Consecration Aids: 7: Early Morning Reverie!
Anyone who has visited a zoo in midsummer and watched the fuzzy-faced bears awake from their noon-day nap will have some idea of what this writer generally looks like when he gets up in the morning. This is especially true when it is raining outside his window.
Well—would you believe it? – although it is literally “pouring” outside this morning, I woke up with a smile.
What’s more, after renewing my Act of Total Consecration with the words: “I am all Thine and all I have is Thine, O most loving Jesus, through Mary, Thy Holy Mother,” I catch myself humming a tune, not a religious tune either, but a popular one!
Do you recognize it? It’s one of those ’song-hits’ the C.Y.O. crowd was singing last night at the meeting. It begins something like this: “If they made me a king, I‘d be but a slave to you!”
Strange how a tune like this just seems to pop into your head this early in the morning. Strange, too, how it will probably stick with me all day. (They usually do when they begin haunting me this early in the morning.) I wonder what made this tune lodge itself so comfortably in my memory when I paid no particular attention to it yesterday? All I recall is that the young folks sang it with a medley of other songs.
Is it the word “slave” that has struck a responsive chord in me and awakened in my subconscious self a series of mental pictures about another kind of slavery? I really don’t know. I’m not wide awake enough just now to analyze this phenomenon. All I know is that I’m humming this tune.
After parachuting into my clothes I squirm as usual into my shoes (I must tell you that I’m the type “that never troubles to unlace his shoes before getting into them in the morning.) Suddenly, snap! and a loose piece of shoe-string is dangling from my clenched fist. Now this is aggravating enough when you‘re in a hurry, but when you’re only half awake it really challenges your will power.
But, somehow, this morning it’s different. Whether it’s that smile I woke up with, or the tune I’m humming to myself, I don’t know. But I do know that the indignant impulse to toss the broken string across the room has immediately given way to this thought: well, here’s my first chance today to offer an act of patience to Christ thru Mary. After all, am I not their slave of love?
Sure enough, there it is! That word ”slave” is really haunting me this morning. No wonder I’m humming a little louder now, “If I had everything, I’d still be a slave to you!”
Slave, that word arouses a world of recollections in me now as I patiently replace the old shoe-string with a new one. Why, only yesterday morning a friend, protested against the word “slave of Mary.” That word sounds so cruel, so un-American, he had said to me, despite all the explanations I had given of its perfectly orthodox meaning.
Author: Fr. Christopher Lee, SMM
This is the seventh in a series of articles covering Consecration Aids. The first five articles were written by Fr. Lucien Ledoux, SMM. Fr. Christopher Lee, SMM continues the series.
I have recognized at once Mary’s voice within me. The sacrifice she is asking of me is really nothing difficult, but it reminds me that God’s will must be sought out in little things as well as in greater ones.
As cruel and as un—American as a latest song-hit, I now reflect, as I stand face to face with my bearded self before the mirror of my medicine cabinet. Poor kids, as I muse and douse my face into that cold water, it’s so easy for them to go all out for human love but so difficult to make them understand the divine! So sweet, so American like for them to sing about human love in these terms: ”If I had everything, I’d still he a slave to you!” but so “cruel,” so “un-American—like” to ask them to surrender themselves to divine Love that same way?
But then again, who am I to talk? Didn’t it take me long enough to grasp this notion of holy slavery of love? Besides, even today am I living my consecration the way I should? Am I really a slave to God’s will in all things?
As I am about to give myself a “modest” pat on the back for my “faithfulness” to God’s grace thus far today, I notice that there is no hot water this morning.
”What? No hot water? How am I going to shave before Mass? Guess I’ll put it off until after Mass then. Instinctively I begin to put my razor back into the cabinet when a voice inside me says: ”No, you mustn’t. Out of respect for my divine Son, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, you must shave off that two-day beard of yours. A little cold water won’t hurt you. Didn’t you say you were my slave of love?”
I have recognized at once Mary’s voice within me. The sacrifice she is asking of me is really nothing difficult, but it reminds me that God’s will must be sought out in little things as well as in greater ones. And the words of Fr. de Montfort come back to me now as I proceed to lather my face: ”She gives them good counsels . . . She reproves them like a charitable mother when they fail; and sometimes she even loving chastises them.”
Sometimes I wonder how Mary chastises her children. I don’t remember her ever chastising me … Ouch! It feels as if someone is flaying the right side of my face! Did I say it wasn’t difficult to shave with cold water? … But then again, I reflect, perhaps this is part of the “chastisement” Fr. de Montfort speaks of. Perhaps a little more of this would do me good. Perhaps Our Lady wants me to renew this little ”sacrifice” every morning before renewing the August One, on the altar. On the face of it, it may sound silly and trivial; but, on second thought, perhaps it isn’t as silly as all that. Perhaps I will shave with cold water from now on …
Have you noticed that I’m not humming anymore? As I don my cassock and prepare for my morning prayer and meditation, I’m actually singing … singing the same words the kids sang yesterday, but the Love I’m thinking of, and the slavery I’m singing about are not the ones the song writer intended because mine is directed to Christ thru Mary, His holy Mother.
