Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. John 12:3
There are two stories about Mary of Bethany at the feet of Jesus. In the first story from the Gospel of Luke chapter 10 we see Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus while Martha scurries around preparing the meal. We see Jesus correct Martha in this story telling her that Mary has chosen the better part. We know from this that adoring Jesus should be primary, above all the distractions of the world. When we keep our eyes on Jesus, when we pray and adore, our work flows from that.
But in today’s Gospel, the story of Mary anointing the feet of Jesus, we see something even more about adoring Jesus. Mary of Bethany is willing to give her most expensive perfume to anoint Jesus. She is willing to in essence make a fool of herself in adoration of Him. She gives him her all because she knows he can take her sin and forgive her. And we see her get persecuted by Judas for this. Judas claiming that it should have been sold and given to the poor.
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) John 12:4-6
We know because the Gospel tells us that Judas is stealing. We know his heart is hard. But have we ever thought about the fact that we could be Judas? This scenario could be applied to almost any group today, not just the poor, but any marginalized group that people advocate for. If we aren’t properly ordered towards God in adoration, our advocacy can actually be harmful.
For a moment, I want to apply this story beyond helping the poor (which we should most definitely be doing.) I want to apply it more broadly to those we speak of as marginalized. We put labels on groups and we fight for the group we want to fight for. Look at us, we scream, and so the focus actually becomes the wounds of the group, and how they were wronged, rather than on God and how we can walk towards healing.
Don’t get me wrong, we should always reach out to those who are wounded and marginalized. We should help those in poverty, we should help those in sin, we should help those who have faced injustice. But the question becomes, are we helping them to adore Jesus? or are we adoring their wounds and their sin and leaving them sitting in them? Are we leading them towards unforgiveness or towards sin, hindering their healing in our effort to help?
It seems Mary was singular minded. She was focused on Jesus. Though these scenes take place prior to the crucifixion, Mary seems to know interiorly that it is Jesus’ wounds we should adore. Why? Because he takes our wounds off of us and takes them on Himself. His wounds are wounds of true love. His wounds mean our healing. His wounds mean we can be lifted out of poverty and sin. In today’s world I would venture to say that it is spiritual poverty from which we suffer. By focusing on Jesus’ wounds our hearts can become spiritually rich.
When we focus solely on people’s wounds without redirecting them towards Christ and the truth that He taught, it becomes our own wound we adore and our own sin we adore. For some, their own sin blinds them to real love. For others, great empathy can be a hinderance to real love and real help. Saint Catherine of Siena once said, “too great pity is the greatest cruelty.”
In the case of Judas, he was blinded by sin. His heart didn’t want to help the poor at all. He was actually just made uncomfortable by the sight of true adoration. It pricked his sinful conscience. He was worshipping his own sin, his own wounds, to the detriment of his own healing. For Judas he was beyond just the distraction of Martha, he wasn’t looking to be lifted from sin, but to justify it and proclaim his own virtue while doing it. He was sitting in pride judging Mary. His pride would soon turn to despair, a twisted form of pride. The focus for Him was never really Jesus, but always self.
We see this so much today. The term we have come up with for it is virtue signaling. We help a marginalized group, and we judge others as hateful if they adore Christ and want to redirect people to Him. We judge harshly those that actually think Jesus can lift people out of sin. We have in essence gotten it all backwards.
Mary was properly focused and she was persecuted for it. When we focus solely on the wound, we sit and wallow in it without ever healing. We sit in sin and unforgiveness.
The most marginalized group that I can think of is actually the Catholic Saint. If you read their stories they are often mocked, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, and killed. But they are singularly focused on Christ and they know exactly who they are, they are not confused. They are willing to go to the death for Christ because they know that freedom from their chains comes from true love and forgiveness. They know that it isn’t really love if it isn’t grounded in truth. They go to their deaths wanting the salvation of others and walking in complete forgiveness. They, like Mary, adore the true God and give Him their all. It doesn’t make sense to the world. The world sits in worship of their own sin and wounds. But when we see a Saint we know they are different. We know they have chosen the better part.
It is why all things should begin and end in prayer and adoration of the God who loves us. It is His wounds we should adore.
The Body of Saint Maria Goretti. She was stabbed 14 times by a man who tried to rape her. She forgave her attacker before she died and stated she wanted him in heaven with her. Her attacker later converted in prison.
When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom. Job 1:5
I gave a talk on reparation this morning at my parish. I am including the video and the transcript.
Reparation
Before I begin this talk, I will just say, I am not a theologian. I do not really feel qualified to speak on this topic and if I am honest, when I signed myself up to do so, it was in the hopes of finding another speaker. Most of what I know I learned from reading scripture, frequenting the sacraments, reading the lives of Saints and from my own progression in the prayer life. I hope I am able to impart the importance of reparation and why we need to do it.
In order to talk about reparation, I first wanted to talk about what scripture refers to as the “unforgivable sin.” It is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Let me read the passage to you;
In the Gospel of Matthew 12:31-32 Jesus tells us;
“Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”
Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is known as a rejection of God’s mercy. I used to think this was a “one and done” sin and I prayed that I would never do this one thing that I didn’t really understand that would leave me unforgiven. But I realized one day, I have actually committed this sin many times in my past. Because, as I said, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is a rejection of mercy, it is when we remain in our pride thinking we aren’t wrong, or even our despair thinking God cannot forgive us in our mortal sin and we refuse God’s forgiveness. In my distant past I used to not confess all my mortal sin, even if I went to confession – and very often I just didn’t go to confession at all. I tried to hide from God the really bad, I was more despairing, which I now see as a twisted form of my own pride. I thought in hiding from God I could save myself or sometimes even that God could not possibly repair what I had broken. There were also occasions I simply thought I was right and God was wrong which is just straight up pride. Because of this rejection of forgiveness we cannot have the Spirit dwelling within us. It is a blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. What Jesus is saying in this passage is, I can forgive you anything, but if you refuse to come to me, I cannot forgive. Unconfessed sin cannot be absolved. When we sit in unconfessed mortal sin, we lose divine indwelling. In our pride we don’t want to be forgiven, for we think we are right or we think we can’t be forgiven. This means we live our lives in the darkness of sin. However, so long as we are breathing, we can always convert and change and repent, and we will be forgiven. Don’t ever think the repentant heart won’t be forgiven. God is waiting and seeking for us to receive the Holy Spirit. But If we go to our death this way, which is to say, if we go to our death in the pride of mortal sin, it gains us hell, which is our own choice. Remember mortal sin is grave sin, we know it is grave, and we give our full consent. It is willful separation from God. Purgatory is for those who accept mercy, who are albeit, still imperfect. Heaven is for those made perfect, “as the heavenly father is perfect.” Being made perfect is all about mercy. Mercy is all about Charity.
So now I want to take you back to the beginning when God created. God, who scripture tells us, is love, who is infinitely good, created us. Not because He had to, but because He is infinite goodness and love. Love is always creative and beautiful. Love gives.
