Here, you can read meditations on the fiat.
“The Annunciation heralds the beginning of our salvation. “By Mary’s obedient “Fiat,” the earth has become Heaven. In Jesus, God has placed in the midst of barren, despairing mankind, a new beginning which is not a product of human history but a gift from above.” (Pope Benedict XVI) All that our heart cries out for became flesh in Mary’s womb. When we repeat the words of the angel by praying the Hail Mary, the Word of God germinates in our soul. Christianity is this never-ending event of encounter with God made present in the maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
-Magnificat (Friday March 25, 2011)
“…They can in all sincerity make Christ’s Words to his Father their own: “Not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39). Their sharpest pain is the thought that they cannot totally uproot their own will, being yet subject to some human weaknesses”…
-Father John Tauler, O.P. (Magnificat March 2011 page 45)
…”Finally I want to leave you this profound prayer, to be recited time and time again: “O God, I wish to be fully what I am.” There is no prayer more beautiful, more pleasing or more powerful in God’s eye than this simple prayer. It is the fiat of the father”…
-Father Jacques Bunel, O.C.D. (Magnificat March 2011 page 92)
“The goal of all our undertakings should be not so much a task perfectly completed as the accomplishment of the will of God.”
-St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, OCD
“This is so in the economy of salvation. Privileged actions sometimes extend their salvific effect on the whole Mystical Body of Christ. This was so, to a unique degree of Mary’s “fiat” which saved the world. With due proportion, the least human act has its effect on the history of the world and can only be adequately measured at the last judgement.”
– Conchita (A Mother’s Spiritual Diary page 27)
“Without love, everything is painful, everything is tiring, everything is burdensome. The cross, taken up hesitantly is crushing; taken smilingly, by free will, and with love, it will carry you much more than you carry it.”
– Fr. Jean C.J. d’Elbee (I Believe in Love)
“Love is the uniting of our will to the will of God.”
-Fr. Jean C.J. d’Elbee (I Believe in Love)
“Both the joy of the Annunciation and the sorrow of Good Friday unite us to the mystery that Christ introduces into the world. At the Annunciation, we rejoice to know that God binds Himself to our race, such that from the moment of Mary’s FIAT until the end of time, God’s goodness prevails over every form of human iniquity and weekness.”
-Rev. Romanus Cessario, O.P. (The Seven Joys of Mary)
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood,
See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small,
love so amazing, love so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
-Hamburg (When I Survey the Wondrous Cross)
“I told you that however exacting our work was, there is a certain kind of prayer which we can make continually without, at the same time, upsetting our labours, and this is how it is done.
It is seeking, in everything we do to to the will of God only.
“Tell me, my children, is it so difficult to seek only the will of God in all of our actions, however small they may be? Yes, my children, with that prayer everything becomes meritorious for Heaven, and without that will all is lost. Alas! How many good things, which would help us so well to gain Heaven, go unrewarded simply by not doing our ordinary duties with the right intention!”
-St. Jean-Marie Vianney
“O God, you sent the Blessed Virgin Mary to visit her cousin Elizabeth and to share with her the joy of your Son’s coming. Give us the will to do your will, that we may glorify you with her for all eternity, through Christ our Lord. Amen”
-Magnificat morning prayer for June 31, 2011
“One day Leonie, no doubt thinking she was too old to play with dolls, came to us both with a basket filled with their clothes, ribbons, and other odds and ends. Her own doll was on top. She said, “Here you are, darlings. Take what you want.” Celine took a little bundle of silk braid. I thought for a moment, then stretched out my hand and declared: “I choose everything,” and, without more ado, I carried off the lot. Everyone thought this quite fair.
This episode sums up the whole of my life. Much later, when I understood what perfection was, I realised that to become a saint one must suffer a great deal, always seek what is best, and forget oneself. I understood that there were many kinds of sanctity an that each soul was free to respond to the approaches of Our Lord and to do little or much for Him – in other words, to make a choice among the sacrifices He demands. Then, just as when I was a child, I cried: “My God, I choose all. I do not want to be a saint by halves. I am not afraid to suffer for You. I fear only one thing – that I should keep my own will. So take it, for I choose all that You will.”
– from the book “The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (Page 27)
“Now I wish for only one thing – to love Jesus even unto folly! Love alone attracts me. I no longer wish for either suffering or death and yet both are precious to me. For a long time I’ve hailed them as messengers of joy. I’ve already known suffering and I’ve thought I was approaching the eternal shore. From my earliest of days I have believed that the Little Flower would be plucked in the springtime of her life. But today my only guide is self-abandonment. I have no other compass. I no longer know how to ask passionately for anything except that the will of God shall be perfectly accomplished in my soul.”
