Daily Rosary Meditations | Catholic Prayers

God’s plan is for the whole Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to live in you and through you. God wants to be the life, love and power pulsing through you. If we would give Him room and let Him live in and through us we would be perfectly happy, have meaning and purpose in life, be filled with joy, totally at peace, undisturbed by any storm, wise to make the best decisions, powerful to overcome any difficulty, loving, energetic, able to move mountains literally, convert countless souls and have the deepest and best friendships. We could have all this IF we would give ourselves to God more generously in prayer. In prayer we open our soul to be filled and transformed by God. This was the secret to the greatness of Mother Teresa, the Saint whose feast we celebrate today. Mother Teresa arguably, did more good than any other person in the 20th century precisely because she opened up and let God fill her by prayer. A young priest asked her one day, “Mother Teresa, what is your secret?” she looked at him with a twinkle in her eye and replied, “That is very simple: I pray.” Mother Teresa once said: Without God we are too poor to help the poor, but when we pray, God places His love in us. Look, the Sisters are poor, but they pray. The fruit of prayer is love. The fruit of love is service. Only when you pray can you really serve the poor.” Once at a gas station, during a trip Mother Teresa was making, she looked for a long time at the nozzle through which the gas was flowing into the tank and then said, “Look, Father, that’s like blood in the body: Without blood there is no life in the body. Without gas in the car—no driving. But also, without prayer the soul is dead.” Maasburg, Leo. Mother Teresa (p. 80). Ignatius Press. When asked what prayer was for her, Mother Teresa answered: “God speaks to me—and I speak to Him. It’s that simple. That is prayer.” Prayer is heart-to-heart contact. “If I pray to Jesus, then it’s from my heart to Jesus’ Heart. When I pray to the Mother of God, then it’s from my heart to Mary’s heart. When I pray to my guardian angel, then it’s also heart to heart.” Mother Teresa’s central principle with regard to prayer was this: “God speaks in the silence of our heart, and we listen. Then, out of the fullness of our heart, we speak and He listens. And that is prayer.” Maasburg, Leo. Mother Teresa (pp. 80-81). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition. People often say, “God never speaks to me.” The question is: Do we ever shut up and listen? De we spend time in silence listening to God? Mother Teresa: “In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence…We must improve our prayer and, flowing from that, our charity toward others. It can be difficult to pray when we don’t know how, but we can help ourselves through the use of silence. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. This silence takes a lot of sacrifice, but if we really want to pray, we must be ready to take that step now. Without this first step toward silence, we will not be able to reach our goal, which is union with God. We forget that in the silence of the heart God speaks, and from the fullness of the heart we speak. Only when we have heard him in the silence of our hearts, only when we have learned to listen to God in the silence of our hearts, only then can we say: I pray. There is no either/or about prayer and love. We can’t say we have either prayer or love: There is no prayer without love and no love without prayer. The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace.” According to Mother Teresa, peace, service, love, faith and prayer all find their origin in silence.

In every approved apparition from the Miraculous Medal to the reported apparitions of Medjugorje, Jesus and Mary have called us to help them save souls and to change world events by our prayer and suffering. Yesterday, the mission to pray; today, suffering.  The Mission of Jesus was to save souls by suffering. We are invited to share in the same mission, to take up our cross daily and follow him.  Recently a wise friend of mine reminded me that my mission was to teach and to suffer. That caught me off-guard, but it is true. I should not forget or reject this aspect of my mission. An essential part of our mission as a Christian is to save other souls and alter world events by our suffering. The greatest good we can do is through our suffering united to Christ and that is what gives meaning and purpose to suffering! I believe Jesus wants us to help him save souls by our suffering. But I don’t like it. And I am tempted to doubt this truth and fall into the temptation that my suffering is random and senseless. There is no reason for my suffering – it just is. Since there is no reason for my suffering then there is no meaning or purpose to my suffering. If the origin of my suffering is random and senseless then there is no meaning or purpose to it. Oh sure, it can make me stronger if I respond in the right way, but the suffering can be so great and last so long that if there is no meaning or purpose to it, eventually it overcomes a person. You can overcome anything if there is a strong enough reason to endure; but if there is no reason, no meaning or purpose, then we cannot endure. This is one of the most important questions that must be answered by every human – what is the meaning and purpose of my suffering? Jesus Christ is the only one who gives meaning and purpose to suffering and the Catholic Church hands down this meaning. No other philosophy or religion answers the question adequately – and that is why so many people are lost, atheist, depressed, commit suicide or mass murders…they do not have a way to make sense out of suffering. We do. Christ has given us the answer. Jesus brought into His suffering all the suffering that would every be in the world, from the beginning to the end of time. He transformed it and gave it meaning and purpose – to save souls. This gives our suffering a meaning - to save souls. Jesus gave a creative character, a creative meaning to our suffering. If we accept and unite our suffering to His, then He uses it to recreate souls, that is, to save souls from sin and hell and to save the world from self-destruction. Jesus is counting on us not to waste our suffering. Don’t waste it – leverage it. What you did not choose, do not like and cannot change, accept with trust and offer with love to save souls. The sufferings of Christ created the good of the world's redemption. This good in itself is inexhaustible and infinite. No man can add anything to it. But at the same time, in the mystery of the Church as his Body, Christ has in a sense opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering. In so far as man becomes a sharer in Christ's sufferings—in any part of the world and at any time in history—to that extent he in his own way completes the suffering through which Christ accomplished the Redemption of the world. A young blind woman name Tina was recently hit by a truck walking through an intersection. Miraculously she survived. She has endured multiple reconstructive surgeries. Yesterday she awoke and said three words: Suffering for souls. We offer this Rosary for the recovery of Tina! I want to announce that we are implementing the option to make a donation at the bottom of this email. Our mission is to deliver meaning, hope, and happiness through deep friendship with Jesus and others. Help us develop tools to bring the audio Rosary to a million people by the end of 2025!

Yesterday, September 2, 2019, Our Lady is reported to have given this message at Medjugorje: Dear children, pray! Pray the Rosary every day—that wreath of flowers which, as a mother, directly connects me with your pains, sufferings, desires, and hopes. Apostles of my love, I am with you through the grace and the love of my Son, and I am asking for prayers of you. The world is in such need of your prayers for souls to be converted. With complete trust, open your hearts to my Son, and in them He will inscribe the summary of His words—which is love. Live in an unbreakable connection with the Most Sacred Heart of my Son. My children, as a mother, I am telling you that it is high time for you to kneel before my Son to acknowledge Him as your God, the center of your life. Offer gifts to Him—that which He most loves—which is love towards neighbor, mercy, and pure hearts. Apostles of my love, many of my children still do not acknowledge my Son as their God; they have not yet come to know His love. But you, with your prayer pronounced from a pure and open heart, by the gifts which you offer to my Son, will make even the hardest hearts open. Apostles of my love, the strength of prayer pronounced from the heart—a powerful prayer full of love—changes the world. Therefore, my children: pray, pray, pray. I am with you. Thank you.” This message at Medjugorje is similar to the August 19 message of Our Lady at Fatima: “Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners; for many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and pray for them.” The message of Our Lady at San Nicolas Argentina in the 1980s is also similar: "God's warning is over the world. Those who stay in the Lord have nothing to fear, but those who deny what comes from him do. Two-thirds of the world is lost and the other part must pray and make reparation for the Lord to take pity. The devil wants to have full domination over the earth. He wants to destroy. The earth is in great danger." Mary tells us, “The weapon that has the greatest influence on evil is to say the Rosary." We need to pray the Rosary every day and to be Apostles of the Rosary. This is a good start, but Our Lady is urging us to go further into union with Jesus and to help him save souls by our deeper prayer. As a young priest, Angelo Comastri, who today is a cardinal archpriest of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, relates his first encounter and conversation with St. Mother Teresa:  She gave me a Miraculous Medal, put it in my hand, and asked me, “For how much time do you pray each day?” I was astonished and a little embarrassed. Then, gathering my thoughts, I replied, “Mother, I celebrate Holy Mass each day, I pray the Breviary each day…I pray the rosary each day also and very gladly…” Mother Teresa, with her rough hands, clasped the rosary that she always had with her. Then she fixed on me her eyes, which were filled with light and love, and said: “That is not enough, my son! That is not enough, because love cannot be reduced to the indispensable minimum; love demands the maximum!” I did not understand Mother Teresa’s words right away, and, as though to justify myself, I replied, “Mother, I expected from you instead this question: What acts of charity do you do?” Suddenly Mother Teresa’s face became very serious again, and she said in a stern tone of voice: “Do you think that I could practice charity if I did not ask Jesus every day to fill my heart with his love? Do you think that I could go through the streets looking for the poor if Jesus did not communicate the fire of his charity to my heart?”…Enunciating each word, she added: “Read the Gospel attentively, and you will see that Jesus sacrificed even charity for prayer. And do you know why? To teach us that, without God, we are too poor to help the poor!”  Rest with God in prayer. God wants to give you rest so that he can fill, transform, and heal you.