Adam and Eve were afforded the gift to live in union with the will of God. This unity, was peaceful, perfect, harmonious, it knew no evil. Everything was held in the infinite goodness of God, the Trinity. So going back to the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve fell, when they chose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, the council of Trent defines this as a grievous sin. They knew it and defied the command of God, and they gave their full consent to it. But something else happened too. God came looking for them. Where are you ? He asks. Who told you that you were naked? – He continued. Then he straight up asked them if they did what He asked them not to do. Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? Are we to believe that God didn’t already know? Of course he knew. He is God. What was happening in this exchange then? I have often pondered, what if they just had said yes and said they were sorry? This was an opportunity to receive the mercy of God. God already knew all that had happened, but he wanted them to tell him. Instead of admitting they were wrong and asking for mercy, they began the blame game. Eve blamed the serpent. Adam blamed Eve. Neither turned to God and just admitted their weakness. They justified themselves in their mortal transgression putting a wall of separation of their choosing between themselves and God. They tried to hide from God. You don’t have to be an atheist to be doing this in your own life, as I said, I in the past, hid my sin from God, and refused to ask for His mercy. In Adam and Eve’s case, as in my own, you can be sure that God knew their weakness for He is their creator. But in choosing to not ask for mercy, they blasphemed the Spirit that had dwelt within them. Union was disrupted. God’s love still held and holds everything together, for without it we would cease to exist, but it was no longer heart to heart. A veil separated the union that once was. And it was an infinite offense, this rejection of mercy, because it was an offense against the infinite goodness of God, which they had known fully in a way that we do not know it. This rift in unity was created with a far reaching consequence, one that is as infinite as the goodness it offended. The offense against the Holy Spirit travels from generation to generation, it is the mark of original sin and the concupiscence that accompanies it. For those of you who don’t know what concupiscence is; it is the tendency of human beings towards sin.
These are the infinite marks for offending the goodness and mercy of God. It marks us in our minds, where Satan trains us to think, and in our hearts where sin takes over, and in our hands and feet, when we act on the disordered desires and sin. These are the wounds of Christ. And try as we may, before Christ came, our attempts at atonement fell short. Covenant after covenant was broken, as our human weaknesses always seem to get the best of us. Our rejection of God and his mercy playing out over and over in time. How could man possibly undo the offense of infinity? How can man undo this original blasphemy of the Spirit? How can this original unforgivable sin be forgiven? Fortunately for Adam and Eve, they did not go to their death that way and God was working in Salvation History. Fortunately for us God also has a plan, a plan that defeats sin and even death as we look forward to the resurrection of our glorified bodies.
God in His Divine providence, knew that only God Himself could atone for the infinite offense. Atonement is the reconstruction of the damaged relationship, a way if you will, for the Spirit to dwell within once again. So the second person of the Blessed Trinity came in the form of the Son, Jesus Christ, to atone for our sin. That is, He came to reconcile us to Himself. He did this through His death on the cross and His resurrection.
But is that the end of the story?
While what Jesus did on the cross, did atone, it did not complete the restoration of full union that Adam and Eve had before they fell. If it had, we would not still be battling the devil, we would not still be falling into sin, we would not still have wars and rumors of wars and hate of our fellow man. We would not need confession because we would have returned to the state that Adam and Eve were in originally before the fall. We would have already entered into what the Saints call transforming union.
God could have just simply returned us to that state of original justice, but He did not. God judged that there was a better way for us. It is a way that completely respects our free will and transforms us into people who love like He does. After all, it isn’t really love if we don’t choose it. God does not mandate love, he respects the choices we make. Love is only love if it is freely given and self sacrificing. So where does that leave us? Well, Jesus left us a way. He is the way, the truth and the life. It is the way of reparation. Reparation means that we unite our sacrifices to the cross of Christ to repair for our own sins and the sins of others. While Jesus does forgive us everything in Confession, there is still the consequence of the sin to deal with. For example, you can confess that you yelled at your spouse and Jesus forgives you, but repair with your spouse needs to be made to heal the residual effect of the sin. The spiritual consequence of having done it in the first place. There is work to be done on our part, we have to choose to partake in the redemption. He does not want to be the only one loving. He asks for us to become love too. And God’s love is self-sacrificing. Jesus Christ on the cross shows us how to love like God. To give absolutely everything of ourselves in love and to hold nothing back from God’s will in our lives. His human will was crucified, obedient to the Divine Will. What this means is he took our previously meager means of atonement, which was mainly animal sacrifice for sin, and offered Himself instead. This offering is infused with the power and glory of God through the Cross and Resurrection. Since God became man, mankind is now able to participate in a very unique and intimate way in the power of God’s merciful love through self-sacrifice which repairs with Christ. And so, God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. And a pathway for us to live in the Divine Will is made.
This way of reparation could not be made without the gift of the Immaculate Conception. God gave us a gift in His Mother who was preveniently saved by his Passion, Death and Resurrection. This means that the grace of His life, passion, death and resurrection was applied to her at her conception, before these things actually happened in time. He is God after all, He can work outside of time. And He did so with her, so as to show us the path of how to repair and be transformed into love.
We know too that her “Fiat”, her, “yes” to the Angel Gabriel enabled the Holy Spirit to come upon her and ushered in the Savior of the world. Her acceptance, no matter the consequence, of the will of God, to trust that God knew what He was doing even though it would put her in danger according to the rules of society, helped to save us, it was a cooperation in redemption. We see that she is truly full of grace to be able to say this yes, even while knowing evil and suffering in a way Adam and Eve would not have known. This makes her singular in our faith and it is why we honor her so much. She is the Mother of Mercy, a human person who knew not how to reject the mercy of God and had the grace of the Holy Spirit always dwelling within her. One of the titles of Mary is Our Lady of Ransom. In Jesus, time if someone could not pay a debt they were often thrown in prison until they could repay. You may ask, how can someone in prison repay? Well, it was their family who paid the debt to get them out of prison. The payment was called the Ransom. We see this story in Matthew 18, the story of the unmerciful servant. In spiritual terms, we repay when we forgive like God forgives, but this story reminds us too that we can pay, or repair, for our loved ones who are still in the prison of mortal sin. We can make payment, with Christ, for them, so that they turn towards God’s mercy. Our Lady and her title of Our Lady of Ransom, in her walk to the Cross, was helping to repay the debt for all of us. And we see in the relationship of Jesus and Mary how we too can partake in our own redemption.
The second person of the Blessed Trinity entered into the waters of the pure womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he was birthed into the world, taking on our limited human nature. This Divine person, came through this grace filled human person to atone for our infinite offense. Her womb, the space where the Divine Person and Human Person meet. Her immaculate heart, the consolation for His sacred heart.
She had a sword pierce her heart as she walked the Passion of her Son. And as blood and water poured from His side, our church was birthed. She is an archetype of the church, and she is the Mother of the Church. Through the Immaculate Conception and the Cross, resurrection is made available to us and heaven is opened up, atonement is made. And we are invited of our own free will into this mystery of reparation that brings down God’s mercy upon us. We have a part to play in our own redemption, as well as in the redemption of the whole world. We must say “yes” to God, we must follow Jesus by taking up our cross and walking our own passion, which strips us of our self-seeking nature, and clothes us with the heavenly cloak of self-sacrificial love of God and neighbor. This reparation, this healing, it is available in all the Sacraments of the church. And at every Mass if only we have eyes to see.
