group of nuns who had given poor Margaret Mary a really hard time and had been very lucky indeed not to have wound up in hell.

These appearances of the souls in Purgatory are very ,very common in the lives of the saints and are reported from the earliest days in the history of the Church. The earliest known description of such a visitation was St Perpetua.

https://aleteia.org/2023/11/02/how-st-pereptua-had-a-vision-of-her-brother-in-purgatory

How St. Perpetua had a vision of her brother in purgatory

The martyr St. Perpetua had a vision of her brother in purgatory and saw how her prayers lessened his suffering.

St. Perpetua is well-known as a martyr from the 2nd century and her account of martyrdom is preserved in what's called the The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicity.

Included in this account is a vision she had of her deceased brother, and many commentators believe she saw purgatory.

Without delay, on that very night, this was shown to me in a vision. I saw Dinocrates going out from a gloomy place, where also there were several others, and he was parched and very thirsty, with a filthy countenance and pallid color, and the wound on his face which he had when he died...And moreover, in the same place where Dinocrates was, there was a pool full of water, having its brink higher than was the stature of the boy; and Dinocrates raised himself up as if to drink. And I was grieved that, although that pool held water, still, on account of the height to its brink, he could not drink. And I was upset, and knew that my brother was in suffering. But I trusted that my prayer would bring help to his suffering.


Purgatory is believed to be a place that prepares a soul for Heaven and various saints have had similar visions of a type of suffering present in this place.

Praying for souls in purgatory
St. Perpetua then had a follow-up vision where she saw the fruit of her prayers.


Then, on the day on which we remained in fetters, this was shown to me. I saw that that place which I had formerly observed to be in gloom was now bright; and Dinocrates, with a clean body well clad, was finding refreshment. And where there had been a wound, I saw a scar; and that pool which I had before seen, I saw now with its margin lowered even to the boy's navel. And one drew water from the pool incessantly, and upon its brink was a goblet filled with water; and Dinocrates drew near and began to drink from it, and the goblet did not fail. And when he was satisfied, he went away from the water to play joyously, after the manner of children, and I awoke. Then I understood that he was translated from the place of punishment.


This vision from the early Church confirms what Catholics believe when it comes to purgatory and how our prayers for deceased family members can have a real effect.