I want you to reach a deeper friendship and intimacy with God in this life and so for the last few days I have been explaining the nine stages of prayer and that when you reach the 5th stage of prayer, infused prayer or contemplation you will begin to experience heaven on earth. To grow in prayer we need to foster a greater desire for God since as John of the Cross writes the desire for God is the preparation for union with Him. However, we cannot grow in union with God unless we grow in love for other people, including our enemies. I don’t like this. I am all for the love of God, but I don’t want to love all people. Some people are my enemies, and the enemies of the things that are genuinely good, things I love and want to protect. In the 1st Letter of John chapter 4, John warns us we must be on guard against the enemies of Christ and against the world: It is not every spirit, my dear people, that you can trust; test them, to see if they come from God, there are many false prophets, now, in the world. You can tell the spirits that come from God by this: every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus the Christ has come in the flesh is from God; but any spirit which will not say this of Jesus is not from God, but is the spirit of Antichrist, whose coming you were warned about. Well, now he is here, in the world…This is how we can tell the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood. False, wrong and evil ideas are dangerous because they lead to evil choices and actions that are destructive to the individual, marriage, family and society such as Marxism that has infected every sector of our society, socialism, contraception, abortion, sodomy and gender fluidity; just to name a few. All bad ideas and destructive actions. We are right to have an aversion toward these destructive ideas and hate them and work to prevent them from having any place in our society. We must think about, assess and judge ideas and actions but we must not hate or condemn persons. This is a crucial distinction because God is love and we will be judged by our love of persons, including enemies. But the devil wants everyone to hate everyone else so that we destroy each other and the world. That simple. 1 John 4:7 My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love…My dear people, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another. No one has ever seen God; but as long as we love one another God will live in us and his love will be complete in us….We ourselves have known and put our faith in God's love towards ourselves. God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him. Love will come to its perfection in us when we can face the day of Judgement without fear; because even in this world we have become as he is…4:19 We are to love, then, because he loved us first. Anyone who says, 'I love God', and hates his brother, is a liar, since a man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God, whom he has never seen. So this is the commandment that he has given us, that anyone who loves God must also love his brother. John of the Cross writes: At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love. Learn to love as God desires to be loved and abandon you own ways of acting. Sayings 60 Love is a choice to think, speak and do what is good for another person. The Golden Rule from the Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus is this: Always treat others as you would like them to treat you. We judge ideas and actions. This is good or this is evil. We must never accept and tolerate evil ideas and actions out of some false form of tolerance. But we must love persons. We can never condemn persons, because we can never know the other two parts of morality: their intentions or their circumstances. Therefore, we can only judge ideas and actions but not persons.

I want you to continue to respond to call of Mary to pray the Rosary every day. Through the Rosary the Holy Spirit and Mary will form Jesus within you. The Rosary is the School of Mary. The Rosary is also the greatest weapon to overcome evil and bring peace to our families and the world. Mary is the one who crushes the head of Satan and she will do so in our lives by the Rosary. At the same time I want to encourage you to deepen your friendship with God by spending more time with him in prayer; talking to him from the heart, listening to him by reading the Word of God and just being quiet and still with him. What prevents us from spending more time with Jesus in friendship are the 1000s desires and worries that vie for time and attention. What overcomes these 1000s is a greater desire for God. John of the Cross, in his Living Flame of Love 3:26, says the desire for God is the preparation for union with Him. The questions is: how do we increase our desire for God?  The first way is very simple: ask for it. God please give me a greater desire for you. I want to desire you above all things.  The desire you feed will grow. The desire you starve will die. If you feed your desire for God, then it will grow and this desire will lead you to a deep and profound union with Him. If you feed your desire for things of this world, this desire will lead you to seek happiness in things that can never satisfy and you will grow increasingly hungry and empty and nothing will satisfy you as you journey further and further away from God.  Stop feeding bad desires; feed good desires less; feed your desire for God more.  We all have bad desires, disordered desires - we desire good things in a way that begin to control us and become addictions. The roots of these are pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust. Think honestly about the desires that drive your life. Identity them. The desire to win; the desire to be wanted by your spouse or kids; the desire for safety, stability or security; the desire for entertainment, tasty food, the desire to feel good, to look good, to be the best. The desire to achieve great things. Any of these good desires can become disordered and prevent us from union with God and perfect happiness. Stop feeding the bad desires and they will begin to starve and die off. How? All these disordered desires are addictions we don’t seem able to break – well recognize your inability to change them, admit you are powerless over them, immediately turn to Jesus, then take these disordered desires to confession and he will begin to set us free.  Stop feeding bad desires but we also need to feed Good desires less. The desire for sleep, food, drink, exercise, family, friends, achievement, knowledge, beauty etc. are good desires. But if one good desire begins to exclude other good things we need and especially if it is stronger than our desire for God then it is an obstacle. So feed these less and they will shrink in power. How do I identify which desires are disordered or out of balance? Ask yourself – am I perfectly happy? What is it in my life that prevents my happiness? What is the cause? The cause will point to a disordered desire.   Feed your desire for God and it will grow.  Receive Jesus as often as you can in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is God, the consuming fire of love. The more you receive Him the more you will be inflamed with a desire for God. Fire sets other things on fire. God, in the Eucharist is a consuming fire of love. My experience is that when I go to daily Mass, I desire Jesus in the Eucharist more. My desire grows. Spend more time with Jesus in prayer. Proximity causes intimacy; while absence makes the heart go wander. The more we spend time with God the more we want him and the less we desire sin. Go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation at least once a month. Sin separates us from God and diminishes our desire for him. Confession unites us every more closely to God.

Over the last few days I have been encouraging you to spend more time in friendship with Jesus by moving from stage one, vocal prayer, talking to God, to listening in Meditation so that you can reach stage 5, infused prayer or contemplation, which is the beginning of the experience of heaven on earth. The Rosary is a combination of vocal prayer and meditation, but to move to meditation it is helpful to understand what it is… Jordan Aumann, Spiritual Theology, p. 318 Meditation is a reasoned application of the mind to some supernatural truth, in order to penetrate its meaning, love it, and carry it into practice with the assistance of grace. Meditation is to turn your attention to God To think about what He has said or done In order to understand it To love God for the things He has said and done To form firm convictions That we will put into practice with the assistance of grace What do we meditate upon? As Christians we meditate on the Word of God, but the Word of God is more than the Bible. Jesus is the Word of God. The full Word of God is all that Jesus revealed through his life and his teachings. The full revelation of Jesus is handed down to us through Scripture, Tradition and the teachings of the Catholic Church, called the Magisterium. The complete teaching of Jesus, the full Word of God is called the Deposit of Faith. As Christians meditate upon all that is contained in the Deposit of Faith, all that is found in Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium. We can use as good meditation material anything from the Old or New Testaments, or the writings of the saints like Augustine, Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux or St. Faustina. And it doesn’t stop there. We can also reflect upon the teachings of the Church, the Magisterium. In fact, the best synthesis or summary of the Deposit of Faith, all that Jesus revealed is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism is wonderful to meditate upon. Or consider other Magisterial teachings such as St. John Paull II’s letter on the Christian Meaning of Human suffering. All these things are an expression of the Deposit of Faith or the Word of God. All of these are great things to meditate upon during meditation or the Rosary. There is a simple method to meditation. It is like having coffee with a friend. Set a specific time and place conducive to a leisurely intimate conversation. Then Talk and share, listen and understand and finally just enjoy the time together. We have broken it down into 3 R’s which we shared with you yesterday: Read something from the Bible or from the Tradition, some good writing from a Saint or a spiritual author. As soon as something profound strikes you – stop reading. Reflect or Think about what struck you Try to understand what you read Apply it to your life Draw practical conclusions for yourself Talk over all of this with Jesus in your mind and heart Resolution Choose something practical and concrete to remember or to do today based on your meditation Write down your resolution and keep it with you The two most powerful aspects of Meditation are reflecting upon the Word of God and the forming of a resolution. These two together, founded on the grace of God, are the transforming powers of meditation. On the first, the power of reflection Jordan Aumann writes: Numerous persons who live habitually in sin continue in that condition simply because they never reflect seriously upon the state of their souls. Some of them do not have malicious hearts, nor do they hate the things of God or their own salvation; they have simply given themselves entirely to purely natural activities and have neglected the things that are of importance to their soul. One of the greatest proofs that their sad condition is due not so much to malice as to the lack of reflection is the fact that when they…attend a retreat or mission, they may experience a complete conversion of life.

Facing temptations in prayer Prayer is friendship with God. Friendship takes time talking, listening and just being together. But it certainly takes one on one time and focused attention. Vocal prayers like the Our Father and Hail Mary, and personal prayers of petition in which we turn to Our Father for all we need are good. But if we stop there, it is not much of a friendship. We would not call it friendship if the only time we communicate was to ask for something. If the only time you call me is when you want something from me – I will stop answering and I will not consider you a friend. Friendship with God is more than talking and asking. It takes time in relationship – listening and just being together. Yet too often we do stop at the stage of talking and asking and we don’t go on to deeper friendship. Do you long for a greater intimacy with God? The CCC points out different temptations that lead us to fail to develop a deep friendship with Jesus in prayer. CCC 2732 The most common yet most hidden temptation is our lack of faith. It expresses itself less by declared disbelief than by our actual preferences. When we begin to pray, a thousand labors or cares thought to be urgent vie for priority; once again, it is the moment of truth for the heart: what is its real love? Sometimes we turn to the Lord as a last resort, but do we really believe he is? Do we really think God is only our last resort rather than our greatest desire? The Catechism is hitting hard. It is confronting us with the most damning temptation to prayer: the temptation that I may pray, I may turn to God when I need things, but I do not turn to him because I want him. In fact it is my wanting everything but Him that prevents me from prayer. What is really at the root of my struggle to spend more time in solitude talking to God, listening to Him and just being with him in silence and stillness? Please do not misunderstand. Vocal prayer is good, but it is just the first of nine stages of friendship with God. I want you to go on to the second stage, meditation. Meditation is to go on from talking to listening to God by reading and reflecting on his life and words in Scripture and then puts them into practice by a daily resolution. Jesus said as much in the Sermon on the Mount: 'It is not those who say to me, "Lord, Lord", who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven. When the day comes many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, work many miracles in your name?" Then I shall tell them to their faces: I have never known you; away from me, you evil men!' 'Therefore, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock. Matthew 7:21-24 The Mother of God has asked us to pray the Rosary every day. That is why I do it. The Rosary is a combination of vocal prayer and meditation. We listen to something from the Word of God, the Deposit of faith comprised of Scripture and Tradition, and then we reflect upon it while we say the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be and the Fatima prayer. So it’s a good combination of stage 1 and 2 of intimacy with God. Now I am encouraging you to increase your relationship with Jesus, if you are not already, by spending additional time in friendship with Him in a form of Catholic Meditation that will prepare you for the third stage – Affective Prayer – because I want you to reach infused prayer, contemplation, the beginning of heaven on earth. Meditation can be broken down to 3 simple steps – 3 R’s Read something from the Bible or from the Tradition, some good writing from a Saint or a spiritual author. As soon as something profound strikes you – stop reading. Reflect or Think about what struck you Try to understand what you read Apply it to your life Draw practical conclusions for yourself Talk over all of this with Jesus in your mind and heart.