It begins in the waters of baptism, We enter in, as if into the womb of the church, the bride of Christ. The words are proclaimed, “I baptize you” – this person who baptizes you, represents Christ (hence why we cannot say we, for it is one God in whom we believe) – from whom all saving comes – When the words, “In the name of the Father” are proclaimed our FIAT is made – the yes which conceives Divine Life within us– we are lifted up to heaven. The next words, “and of the Son” and we are taken down into our sin which is crucified and dies, and finally, “and of the Holy Spirit” and we are reborn into new life. The infinite offense of original sin is repaired for us. And the waters of Baptism bring us through Salvation History from the annunciation to the resurrection in one Sacramental act. It is why Baptism is necessary for Salvation.
The infinite consequence of original sin (and our particular sin up to that point) are atoned for and repaired by God.
But this is not the end. This begins the journey of our Christian life. To think this is the end, and now we are done with our journey would be a mistake.
We know that we are still affected by concupiscence – our tendency to sin. So the repair is made and we have full access to the Holy Spirit, but there is something left for us to do. The Sacramental life is a choosing daily to partake in the life of Christ. The grace of the sacraments help to reorder our desires. The end goal, the crushing of our concupiscence.
Mary had no concupiscence.
She did not just birth Him and leave and become sinful, she went all the way to the Cross with Him because her desires were ordered to goodness. The Cross crushes concupiscence in order that we be “made perfect as the heavenly father is perfect”. (Matthew 5:48)
It is why we “take up our cross and follow him.” God does not want to leave us with a disordered desire to sin, and He definitely does not want to leave us in our sin. So He made for us a way to freely choose life.
For the Blessed Virgin Mary, this is where the grace of God filled her, and she had total surrender and trust to the path. The path that led her to stand at the foot of the cross and still trust that God is good and His plan is better. A path where she helps Him redeem by being a vessel of grace that shows us what we were made for.
It is not enough that we simply are born again, we must not stay spiritual infants, but we must grow and mature, and be transformed into life giving love ourselves. Life giving Love wants to repair for what evil and darkness have wrought. This is because true life has no place for evil to dwell. We do not get to choose what is good and evil, that has already been done by God the Father. We do however get to choose whether or not we are going to participate in or promote or excuse evil. We get to choose to overcome evil through our own obedience to Our Heavenly Father, no matter how painful, or scary that obedience to God may seem to be.
A Christian who stops at baptism and gives in continually to concupiscence and sin, with no thought of following the will of God, is left as a frozen hearted soul.
To paraphrase Martin Luther (Luther werks vol. 26) and yes this is actually the essence of what he stated, although not verbatim, he said we are like a pile of dung that Jesus covers with the purity of snow. This presupposes that what God made isn’t good. We become like frozen piles of poo. If you believe this, then no need for us to repair anything, in fact why bother at all? But for the Catholic, even if you are filled with the dung of sin, when we repent and accept mercy, God can then crush that dung into compost that becomes fertile soil in which abundant life can grow. To be Catholic is to follow in the footsteps of St John the Beloved Disciple, Mary Magdalene and most importantly our Mother Mary, all the way through the passion to the tomb.
This is why we need confession. Another sacrament. This is the one in which we hand our sin to Christ and continue the path to repair. When we go to confession, we are trying to purge our sin by naming it and nailing it to the cross – Confession crucifies our sin. It is the real sacramental grace of the Sacrament that will eventually help us overcome those sins. And by doing your penance you acknowledge the temporal damage that was done to your soul because of your sin. You partake in the repair for the sake of your own soul. You accept the mercy of God, grace grows and the spirit can make a home inside of your heart, or at least begin to do so.
There is another error in our world that also hinders us from this path of reparation. It seems to embrace the wrongheaded thought that suffering is worse than sin. All the while never realizing that sin begets more and worse suffering. When we wallow in our sin, in an effort to stop suffering, the joy filled abundant life is never found and we fill only with fleeting worldly pleasures that never truly satisfy. No amount of money, sex, food, shopping, work, status, or reputation, can ever truly satisfy what only God can fill. Oftentimes our emotions can get the best of us and what we feel becomes our radar for what is or is not sin. But the Catholic Church in her great Wisdom, has already given us the road map. And through the Authority of Christ, what she binds on earth is bound in heaven and what she looses on earth is loosed in heaven. So we don’t have to guess at or wonder whether or not a particular action is sinful or not. We know because the Church, who is Our Mother, has already instructed us in it. The Saints all knew this and they also knew suffering well. We do not see them shy away from suffering, in fact, if you read their writings, they praise and thank God for all that comes their way. They know God is good, despite their suffering because they know if they accept mercy, they grow in charity and the Spirit dwells within and love grows in them which in turn grows through them to their community. Saint Josephine Bakhita famously said, “”If I was to meet those slave raiders that abducted me and those who tortured me, I’d kneel down to them to kiss their hands, because, if it had not have been for them, I would not have become a Christian and religious woman.” This is a woman who KNOWS God. Can we say the same for ourselves? Can we thank God for our suffering, for our trials, both big and small? Or do we rage at the world when suffering comes our way? All things are held within God’s perfect will, which means all things are an opportunity to glorify God. Our pain and suffering, is a means by which we are able to imitate Christ on the cross, who triumphed over evil through obedience to God and love for humanity. What an honor to be able to love God that much and to truly love our neighbor, even when it is not easy to do so.
Saints seek to grow in virtue to help temper the desire borne of concupiscence. In the first stages of the Christian life, this is purgative, meaning that they are trying to get rid of and repair for their own sin. These Saints, they know something else, they know they are weak, and they know they are not their own Savior. They know as I stated at the beginning, that God’s power is made perfect in their weakness. This means once they accept the mercy of God, they do not wallow in guilt and shame, they are confident in the one who loves them. Scrupulosity is a way that Satan tries to steal our confidence in mercy and make us once again rely on ourselves instead of God. We must always remember who is really in control. We must surrender to God the journey he has placed before us, so that He can be the one that is glorified and we do not end up stealing His glory.
Saints hope to attain the “rejoicing in their suffering” that Saint Paul speaks of. Because they know that their suffering “makes up for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.”
What is lacking in His sufferings is our free will’s choosing to help him repair for the offenses that have been made and to extend mercy, even to those who don’t deserve it. We can repair for ourselves, but we can also repair for others. If Jesus could extend mercy to the man who nailed His hands to the Cross, is there anyone you should not be able to forgive? They may reject your forgiveness, but you are freed from your chains when you forgive. If we choose to repair with him, the Body would heal much faster. Saint Paul knew true love inside of his heart, where the Holy Spirit dwelt, and in all of his sufferings, he continued to love. His suffering, united to Christ’s helped this man who wrote most of the New Testament, with Christ in him to bring healing to our world through the rise of Christendom.
Think of reparation and extension of mercy like this, If a child who falls and skins his knee, he is in pain and suffering but his body has the capability to heal that wound on its own. However, if mom comes along, she suffers pain too at seeing her child and because of her love for him, she cleans it, puts some Neosporin on it and bandages it. This will help heal much faster than if the dirt is left inside of it. His skinned knee is not her fault. And her attempt is miniscule in comparison to the healing ability of the body itself, but the love with which she does it, and the means she uses to help, do make a difference and she has partaken in repair. She desires only that her child get better, she is thinking outside of herself and her own ego and wills the good of her child, for his sake. For us, reparation is not an attempt at physical healing for our neighbor, although it could result in physical healing, but it is a spiritual repairing. Where we or our neighbor has offended God, as a member of the Body of Christ, we are able to pray, sacrifice, fast, and mortify ourselves as an offering of self-sacrificial love, where we die to ourselves in order for the mercy of God to be granted to that person, even though they may have done nothing to deserve God’s mercy. This repairing act of love is a participation in Christ’s crucifixion. We become instruments of the Crucified Christ on earth as he reigns in heaven. So often we want to imitate Christ’s loving acts of kindness, his service to the poor and needy, which are all good, but we are called to so much more, for Jesus tells us that the GREATEST act of love is to lay down ones life for one’s friends.
