“I am constantly offering you new graces and reminding you of all those graces that you are letting pass without taking advantage of them for your souls” (Father’s message to Sr. Eugenia Ravasio).
Surely our Heavenly Father is saddened when we do not take advantage of the graces that He is pouring out on us now or that He has given us in the past and which we do not assimilate.
In a prayer of our community to the Virgin Mary, we say to her: “Grant us the fullness of the Holy Spirit and watch over us so that none of the graces you give us for the fulfillment of our mission will be lost”.
Indeed, by cooperating with God’s grace, the soul is elevated and strengthened from within. Grace also makes the path of following Christ much easier than when we walk it in our own strength. Here we can turn to a metaphor sometimes used in mysticism to describe how the gifts of the Holy Spirit work. When we do things in our own strength, it is like rowing tiredly in a boat. On the other hand, when we act and cooperate with God’s grace, it is as if the wind is blowing in the sails and the boat moves forward with much greater speed.
But there is another aspect to consider. Our Father gives us these graces as an act of His inexhaustible love. Therefore, to accept them and to cooperate with them is to allow the love between the Father and us to unfold and become effective. In this way, our spiritual life is vitalized and our Heavenly Father is pleased to see that we accept His gifts and that they bear the fruits He intended.
It is certainly appropriate to ask the Mother of the Lord to help us to be vigilant so that the graces given to us do not pass us by and that we may even recover what we have wasted in our lives.