Prayer is friendship with God: it is talking, listening and just being with God. This corresponds to the three major expressions of prayer: Vocal prayer, mediation, and contemplation. The goal of this friendship with God we call prayer is Heaven. Heaven is a transforming union with God. The journey to heaven does not begin at death. The journey or pilgrimage to heaven is supposed to begin now. In fact, you are traveling either closer to heaven or closer to hell at each moment. Time is dynamic. There is no standing still and there are only two ultimate destinations: heaven and union with God or hell and eternal isolation and loneliness. We are indebted to the great Doctor on Prayer, Teresa of Avila, for explaining the different stages in the journey of the soul to Heaven or union with God. The landscape of prayer has been divided into (9) stages: Vocal prayer, Meditation, Affective prayer, Prayers of Simplicity, Infused Contemplation, Prayers of Quiet, Prayers of Union, Prayers of Conforming Union, and the Prayers of Transforming Union. It is a doctrine of the Catholic Church that every person was created by God to reach at least the 5th stage of prayer, infused contemplation, because every person was created for holiness and holiness is the fruit of contemplation. Every one of you praying now has the God given capacity to reach at least the 5th stage in this life – that is if you desire it and persevere in prayer. St. Faustina describes her experience of contemplation this way: "O Holy Trinity, Eternal God, I thank you for allowing me to know the greatness and the various degrees of glory to which souls attain. Oh, what a great difference of depth in the knowledge of God there is between one degree and another! Oh, if people could only know this! O my God, if I were able to attain one more degree, I would gladly suffer all the torments of the martyrs put together." With Stages 3-4  we begin to desire to spend time with Jesus and Mary without talking, without trying to figure things (discursive meditation), but simply to remain alone with them in quiet. John of the Cross describes this as: “An inclination to remain alone and in quietude…If those in whom this occurs, know how to remain quiet (not talking or trying to figure things out) they will soon in that unconcern and idleness delicately experience the interior nourishment.” This prepares us for stage 5 (contemplation): “Contemplation is nothing but a hidden, peaceful and loving inflow of God. If it is given room, it will inflame the spirit with love.” John of the Cross The transition from stage 4 to 5 involves: The Dark Night of the Senses Which accomplishes 2 things in us. First, it purges the soul of all disordered attachments, misdirected desires, and idols and addictions that block God from entering more fully (Pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust). Then, it prepares the soul to share more fully in His divine life. We could not handle His divine life if He didn’t prepare us. It would be like pouring new wine into old wine skins. Contemplation is an experience of God, drinking of the Living Water which quenches the thirst of the soul which satisfies as nothing else in the world. How do we prepare to Drink of the Living Water? Jesus said to St. Angela of Foligno, “Make yourself a capacity and I will make myself a torrent.” 1. Desire, want transforming union with God 2. Receive the Eucharist and Reconciliation Frequently 3. Persevere in a Daily Examination of Conscience with Daily Meditation and a Resolution 4. Pray the Daily Rosary 5. Live a well ordered and balanced life (a Rule of Life) 6. Have a Spiritual Director or at least good Spiritual Friendship to give you encouragement and accountability. 

Why would anyone want to pray? I want to pray because I want to be happy. Happiness is to possess the good things that complete or fulfill our human nature. In general, God designed the Human Person to need certain good things to be satisfied. We need: physical goods, psychological goods, family and friendship, knowledge, meaningful work, beauty, and identity.  If you had all these would you be perfectly satisfied? No! And that is the right answer because even though the things of the world are good…the Problem lies in this: Nothing is perfect, lasting, or enough. I desire more - union with God. We were made for union with God.  Today is the Feast of St Augustine and he summed up this desire for union with God when he wrote “you have made us for yourself, O Lord and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” The good things in life are the cups – Jesus is the Living Water. The good things in life we need to be happy – physical, emotional, family, friends, meaningful work, knowledge, beauty, ect… are like cups. But Jesus is the Living Water that needs to fill the cups. Without the Living Water, without a personal relationship with Jesus, then we might have all the right cups, but they are empty. Then we become unsatisfied with our spouse, our house, our job, our health and wealth and everything else. The danger is that we think the problem is with the cup. The cup is empty so we think the problem is with the cup and we think we can solve the problem by getting rid of this cup and getting a different cup, a different spouse or house or vacation or better health or whatever. But the problem was not with the cup The problem is not with the cup, the problem is that the cup is empty of the Living Water, empty of the personal relationship with Jesus that comes through prayer. A different or new cup wont solve the problem. The solution is to fill our existing cups, fill our lives with the Living Water that is Jesus that comes through prayer. A Personal relationship with Jesus is the Living Water that can fill up every area of life so that we can be satisfied. In John 7 Jesus stood and cried out: 'If any man is thirsty, let him come to me! Let the man come to me and drink…For My heart is a Fountain of living water.” The Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church are the Fountains from which the Living Water flows. The Eucharist is the Fountain par excellence because the Eucharist is literally the Heart of Jesus. If you want to drink the Living Water, then you must to come to the Heart of Jesus. The sacraments, especially the Eucharist, is the Fountain. But it is possible to come to the well and not drink. Not only do we need to come to the fountain, but we need to open up and Drink the Living Water. We drink in the Living Water of Jesus by Prayer.  Pope Benedict writes: “Prayer is the self-opening of the human spirit to God.” (Jesus of Nazareth vol 2, p. 233) Many people come to the Fountain of Living Water but they do not drink in the living water because they do not have a personal friendship with Jesus in prayer and they spend little or no time in prayer. Prayer is friendship with God. What does friendship take? Time… time talking, listening, and just being together. The Great Teresa of Avila writes “Prayer…is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; its means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us.” Prayer is friendship with God: it is talking, listening and just being together. This corresponds to the three major expressions of prayer: Vocal prayer,  meditation, and contemplation.  Prayer is friendship with God, talking to him from the heart, listening and just spending time with Him. We want to drink the Living Water, but have you ever experienced that you cant talk and drink at the same time. We can't drink the living water unless we spend time drinking and listening.

We are all addicts. Addicts to the sins we have turned into habits that are buried so deep in our sub-conscience we do them without even thinking. There are seven roots of our addiction and they are known as the deadly sins: Pride, envy, anger, acedia, greed, gluttony and lust. Pride in the form of self-reliance, the disordered desire for perfection, or being a control freak, refusing to listen to anyone other than oneself; but Pride is also found in timidity, anxiety and fear. Envy is a sadness at someone’s good and pleasure at their misfortune. It leads us to gossip, backbiting, tearing others down in the attempt to raise ourselves up. Its why we love hearing and spreading dirty laundry. Anger and impatience – that’s probably self-explanatory. Acedia or Sloth which is not laziness but rather an aversion to the invitation from God to become a saint. So rather than heed the invitation from God we escape his call through our constant busyness and entertainment which keeps us from doing those things that will really bring us into union with God. After all, there’s nothing more difficult than becoming holy. Greed is a disordered love of getting and possessing. Although this might involve mere money, it can also take the form of an excessive desire for position, knowledge, and other goods. It is the desire for satisfaction and fulfillment in the possession of things which tries to find security in worldly realities, rather than in God. When we fail to trust that God will provide our daily bread then we seek to grab all that we can and store it up for a rainy day. Gluttony refers to eating, drinking and drug use for the sake of pleasure or to escape the reality we find too hard, too painful, or too boring. Finally, Lust, the way we use others sexually to get what we want. Men use women to get what they want and women use men to get what they want. We each want something different but we use one another just the same. The seven deadly sins do not make us happy and our sins certainly don’t make the lives of those around us better. In fact, they destroy the good things in life we need to be happy. If we want to be set free we need to do three things: First, make a searching, honest and fearless examination of conscience. Then, admit to God, to ourselves and to a priest the exact nature of our wrongs in the sacrament of Reconciliation. Finally, do our penance, that is, practice the virtues that conquer the vices to which you have been enslaved: practice humility, good-will, meekness, magnanimity, generosity, temperance, charity, courage, honesty, patience, etc. One of the things that can prevent me from receiving the freedom and healing I need in the Sacrament of Reconciliation regularly is that get lazy about doing a daily examination of conscience. Then when I think about confession I seem to get this amnesia and can’t remember any of my sins so I put it off until I have some sins. I need to change this. At the beginning of each day, or the beginning of my time in meditation, or at the end of the day, I need to take a few minutes for an examination of conscience which consists of three things:  Gratitude, acknowledgment of our wrong, and a practical game plan to go forward.  Start with Gratitude – call to mind all the things for which you are you thankful to God? Then think back over the last 24 hours and admit where you have sinned in your thoughts, words or actions. Ask, why did I do these things? What was at the root? Was it Pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony or lust? Then make a practical game plan to live differently today. God forgives our sin and gives us His grace to be changed and transformed. But, its not magic - we must do our part. Don't try to change everything in your life. Pick one thing to change, one virtue to practice, and that will enable you to change everything in your life eventually. 