– From the book “The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (page 109)
“The devil is like a mad dog tied by a chain. Beyond the length of the chain he cannot catch hold of anyone. And you, therefore, keep your distance. If you get too close you will be caught. Remember, the devil has only one door with which to enter into our soul: our will.”
-St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
“In reality, holiness consists of one thing only: complete loyalty to God’s will.”
-Jean-Pierre de Caussade
“You are seeking for secret ways of belonging to God, but there is only one: making use of whatever he offers you.”
-Jean-Pierre de Caussade
“If we only have sense enough to leave everything to the guidance of God’s hand we should reach the highest peak of holiness.”
-Jean-Pierre de Caussade
“The great and firm foundation of the spiritual life is the offering of ourselves to God and being subject to His will in all things.”
-Jean-Pierre de Caussade
“The truly faithful soul accepts all things as a manifestation of God’s grace, ignores itself and thinks only of what God is doing.”
-Jean-Pierre de Caussade
“If we are truly docile, we will ask no questions about the road along which God is taking us.”
-Jean-Pierre de Caussade
“The smallest, most trival task we accomplish is supremely important if it is done in obedience to God’s will and for love of Him.”
-Jean-Pierre de Caussade
“Caussade says that everything in life is to be welcomed as the expression of the will of God, so we must “accept what we very often cannot avoid, and endure with love and resignation things which could cause us weariness and disgust. This is what holy means.” And “for most people the best way to achieve perfection is to submit to all that God wills for their particular way of life.” Caussade tells us: “God speaks to every individual through what happens to them moment by moment.” He goes on: “The events of each moment are stamped with the will of God… we find all that is necessary in the present moment.”
-John Beevers
“We must realize that there is nothing at all which happens unless willed by God, and our all-important duty is to co-operate with that will.”
-John Beevers
“May the Holy Eucharist and perfect abandonment to God’s will be your Heaven on earth.”
-Mother Marie Anne’s words on her deathbed
“Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve You as You deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, save that of knowing that I do your will!
-St. Ignatius of Loyola
“All we have to do is to accept God’s plan – to say as Christ said coming into the world: “A body thou hast fitted to me; behold I come to do thy will, O God.” We have to accept the self, and the surroundings, and the story, that God’s providence arranges for us. In humility we must accept our self – just as we are; in charity, we must accept and love our neighbor just as he is; in abandonment, we must accept God’s will just as things happen to us, and just as he would have us act. Faithful compliance with his will and humble acceptance of his arrangements will bring us to full union with Christ. For the rest, let us gladly glory in our infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in us. In our weakness and in our love we shall thus become one with him, and there shall be one Christ loving Himself.
-Dom M. Eugene Boylan, O. CIST. R.
“When Mary told the angel at the Annunciation, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your world.” she became the patroness of every priest and religious until the end of time. Her acceptance of God’s invitation to become His Mother made her the Mother of all vocations to the priesthood and religious life.
-Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, SJ
“Behold the Handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word.” “Mary was completely empty of self; therefore, God filled Her with grace so that She was full of God. She allowed Him use Her according to His wish, with full trust and joy, belonging to Him without reserve.
-Mother Teresa of Calcutta
“Perfection consists in one thing alone, which is doing the will of God. For, according to Our Lord’s words, it suffices for perfection to deny self, to take up the cross and to follow Him. Now who denies himself and takes up his cross and follows Christ better than he who seeks not to do his own will, but always that of God? Behold, now, how little is needed to become as Saint? Nothing more than to acquire the habit of willing, on every occasion, what God wills.”
– St. Vincent de Paul
“The most beautiful word which a man can say to his God is the little word, ‘yes’.”
– unknown
“God’s love for His creatures was so strong that it moved Him to draw us out of Himself and give us, His own image and likeness – just so we might experience and enjoy Him, and share in His eternal beauty. He did not make us animals without memory or understanding, but gave us memory to hold fast His benefits, and understanding to comprehend His spreme eternal will – His will that seeks nothing else but that we be make holy. And He gave us our will to love that will of His.
The will of the Word wants us to follow him on the way of the most holy cross by enduring every pain, abuse, insult, and reproach for Christ crucified, who is in us to strengthen us. And as soon as our understanding’s eye perceives this, our will gets up at onve. Warmed by the fire of this mother charity, it runs to love what God loves and hate what God hates, wanting to seek and desire and clothe itself in nothing but God’s eternal will. Once we have seen and understood that God wants only our good, we see that it is God’s will and pleasure to be followed on the way of the cross. We rejoice and are content with whatever Gd permits: sickness or poverty, insult or abuse, intolerable or unreasonable commands. We rejoice and are glad in everything, and we see that God permits these things for our profit and perfection. I’m not suprised that we are, then, free from suffering, since we have shed the cause of suffering – I mean self-will grounded in selfcenteredness – and have put on God’s will grounded in charity”
– St. Catherine of Siena
”I come,” the great Redeemer cries, To do thy will, O Lord!”
At Jordan’s stream, behold!
He seals the sure prophetic word.
“Thus it becomes to fulfill
All righteousness,” he said.
Then, faithful to the Lord’s
commands,
Through Jordan’s flood was led.
Hark, a glad voice! The Father
Speaks
From heaven’s exalted height:
“This is my Son, my well-beloved
in whom I take delight.”
The Savior Jesus, well-beloved!
His Name we will profess,
Like him desirous to fulfill
God’s will in righteousness.
No more we’ll count ourselves our
Own
But his in bonds of love.
Oh, may such bonds for ever draw
Our souls to things above!
– “Come, The Great Redeemer Cries”
“Certainly it is the great secret of the spiritual life to abandon to God all that we love by abandoning ourselves to all that He wills.”
-St. Louise de Marillac
“I will attempt day by day to break my will into pieces. I want to break my will into pieces. I want to do God’s Holy Will, not my own!”
-St. Gabriel Possenti
“How much we need to unite our inconstant and changeable will to the immutable will of God! The more we try to will only what God wills, to love only what he loves, the more will our will be freed from ints inconstancy and become fixed in good.”
-Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, O.C.D.
” The souls who truly love God cannot live without continually renouncing their own selves, their intelligence, their free will, to become ever more inflamed with this true love that seeks not sweet sensations but that desires, with ever-ready willingness, everywhere and in all things, to carry out only, simply, and exclusively the will of God, as seen through the eyes of faith, and which they love more than their own live.”
– St. Maximilian Kolbe
MERCY MINUTES OF TODAY …. 07/07/12
Let all my desires, even the holiest, noblest and most beautiful, take always the last place and Your holy will be the very first. The least of Your desires O Lord, is more precious to me than heaven, with all its treasure. Diary # 957
-From Fr. Kosicki’s book “Mercy Minutes” Daily Gems of St. Faustina
“Lord whether I have a long life or a short life, whether I am healthy or sick, whether I am rich or poor, is a matter of indifference to me, as long as I am following your will.”
-St. Ignatius of Layola
“Our love for God will be pure when we love Him so much that seek only His glory and the accomplishment of His will: “Hallowed be Thy name… Thy will be done” (Mt 6,9.10). This is the only real good that we, poor creatures, can wish for our God. All the glory we can possibly give Him consists in saying a wholehearted yes to His holy will, in rivaling the angels and blessed in heaven by carrying out His will here on earth with such great love and completeness: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (ibid). The purity of completely forgetting ourself, in being ready to sacrifice every wish, desire, and interest for Him.”
– Divine Intimacy page 743
“Oh my God when will it please you to give me the grace to remain hibitually in this union of my will with your adorable will, in which, without uttering a word all is said, in which all is accomplished by allowing you to act, in which one’s only occupation is that of conforming more and more entirely to your good pleasure; in which, nevertheless, one is saved all trouble since the care of all things is confided to you, and to repose in you is the only desire of one’s heart? Delightful state, which even in the absence of all sensible faith, affords the soul an interior joy altogether spiritual. I desire to repeat without ceasing by the habitual disposition of my heart, “Fiat”, yes, my God, yes, all that you please, may your holy will be done in all things. I renounce my own will which is very blind, perverse and corrupt in consequence of its wretched self-love, the mortal enemy of your grace, of your pure love, of your glory, and of my own sanctification.
Prayer to be said in temptation:
Oh my God! Preserve me by your grace from all sin, but as for the pain by which my self-love is put to death, and the humiliations which crucify my pride, I accept them with all my heart; not so much because they are the effects of your justice, but as benefits of your great mercy. Have pity on me then, dear Savior, and help me.
-Prayer of the Rev. Fr. de Caussade to obtain holy abandonment to the divine will.
“God sustains every soul and dwells in it substantially, even though it be that of the greatest sinner in the world, and this union is natural. The supernatural union exists when God’s will and the soul’s will are in conformity. Therefore the soul rests transformed in God through love.”