The Saint starts out in this purgative way, and know the goal is to be purified of all evil. Evil thoughts, evil words, evil actions. We can do our purgatory here. We can offer suffering for others here. This is the ultimate reparation, because it not only purifies our own soul, but it spreads outward to others, purifying the whole Body of Christ. It is a work that is done with your will, the action of your mind and body, and a heart that totally relies on the grace of God. And most importantly it is an act of humility. To self-reflect upon our own sinfulness, instead of always looking outward at others and pointing out their sinful ways, we are humbling ourselves before God, surrendering ourselves to Him, and begging for His mercy upon ourselves before we try to go around correcting our neighbor. This is why Jesus taught us that we must first take the log out of our own eye before we can notice the speck in our neighbors eye. Purging ourselves of our sinful habits does just this.
Imagine what the world would look like if we all were committed to purging ourselves from sin – it would look like the will of God, on earth as it is in heaven. This is what we pray for. But this path isn’t easy. It requires letting go of worldly desires and focusing on what God desires, even when it’s hard, even when it brings suffering. It means trusting in the power of God in and through our own work of redemption within our own souls and the ripple effect that will have on those around us. If we keep an eternal view we know suffering in this life is temporary compared to the heaven of no more tears.
For me in my life, it has taken me a long time to understand this. When I think of my past and all the things I have done, I can see how I fought so much against the plan of God for me. I thought I knew better.
I used to complain of the rules of the Church as if they were some kind of fun sucking rigidity that was meant to make my life miserable. I raged at God and at the church, all the while still proclaiming my belief and telling everyone I was Catholic.
I was double minded.
I believed I could disregard the commandments and still be a “good person.” I hated myself because I was stuck in the pride of my sin not realizing that what I needed was the mercy of God. I have to think that any grace I merited at all, was because of loved ones praying for me. Don’t ever stop praying for your loved ones. God can do amazing things with that. In my case, it wasn’t until a series of humbling events, a deep and severe depression and anxiety, and the murder of my friend, that I began to see that the world wasn’t better because of ME. These sufferings, though awful, brought me to my knees, where for the first time since I was a small child, I connected in real relationship with the God who loves me in prayer. I realized, in fact, I was a misery and I understood what the Saints meant when they said things like this, and I knew how far away I was from God. I still have a long way to go, but I am learning day by day to trust completely in my Savior.
I remember the first time I really saw that my thoughts, my words, and my actions, wished evil, they spoke evil, and they did evil. I am still on my journey with God, but the recognition of this is when the reparation finally begins. And when reparation begins, healing can truly begin.
I was illuminated about this because of prayer. A real and meaningful conversation with God. The way of the Christian is the way of prayer in real relationship with a real and living person.
Two of the first sins God showed me were my use of his name in vain, and that of using birth control. To be sure, in our society, neither of these things is considered a big deal, but both are evil. In my pride I had refused to see that.
I used the name of the God who loves me and wants to bless me as a curse, as a way to damn those who I didn’t like or agree with. Scripture tells me I will be held accountable for every careless word from my mouth. Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a sinner.
When it came to birth control, I had embraced the worldly view that children could be a burden, and the sacrifice which is part of the motherly life, well, I fought against it. I didn’t understand that my body was a gift and it’s natural processes didn’t need to be broken. We take what works perfectly and we break it. I didn’t understand the self sacrificial love that motherhood requires was actually something beautiful. I didn’t understand until God showed me. Scripture tells us of children, “happy the man whose quiver is full” (Psalm 127:5). Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner.
As time moved forward and God peeled back the veil I came to understand that if we truly want to be healed, God asks us to repair with Him. This reparation means listening to Holy Mother Church and all of her teachings, even the ones that seem hard. Obedience was the thing Satan couldn’t do. All of the Saints unanimously practiced obedience to the church and her teachings. If you struggle with a particular church teaching like I did, it is worth looking into why it is taught. For the why, is always about our healing and salvation. It isn’t some arbitrary rule, it is always about abundant life.
The church also left us the sacraments as a way towards transforming union, one that brings real peace in the world and not a false peace that leaves our hearts dark.
There’s a beautiful passage in the Gospel of John, Chapter 17:15-22 where Jesus is speaking to the Father on behalf of his disciples and he says;
I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,[f] so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one..
I think we sometimes tend to think of this oneness Jesus speaks of as some kind of ecumenical agree to disagree, all get along, coexistence. But this passage – Jesus prays for them to be one as the Father and He are one. That isn’t some sort of worldly coexistence, that is Jesus wants you personally to be one with Him as He is with the Father. This is a divinization of your soul. And when you become divinized, true love lives in the world. This is being taken back to the garden. The Kingdom of God is at hand, in you. Your every breath is love, your every action is the Passion, the self-sacrificing love.
How do we get there? We make, as Our Lady of Fatima requested, reparation. Our first steps to repair is to actually allow ourselves to be healed of what sin has done to us by partaking regularly in the Sacraments. We must fully embrace our baptism, give our fiat, to God and seeking to do His will in all things. We must fully embrace our Confirmation – asking for the gifts of the Spirit to increase in us, for it is these gifts that will bear life-giving fruit for others.
We must go to confession when we sin and confess without justification. If we justify why we sin, Jesus cannot be our Justification because we are still trying to save ourselves instead of letting him be our Savior. Once we are in this state of grace, we must receive the Eucharist, asking and knowing that Jesus will purify us. This bread that we eat can purify our hearts if we allow it. When we receive Jesus, who is truly present in the Most Holy Eucharist, in a state of grace (which means we have have confessed all of our sins and have no other known sin on our hearts) we are able to be filled up completely with sanctifying grace, which heals, perfects, purifies, and makes holy all that it encounters. Who would not want to receive the Eucharist in a state of grace as often as they could. This is where the real work of holiness is done.
I want to pause here for a minute and state that we are so so far away from real purity. I used to scoff at the Saints who would proclaim their misery to God and I would think, “seriously Faustina?” That’s ridiculous, what could you possibly be doing that was so bad. That is until God started illuminating me on all the ways we are impure and showed me how His Mother was not.
I realized on day how I have a secondary thought that is all about me. For example, I was in the chapel praying alone one day, which is a good, but when someone came in, I thought, “oh, I hope I look reverent.” This thought, though not terrible, shows how self-centered I am. Mary was not like this. The thoughts would have been thoughts of God and of other. We’re far from that type of purity.
Mary bore zero ill will towards others. She, like her Son, wants for salvation for souls. Think about what you would have been like if all of your son’s friends abandoned Him at the cross. Would you be with them in the upper room praying? Or would you be angry and raging? She walks in Mercy.
This is the Immaculate Conception, it is who she is and how she identified to Saint Bernadette. She went to the Cross trusting God and forgiving like Jesus did and through His saving and His gift to her as making her Mediatrix of all grace, God wants to grow that Divine life within you, asking you to partake in the repair. SO that your FIAT can let God crucify the sin in you. Mary cooperated with the redeeming act of Jesus and we can partake in that too. We are one Mystical Body and Christ is the head.