Mary set out and went as quickly as she could to a town in the hill country of Judah. She went into Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth. Now as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, ‘Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honored with a visit from the mother of my Lord? For the moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy. Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’ 2. Mary brought Jesus to Elizabeth and John the Baptist in her womb. Mary leads all people to Jesus! The more you develop a relationship with Mary, your spiritual mother, the more she will help you live your relationship with Jesus. Poland may be the last completely Christian nation in the world. I know it is not 100% but it is close. And why has their faith survived, even after 70 years of pressure from Government enforced atheism under the Soviet Union. Because of their deep relationship with Mary, the Mother of Jesus and Our Mother. Poland’s love for Mary is seen in their love for the Icon of the Black Madonna kept at the Monastery of Czestochowa. I saved an image of this icon on your email. Tradition holds that it was painted by St. Luke, the writer of the Gospel and later taken from Jerusalem to Constantinople and then Poland. During Holy Week of 1430, robbers attacked the monastery looking for treasure, finding none they took whatever religious good, chalices, etc. and even the Holy Icon, but miraculously as they carried it away it become so heavy, they could go no further. They dropped it in the mud and slashed the Virgin's face with a sword, and the Icon began to bleed. With the 3rd stroke of the sword the attacker died. Frightened they left it desecrated in a puddle of blood and mud. The monks pulled the icon from the mud, a miraculous fountain appeared, which they used to clean the painting. The icon was repainted in Krakow, but both the arrow mark and the gashes from the sword were left and remain clearly visible today. 3. In the year 1655, the Lutheran King of Sweden, Charles X, attacked Poland. This invading force, known as the Deluge was stopped at only one place the fortress monastery of Czestochowa which contained the miraculous icon of the Black Madonna. As he stood beneath the ramparts of the monastery the Swedish General Muller contemptuously exclaimed "We will have that henhouse down in three days." But that is not how things turned out. Both Polish and Swedish witnesses testified that that during the siege, the Holy Virgin of Czestochowa appeared above the monastery, leading the defenders and directing their fire. A testimony of this miraculous apparition of the Blessed Virgin was given by the Swedish General Muller. After the siege of Czestochowa, General Muller spent some time in Krakow. In one of the churches, he gazed on a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Asked the reason for his amazement, he said in reply that what convinced him to retreat from the siege of Czestochowa was a visit from a noble woman. Her words and menacing look severely warned him. He did not know who the woman was until he saw this image of Mary in the Church. Then he knew it was the Blessed Virgin Mary herself who turned him away from destroying the Monastery that housed her Icon. “Impossible,” he was saying about the Image. “This is like the Virgin that appeared to me and directed a canon against me by her hand. But on earth something like this does not seem possible. O Celestial and Divine thing! That which I feared beyond measure has shown again in her majestic face.”

Thank you for joining us for our meditation on the Kingdom of Heaven

Today is the feast of the Apostle Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael. I walk by his house in Cana in the Holy Land every time I lead a pilgrimage there. Bartholomew was one of the few who said yes to a life of deep friendship with Jesus Christ. He lived this intimate friendship with Jesus and with the other Apostles for three years and then he went forth after the Resurrection to constantly invite others into friendship with Jesus. We make things too complicated and difficult. This life is most importantly about a deep friendship with Jesus in prayer; it is about living authentic friendships with others; and constantly multiplying by inviting others into this way of life. Yeah, I know, you got a lot of things going on in your life. But the only things you will take with you from this life to the next are these three: your friendship with Jesus – so you better get that now, because if you exit this life without it you are screwed; Virtuous friendships with others also goes with us into heaven, that is why we have the communion of saints – a bunch of really close friends who are perfectly happy with God; Finally, that we helped others to friendship with Jesus like Bartholomew did. The friendship and love Bartholomew had for Christ and souls took him to Armenia, on the far eastern side of Turkey, where he introduced the brother of the King of Armenia to Jesus and he converted. For this the King had Bartholomew skinned alive and crucified head downward. The missionary efforts of St. Bartholomew along with the Apostle Jude Thaddeus were so successful that in 301, thanks to the apostolate of St. Gregory the Illuminator, Armenia became the first nation that embraced Christianity and proclaimed it a state religion, even before the Edict of Milan of 313, by which the Roman Empire tolerated Christianity, and the Edict of Theodosius by which in 380 the Empire recognized Christianity as a state religion. Surrounded by Islam on all sides Armenia has remained a Christian nation until this day. Way to go Bart! The Gospel of Todays Mass for the Feast of Bartholomew is from John 1:45-51 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, the one about whom the prophets wrote: he is Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.’ ‘From Nazareth?’ said Nathanael ‘Can anything good come from that place?’ ‘Come and see’ replied Philip. When Jesus saw Nathanael coming he said of him, ‘There is an Israelite who deserves the name, incapable of deceit.’ ‘How do you know me?’ said Nathanael. ‘Before Philip came to call you,’ said Jesus ‘I saw you under the fig tree.’ Nathanael answered, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel.’ Jesus replied, ‘You believe that just because I said: I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.’ And then he added ‘I tell you most solemnly, you will see heaven laid open and, above the Son of Man, the angels of God ascending and descending.’ People come to God through other people. There is no other way. Philp helped Bartholomew into friendship with Jesus by his friendship with Bartholomew. That is precisely how God set it up; that by the unique friendships established through marriage, family, work and social life, we develop authentic friendships with others. True friends want what is best for the other and the greatest good is friendship with God. so that is what we hope to help our spouse, kids and friends to – deep friendship with Jesus. If we truly live the virtue of friendship in which we demonstrate that we know, love and care for the other person unconditionally, then we will have won the right to propose friendship with Jesus to them. But only based on this precondition. Am I really demonstrating that I really know, understand, love and care unconditionally for those around me? If yes, then I am on good footing to help them to Jesus. IF not, then I have some work to do. Bartholomew lived Deep friendship with God.

One of the greatest weapons of the devil is discouragement. He wants to discourage us from actions that will lead to our own transformation, the transformation of those around us and the whole world. We need to resist him firmly, refuse to give into his lies and do what God is inspiring within us! 1) The devil wants to discourage us from daily meditation. He knows that if we persevere in daily meditation, we will, over time, go from good, to better, to great, and become a saint. If we persevere in meditation, nothing can stop us. Therefore, the devil does all that he can to stop us and discourage us from prayer by telling us that “we’re wasting our time, that our prayer isn’t accomplishing anything, and that we have too many more pressing responsibilities. Or, God loves you unconditionally and he won’t mind if you skip meditation today.” Fight this attack of the devil by persevering in daily meditation. 2) The devil wants to discourage us from speaking to others about Jesus. The devil knows the power of the gospel and what will happen if we put people in contact with Jesus. So he has to do everything in his power to keep us from talking to others about Jesus. The lie that he spreads to discourage us is this, “you should have faith, but keep it to yourself. Your faith is personal and needs to be private. If you tell others about your faith then your trying to force it on them. You wouldn’t want to be one of those annoying bible thumpers, would you? So just lead by good example and people will come to Jesus.” This is a lie. Our relationship with Jesus is personal, but it was never meant to be private. In fact, Jesus commanded the apostles and all his followers to make it public. Every time Jesus says proclaim or preach the gospel, the phrase in the original language means to “Make it public.” Don’t give into the lie, when God gives the opportunity to speak about Him to others – do it. 3) The devil wants to discourage us from leaving our comfort zone so that we are never able to reach our fullest potential. This could be regarding starting friendships or in taking a step forward in your profession that you feel could help you, the company, and the clients. The devil has engrained in us the fear of failure. “Why would you risk the failure and the humiliation that follows, you’re good where you are right now. Why risk that?” The devil doesn’t want us to have the chance to ever start up new initiatives that entail risks, possibly a business venture, possibly starting or expanding a family, or possibly even inviting people to your home to pray the rosary with you. 4) The devil wants to discourage us from ending sinful habits and creating virtuous ones. He sows the lie that you can’t live without the sinful habit. The habits become so tied to who we are that we let the devil tell us that these habits are our identity, and losing that habit is losing a part of ourselves. We may fall into the vice of overworking, whether it be in the workplace or at home. Instead of living a balanced life, the devil lies to us and makes us fear losing our identity of a “good work ethic,” convincing us to overwork ourselves. The devil tricks us into tying our entirely identity in moderate things such as work. 5) The devil wants to discourage us from loving unconditionally. He does so by telling us, “You’re always the one that gives, they never give anything in return. If you keep loving unconditionally then you will never get what they owe you.” Jesus doesn’t want us to enable sinful manipulation, but the devil skews this and tries to prevent the power of unconditional love. Saint John of the Cross says, “Where there is no love, put love and you will find love."

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Queenship of Mary. Because Mary is the Mother of Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, then she is the Queen of the Universe. In the early 700’s in Jerusalem, St. John Damascene sums up the entire Christian tradition when he writes: "When she became Mother of the Creator, she truly became Queen of every creature." Christ is our King not only because He is the Son of God but also because He is the Savior of the World. Instituting this Celebration of the Queenship of Mary Pope Pius XII wrote: if Mary, in taking an active part in the work of salvation, was, by God's design, associated with Jesus Christ, the source of salvation itself, in a manner comparable to that in which Eve was associated with Adam, the source of death, so that it may be stated that the work of our salvation was accomplished by a kind of "recapitulation," in which a virgin was instrumental in the salvation of the human race, just as a virgin had been closely associated with its death; if, moreover, it can likewise be stated that this glorious Lady had been chosen Mother of Christ "in order that she might become a partner in the redemption of the human race"; and if, in truth, "it was she who, free of the stain of actual and original sin, and ever most closely bound to her Son, on Calvary offered that Son to the Eternal Father together with the complete sacrifice of her maternal rights and maternal love, like a new Eve, for all the sons of Adam, stained as they were by his lamentable fall," then it may be legitimately concluded that as Christ, the new Adam, must be called a King not merely because He is Son of God, but also because He is our Redeemer, so, analogously, the Most Blessed Virgin is queen not only because she is Mother of God, but also because, as the new Eve, she was associated with the new Adam. Let all Christians, therefore, glory in being subjects of the Virgin Mother of God, who, while wielding royal power, is on fire with a mother's love. On this Feast of the Queenship of Mary I want to share with you a few key messages from the apparitions of Jesus and Mary to to Sr. Mary Ephrem Neuzil, a Precious Blood sister in Ohio from 1954 and 1984 known as Our Lady of America. In 2007, Cardinal Burke wrote a letter to every bishop of the U.S. verifying the approved status of this apparition and encouraging all bishops to do as Jesus and Mary had requested in their messages…May 22 1954 Jesus said to Sr. Neuzil, if the world is dying, it is because it will not let Me give it life. I am the resurrection and the life, and unless souls seek their life in Me, they will find only death and destruction. They fear man-made destroyers of life, yet destruction is in themselves. Man destroys himself through the evil that is in himself. Implements of war kill only that which is without. Man kills that which is within – his soul. May 29, 1954, O Man, what have I done to you that you should refuse My aid?... do you know what I find most lacking in the world today? It is FAITH. There are so few souls that believe in Me and My love. They profess their belief and their love, but they do not live this belief. Their hearts are cold, for without faith there can be no love. Pray and sacrifice yourself, my child, that faith may once again find entrance into the hearts of men. July 11, 1954 My daughter I am not loved in the homes of men. And because I am not loved, the Divine Trinity refuses to dwell therein. Children are not taught to love Me, because those who are in charge of them have no time or patience to do so. My Heart grieves over My children in the world. Their hearts are being drawn farther and farther away from Me. They will not even listen to My Mother, because they have never been taught to listen. I am a Beggar for love, but how few give to Me the means by which to satisfy My divine hunger. I hunger for the love of My own, and I receive only the crumbs no other would accept. July 12, 13, 14 1954.

