DAILY WORD of BLESSED JAMES ALBERIONE 2024
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of our founder, Blessed James Alberione, we will reflect on his words and use them as our daily guide.
PRAYER INTENTION for NOVEMBER
Heavenly Father, I believe in your wisdom and your love. I believe that you created me for Paradise, you showed me the way to reach it and that you are waiting for me there. Give me light and show me this way; grant me the strength to follow it with generous correspondence (PR 56).
Let us contemplate this heavenly life, this happy life, which will console all the righteous: there will no longer be weeping, trials, temptations, difficulties, enmities, persecutions, internal or external pains... but only joy... Paradise (APD56, 399).
Whoever has good will, above all, seeks inner, interior holiness, that is, the elevation of his mind, the holiness of his heart, of his sentiments and therefore wanting, in the first place, interior holiness. External holiness is like a reflection of what is inside (APD56, 42).
The chaplet is beautiful: “Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, make us saints.” And that is, what does this mean to make us saints? This making us saints means purification from defects and means, at the same time, the acquisition of virtues: increased faith, firmer hope, more ardent charity, kindness towards all, zeal in the apostolate (APD56, 52).
“Your word is a lamp for my steps and a light to my path” (Ps 118/119,105). It is always the Lord who, by means of his law, lights our way, so that we do not deviate from the straight path of heaven. Ah, how hope and desire for heaven are revived in one who often reads the Bible (LS 254).
Whoever reads the Bible gets used to contemplating what will form the object of his eternal bliss; and as soon as his soul is free from this body of death, it will take flight towards God and being already used to contemplating the sublime mysteries, it will sooner be admitted to the vision of God (LS 255).
The Church has the office of preaching, of teaching. The Church has the office of holding up, guiding souls in the way of salvation. Therefore, the Church has the office of sanctifying souls through the Sacraments. And whoever follows the Church follows Jesus Christ (APD56, 214).
Let us open the holy book and read it; let us feed on it often because in this way we will increase our eternal bliss, the Bible being nothing but a preparation for it (LS 256).
You hear, read many things about asceticism and spiritual life, but if you take the Bible in your hand and open it, you will find there all those truths in all their genuine beauty. We could represent all the spiritual books in as many rays of light, which have their origin, life and warmth from Sacred Scripture (LS 274).
Be grateful for the graces and the call and the foundation of the Institute. Of all the daily cares and all the graces that you see growing around you on the outside and then the graces of each one on the inside (APD64, 28).
Everyone, in life, has a particular vocation. The wisest God has created a large garden... And just as the rose cannot say: “I want to be as beautiful as a lily” and neither can the lily say: “I want to become hidden like the violet” so let every soul study to become like what God wants and not otherwise (Esercizi e ritiri, 1, 52).
Receive, oh my God, through the hands of Mary Most Holy to whom I belong entirely, all my freedom, my memory, my intelligence, all the affections of my heart... and here I give you everything back and place all of myself at your disposal and your will. Give me only your
love, your holy grace (PR 87).
The spirit of piety has a nourishment which is spiritual reading. All the masters of asceticism recommend and have wonderful praises for spiritual reading: St Augustine calls the spiritual books his delights, and the principle of his delights was the Sacred Scripture (LS 272).
There is a book that stands above all, and which is the source of all the others: the Holy Bible; here is the best book of spiritual reading, here is the crystal-clear source from which all ascetic writers drew their doctrine, and their books are but so many streams gushing from this immense sea (LS 273).
Piety being the divine life in us, behold, the closer we draw to the source, the purer and fresher the water we draw: and so, the more spiritual books draw from the Gospel, the more effective and useful they are for souls (LS 274).
Whoever loves St Paul very much and follows him, acquires a strong spirit, ascends easier to holiness, leaves aside all the pettiness of the communities and rises more and more in a serene atmosphere, rises more and more towards God and judges things not according to small difficulties... but one judges them from on High, in God, in Jesus Christ (APD56, 504).
When a soul is lukewarm, does not feel spiritual warmth within itself, does not have, in a word, the spirit of piety, take the Bible and read, it will immediately feel the heart inflamed with holy desires, the mind will be enlightened by a divine light and will cause the will to conceive energetic resolutions (LS 274-275).
There, in the Holy Gospel, the most loving heart of Jesus beats: let us go, let us rest on his chest, he will warm us and let us know what he wants from us (LS 275)
In the Sanctuary Regina Apostolorum Jesus from the tabernacle repeats: “I am the light of the world. You are the light of the world” (Jn 8:12). And he means: “Think about it, I have been the light to the world; but now you are the light of the world” (Mt 5:14)… Understand souls, the mission, the vocation (FSP-Spiegazionedelle Costituzioni, 233).
Where Peter is, there is the Church, and where the Church is, there is Peter. And whoever is with the Church is with Christ. Ah! we want to be lambs of the Church, but docile lambs (Predicheinedite, 1937, 59).
What if a book was written, not by a saint, but by God himself? This book would contain in itself the maximum of grace, God being grace itself. Now the Bible is precisely the book of God, He is its main author. It therefore follows that the Holy Bible is the most suitable and most useful book for spiritual reading (LS 226).
Whoever reads the Scripture talks with the Heavenly Father, with the Angels, with the Saints: he will have heavenly aspirations! He will even take the thinking and speaking of God and of those blessed spirits (LS 225).
We need to sanctify ourselves. “Ad quid venisti?” What did you come for? Was the intention right when you entered? That is, solely to sanctify yourself and to attend to those specific apostolates that are assigned? Have you wholeheartedly embraced the first two articles of the Constitutions? (APD56, 169).
Whoever habitually reads the Sacred Scripture, little by little finds his desires divinized to the point of desiring only what the Lord desires, and to wanting only what He wants (LS 217).
All of Sacred Scripture is to tell man that he is created for heaven. Both the Old and the New Testaments are a constant exhortation to live well and flee from evil; and for what purpose? To be able one day to have the reward, that is, to enter heaven (LS 253).
The words of Sacred Scripture are the mystical mustard seed Jesus speaks of in the Holy Gospel, a little seed that will sprout and grow into a majestic plant (LS 227).
When our soul is discouraged and downcast, when we feel a greater need for grace and light, let us have recourse to the divine book with faith and we will have what we desire (LS 227).
Paradise is all our hope; it is our only treasure; it consists in seeing God face to face, in possessing him, in enjoying him. It is in view of heaven that God wrote his long letter to men! For it we were created, for it we still work and live (LS 252).
Helping each other to become saints, helping each other in study, helping each other in the apostolate, helping each other for salvation and, by putting all our strength together, more easily reach holiness and better carry out our apostolate. Help one another (APD56, 146).
We must not think that the Lord listen to every petition we ask... because sometimes we ask those that are not of advantage to our eternal salvation, to our sanctification. But when we, on the other hand, say: “make us saints,” behold, the Lord does not fail to instil grace and we will be saints (APD56, 119).
Our foundress
Venerable Thecla Merlo
night of 31 December 1900 and felt obliged “to do something for God and for the people of the new century.”
Our founder Blessed James Alberione
Fr James Alberione encountered the Lord in the
Eucharistic adoration on the
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