We must be ever more vigilant in these times. We must trust that those sins which we think we cannot stop, that God can give us the grace to stop. He can lift us higher. We cannot and do not lift ourselves up to holiness. Only God can sanctify us.
Eventually, if you stay on the path, God will draw you closer to him. Instead of always being angry at others for their sin, you too may start to see their weaknesses the way God does and offer to repair for them. What mother wouldn’t want to help her son repair damage that has been done?
Holy Mother church helps us do that.
Besides staying on the path of prayer and the Sacraments, any and all suffering that comes your way can be offered for others. In Father Bolster’s talk on mortification he said the acceptance and offering of the suffering that isn’t a suffering you choose, but is a suffering sent your way, is extremely efficacious. God is the one who knows best how to purify you. He is trying to teach us how to love unconditionally, the way He does, in the middle of whatever suffering we are in. He entered the suffering, he didn’t remove it, he purified in the middle of it.
I want to relay a story about suffering after my dad died. My mom has dementia. She and my dad were married almost 59 years before he died. But right now she doesn’t remember that he did die. But there are days when the remembering comes and I want to relay to you about one such day. On this particular day, She asked me if “my Mike” was gone. She called him her “main man” and she realized he was dead, and then came the body shaking sobbing. I climbed into bed with her. I held her as she asks me why I didn’t tell her (which I did), why I didn’t take her to the funeral (which I did). I lay there with her and we cry. It’s all I can do, hold her and cry with her. All I can do is love my mom in the middle of her suffering.
As I laid there in bed with her, I felt the Lord whisper, “there’s more grace in this one act of holding your mother than in anything else you have ever done.”
I knew that all the writings I have written, all the classes I have taught, all the retreats I have put on, paled in comparison to the minutes I laid in bed and held my mother. I was not able to fix any of what was happening, I was just in the suffering with her. This moment in time was an act of reparation. And though I have been known to complain about what I am living right now, in that moment I welcomed the suffering and asked God to let it continue because grace was flowing like a river. This is the grace and unconditional love that God has in store for us.
I look at this situation as a Passion, a cross I take up. It wasn’t controllable, it was just a mess that God was in with us, that I could choose to love through. And with Jesus, the yoke is easy and the burden is light, it is how I can keep going. If you really want to know how to love, meditate on the Passion of Christ. Almost all of the great Saints meditated on the Passion of Jesus, not as a morbid recalling, but as a way to die to self. As a way of recognizing the great mercy and love that the Father has for us.
There is a passage in scripture where God tells us, my ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts. I started praying for God to make my ways his ways, and my thoughts to be his thoughts. It is amazing how your perspective changes when this happens and how suffering can be viewed as purifying instead of something to be avoided at all costs. Gratitude becomes a way of life, you rise above enmity, and Thanksgiving is always on your lips. It is no wonder that the Eucharist means Thanksgiving.
Finally, as I conclude this talk on reparation, I must acknowledge the elephant in the room. The church herself, though Holy, has a mess of sinful men and women inside. Make no mistake, the Priest scandal is an attack on all of us. For if Satan can make us hate our Priests, he can keep us from the Sacraments. Keeping us from the Sacraments keeps us from mercy. Satan wants us to go to our death blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Pray for and repair for our Priests. Pray for our Priests to be made holy. Pray also for yourselves to be made holy.
If you want unity in the church, offer yourself as a holocaust of unity. That’s what Saint Catherine of Siena did. There is a reason that in the Apparitions at Fatima Penance and Reparation were the message. There’s a reason too, that within a few years of that message, Saint Faustina was receiving the one of Divine Mercy. These two messages are intimately connected. We must receive mercy to receive the Divine light. That Divine Light helps us repair for others, especially now with the world spiraling out of control.
Don’t keep living your life circling the drain of your sins in a perpetual cycle of adolescence. Pray to God like he is your best friend. Frequent the Sacraments. Read Scripture daily. Meditate on the Passion and Pray the Rosary of Our Lady and offer to repair by taking up your crosses and following him. And then trust God to do the work within your own heart that will make your heart beloved. And always remember the words of Divine Mercy, Jesus I trust in you.
Saint Catherine of Siena offered herself for the unity of the Church
When I immersed myself in prayer and united myself with all the Masses that were being celebrated all over the world at that time, I implored God, for the sake of all these Holy Masses, to have mercy on the world and especially on poor sinners who were dying at that moment. At the same instant, I received an interior answer from God that a thousand souls had received grace through the prayerful mediation I had offered to God. We do not know the number of souls that is ours to save through our prayers and sacrifices; therefore, let us always pray for sinners. (1783) –St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in my Soul
The other day I was speaking to a friend of mine who had in the past struggled with frequent migraines. These migraines could be debilitating, often making her feel sick and perhaps even throwing up. A suffering none of us would want.
She had medication the Doctor gave her, but the medication has it’s own side effects, so she set out trying to prevent ever getting a migraine. Remove alcohol, this food or that, please Lord let this be the thing that stops the migraine. There is often thinking that accompanies the experience of pain, what did I do to cause this to happen?
For the Spiritual person that question can leave you wondering, aside from foods and lifestyle, what sin you committed to cause this to happen. Perhaps curse breaking prayers have been prayed, all to no avail. For some, I imagine, fear of the next onset of migraine can cause despair.
For my friend, she had tried everything she possibly could do to humanly fix it, and she had begged God to fix it for her. She fought as hard as she could against getting the migraine. But all the efforts failed, and she still got them.
Finally one day she realized she was afraid of the migraine. She was afraid of the plans it would change, the pain it would cause, the throwing up, the medication side effects, the sin she may have committed. All of it was fear. And she decided she no longer wanted to fix or fight the migraine because of fear.
So, she decided instead to accept that migraines were her lot. And instead of eliminating so many foods or trying to control getting them, she decided that if God had sent them her way she would accept it and not try to control the prevention of them. She would surrender the pain, she would offer up the pain for someone else and trust God to do what he would with her offering of love. She had tried everything humanly possible to save herself, to control the situation, and when that all failed, she turned to her Savior to save. She decided that in her gift of offering her pain in love, God could do something with it that she couldn’t see. She got outside of herself and her pain, and looked to love. She actually just prayed to desire to do the will of God, so that if she got a migraine she would desire to suffer for other souls and want for their salvation as God does.
And then an amazing thing happened, her frequent migraines stopped being so frequent. While she does still occasionally get one, they are not nearly as frequent as they once were.
It seems that some of the cause may have been spiritual and perhaps Satan left her alone when he saw how efficacious her offerings were for other souls. Perhaps her torment of migraines was an effort to distract her from love, but when she redirected back to love, the tormenter fled.
Now, I don’t type this out to say that everyone will be physically healed of something if they just do what my friend did. Because if you think, oh I will surrender so I will get better and not suffer, then guess what, your focus is still on you and you are still trying to control the outcome. You must understand, she made the offering out of love not knowing or expecting that her migraines would stop. In other words, her pain didn’t measure into the equation, she only wanted what God wanted. The whole message of my friends story is that she took the focus of her pain off of herself and in pure hearted sincerity used it in love for others. Our offering for others is so powerful that the devil flees from us when we do it because he does not want us offering for the salvation of other souls. My friend, she still offers her suffering for others, her sufferings have just changed.