I hate limitations! I am not the most intelligent person but I have a strong will and I will work or push through anything to accomplish what I want! Well, I came face to face with my limitations last night and today. My body was destroyed from trying to reach a new summit hiking everyday since last Wednesday. Except for Mass I didn’t leave the house today. I’ve been vanquished by my limitations and I am angry, sad and depressed. I have limitations, I hate that I am finite. This is the very trap the devil fell into. Teresa of Avila writes: I believe His Majesty desires to bring us along this way (the way of suffering, trials, crosses and difficulties) for our own good so that we may understand well what little we amount to. The favors that come afterward are of such great worth that He desires first that before He gives them to us we see by experience our own limitations so that what happened to Lucifer will not happen to us. Life 11:11 Because he has no physical body, the devil did not experience his limitations through suffering. Therefore, he thought he was without limits, that he did not need God, so he did not want God and made no space for God in his life. That is why he is in hell. He made allowed no space for God in his life. 2. If we had no limitations, we would be full of ourselves and there would be no space for God to fill with His divine life. Our limitations therefore may be our greatest asset because it creates a space for us to be filled by God and divinized – that is – made God-like. And when we become God-like we surpass our limitations infinitely! Our limitations are unique. It may be physical, psychological, it may be that your kids are growing up and leaving you behind so to speak – you can go with them or keep them with you – it may be the death of a spouse, old age and infirmity; it may be that you are a gifted professional and you take on too many opportunities, clients, or patients and the weight is now crushing you; or you may just find that you face circumstances you cannot change. These are our limitations. They are a gift. Why? Because you cant do any more to overcome it by your power alone! You cant do it. Oh you can make it worse, that’s for sure, by forcing your will or your way, but you cant remove your limitations by your will power. This is a great blessing and the devil missed it completely. See, you CAN have your limitations removed and obliterated completely by A) accepting them with trust in God B) surrendering them to Jesus C) letting God fill that space of perceived loss or frustration with Himself D) when God fills that Space with Himself he raises you up to a divine level – Divinizes you! 3. This is what God did to St. Faustina and Maximilian Kolbe. God allowed both Faustina and Kolbe to face the limitation of TB. She accepted it with trust and God raised her up to become the Apostle of Mercy around the world for the last 100 years. Kolbe accepted his limiting illness with Trust in the Mother of God and he formed the largest monastery in the world, 700 young men, and then duplicate it in Japan, and produced a daily periodical to evangelize with a distribution of over 1,000,000 copies regularly. Then he offered his life for another man in Auschwitz, they denied him water and food for 14 days at the end of which he was latterly glowing with divine light and he wouldn’t die so they had to give him a lethal injection. Kolbe accepted his limitations, God filled that space with the His divine presence and made Kolbe free and powerful and almost indestructible! 4. The devil wants us to focus on the limitations, the loss, the frustration, fear and sorrow. then the devil wants us to hate God for this. Focus instead on God filling your limitations, the space He is carving out, with Himself, making you God-like, free, powerful, beautiful, and full of His divine life. 5. Develop your gifts, maximize your potential, do arduous things, and live life to the full.

I am with my family, sadly not all at the same time but in waves, Sandy John Sara Grace, Xavier, Teresa and Nick. We get up, go to daily Mass, hike big all day, cook great meals, laugh, have good conversation and pray the Rosary – well, that is whoever hasn’t fallen asleep. This is wonderful vacation. But today I felt a little lost because I am off my normal spiritual routine of spending the first hour of each day in silent meditation with Jesus and Mary. I’ve had lots of time in silence on the mountains but its not my normal routine and place for meditation so I’m off my game. I have a handful of holy nuns that pray for me, and keep my out of prison and probably from hell. One of them texted me today and I share with her how I was a little lost. She gave me a piece of wisdom that should be lived everyday and I share it with you: “The heart of our prayer routine is to fix our gaze on the Heart of Jesus and that our deepest longing is union with Him. With this I should move through the day without ever leaving intimacy with Jesus. What happens exteriorly is just different scenarios where that intimacy love and union unfold.” Great wisdom right – I should live that every day and so should you! God is not only with us when we are at Mass, or in meditation or praying the Rosary. He is present with us at every moment. We just forget this. In the Our Father we pray: Our Father Who art in Heaven. The CCC 2794 says This biblical expression does not mean a place (space), but a way of being; it does not mean that God is distant, but It refers to His supreme majesty, and power His presence in the hearts of the Just Augustine “Our Father who art in heaven” is rightly understood to mean that God is in the hearts of the just, as in his holy temple. Jesus said to St Faustina, My Kingdom on earth is My Life in the human soul Diary 1784 Pope Benedict This is what prayer really is Being in silent inward communion with God This silent presence of God at the heart of our thinking, our meditating and our being is what we mean by prayer without ceasing St Faustina writes: The moments which are most pleasant to me are those when I converse with the Lord within the center of my being. I try my very best not to leave him alone. He likes to be always with us…Diary 1793 531-534 The mysteries of Jesus’ hidden life Jesus spent 30 years in Nazareth living an Ordinary Life of prayer and work, friendship and family Only 3 years of public ministry Jesus spent 10 times more doing what you do day in and day out than he did in his ministry – WHY? 2 Reasons: Remember, Jesus is an eternal person, that means all that he does remains present, never slips into the past. In some way Jesus is still present living an ordinary life and because He is present in that ordinary life you can meet Him there at every moment of your ordinary life and live it together. It is not just the suffering of Jesus that we can participate in through our own suffering. We can participate in the prayer, work, joy and suffering of Jesus. Every moment of our life can be moments united to him if we just have the right desire – the desire to be united to him, present to him. The opening prayer of Mass each day this week says – love him in all things and above all things. CCC 533 tells us to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life The 2nd reason Jesus lived this ordinary life for 30 years was to teach us - we are to live as sons and daughters of God and become Saints through the ordinary events of life Prayer Work – school Friendship, marriage, family Sickness, suffering, trials and conflicts Living a well ordered and balanced life Friendship with Jesus, like any friendship, requires time and our undivided attention. That is why we need time in silent meditation each day with Jesus and Mary – talking, listening and being with them. But when we leave that time – they don't leave us, we should not leave them.

Is your addiction to routine holding you back from encountering others?

Join us for the Rosary and a meditation on this weekend's Gospel.

God created every person to share in his life – to be like God and live like God forever! God’s plan is to bring about a great exchange – he would take on our lowly humanity in order to give us a share in his divinity. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that? St. Peter writes in his 2nd letter that we will become “partakers in the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). And this fact led St. Augustine and St. Thomas to say: God became man so that man could become god. How will we come to share in the life of God? The Holy Spirit and Mary conceive the life of Jesus in our souls through Baptism and then we are to cooperate with God so that Christ is fully formed in us. CCC 520 In all of his life Jesus presents himself as our model. He is "the perfect man", who invites us to become his disciples and follow him. In humbling himself, he has given us an example to imitate, through his prayer he draws us to pray, and by his poverty he calls us to accept freely the privation and persecutions that may come our way However, If we strive to become like Jesus by imitation alone we will fail. God knew this and He provides a further means: CCC 521 Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us…We are called only to become one with him, for he enables us as the members of his Body to share in what he lived for us in his flesh as our model: St John Eudes: We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus’ life and his mysteries, the events of his life, and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church…for it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in his mysteries, the events of his life and to extend them to and continue them in us and in his whole Church. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us. Through the Mass and the Sacraments Jesus makes the Events from His life Present So that what took place in Him can take place in us and transform us CCC 1085 In the liturgy of the Church (the Mass and the Sacraments), it is principally but not only the Paschal mystery, the suffering death and Resurrection that Christ signifies and makes present…When his hour comes he lives out the unique event of history which does not pass away: Jesus dies, is buried, rises from the dead, and is seated at the right hand of the Father “once for all. His Paschal mystery is a real event that occurred in our history, but it is unique: all other historical events happen once, and then they pass away, swallowed up in the past. The Paschal mystery of Christ, by contrast, cannot remain only in the past because…all that he did and suffered for all men - participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all…” Jesus is an eternal Person Eternal means there is no past and no future, only the “Present” Every event from the life of Jesus remains PRESENT So that we can enter into it Take part in it – be conformed to it And become like him The mysteries, meaning the events of the life of Jesus are made present in the Mass and the sacraments So that what took place in Jesus May take place in us And we be conformed to Him How does this happen that the events of the life of Christ are made present and we enter them? CCC 1099 The Holy Spirit Recalls the mystery of Christ In the Liturgy of the Word, the first half of the Mass, the Holy Spirit recalls the saving events from the life of Christ; but it doesn’t end with there; CCC 1104 the Christian liturgy not only recalls the events that saved us but actualizes them, makes them present. The Paschal mystery of Christ is celebrated, not repeated. It is the celebrations that are repeated, and in each celebration there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that makes the unique mystery present. That is why 1370 can say: In the Eucharist the Church is as it were At the foot of the Cross with Mary, united to the offering and intercession of Christ.

