Twelve Acts of Love…

The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom, Day 15

Aspiration

[Blessed Virgin Mary:] Today, to honour me, accomplish twelve acts of love for me in honour of the twelve years I spent in the Temple, asking me to admit you to union with my acts.

On Day 15 Our Lady asks for twelve acts of love done in her honor. Of course, acts in the Divine Will can mean different things, but in every act we do (which includes prayers) the “I love you” is paramount. In the Divine Will, the “I love you” takes its life from the very heart of God and so it becomes a continuous, eternal act.

Volume 28, May 2, 1930

[Jesus:] “My daughter, you have forgotten that an ‘I love You’ in my Divine Will has the virtue that, after it is said once, it never stops saying ‘I love You, I love You…’.  The ‘I love You’ in my Divine Will is life, and, as life, it cannot cease to live – it must have its continuous act.  My Fiat does not know how to do finite acts, and everything that is done in It by the creature acquires continuous life; and just as the breath, the heartbeat, the continuous motion are necessary in order to live, so do the acts done in my Divine Will, having their origin in It, change into life, and, as life, they acquire the continuation of the act itself, without ever ceasing.  Therefore, your ‘I love You’ is nothing other than the continuation of your first ‘I love You’.  As life, it wants the nourishment in order to grow; the breath, the heartbeat, the motion, in order to live; and by your repeating your ‘I love You’, it feels the heartbeat, the breath, the motion, and it grows in the fullness of love, and it serves to multiply as many lives of love for as many ‘I love You’s’ as you say.  If you knew how beautiful it is to see all Creation strewn with as many lives of love for as many ‘I love You’s’ as you say!  So, one ‘I love You’ calls and demands with insistence another ‘I love You’.  And this is why you feel a need, a necessity of love, to follow the race of your ‘I love You’.  True good never remains isolated; more so in my Divine Will, since, It being life that has no beginning and no end, everything that is done in It is not subject either to ending or to being interrupted.  Therefore, one ‘I love You’ serves to maintain and call to life another ‘I love You’; these are steps of life of love that the creature takes in my own Volition.  Therefore, do not stop, and continue the race of your ‘I love You’ to the One who so much loves you.”

What a magnificent passage! Let us now apply it to our Blessed Mother’s request: “Today, to honour me, accomplish twelve acts of love for me in honour of the twelve years I spent in the Temple, asking me to admit you to union with my acts.”

As we pray, let us remember that in the Divine Will we are not merely recounting Our Lady’s human acts of the past. We are allowing her acts, perfectly executed in the Divine Will while she was on earth, to live once again on earth through us. In doing so we increase her eternal glory as well as Our Lord’s, and indeed the accidental glory of all souls of all time.

As Luisa says, “The poor must receive from the rich.” Since all our Blessed Mother’s acts were Divine Acts (by grace not by nature), we are really giving God “his own things”, which alone can give him perfect glory.

Day 15 prayer – Twelve Acts of Love:

Blessed Mother, in honour of the twelve years you spent in the Temple, in the Divine Will I offer you these acts of love:

1. I love you in your obedience to the Divine Will that gave you the power at such a tender age to leave your family for service in the Temple.
2. I love you in your parents Joachim and Anne presenting you to the superiors who consecrated you to the Lord, adorned as a bride for her bridegroom.
3. I love you in the joy you felt at hymns and prophecies that were sung of the future messiah, not realizing that you, yourself, had been chosen to be his Mother.
4. I love you in the courage with which you said goodbye to your dear and holy parents, and in the chaste kisses you gave them.
5. I love you in the gratitude you expressed for their care in your childhood, and for having consecrated you to the Lord with so much love and sacrifice.
6. I love you in your peaceful demeanor and courage, which infused in your parents the strength to depart from you, who were their very life.
7. I love you in the power of your Fiat which granted you the heroism to separate yourself from those who loved you so much, even as you saw their hearts breaking.
8. I love you in the power of your Fiat that allowed the Divine Will to rule over you and extend its Kingdom in all your acts.
9. I love you in the little acts with which you prepared for all souls consecrated to the Lord the earth of the Divine Will and the heavens which were to be formed over this earth.
10. I love you in your attentiveness to all your duties in that holy place and in your submission to the most humble tasks.
11. I love you in submitting to the little bell of the temple, as to the Divine Will itself, and your example of peaceful harmony in community.
12. I love you in obediently extending the Divine Will in others, and in preparing the Kingdom of the Divine Will with us, your little children, in mind.

Holy Queen Mother, [please admit me to union with your acts and] enclose me in the sacred Temple of the Will of God. (Luisa’s Exclamation prayer for Day 15)

Fiat!