And there is a larger lesson here, this situation does not just apply to physical suffering, but to all situations. When we get outside of ourselves and look to love God and others, amazing things happen.
Many times in life we operate out of fear instead of love. That fear leads us to fight and fix, or try to control a situation. We leave no room for the Holy Spirit to act because we keep interjecting ourselves. And then we wonder why it fails. Miracles happen when love is the focus.
I see this so much, struggle and fear, fighting, fixing and failure. I see it in marriage and relationships with adult children. People who know the truths of God who want to try to fix or control their loved ones who perhaps have fallen away. If they just watch this one Fr. Mike video I send them, or I just tell them one more time about the beauty of the faith, then they will come back. And our efforts seem to build a wall that further pushes them away. The spouse or parent lives in bitterness or resentment against the one whom they are actually trying to love and a cycle of rejecting one another takes hold.
Please understand, I am not saying we should not be telling them the truth, or that we should always be silent, but I am saying to let the Holy Spirit guide you as to when to say something. The judgement should leave and be replaced with love.
There is a spirit of control, of “rightness” that can permeate the faithful. And those in sin hear our “rightness” and dig into their own sin. And then we get angry and try even more to fix and control, or we tailspin into whatever we think it is that we did wrong that may have led them away. All of these responses keep us focused on ourselves instead of looking to the one who saves.
You are right, to believe and follow church teaching, but your effort to fix and control and save, that can be wrong because you are not their Savior. God is the one who saves. You could have, in the past in your own journey, done something wrong that pushed them away, but it is wrong to believe that God cannot repair it and that your mistakes can never be forgiven. Instead of these responses, love like Christ and I have no doubt that they will see the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. They will want it and it will do more to bring them home that any amount of telling them how they need to be fixed, or even apologizing over and over for your past mistakes, can do.
Sometimes all you need to say is, “I am going to Mass.” And say it with no bitterness or animosity towards them. There should be no hint of condemnation from you, like saying the extra phrase, “you should too,” especially since you probably already told them that many times before. Look up towards God and pour life into the situation.
When these are the situations you are in, move away from fear, fighting and fixing, which fails, and move towards love, acceptance of the suffering–not of their sin, and trust that surrendering it to God can and will help save them because He wants them saved more than you do. Never stop praying or sacrificing for them.
This means accepting the suffering that they are away from the faith, offering your suffering of your worry about their salvation – for their salvation – because you love them, and wait for God to act. I think this is what Faustina was talking about when she wrote about saving souls through our prayers and sacrifices. And I think God can act faster than we can ever can when we try to control and fix.
I know with 100% certainty that when I was steeped in mortal sin, people were praying for me, and their prayers worked. I didn’t know until later that they were praying for me. I also know when people tried to control me I ran in the other direction.
It makes me think that Saint Dismas had a mom who prayed for him and it helped him recognize who Christ was and is. Maybe that was the difference between him and the other thief who also saw Jesus but rejected him. Jesus is always reaching out, but are we uniting with Him in prayer and sacrifice? Are we like Saint Monica was for Augustine? We know Saint Thérèse of Lisieux’s prayers helped a murderer kiss the wounds of Christ before his own execution. We are all connected to one another, and it is a great sadness when a person has no one to pray and sacrifice for them.
If prayer and sacrifice can stop wars, like Our Lady of Fatima stated, think of what it can do for that one soul that you love.
“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” James 5:16
“but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” John 4:14
I was awakened in the early morning hours of March 9, 2022 with the urge to write down in my journal. As always if the church says what I have written in wrong, the church is correct and I am wrong. Know that as you discern what I write.
March 9, 2022
Beloved Lily of the Father,
Time is short. Velocity speeds up. The door is closing. Pray for mercy.
Justice illuminates.
Let the children come to me.
The 8th day unveils.
Let go of preconceived notions of who I AM.
Cling to my truth and walk in it.
My ways have been taught to you.
What is written on your hearts will be revealed to all.
Mankind will see its misery.
Make Reparation.
Be a light in the darkness.
Be a living sanctuary.
Satan roams freely attacking the mind so as to steal, kill and destroy.
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2
I will be posting some thoughts in the next coming days, but I thought I would share with you an excellent talk that took place at my parish by Joan Watson.
Joan lives in our Diocese and I had asked her to come speak on humility at our parish this week. The talk was so good to me I thought that I would share it with all of you.
Addtionally, our Associate Pastor, Father Rhodes Bolster, gave an excellent talk on mortification, which would be great to listen to as you begin your Lenten mortifications.
Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. Matthew 9:17
The news in the world is starting to look more bleak. As Russia bombs the Ukraine, you may find yourself looking at the storm instead of at Christ. We should continue to pray for this situation and continue to prepare our hearts and our homes.
I wanted to take this time to relay hope to you all. As always what happens in my prayer, is for your discernment. If the church says what I have written in wrong, the church is right and I am wrong.
On Monday, the feast of Saint Peter Damian, I went to Mass. Confession was happening prior to Mass and I pondered going for a repetitive sin that I confess often that I have been struggling with. But the line was long and I knew I wouldn’t make it in prior to Mass starting. In this case, my sin had not risen to the level of being mortal, so I knew my sin would be forgiven at the beginning of Mass. I decided instead to sit and speak with the Lord about it in the pew.
Over the years I have tried many human ways to rid myself of this sin. I have begged God to help me.
As I sat in the pew I told God I was clueless about how to stop. I told him that I do that which I don’t want to do. I give in to earthly desire when my heart doesn’t desire it. At this point I just asked the Lord to crush my concupiscence. Like totally crush it. I think previously I have avoided verbs like crush – because the suffering of crushing scares me. I ask God in prayer to be gentle with me a lot. I realized in that moment that God can be at once gentle and crushing so I didn’t need to be afraid to ask for concupiscence to be crushed. He is often a paradox.
I pondered Mary’s purity. I pondered how in her sinlessness she had no concupiscence. Her desires were the desires of God.
I realized this is because she is infused with Divine Grace.
Her life was a constant prayer.
I think and have mentioned before that Adam and Eve must have stopped praying. Eve had told the serpent something that wasn’t true, so she must not have been talking to God.
But with Mary, I just see Mary in prayer and this light emanating off of her that demons can’t penetrate. They just can’t get near her.
I began at this point to beg God to infuse me with Divine Grace because I realized there was nothing I can do to warrant it, except to ask Him for it. I am too weak. He tells us to ask.
As I was praying some images came into my head. I want to relay the one that was the most powerful which occurred when I repeatedly begged God to infuse me with Divine Grace. To please give me the gift, to crush my concupiscence so that I am one with the Trinity.
I realized I am nothing – but God can crush those demons. He can crush those who curse me.
Mary herself crushes these demons because she was an open vessel that God poured into. A woman who prayed without ceasing. This is why they fear her so much.
At this point we were at the Consecration at Mass. I look at Jesus in the host and then I close my eyes.
Then appeared in my head, the most beautiful woman. I knew it was Mary. She had what looked like a navy blue velvet mantle, the underside was red silk. It was like something royalty would wear. And it was heavy like she was dressed for winter. This royal cloak, being wrapped in it, keeps you warm during a cold winter.
Her eyes were like crystal. She was delicate and feminine, striking.
She put her hand up to her mouth and cupped it around the side of her mouth the way someone who was about to whisper would do. She said, “let it be done.”