The CCC suggests 4 reasons why we need Jesus 457 God became man in Jesus to save us by reconciling us with God. We have all sinned. Romans 6 tells us the consequences of sin is death. Death doesn’t just mean the end of our earthly life. Death as the consequence from unrepented sin means eternal separation from God, but also separation from one another and the complete loss of happiness… Imagine being locked in solitary confinement, completely alone – forever, with no hope that the pain would end. That is Hell That is what Jesus came to save us from Why can’t God just forgive and forget the consequences? B/C God made us free like Himself and with Freedom comes Consequences. Good choices bear good consequences, Bad choices bear bad consequences. If we want him to remove the consequences, Then He would have to remove our freedom We would not be human Imagine Playing a game with young child If every time the child made a wrong move you let him take it back, Then the child was not really playing the game, was he? For God to excuse every bad move I make, He would have to take away my freedom. Rather than destroy our human dignity; God became one of us. He suffered the consequences for us; He suffered our death And rose from the dead. Since Jesus is both God and Man, He could bear the consequences as Man, He could rise from the dead b/c He is God. By His death Jesus fulfilled the consequence of our sin. By His Resurrection He conquered death 2nd Reason we need Jesus… 458 The Word became flesh so that we might know God’s love How do we know God’s love? He died for us At the Last Supper Jesus tells his disciples, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends…” Then He suffered and died for us We should Read the accounts of Jesus’ suffering and death in the Gospel There you will see for yourself: the outstretched arms of Jesus on the Cross, the arms of the God who proved his love for us by dying for you and me this is the Revelation of God’s love 3rd Reason we need Jesus 459 The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness Jesus reveals what God is really like; He also reveals what we should be like Because Jesus was fully human He shows us how to be Fully Human Fully Alive He teaches us how to live by the way He lived He teaches us how to pray By the way He prayed He teaches us to live Mercy Through his own example of Mercy He teaches us how to fight Temptation To be calm in the storms of life To have courage under persecution To deal with rejection, privation and want To be patient in suffering and death A wonderful old Benedictine monk, Fr. Adrian, when we would be in the sacrament of Reconciliation he would turn to a small statue of Jesus and say to me How would Jesus handle these situations? Michael you must live like the Master Read and think about the life of Jesus in the Gospel For we must learn to live like the Master 4th Reason we need Jesus… 460 The Word became flesh to make us partakers of the divine nature. For this is why the Word became Man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God. For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he made man, might make men Gods. The whole point of life is to be Reunited to God Sin had separated us from Him The distance between us was impossible to bridge Imagine Two Shores separated by a body of water no one could swim You would need a bridge to cross over We need a bridge from God to man Where are God and man joined together? In the Body of Christ That is why Jesus gives us the Eucharist! The Body of Christ is the bridge to cross over to God (John 6:54)

The Assumption of Mary is not recorded in Scripture, but we know it is true because the Apostles were present, they are the witnesses to the Assumption of Mary, body and soul into heaven, and they hand down this fact. The Apostles were present at the home of Mary in Jerusalem when her earthly life came to an end, they carried her body and placed it in a tomb near Gethsemane, and the Apostles were witnesses to her bodily Assumption into heaven. St. Germanus of Constantinople in a homily given in the year 720 states that Mary’s Assumption into heaven was witnessed by the Apostles, who could then confirm the truth with their authority. St. Germanus writes: “Your departure did not lack witnesses…Heaven tells the glory of those who ran to meet you then; earth presents the truth about it; the clouds cry out the honor they paid you, and the angels tell of the offering of gifts that was made to you then, when the Apostles were at your side as you passed away above Jerusalem.” The Church has celebrated the Feast of the Assumption in Jerusalem on August 15 since the 400’s St John Damascene, who lived near Jerusalem proposed Consecration to Mary in one of his sermons on the Assumption (Dormition) of Mary in the 700s: We today also remain near you, O Lady. Yes, I repeat, O Lady, Mother of God and Virgin. We bind our souls to your hope, as to a most firm and totally unbreakable anchor, consecrating to you mind, soul, body and all our being and honoring you as much as we can with psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles. The First Reading from Mass today is from Revelation 11-12 The sanctuary of God in heaven opened and the ark of the covenant could be seen inside it. Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman, adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with the twelve stars on her head for a crown. She was pregnant, and in labor, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth. Then a second sign appeared in the sky, a huge red dragon which had seven heads and ten horns, and each of the seven heads crowned with a coronet. Its tail dragged a third of the stars from the sky and dropped them to the earth, and the dragon stopped in front of the woman as she was having the child, so that he could eat it as soon as it was born from its mother. The woman brought a male child into the world, the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre, and the child was taken straight up to God and to his throne, while the woman escaped into the desert, where God had made a place of safety ready. From the time the devil rebelled against God and led 1/3 of the angels with him, there has raged a cosmic battle. The devil and his angels were cast out of heaven. Then the devil, the prince of this world pursued the woman, Mary but had no hold on her for she is the new Eve, "full of grace" of the Holy Spirit, who is preserved from sin and the corruption of death (the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Most Holy Mother of God, Mary, ever virgin). Because the devil could not touch Mary he went off to make war on the rest of her offspring – we are the offspring, the children of Mary, she is our spiritual mother. The devil is bent on one thing and one thing only, our destruction. But if we belong to Mary, he cannot touch us. Mary was Assumed into heaven, but she has not left us alone. She is present. I sense her presence. She is the one who crushes the head of Satan in our lives. Belong to her. Practice living under her influence and care. She will protect you from the deceptions of the devil, the destroyer and she will lead you to the calm harbor of the will of God. Since Mary is our Spiritual Mother and she is the one who crushes the head of Satan the Church recommends 3 things: Entrust ourselves to Mary as Jesus did in the Incarnation Live in union with Mary as a little child with his mother Sit at the school of Mary each day in the Rosary We should imitate Jesus and consecrate ourselves to Mary.

In the beginning of his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul makes a statement that I think doesn’t make sense except on the Catholic view of participation: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and my flesh I complete what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body, that is, the Church” (Colossians 1:24). How could Christ’s sufferings be lacking? And if they were lacking, how could we make up for it? Think of it this way: Christ preached the Gospel, but if we don’t participate in preaching the Gospel, Christ’s preaching won’t have its full effect. Christ loved and served the poor, but if we don’t participate in His love and service for the poor, His love for the poor won’t have its full effect. And Christ suffered for souls, but if we don’t participate in His suffering for souls, than His suffering won’t have its full effect. That’s what it means to “make up what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings for the good of the Church”: it means Christ makes the full impact of Calvary dependent on our willingness to cooperate with Him. Pope Pius XII puts it starkly: “The salvation of many depends on the prayers and voluntary penances which the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ offer for this intention.” He goes on to say, speaking to all the faithful, “Let them all remember that their sufferings are not in vain, but that they will turn to their own immense gain and that of the Church, if to this end they bear them with patience. What kinds of sufferings bring divine aid to other people? In the 2nd apparition of the Angel to the three children of Fatima in the Summer of 1916, the Angel stated that the children had a mission from Jesus and Mary to help them save souls by prayer and sacrifice. Lucy asked the Angel: “How are we to make sacrifices?” "Make of everything you can a sacrifice and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners.” “In this way, you will draw peace upon your country. I am its Guardian Angel, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, accept and bear with submission the sufferings which the Lord will send you." The most spiritually fruitful you can be is the patient acceptance and endurance of the sufferings, which you did not choose, you do not like and you cannot change, which God in His mysterious providence sends you. Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychotherapist and concentration camp survivor, used to quote Nietzsche’s dictum that a person can endure any “what” as long as he has a strong enough “why.” The idea is that a person can withstand any amount of suffering given an adequate reason, an adequate cause to which their suffering contributes. And our faith tells us that suffering saves souls – ours, and other peoples’ – and consoles the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It’s hard to think of a worthier cause, one that would inspire more courage in whatever situation, than that. Victims or Voluntary Agents? The word “passion” is connected to the word for “passive.” Because our feelings are responses, they’re associated with something happening to us. The word “suffering” has similar connotations of passivity, and in fact one of its definitions is “to put up with.” The idea is that some other force is the agent, maybe a violent agent, and the sufferer is the victim who feels the effects. At one level, Jesus is the supreme victim. Judas, the Pharisees, Pilate and the Romans, Herod and Satan himself work in concert to attack, suddenly, freely and brutally. An innocent man who has done nothing to deserve this kind of hatred or violence, nothing to provoke it, is subject to betrayal, torture, mockery, death. He puts up with it all. He “suffers himself” to be immolated. But of course, that’s only part of the picture. The other part of the picture, the more important part, is that the entire event is orchestrated by God himself.

Yesterday we reflected on four causes sorrow, that if prolonged can lead to depression. We should do all we can to change what is bad. However, if we cannot change our suffering, there is still a way forward; we can unite our suffering and sorrow to Christ. He uses it to bring us to transforming union with God, the goal of life and he uses it to save the souls of others. This is what led St. Paul to say “It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.” If the suffering of Christ was sufficient to save the world – why would Paul say he wants to make up all that still has to be undergone by Christ? Because God invites us to participate in all he does. This idea of participation is where we get the phrase “offer it up” and it is why Jesus says we cannot be his disciples unless we take up our own cross and follow him every day. Still “offering it up” is a very misunderstood Catholic thing, but once we understand how God has given us a way to participate in his being and action, your suffering can become a powerful force to live with meaning, hope and happiness. Participation in Divine Being and Action To understand how we can help others by our suffering we must grasp one of the most fundamental and neglected ideas in Catholic theology, that of participation. This is the idea that: God has enabled us to share in His being and action in a way that does not add to, subtract from, or compete with His being and action. In the material realm, “sharing” means dividing up limited resources. If you share your pizza with me, I’m subtracting from your pizza. And if we split a pizza, the more you take the less I’ll be able to have. There’s a competition. But sharing or participating in the immaterial or spiritual realm isn’t like that. If I go to a lecture about something I have no knowledge of the professor will share his knowledge with me, but I won’t be taking away or adding to or competing with any of his knowledge about the topic. My knowledge will depend on his, but his won’t depend on mine – so I’m participating in his knowledge in a way that doesn’t threaten his primacy or expertise in any respect. What’s true of this example of teaching and learning is true of all the various ways God wills that we participate in His being and action. God lets us share in His being. On the natural level, our existence is dependent on the existence of God, not vice versa, since He exists in Himself and we exist by sharing in or participating in the existence of God. Moreover, God exists infinitely, so our existence doesn’t so much add to His existence as participate in it: He is the God “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Then, through the staggering generosity and presence of the Holy Spirit, sanctifying grace raises our sharing in God’s being to the supernatural level, such that we become, in the words of St. Peter, “partakers in the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). The fact that we are invited to share in the very nature of God led St. Augustine and St. Thomas to say: God became man so that man could become god. God also lets us share in His action. In particular, the theological virtues allow us to operate at a level above the merely human, since they “adapt man’s faculties for participation in the divine nature.” By faith we know divine truth, by hope we participate in God’s love for ourselves, and by Charity we participate in God’s love for God – which will be the apex of heavenly happiness. So it shouldn’t be surprising that when God became man, and shared in our life, He also opened up new avenues for us to participate in His character and mission. In other words, we participate in Jesus’ being and His action too. We share in His divine sonship, and we look forward to sharing in His death and Resurrection.

