XII. To Kindle Everywhere the Fires of Divine Love

From the Series: Beneath the Standard of Mary – The Heart and Voice of an Auxiliary Member

There is something that bubbles up inside of me that I have never been able to fully explain to another person.

It is not pride or ambition. It is not even the satisfaction of accomplishing something difficult. It is deeper than all of that and simpler than all of that at the same time. The best word I have ever found for it is JOY, but even that word is not quite big enough. It is the joy of serving her. Of standing up for her. Of defending her place and her honor without wanting a single thing in return. Every day I wake up and I do what I do, and I do it because I love her Son so much that everything else in my life arranges itself around that love whether I plan it that way or not.

That fire has been burning in me since 1983.

I remember the moment it started. I walked into a meeting where people seemed to be supposedly gathering to Pray the Rosary, and Our Lady had been tucked away in a corner, pretty much forgotten. And something in me was very offended. Not in a hostile way. Not in a way I could even fully articulate at the time. It just did not make any logical sense to me that we would gather in her name and pray the rosary and not even give her the dignity of a proper presence among us. So, I said something. I stood up for her. And by the next prayer meeting she (Our Lady of Fatima) had been given her rightful place, with the full love and attention she deserved among us.

To this day, 43 years later, I can have a very special love for Our Lady of Fatima.

That is the fire of divine love. Not a metaphor, or a theological concept to be discussed in a classroom. A living, burning reality that takes up residence in a human heart and does not leave. When those fires are kindled in you, you feel them. You know they are there. And you cannot, you simply cannot, keep them to yourself.

Think about what fire actually does. Everything near it kindles, and everything cold becomes warm, and everything dark becomes visible. That is not the fire of destruction I am describing that is a different fire entirely and it belongs to a different story. The fire of divine love is the fire of the Holy Spirit descending at Pentecost, the fire in the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus when they said did not our hearts burn within us. That fire transforms, as it draws people in rather than driving them away, and it illuminates rather than consumes.

And the prayer asks us to kindle it everywhere.

Not just in church, or only among people who already believe. Everywhere! In our families, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in the quiet ordinary moments of a Tuesday afternoon when nobody is watching and there is no audience and it would be very easy to let the fire go low. The Legion understands something that the comfortable version of faith sometimes forgets, a living faith is not a part-time commitment. There is no such thing as a day off from loving God. Even a day of rest, a genuine Sabbath, should be wrapped in prayer and Scripture and time in His presence. The fire does not go out on weekends.

Our Lady is at the center of all of this for me, she always has been these past 43 years.

I think about her response to the angel Gabriel often. He came to her with a request that would cost her everything, her reputation, her safety, possibly her life by the standards of her time and culture. She did not have a long conversation with him about the risks. She did not ask for time to think it over. She said be it done unto me according to thy will. And that one yes, that single act of total surrender by one young woman in one ordinary room in Nazareth, changed everything for every human being who has ever lived.

She first loved us. Before we knew her name, before we ever prayed a Rosary, before we ever thought to ask for her intercession, she was already saying yes on our behalf, that is why I love her so dearly. That is why I defend her honor when I see it neglected. That is why everything I do goes through her on its way to her Son.

She is not the source of the fire. She is the one who brings us to the source. She points, and intercedes, and she draws us by the sheer force of her love toward Jesus, who is the fire itself. Every Rosary we pray is a journey along that path. Every bead is a step closer. Every mystery is a window into the life of the One who came to cast fire upon the earth and who said how I wish it were already blazing.

He still wishes it. And we are the ones He is counting on to kindle it.

Everywhere means everywhere. Especially in the lukewarm soul, and I am deeply convicted about the lukewarm because you cannot serve two masters and you cannot live on both sides of the fence and call that a life of faith. The lukewarm soul is the one the enemy loves most because it requires no effort to hold. It simply stays comfortable, stays undecided, stays close enough to God to feel religious but far enough away to avoid being changed. The fires of divine love are the remedy for that. Not an argument, or a rebuke. Simply a life so visibly, so joyfully, so completely on fire that the lukewarm person standing next to you cannot help but feel the warmth and wonder what it would be like to stop being cold.

My wife (Kenia) and my mother (Marie) and I pray the Rosary together every single evening. To Jesus through Mary, we are Devoted Auxiliary Legion Members. That is not just a routine we follow, that is a fire we tend to. Every night at 6:00 pm, we gather the wood and we strike the match and we sit in the light of it together and we trust that what we are doing matters, for our own souls, for the souls of our family, for strangers we will never meet whose names we will never know but whose hearts God already knows completely.

I am a sinner. I say that not to be humble, but because it is simply true and I know it. None of us is worthy. Scripture says so and my own life confirms it. But the fires of divine love do not require worthy people. They require willing ones. They require people who will say what Our Lady said, be it done unto me, and mean it and keep meaning it every day even when the fire feels low and the work feels hard and the results are invisible.

Because the fire does not go out, especially when it belongs to Jesus, we have to keep showing up to tend it and kindle it everywhere we go.