Blue waves of light came out of her as she said it.
The light came directly at me and swept over my heart. I started to tear up at Mass.
I got an image in my head of an empty wine rack covered in cobwebs, but the cobwebs were blown off by the blue light. I heard the words “new wine”. I sensed that each space on that rack would be filled with a bottle, a vessel, representing individual people. It isn’t immediate, this is a process and this wine rack will be filled with God’s people. There would be many who would be “new wine”.
While what we are experiencing in the world seems terrifying, the surrender God is looking from you personally, your surrender to God, makes you an open vessel. He will make you into new wine if you let Him and you trust completely.
At this point I had received communion and was back in the pew crying pretty fully now.
After Mass I went to the old chapel and sobbed. I sobbed and sobbed about the goodness of God and what he is actually doing for us in the middle of this mess and I sobbed because people don’t know.
I had the word “feather” come to me and I remembered I had a feather in my bible. I opened my bible to find the feather and the feather was on Psalm 34.
Psalm 34
I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. 2 My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and be glad. 3 O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!
4 I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. 5 Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. 6 This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. 7 The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. 8 O taste and see that the Lord is good! Happy is the man who takes refuge in him! 9 O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no want! 10 The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
11 Come, O sons, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. 12 What man is there who desires life, and covets many days, that he may enjoy good? 13 Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. 14 Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.
15 The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and his ears toward their cry. 16 The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. 17 When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. 18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.
19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord delivers him out of them all. 20 He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. 21 Evil shall slay the wicked; and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. 22 The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
And this experience just leaves me even more with the feeling to pray for Priests and repair for them. That is what I walked away with. Mary is wanting to hearten her Priests and her people through them. I am in total awe of God. God Bless you all out there!
I answered, “Sir, you know.” And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Revelation 7:14
I don’t think it takes a prophet to see that the world is already in a state of tribulation. Many of you are suffering, wondering when will God intervene.
I read an article this morning where even church prelates are speaking of tribulation. It is enough sometimes to make faithful Catholics feel despair.
I often hear Catholics wondering when the Warning will take place. They speak of refuges where people will be safe.
While I read about and think of these things as possible, I want to address a few things in the here and now.
God is allowing this suffering. He is allowing it, not because He wills us to suffer, but because, in the end, suffering leaves us two choices; we can surrender all we are to Him and His providence, or we can doubt His love and fall into apostacy. If we surrender all we are, then the suffering is a purifying fire of love. If we fall into apostacy then the suffering ends in the fires of hell.
I believe the church is entering a time period where she will look dead. Where doctrine will be nailed to a tree and the church, as the Mystical Body, will take the sins of the world on, the way that Christ took them on, and then let them die in His humanity. Oh that the sin in the bride would die; then the bride would be glorious.
If we follow that pattern, that Passion of the church;
CCC 675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
Then we should expect these things must come. The evil must be made transparent before it can be cleared out. And the evil will look like death. The church will look dead. The remnant must remain faithful in love and will be walking blind, but with spiritual eyes that trust. We shouldn’t be waiting for a warning or a refuge to live the faith now. We shouldn’t be anxious or fearful, and if we are, we need to be talking to God in prayer about that every chance we get. We should see the signs of the times happening and try to become as pure as we possibly can in our humanity through virtue, and then rely totally on God to finish the work in us with His Divinity. We need to start acting like Saints who did not doubt the goodness of God, nor did they doubt his love.
People who don’t doubt God’s love for them do amazing things.
Saint Padre Pio
We need to worry more about getting to heaven than the things of this world. So what does this look like?
If you’re sick, it means loving God when your sick. You can be physically throwing up and love God while you’re doing it.
If you’re jobless, it means loving God in your joblessness.
If your children are away from the faith, it means loving God and trusting that He loves them more than you do.
If you’re not sure where your next meal is coming from, it means loving God anyway and uniting your hunger to His cross.
If a person is persecuting you, it means loving God so much that you can forgive them.
This is what we’re called to do here and now. It looks like this;
Mary and John at the Foot of the Cross in Mel Gibson’s Passion of Christ
Not many faithful people made it to the Cross with Christ. Most ran away, but even for them, His mercy covered them. But, if you can stand and be a light in the darkness, and believe God’s promises are true, then you can truly Love. And love really does conquer all things. Set aside your expectations of what God will do, and trust and love him in the middle of the madness of this storm.
Joseph of Arimethea takes Jesus’ dead body down from the Cross
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Mark 7:14-23
I want to relay to you what happened to me yesterday in the chapel. I realize that everything I am about to say has been written better and more thoroughly by someone more holy than I in the past. I can only think that what I am about to relay is to serve as a reminder of the good God we serve.
Yesterday was a Tuesday, so I went to the chapel to pray the sorrowful mysteries. I had many intentions including for the soul of Father Clare Joseph Hendricks, whose funeral was yesterday. Please pray for the repose of his soul.
As I sat with my eyes closed meditating on the sorrowful mysteries, an evil grotesque thought was flung at me. It was so startling I knew it was Satan trying to invade my prayer, which made me angry, it made enmity rise up in me. I questioned God as to why that would be allowed in my prayer. And then I got overwhelmed.
In my head I pictured Jesus on the cross and he was being swarmed by what looked to be disgusting insects enveloping His body. And I knew this swarm to be the evil thoughts entertained in the heads of men and women, including myself. They physical pain He endured was bad enough, but this swarm, this impurity, this sin we hold in our heads for one another, swarmed Him to the point that He cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani.” My God, my God why have you forsaken me?
It was the thoughts we all have that He took on in His humanity and He let it envelope Him. He took all of it on in order that it all die when His humanity died, so that our humanity could be redeemed. He made expiation. And I wept at the realization of what we have done.
It wasn’t simply the physical suffering that made Him feel forsaken, it was the evil thoughts we have towards one another that made Him feel so separated from the Father. And I thought how often the same is true of us. When I was experiencing COVID it wasn’t as much the physical pain, though that was awful, it was the thought the devil kept flinging at me that I was so tempted to entertain, and like Eve in the Garden I had a choice. For her it came in the form of a question;
Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?”
And the doubt in God’s goodness began to be entertained in her heart.
For me Satan said;
“Did God say that he really loves you?”
And it took every ounce of who I am, and the grace of God, not to entertain the evil suggestion that he doesn’t.
Physical weakness often makes it easy to believe the lies. Yet Christ stayed on the cross to expiate for these sins. He wants to put all evil to death and elevate us above it in order that we be divinized.
He wants us to partake in this expiation. He wants us to partake in destroying the works of the devil. That’s why each time we repair with Him grace flows abundantly.
Think of it this way, when a child falls and skins their knee, the body will actually begin to heal over time, but if mom steps in, cleans the wound, puts Neosporin on it and a band aid, the wound will actually heal faster. The effort of mom is miniscule compared to the body’s own healing capabilities, but the love with which mom does it and the small effort, actually does help the healing process. It is the same of Christ. He can heal the Body alone, but when we repair with him by offering our suffering in expiation and total love of him, we become coredeemers in the Kingdom and the wounds of mankind get healed faster because love grows exponentially. He doesn’t want to be the only one loving. Our small acts of love within our suffering will, through His grace, rain down the glory of God.