Depression can be caused by suffering, pain and sorrow. Let’s recall the difference between evil and suffering. Evil is the absence of a good which should be present, in other words something is missing that should be there. Blindness is a physical evil since the person is missing sight. Vice is a moral evil since the person is missing virtue – the good actions and habits that result in happiness. Suffering is not evil. Suffering is a felt response to something perceived as evil. The purpose of suffering is to alert us that something needs to change. People always mix up suffering and evil, probably because suffering always indicates the presence of some evil. If we suffer, it’s either because we accurately perceive some present evil, or because we mistakenly think something’s evil when it isn’t – and that very mistake on our part is itself a failure in our judgment. Suffering doesn’t happen without evil. But the correspondence between evil and suffering shouldn’t lead to confusion. Only evil is evil. Suffering can be good. It can be the right response to a perceived evil (causing you to take your hand out of the fire); and it can motive change in our behavior from vice to virtue. Like changing from a life of greed to generosity. We must distinguish between pain which begins in the body and sorrow which finds its origin in the soul. Sorrow can cause us to ask the big questions in life and then seek for answers. Sorrow can also motivate us to make a change in the way we live. If we suffer the sorrow of loneliness, we may make the changes to have deep friendships. Sorrow may also help us appreciate happiness even more. Suffering in the form of pain or sorrow is meant to alert us to a problem and motivate us toward change and ultimately to achieve the purpose of our life - union with God. Suffering can awaken the soul from indifference and sloth, causing it to take our relationship with God more seriously. Suffering can also prevent us from becoming distracted on our journey toward union with God because when we become distracted, as we often do in the summer, then we lose the depth of relationship we had with God when we are in our normal routines, and this lose of relationship results in sorrow. Finally, suffering can empty us of all the addictions and disordered attachments we will not let go of on our own that block us from being filled by God. Suffering is not evil. Evil is evil. Evil is the problem – whether physical, psychological, or spiritual. Evil is the thing to eliminate at all costs – not suffering. We eliminate evil by rectifying the absence of the good that ought to be there; not the numbing of the response that motivates positive change. God allows evil out of respect for our freedom and interdependence, and because He can use evil as an opportunity for good. God gives us the gift of human suffering as a perfection of our nature, and as a motive for heroically moving beyond the weaknesses and defects of our condition: “the more one sorrows on account of a certain thing, the more one strives to shake off sorrow, provided there is a hope of shaking it off.” We are not motivated to change until the pain or sorrow outweighs the pleasure or the comfort. However, suffering in the form of sorrow, just like any other good or any other passion, can also become disordered. It can be counter-productive. It can inhibit, instead of inciting, the process of making things better. Such is the case with “excessive sorrow, which consumes the soul: for such sorrow paralyzes the soul, and hinders it from shunning evil...” There is the danger of a suffering that cripples the will rather than empowering it – and this is depression. It’s not necessarily immoral or imprudent to use drugs to help with depression, but before we get to that we need to appreciate the character of depression as a natural response to significant pain

Prior to everyone on the planet having an I-phone ready to record, the only verification of any historical event were the eyewitness accounts. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15 Paul recounts the many eyewitnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus from dead.Some deny the Resurrection The disciples lied and stole Christ’s body to support their lie What if the disciples just made the whole thing up? What if the whole story of the Resurrection was a fabrication by the apostles? But the main problem with the Deception hypothesis is this: Why would you give your life for a lie? Furthermore, how could you get more than 500 people to conspire and carry out the same lie over 50 years with no earthly benefit? Many of the apostles and first Christians were martyred in horrible, horrible ways. Who on earth would die for something they know isn’t true? You may give your life for something you mistakenly think is true – but we have no case in history of someone dying for something that they know is a hoax. The word “martyr,” as is commonly known, is actually taken from the Greek word for “witness,” and it is precisely the martyrdom of the early Christians that witnesses to the sincerity of their belief. You may think they were wrong, but they sure didn’t think they were. Jesus died and rose from the dead so that He could offer the same possibility to us if we choose to believe and live according to the will of God. St. Thomas Aquinas writes: "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."The Resurrection of Jesus gives us meaning, hope and happiness. If we come from nothing; and we are going toward nothing after death; then nothing really matters which makes a person feel like you don’t matter, your just a random occurrence. There is no meaning, no hope of something to look forward to. Oh sure, I can have some pleasure now but most of my time is work and there is a lot of pain – why endure it? But if Jesus has risen from the dead, then he is God. there is a God who made the world and made me with a design and purpose – to reach heaven and the resurrection – never ending perfect happiness – that is my destination – that is what I hope in. This gives meaning to my life for now my prayer, work, joy and suffering prepare me for eternity and I can help others to eternity by offering up these things. Without the Resurrection of Jesus – there is Nothing! With the Resurrection there is Everything. The Devil wants to obscure the Resurrection The devil wants us to fear, hate one another, cause division, despair and give up and ultimately kill ourselves. This is precisely the path he led Judas down and it’s the way he wants to lead all people. Do not give in to fear hate and despair. You are not alone. Jesus has risen and he lives in your soul. Turn to Him there. Surrender yourself to Him. Then Hope. Hope means to have a firm confidence that Jesus is going to work everything out in Heaven. (Spe Salvi 43). God can’t make what has happened not to have happened. He can’t change the past, that would be a denial of human freedom. Throughout our lives, God is orchestrating everything. Hope says we will place our bets on Christ.

The third reason we believe Jesus is God and one of the most dramatic differences between Jesus and any other religious founder, is that Jesus said He was God. That’s right. The thirty-something carpenter’s son from a small town in Nazareth said he was the Eternal Creator of the Universe. He actually said, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (thus giving himself the name of the eternal, all-powerful creator of everything visible and invisible). This is the main reason the Jewish leaders wanted to Jesus put to death: “He made himself God’s equal.” John 5:18. Now what can you do with that? First of all, that’s radically unlike what any religious founder would have said. CS Lewis imagines what other religious founders would have said if you’d asked them, “Are you the creator of the universe?” Socrates would have laughed at you. Buddha would have urged you to seek enlightenment. Confucius would have said something like, “Jokes which are in bad taste should not be made.” And Mohammed would have cut off your head for blasphemy.I once talked to a nonbeliever who said that Jesus was a good guy, had some good insights, but was a little neurotic. But calling yourself the creator of the universe doesn’t qualify you as neurotic: it means you’re a full-blown psychotic. If somebody says “I’m the eternal, all-powerful creator of the universe,” you don’t say, “Well, I disagree with you about that. But I’d still like to hear your views on marriage, family, social justice, and morality in general.” Somebody who thinks they’re God (with a capital G!) is not someone who’s going to give you good moral insights. But everyone agrees that Jesus had some of the most beautiful moral insights the world has ever known. Which means He isn’t a psychotic (and remember, thinking you’re God isn’t the sort of honest mistake a sane person can make). But if He’s not psychotic, then when He says that He’s God, He must be speaking truthfully. Which means He really is God.To give in to the lie that Jesus was a great moral leader but not God is the key to the deception of the Anti-Christ. Here are the 12 deceptions of the Anti-Christ according to Venerable Fulton Sheen: 1) He will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk of peace and prosperity, not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves. 2) He will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live. 3) He will induce faith in astrology so as to make not the will but the stars responsible for our sins. 4) He will explain guilt away psychologically as repressed sex, make men shrink in shame if their fellowmen say they are not broadminded and liberal. 5) He will identify tolerance with indifference to right and wrong. 6) He will foster more divorces under the disguise that another partner is “vital for happiness.” 7) He will increase love for love and decrease love for persons. 8) He will invoke religion to destroy religion. 9) He will even speak of Christ and say that he was the greatest man who ever lived. 10) The mission of Christ, he will say, will be to liberate men from the servitudes of superstition and Fascism, which he will never define. 11) In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one; he will not believe in God. And because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. 12) He will set up a counter-Church, which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God…In desperate need for God, he will induce modern man, in his loneliness and frustration, to hunger more and more for membership in his community that will give man purpose, without any need of personal amendment and without the admission of personal guilt. These are days in which the devil has been given a particularly long rope. Why is it so important that Jesus is God? Because you and I are weak. But Christ can fix the mess.

Before we get on a flight for which we have a reservation, we’re asked to show some form of ID. They want to make sure we’re who we say we are. Jesus Christ has his proof of identification as well. It’s not a photo ID; it’s his miracles. Jesus performs dozens of miracles, and he uses them as evidence that He’s who He says He is. He goes so far as to challenge people: “Believe in me because of the works that I do.” Here are a few remarkable but often overlooked characteristics of Jesus’ miracles: He never did a miracle for His own advantage (i.e., when He was hungry He didn’t turn the stones into bread)He never did a private miracle. He never did a miracle to satisfy curiosity or popular demand. He never did a miracle that was denied, even by his enemies. Even those who hated him had to admit that his actions were supernatural. The only solution they could come up with was that he was doing his miracles with the help of Satan!Compare that to other religious founders. Mohammed worked no public miracles. Nor Socrates, nor Confucius. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism got tarred and feathered because he said he could do miracles and then failed to deliver. But if God is going to send someone to earth with the message of truth for the world, you’d think He’d give that person the credentials necessary for people to be sure that this was the real deal.Some people will say, “There could never really be a miracle, because a miracle goes against the laws of nature.” But if you believe in God, then a Law of Nature just means the way God usually does things. And a miracle just means when God is doing something unusual. Usually God makes it so that people can’t walk on water, but if on occasion He wants to make it so that people don’t sink when they walk on water, what’s to stop Him? That’s why it’s very important that we Christians not under-emphasize the miracles of Jesus’ life, because if we do we’ll be undermining His claims to being really sent from God. When Jesus physically heals the paralyzed man, it so that we might know “that the Son of Man has the power to forgive sins”? If Jesus can’t do physical miracles, what reason is there to think that he can do spiritual miracles? After all, spiritual miracles (healing our broken souls and corrupt minds) are a lot more difficult than just multiplying a few loaves of bread. If it weren’t for his miracles, we might despair of ever becoming whole.In Mark chapter 1 Jesus heals all the sick brought to him in Capernaum, then he cures the leper. After which the Centurion comes to Jesus telling him his servant is paralyzed. Jesus offers to come to his house but the Centurion responds “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.” Immediately the servant is cured. Jesus has power over physical illness. Then Jesus gets in a boat with his disciples and falls asleep while a violent storm breaks out, about to sink their tiny ship. He has power over the forces of nature. Jesus also has power over demonic forces and he even has power over death, raising Lazarus.Jesus has power over sickness, power over the forces of nature, power over the forces of hell, even power over death. Who is this guy? He is God. His Miracles bear witness that he is the Son of God. He is the one to whom we can entrust our entire life. Jesus I surrender to you, take care of everything. Say that 10 times and you will experience a difference.You might be thinking – I’ve prayed for a miracle and nothing’s happened. The goal of life is not physical, emotional or mental healing. The purpose of life is to be emptied of all that blocks us from being filled by God: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust. Suffering is the most effective means to accomplish this. If you are suffering, it means God is there, he is working to empty you so that He might fill you with Himself. (CCC 549)

In your average Comparative Religions course at your run-of-the-mill college, Jesus Christ will be presented in a lineup of major religious founders. He’ll be there with the likes of Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, and maybe Martin Luther. And the similarities between all these people will be emphasized. They were all persons of strong character, who presented a world-view and preached a moral system. Many suffered for their beliefs, and all of them urged people everywhere to unite in serving a Higher Cause. The problem is, emphasizing similarities is sometimes more misleading than emphasizing dissimilarities. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, milk and urine are similar in that both come from a cow, but you wouldn’t really want to make too much of that similarity when the differences are so much more striking and important. So too with Christ. It’s an enormous mistake to emphasize the similarities between Himself and other religious founders when the differences between Him and them are so much more extreme. What is so special about Jesus? Why do we believe Jesus is God? There are four reasons. We will meditate on the first reason today.Jesus was the only person ever pre-announced for centuries If someone is planning on coming to your house for supper, you’d probably be grateful if they didn’t just drop in unannounced. That is doubly true for someone important: My wife hates it when I invite the Archbishop without giving her some advance notice. If God were coming to earth, wouldn’t be nice to have a little heads up – some advance notice. Jesus Christ is the only person in human history to be preannounced. Quite a few details were known about Him before he came like: How he would be born (Isaiah 7:14), where he would be born (Micah 5:2), when he would be born (Daniel chapters 2 and 7), when His public Ministry would begin (Daniel 9:2-27), and that he would work specific miracles (Isaiah 35:5-6 ). Isaiah 53, written 500-700 years+ before Jesus describes in an uncanny way how the Messiah would suffer and die to save many from their sins: Isaiah 53:3 He will be a thing despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering…; he was despised and we took no account of him. And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried…Yet he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed. We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and Yahweh burdened him with the sins of all of us. Harshly dealt with, he bore it humbly, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers never opening its mouth… They gave him a grave with the wicked, a tomb with the rich, though he had done no wrong and there had been no perjury in his mouth. Yahweh has been pleased to crush him with suffering…By his sufferings shall my servant justify many, taking their faults on himself. The first reason we know Jesus is God is that he is the only person ever to be announced for centuries in advance down to every detail of his life. When the two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus were in confusion and despair about the identity of Jesus, he approached them and brought them out of their confusion by showing how he had been predicted and prophesied. And they believed: Luke 24:44 Then Jesus told them, 'This is what I meant when I said, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms has to be fulfilled'. He then opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, 'So you see how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to this.

Evil and sin are the enemies, not people.

The Feast of the Transfiguration (Matthew 16:24). The event of the Transfiguration is a Diamond placed within a setting of 5 predictions of the suffering of Jesus (16:21; 24; 17:9; 17:12; and 17:22). We just heard the first of the five predictions at the end of which Peter tries to stop Jesus and Jesus responds 'Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God's way but man's.' Why does Jesus call Peter Satan? Because Peter what Satan is always trying to do – turn Jesus away from the will and mission of the Father. That Jesus would save souls from hell by his suffering, death and Resurrection is the will of the Father. Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it. What get if we are followers of Jesus is to be Agents of Change – Jesus goes before us, saving souls by taking up his Cross, then he invites us to help him save souls by taking up our own crosses. If we do, then our suffering will help to save souls and we will share in his glory – which he revealed in the Transfiguration. At Fatima Mary said, God wishes to establish in the World Devotion to My Immaculate Heart, wanting to save souls by this means.What does devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary mean? For one it means to imitate the Heart of Mary. What was the response of the Immaculate Heart of Mary during the suffering of Jesus? What did she do? She traveled through all the human emotions of a mother – she experienced fear, anger, helplessness, darkness, discouragement, the deepest sorrow She Prayed She accepted the Will of the Father with Trust She offered Her Sacrifice with Love For what Purpose? For the conversion of sinners – to save souls from Hell – that is why her Son suffered and died. Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means to be Consecrated or Dedicated to live in imitation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to do what She did Face our Cross Go through all the human emotions that come with suffering Accept with Trust what you can’t change Offer your sacrifice with love Joining it to the sacrifice of Christ For the conversion of souls Why should we do this? Because Jesus and Mary are inviting us to help them save the world and sous from self-destruction by taking up our cross.Think of what Christ suffered in this life, and then arm yourselves with the same resolution that he had: anyone who in this life has bodily suffering has broken with sin, because for the rest of his life on earth he is not ruled by human passions but only by the will of God. Everything will soon come to an end, so, to pray better, keep a calm and sober mind. My dear people, you must not think it unaccountable that you should be tested by fire. There is nothing extraordinary in what has happened to you. If you can have some share in the sufferings of Christ, be glad, because you will enjoy a much greater gladness when his glory is revealed. The Problem with suffering is that We feel like helpless victims of unjust suffering But we are not the victim of a random senseless forces We are the Agents of Change Christ was not a Victim in His Passion and Death He was the Agent of Change His Sacrifice Changed the World I am not a victim when I suffer and die I am an Agent of Change I am a co-Redeemer with Jesus and Mary This is where I make my greatest impact! This is where we prove our love for God and help Jesus save souls God says – I want you help me save souls I say, “Yes, I want to help you!” Ok - here is your Cross

Today, August 5, is the Feast of Our Lady of the Snow. It commemorates a powerful intervention of the Mother of God in the world. In 352 AD, there was a Roman aristocrat named Giovanni. He and his wife, having no children, made a vow to donate their possessions to the Virgin Mary. They prayed that she might make known to them how they were to dispose of their property in her honor. Mary appeared to Giovanni in a dream on August 4 and told him to build a church on the site where he would find snow the following morning. Bewildered, he went immediately in the morning to tell Pope Liberius of his dream. But that same night, Mary had also appeared to the pope and told him he would find snow on the Esquiline Hill, and there he was to outline the dimensions of a new church. On 5 August, at the height of the Roman summer, snow fell during the night on the summit of the Esquiline Hill. In obedience to a vision of the Virgin Mary that they had the same night, the Pope outlined the size of the Church and the couple built the basilica of St. Mary Major in honor of Mary on the very spot that was covered with snow. Everything in the Old Testament was a preparation for something in the New Testament. The manna or bread from heaven that fed the Israelites as they journeyed through the wilderness to the Promised Land is fulfilled by the Eucharist, the True Bread from heaven. Mary is the fulfillment of Noah’s Ark. Mary is the New and Eternal Ark where we are to find refuge from the flood of evil that is swamping the world today. From October 13, 1983 to February 11, 1990, Jesus and Mary appeared in San Nicolas, Argentina. This apparition has become fully approved by the Church. On December 30, 1989, Jesus said to the visionary: “Formerly, the world was saved by the ark of Noah. Today the Ark is My Mother. Through her, souls will be saved, because she will lead them to me. He who rejects My Mother rejects Me! Many are letting the grace of God pass by in these days.” The Flood is a good image because we all may experience or are experiencing a Flood that appears to be on the verge of swamping our lives. It come in the form of tackling a major investment or business venture; it may be the stress of your job; seemingly unresolvable difficulties with a child be it physical, mental, or emotional; maybe your own chronic illness; maybe an addiction that that has you on the brink of drowning. Or maybe it’s just the onslaught of evil in the world and, well sadly, even within the Church that has you feeling like you’re are sinking…It really doesn’t matter what form the flood takes in your life, what matters is that just as God told Noah to build and get into the Ark, so now God has given us the Ark, Mary our Mother, refuge of sinners and Our Most Merciful Mother. Go into the Ark by Consecrating yourself, your family, your profession and your country to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Give yourself and all the things you cannot control to Mary and she will save you from drowning in the Flood. St. Maximilian Kolbe is a particularly close friend of mine. What I love most about him is his indefatigable (isn’t that a great word – it means untiring) confidence in Mary. Kolbe was convinced only one thing was necessary – belong entirely to Mary and she would help you to know and do the will of Jesus. Just as Mary worked out all the details for the bride and groom at Cana, Mary will work out all the details of our lives – if we go into the Ark, if we entrust everything to Mary. In a letter of his from May 8, 1938, