de’Pazzi’s Lessons for Today

TRANSCRIPT OF SR VERONICA ON THE LESSONS OF MARY MAGDALENE DE’PAZZI FOR THE 21ST CENTURY:

You asked me also to speak of the lessons that she [Mary Magdalene de’Pazzi] has to teach to us in today’s world and how we can live them out. There are many, but I’ve chosen three, and all three are taken from her experience on the day when she was released from her five years of probation and trial from the Den of Lions.

La primera es la esperanza.

El segundo es lo que significa vivir en la Iglesia.

Y la tercera es la pureza.

So, hope, because it’s hard to define what her trial was exactly. We know that she was tempted against her religious vocation, but I think ultimately it was a trial of hope because the evil spirits would try to make her think that her soul was lost. And they would even try to prevent her from receiving Holy Communion. They would tell her that if she received Communion, she would be offending God all the more.

When she was released from these temptations, she saw her patron saints, and I’ll describe more in a moment, but she also saw the devils who all through the five years, even though she had always been faithful and never given into the temptations, in her weakness she had acted imperfectly in some situations or struggled, and the devils had been there with their little notebooks taking down every least imperfection. And the saints came, and they took those notebooks, and they tore them up.

And when I read that, I just, I get tears in my eyes because doesn’t that resonate with our own experience that so often we have a long list of all the reasons why we’re not worthy to be a child of God, and we become discouraged by our weaknesses, our imperfections, and we’re tempted to give up and think that we’re not going to make it to the end.

But God doesn’t see it that way. He’s not interested in keeping track of all our imperfections that come through our weakness. But what matters to him is that we persevere to the end in letting him transform us in his love, and that we put all our hope in him because he cares about the end results. And he sees it from a different perspective than we do.

And the second lesson is about the church and the communion of saints, because as I said, when she came out of her trial, she saw twelve of her special patron saints coming in pairs, and each one would present her with a jewelry piece of jewelry or, or clothing, some adornment, which represented a spiritual grace that God was giving her.

And she then saw them that they were singing and dancing and celebrating because rejoicing that that she had made it through this, this trial. And so then she did something very wonderful. She wanted to dance with them, and she literally started leaping and dancing all through the monastery with the saints.

So I see that as an image of her whole spirituality.

In today’s world, there’s so much individualism. And we can think of prayer as like my own private relationship with God, but her prayer was always ecclesial. It was always in the Church. First of all, because it was usually connected with the liturgy and the feast for the day, but also even in her most intimate prayer she was always aware of the saints in heaven, but also the saints on earth. She would see her own sisters and pray for them, even when she was united to our Lord. And she, anytime that he wanted to give her a grace, she would say, I won’t be happy unless you also give a grace to all my sisters. You know, we’re all in this together.

And the third lesson is purity.

At the end of this joyful experience of celebrating and dancing with the saints, she went and prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom she had a very great devotion all her life and our Lady appears frequently in all her works.

And she offered her purity to Mary. And she says, it’s not the purity in a sense that I had in the beginning, but I’m offering it to you a new having been re adorned and re purified through all this that has happened. She offered all that to Mary.

For St. Mary Magdalene de’Pazzi, purity is so much more than just being cleansed of our sins. It’s really, it’s equated with receptivity. In one of her meditations on the Feast of the Assumption she sees that heaven was not complete until Mary was there, until she was brought up in the Assumption, because God was looking for someone to whom he could communicate himself completely. And the only creature he found who could fully receive that gift was Mary because of her purity of heart.

And we’re called to that, too, as Carmelites, to be able to receive that gift of God’s presence through our purity of heart. Also, for her purity was not something cold, but something life giving, something that makes us fully human.

She spoke not only of our quest for purity of heart, but of purity as an attribute of God himself, and particularly of God the Father. And she spoke of milk as being a symbol of the purity of the Father, and milk gives life.

And so I think that this purity is a lesson that’s really needed in the world today because so many people are searching for their identity, for their wholeness and integrity, and they’re not finding it because they’re looking for it apart from God. But if we, as Carmelites, can receive that purity of God and bring it to others, it will bring great healing. And I can testify to this from my own experience that contemplative prayer heals us and transforms us and purifies us so that we can be like God.

And so I would like to end with a prayer in the words of St. Mary Magdalene de’Pazzi herself.

Please, O Lord, I beseech you. Do not take away from me the power of your divinity, but keep me, O Lord, in that innocence that you gave me from the beginning. Keep the pact that you made with yourself for me. Keep me, I beseech you, so that I can pour you into my neighbor. I mean your love, your light, into the creatures that you love. Keep yourself in me and keep also all those who in labor and fatigue are walking along your ways. Keep your Holy Spirit in me and confirm your bride in your grace so that she can crown it with the regeneration accomplished in all your creatures in order to lead them to you.

Amén.

To read more about Mary Magdalene de’Pazzi, visit Publicaciones de Carmelite Media to purchase the Holy Flame: In the Footsteps of Saint Mary Magdalene de’Pazzi.