Life, work and spirituality of Mother Clelia Merloni

Our hope is in God…He is our strength

Dearest daughters in Jesus Christ,

Why do you cry over the slightest contradictions? Crying over an insignificant thing reveals a weak spirit deprived of that stability which is necessary for those souls who have consecrated themselves to God and are immolated on the altar of sacrifice.

Weep instead over yourselves, as Jesus told the holy women while He climbed the way to Calvary.   Yes, dearest daughters, let us weep over all our past sins, over our present miseries, over the uncertainty of reaching our eternal salvation, over the abuse of graces, over the little progress we are making in virtue.

God visits us every day with so many lights, with so many inspirations of His grace, with sound instructions, with good reading material, with examples of holiness, with good things and bad things. He sends us the former to let us feel His goodness and the latter to help us remember His justice. It is something worthy of tears not to be aware of these graces and to render them useless for ourselves.

O my daughters! How much we deserve compassion!   What an unfortunate thing for us to have so often not recognized our Lord’s visits! Let us weep, daughters, over ourselves as Jesus Christ wept over Jerusalem, and let us be converted to God once and for all.   The plan He has in making us see our miseries is to turn our soul to the practice of humility, to penance, to the total reform of our lives; and what great evil will be ours if we would not draw from this visit anything but annoyance, desolation, discouragement! Let us weep, then, because we are miserable; but may our tears always be accompanied by the firm proposal to change our life for the better by practicing humility and always trusting in His divine mercy.

Are you not aware, daughters, that in spite of the ordinary help of God, we are still weakness personified? Isn’t it perhaps true that with all the graces we receive from God, we so often fall and our life is full of deplorable weaknesses?   We, my daughters, resemble a paralytic, who cannot move except with the help of a friendly hand; and even when this hand presents itself, we often do not want to let it lead us. The slightest temptations afflict us; an imagination, a thought, a look, a bad example; a criticism makes us fall; the smallest passion drags us into sin; the slightest difficulty stops us along the road of virtue. See, then, daughters, how weak we are! With prayer we could receive a more powerful grace that would make us triumph over our weaknesses; but alas!   This is one of our greatest miseries: we pray so little, we pray so poorly! What are we to do then, if not confound ourselves before God in the light of our impotence, be diffident of ourselves and not render ourselves incapable of doing any good, abandoning ourselves to our own strength alone, capable of every evil if grace would not support us to be watchful over our senses, over our spirit and over our heart?

Oh, let us flee, dear daughters, from the occasions of evil and place all our hopes in God because He alone is our strength, awaiting all things from Him. Let us pray to Him then to the fullest stretch of our souls to have pity on our miseries and to heal us completely. Let others trust purely in human means, but you, beloved daughters, strive always to place your unlimited and filial confidence in God alone!

I bless you maternally and with my whole heart, Your most affectionate Mother

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As we forgive…

Dearest daughters in Jesus Christ,

Remember, my daughters, that mutual tolerance is part of the precept of charity. These two things are so bound to each other that without mutual suffering, charity would not be possible, and it would be necessary to cancel this precept from the Gospel because every person on earth has his or her own defects and imperfections. There are no angels except in heaven. If you don’t bear with the defects and imperfections of others, you break that bond and charity is destroyed.   Everyone has his or her own particular nature. Inclinations and temperaments are not all the same; judgments and ways of feeling contradict each other; wills clash with one another; tastes vary. No, among so many contrary elements, the fusion of hearts to form one heart, only one soul, as charity demands, is not possible so long as people don’t bear with one another in their weaknesses and don’t suffer in a spirit of charity and patience all that offends them, all that displeases them, all that does not meet with their tastes nor their disposition.   Without this mutual tolerance the union of hearts would be likewise impossible, no different than the fusion of water with fire, of light with darkness. There would necessarily be among them divisions, arguments, discord.

Therefore, bear with one another with great humility. This excludes sensitivities and pretensions. This will teach you how to treat your neighbor. Do it with sweetness and patience and so you will exclude murmurs and grumbling, criticisms, sarcasm, stinging barbs, antipathies and impatience with displeasures received. Do this with great charity and this will teach you to treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated yourselves… God will not be indulgent toward our defects except in the measure that we are indulgent toward the defects of our brothers and sisters. If we do not support our neighbor, God will not support us; if we do not sympathize with others, God will not sympathize with us.   We ourselves, daughters, do recognize the demand of this law, and so we say: Forgive us, O Lord, our offenses as we forgive those who have offended us. We, therefore, must be indulgent toward our own faults in the measure that we are indulgent toward the faults of others. Justice itself obliges us to mutual tolerance.   Who does not feel the need for herself of this law of tolerance, of this law, which is protective of human weakness? Now if we want it to be observed in our regard, isn’t it a real injustice not to want to observe it regarding our neighbor?   We complain about the imperfections of others, but we don’t want others to complain about ours? [We complain] about their character and of their moods, but don’t we also have some critical moments? [We complain] about their impulsiveness, or of their discourtesy, but don’t we also fall into the impulse of a language that is too pointed and rude? It is not good, daughters, in fact, it is very bad, for us to want perfection in others to the point of not supporting in them any spot, any imperfection. Seriously probe your own conscience a little bit, daughters, and see how you support the defects of your neighbors.

I remain in Jesus, Your anguished Mother

Throw oneself blindly into the ocean of Providence

Dearest daughter in Jesus Christ,

I understand. Have courage and unlimited confidence in God. You, dearest daughter, must begin [your journey] little by little and with gentleness, with unbounded trust in the divine Heart of Jesus, who calls you saying: “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will comfort you. All you who are thirsty come to the fountain.”

You, daughter, must follow this action and divine vocation; you must continue to wait for the prompting of the Holy Spirit, so that, with determination you may throw yourself blindly into the ocean of divine Providence and of the Eternal Will and beg that it be fulfilled in you so that you may be carried along by the most powerful waves of divine kindness, unable to resist, and be transported to the shore of your particular perfection and spiritual well‐being.

Having made this decision, which you should repeat many times each day, study yourself and strive, with as much certitude as you can, interiorly and exteriorly, to draw near, with all the strength of your soul, to those things that excite you and bring you to appreciate ever more the goodness, the loveableness and the infinite charity of your beloved Jesus.

These acts are to be done always without pressure and violence to your heart so that they do not weaken you or maybe even incapacitate you.

Whenever you can, accustom yourself to the contemplation of the divine goodness and of His continuous and loving gifts, and humbly receive the droplets of His inestimable goodness that will descend into your soul. Guard yourself well against forced tears or other devotions of the senses, but remain tranquil in interior solitude awaiting the fulfillment in you of God’s divine Will. And then when He may give these to you, they will be sweet, without struggle or force, and you will receive them with gentleness and serenity and above all with humility.

Remember, daughter that the key to opening the secrets of spiritual treasures is in knowing how to deny oneself always and in all things, and it is this key that closes the door to tepidity and mental aridity when it is caused by our own fault. When these come from God, they join the other treasures of the soul.

Be pleased to stand with Mary as much as you can at the feet of Jesus and listen to what He tells you.   Be watchful so that your enemies (chief among whom is you, yourself) will be unable to impede this holy silence.

For now I will say no more because I hope you will put into practice what I have written.   Now I leave you at the feet of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, so that, with His strength, you will be able to distance yourself from any shadow of sin and continue along the narrow path of the Saints!

I bless you with all my heart, Your most affectionate Mother