The only thing that can defile us is that which comes from within. All the evil thoughts we entertain, all the evil thoughts we turn into action, they defile the body. When we pay attention to our thoughts and to whose Kingdom they serve, and we try to purge the evil, asking for the grace of God, they repair the body; the Mystical Body, the church.
I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. Colossians 1:24
But he said to me, “Mygrace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Cortinthians 12:9
I have spent the past several weeks often feeling like I was drowning. Between recovering from COVID, digging out from the mountain of work I had waiting for me in my job, helping my teenagers who are often struggling, and caring for my aging mom, I was and I am exhausted. It is a feeling that I am not enough and can never be enough. So many things have fallen through the cracks. I have never felt weaker. It is a great realization that is actually a wonderful thing, when you finally realize, in every fiber of your being, that you are not your Savior.
I have spoken often of surrender, but it is in these past several weeks that the word has been plastered on my heart. The world becomes ever increasingly out of control and I see so clearly that the only thing we can do is rely totally on the God who loves us.
How many of you out there have felt almost despairing that your children are away from the faith?
How many of you are staring down a sickness that you see no way to conquer?
How many of you feel trapped or forced to do something against your will?
How many of you look at the state of the church and actually worry in anxiety that the gates of hell might prevail?
It is in these precise moments, the ones that are totally out of our control, that Divine Grace falls from heaven and meets us in our human mess. When we surrender all we have, we choose to love God anyway, and we decide to trust Him, Divine Grace rains down. His grace is sufficient for you. In fact, it is all you need.
His promises are true.
This realization, this surrender, it becomes a turning point for the miraculous. But it is an odd thing, because you surrender, not because of the desire for miracles, but because you want nothing but Love Himself, who is the only one who you are certain can fix this mess. And you stop trying to tell Him how best to do this and just rely on Him.
There are many who reject this grace, who think they can fix everything, who in their pride think their human answer is better than God’s. Don’t be one of those people. Be one who asks for that Divine grace to be poured over you. Let the power of God have some place to rest by resting your own heart in His.
I have been astonished to see, in the middle of this exhaustion, many of my relationships begin to heal and flourish. This is the place where God has descended. He actually wants to come heal his human family. It is when we finally let go in our hearts, we accept the suffering that has come, we face it, we love in the middle of it, and we don’t try to fix or save anyone ourselves.
I have spent many days crying physical tears, but also thanking God. Life is good and beautiful and Our Creator is awesome.
As my mom has been winding down these last days of her life, I have seen people around me love in astonishing ways. I have seen hard love from my husband, my kids, my siblings, my friends, and even from you out there who have never personally met me, but who have reached out in the middle of my suffering and lifted me up. Hard love faces the suffering and keeps going towards heaven wanting that those you come across are heavenly bound too.
I know the world seems awful out there at times, but I am telling you, God is bigger, God is better, God is good, and we really should have no anxiety. I was awakened at 1:43 am to tell you this, and I am not worried about the lack of sleep. We all may be in the desert, but Easter is around the corner.
Hold on to hope and surrender all you have to God.
May God Bless you and keep you safe.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Romans 5:2
There is nothing to be dreaded in human ills except sin – not poverty, or disease, or insult, or ill treatment, or dishonor, or death, which people call the worst of evils. To those who love spiritual wisdom, these things are only the names of disasters, names that have no substance. No, the true disaster is to offend God, to do anything that displeases Him. – Saint John Chrysostom
In my last post I told you I would update you on the happenings in my life. I picked a word of the year for this year. I got EXPAND. I wasn’t sure what this would mean for me this year, but God was preparing to show me something.
My family ushered in the New Year with COVID. All of us, including my mom. I had no caregiver help for 13 days and cared for my entire family while I myself was fevered and coughing. There were moments I didn’t think I would make it, not because I was deathly ill, but because I felt so bad and was unable to rest because of the high level of care my mom needed as well as the care of my husband and kids.
The devil attempted to attack my faith. I must tell you, when an attack on faith takes place, you must rebuke it swiftly and sharply. The devil yelled, “see God doesn’t love you. He doesn’t hear your prayers to protect you. You’re silly to think that your prayers can break this curse.” In my state it was hard to fight off. But I know well enough that that was not the voice of God. And I know also well enough that I have prayed for something larger. I have prayed to be stripped of my ego and to be conformed totally to God’s will. If we learn anything from the Saints, it is that God accomplishes much of conforming to His Will through suffering. I proclaimed that God is good, and really set to the task of living in the present moment. It was all I could do. I decided that each task, each reaction, no matter how hard, had to be done with love. If I thought of the future, the devil attacked. I thought only of what needed to be done in the present moment. And 13 days later, I emerged from the darkness. My type one diabetic mom, who has heart and kidney disease and dementia and has had two strokes and had a broken hip last year, beat COVID. I do not know the ways of God, but I do know that God is good.
My mom is quite childlike. I came to understand during this time that her dementia really is a blessing. She no longer has the reason or capacity to sin. Caring for her was almost impossibly hard in the sick state I was in. But I see what God is doing for her.
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:3
He has prepared her. She will be ready. God is good.
After emerging from the sickness, I was chatting with my prayer group and we were telling each other our words of the year. As I stated, my word is EXPAND. My friend Leah texted me this passage from Letter 110 of Luisa Piccaretta;
Leah sent it to me because it contained the word expand. But I saw something else and I came to understand something the Lord has spoken to me about for awhile. I will state that, as always if the church states that what I am saying is wrong, then the church is correct and I am wrong. Know that as you discern what I write.
There is something I have been trying to put together for quite awhile. It is how the Lord has spoken to me about being restored through the Immaculate Conception and the Cross. Though I understood that He was speaking of Mary and Jesus, I hadn’t understood how it applies to us. Now I think I understand.
The human will is strong, but when one decides to say “yes” to give a “fiat” to God and fully embrace their baptism, the seed of the Divine Will is conceived in their hearts. An immaculate conception of the Divine Will within someone.
But it’s just a seed. It has to expand, be nourished and grow within a soul. With every advance in doing what God asks, joyfully, fully and immediately, It is birthed fully in the soul through the cross. The soul that fully accepts the sufferings that come their way, and offer all they have to God has the Divine Will birthed within their soul. They become Golden Souls.
Through the Immaculate Conception and the Cross a soul is not just redeemed but restored to the original order God intended. The souls that take Mary as their Mother, understand “fiat” and receive this seed.
Mary is Co-Redemptrix; but in this she takes absolutely nothing away from the Redeemer. It is God who wills us to partake in her Immaculate Conception. She had the seed of the Divine Will from the moment she was conceived. She made it all the way to the Cross with her Son. She is the Mother of the Church, and we are the Church, when we hand our human will to God and say yes, we receive the seed of Divine Will through her. FIAT.
It is important for us to know this because of the suffering that has come on the world. We must view this with the eyes of eternity or we will falter. When you know there is an end to the immense suffering, when you know there is light in the tunnel you are in, you can persevere in God’s grace. Despair and the attacks on faith will not overtake you because you know the lies of the devil and you know the goodness of God.
During those 13 days of sickness, the devil tried to tell me I would never get better or that I would never have help. He tried to make it seem as though the good God of the universe didn’t know what was best for me. The devil is wrong and he is always a liar. Perseverance really was a grace; the grace of the Sacraments that came to us through the Immaculate Conception and the Cross and brought us the hope of Resurrection.
Veil of Veronica 