Simply amazing how Mary speaks

I am still trying to understand what happened this weekend.   I am sure the Holy Spirit and Mary were there.

The course by Christo.pher West on the Theology of the body was amazing.  I feel peace that I have not felt in the last months. 

When I met him I thought he was very serious and kind of aloof.    We asked him some questions and he answered in very short phrases.   He seemed to be somewhere else and I was kind of disappointed.

Then the course started.  I was very nervous because I had a very 7 active month old to take of both Thursday and Friday all alone and also participate actively in the activities.

Luckily  Josemaria behaved very well and although I had to lose parts of the course to take care of him, in the end it was a very big blessing he was there. His very first trip ever in his whole life and it was to take a Theology of the body course!

Well I can only say if you have the opportunity to read We.st or listen to him or watch him in video do it.  It will be worth every penny.

 Pope Benedict and many others say Theology of the Body has the potential to change the Church and I truly believe it does.  One marriage at the time.

The couse spoke deeply to my heart and I think to most participants. I am still digesting what this will mean to my life, but it stirred my heart deeply and its very,  very much linked to IF and Napro..

I was also very blessed since he had just been to Guadalupe and spoke in many of his examples about Our Lady.  He was very,  very impressed by her. spoke of many many sybmols in her image that even I did not know as a Mexican  and said her image spoke volumes about the TOB

He will begin some work soon about Her and TOB and JPII  since he says the 3 are key to the reevangelization. 

(JPII very first international trip as Pope was to Mexico to see her, in his desk he had 2 images: one of Guadalupe and one of the Black Madonna of Poland and did several pilgrimages to see her)

I needed this couse so much.   I have been very physically and spiritually  tired of many things, actually exhausted in part related to my month long flu, then Nap.ro Mexico and that things in some aspects seemed to go backwards, then my coming back to work and many work related decisions, etc.   All on top of a lack of prayer life and my DH having to work extremely long hours.  

On Friday night I had the opportunity to speak during dinner with West.  He sat right beside me and we had an incredible dialoge.  Just because of this the trip and the expense and everything was worth it.

I had heard he was part of something having to do with St.  Montfort and wanted to ask him about it.

He asked me about the coming of Josemaria into our lives and I told him it was very much related to the Virgin and St Gianna.   I told him about all the amazing dates; us married on St., Giannas feast day, Josemaria born on the day she had given birth, our permision to adopt in the day of the Visitation and his coming on the day of the Annunciation, 5 years after we had gotten engaged on the very same day , etc. 

He smiled and said it was simply amazing and that God had plans for us for sure.

 I told him I was afraid. Terrible things had happened to us since we became involved in the prolife movement.  That perhaps I was destined for a partime  corporate job together with motherhood.   It was far more comfortable. 

I asked him directly about his relationship with Montfort and told him I had married in his feast day even not knowing who he was and even confessed to him  I had been very disappointed about the day.

April 28th,  since I had wanted to get married on St. Patricks day,  but could not.

Actually I had been very mad!

Then I told him I has found out later if was Montforts feast day  (the nuns that I go to told me and laughed when I told them I do not know who this guy is!!! )  and also St Giannas (this one I found out  2 years later in Omaha since in the saint calendars here she does not appear)  and that for years and years it did  not make any sense.

We both  laughed hard about my lack of Marian knowledge. 

Then I told him I was very tired about many things and that since starting our work with na.pro we had had many horrible struggles and that I was afraid of what God was asking.  I told him with tears in my eyes about my miscarriage, that I had gone into labor pains several days later and then 3 months later was told we had miscarried again.  It had been my dark night of the soul)

I am not sure why,  but I felt I could tell him. 

Well he said that nobody could work for life and not consecrate him or herself to Mary.  That the bad guy wanted to kill our spirits in this battle and that it seemed that its what was happening to me.

He told me to consecrate myself to Mary and also this project and that all would be well. There would be still many struggles,  but that Mary would put the evil one on a leash. 

Put myself and all of this in Her womb. We would be protected.

There would  be struggles, deep ones but the bad guy would not be able to touch us at all.

He then told me he many times also had struggles  and just the night before had one very bad one, a dream from the evil one one , yet was not afraid since he consecrated each day to Her.

I felt such peace after this talk and could feel his sincerity.

He had spoken in the morning about the intense pain of IF and had said ask anybody that has struggled with it or lost a baby to miscarriage the inmese worth of each and every human life  .

 This is why many people that have faced IF work for the prolife movement.  They get it!

Well just in the course out of the maybe 12 couples there 6 had struggled with IF!!! one woman had lost 5 pregnancies and had 6 living children, another just one son  after 20 years of marriage, another had also just one  after many many treatments, us, etc.  

Then he told me to offer everything to Her and asked me to read the Secret of Mary by Montfort. He said read it and do what he says.

Then he mentioned that the TOB is really the culmination of what the Pope Paul the VI had started with Humanae vitae.  We could  not try to bring Napro here without understanding TOB and since JPII had put his work under Mary we could not put this not under Her!

That night I could not sleep and downloaded in my Ipad the kindle version of the book.  I started to read it and then remembered....  how could I have not seen it before?

We had consecrated to our lady of Guadalupe this project on my wedding anniversary together with a couple that had donated a traveling image of Her with a priest named Juan Diego.

The reason we chose this day  really was that  St. Gianna as a doctor that had given her life for her child  and was very popular among napro practitioners.   

yet  I never ever made the connection with the  Consecration to Mary.  How stupid of me!!! 

We had consecrated this to Her  on the day of the Saint that had written the Consecration to Mary. Wow! Yet I saw it for the very very first time!

We had not consecrated us., but the project yes!!!

And now must come the consecration of us..... 

West explained that this was crucial moving forward and that She must want something of my DH and I, we just did not know it .

Actually She wants something of each person and specially of those struggling to conceive. She speaks in signs and in God incidences, yet we do not see it. 

 We got engaged on the Feast of the Assumption and our son had come 5 years later on that very same day and also we got unknowingly married on the Feast day of St, Louis Marie Gringon de Montfort who was key in speading the Marian devotion and also gave JPII his motto: "Totus Tuus".

He recommended we read his book "Heavens So.ng" where he links Montfort, JPII and the  mystics with TOB.  I started last nigth and is simply beautiful!

 Since my DH is a carmelite is specially important for us  since several of the ,mystics (Sta Teresa de Avila, San Juan de la Cruz)  are carmelites.  My DH knows their poetry by heart and I did not even know it!  

Then told West I read in the book that is recommended that you consecrate yourself on a Marian feast. 

Several important Marian feast days are coming up!!!!.

West  said the traditional consecration takes more than 30 days, but you can also do the short version and later start preparing yourself for the big one.

So we will  begin again under Mary.  Just like JPII did.     I just found this Spanish video which I have always loved. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtxsuYY5wLg&feature=related