-St. John of the Cross
“And truly he who is well learned who does the will of God and relinquishes his own will.”
– Thomas á Kempis
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
In the spring
of 1858, the Virgin Mary spoke to Bernadette Soubirous in a grotto in the small
village of Lourdes, in France. Bernadette was fourteen years old. A total of
eighteen times Bernadette saw “a lady” who she described as
“wearing a lovely white dress with a bright belt.” On each of her
feet, “the Lady” had “a pale yellow rose, the same color as her
rosary beads.” Soon, pilgrims began coming to Lourdes by the thousands.
Still, her pastor doubted the
young teenager. He instructed Bernadette to ask “the Lady” her name.
On March 25th, 1858, “the Lady” told the peasant girl in her native
French dialect, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
Until the Virgin Mary said
“immaculate conception,” Bernadette had never heard those words. For
in her catechism classes, Bernadette had not yet been taught about the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
When Bernadette saw the Blessed
Mother, it had only been four years since Pope Pius IX had defined the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX
declared it to be a belief of our Roman Catholic faith that “The Blessed
Virgin Mary was preserved pure from every stain of Original Sin from the first
instance of her conception through a singular gift of grace and privilege of
Almighty God in view of the merits of Christ, the redeemer of the world.”
By saying that Mary was
preserved from every stain of original sin, the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception tells us that from the very first instance of her conception, Mary
was totally centered upon God.
Scriptures tell us that sin
entered the world through Adam and Eve. By their act of disobedience, sin came
into the world (Romans 5:12), and it touches the soul of every man. We call it
original sin, and every human exhibits that same tendency to pride and
disobedience. The singular exception to this is the Virgin Mary and her Son,
our Lord.
Knowing that Mary would be the
Mother of His Son, the Father desired to prepare a worthy dwelling place.
Therefore, God applied to Mary the merits that Christ would gain for each of us
by his death and resurrection.
From the earliest times of the
Church, Christians have honored Mary in a special way as the Mother of our
Savior. The Council of Ephesus, in the
year 431, was the first to formally do so.
In particular, she is honored for her whole-hearted “yes” that she was
able to give to the will of God. Surely,
she must have known in some way what that “yes” would mean. It would mean hardship, difficulty, confusion and perhaps even anger on the part
of her soon to be husband. It would mean
that she and her family would be forced to flee their native land for fear of
their life, it would mean mockery and
scorn, and ultimately it would mean that
she would stand at the foot of her Son’s cross as He died a most agonizing
death.
This serves as
a reminder to you and I that accepting God’s will is not easy. It doesn’t mean praise, but most often it
means persecution. In the world we live
in today, dear brothers and sisters, we are reminded that answering “Yes” to
God’s will for us will most likely mean
that we will face ridicule. It will mean
sacrifice on our parts, just as it meant in the life of the Blessed
Mother. We will be taunted as being
“backwards” and “outdated” – “stuck in the dark ages.” In a world that welcomes such sins as the
willful taking of human life by abortion,
that objectifies the human person as a mere object of my pleasure
through the use of artificial contraception,
in a world that actively mocks our faith in Christ, you and I are called
to be voices of something radically different.
For it is in the midst of such forces that you and I are called to
answer “yes” to God’s will as well.
“Fiat!” – May it be done unto me…!
To answer
“yes” to God’s will, the Blessed Mother received a special grace: her Immaculate Conception. You and I, if we are to follow her
example, must dispose ourselves of the
grace that we need to do likewise. The
most effective way for us to do this is by our frequent and worthy celebration
of the sacraments, in particular the
Eucharist. For just as Mary held our
savior within herself for nine months, so to do we hold Him within our own
bodies, if for only a brief while, at every holy Mass, each and every time we
receive the Eucharist. This demands that
we prepare a worthy dwelling for Him.
This can be done by our frequent works of charity, and in particular taking regular advantage of
the sacrament of confession.
Her Immaculate
Conception disposed the Virgin Mary to answer yes to the angel Gabriel who
announced to her God’s plan. Her answer
to the angel is familiar to us: “Behold,
I am the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done unto me according to thy
word.”
That very same response, in it’s
single-mindedness of purpose, is ultimately what is demanded of you and I. You and I are called to give ourselves to
God’s will in such a way that there could be no other option for us. That it comes to us naturally, and without
hesitation. “Fiat!” May it be done unto me according to your will. Let us pray
that through this Eucharist, the Lord may see fit to accomplish this work in
us. That, in imitation of His Blessed
Mother, we might receive Him with joy this Christmas season.
+In the Name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
-Father Beach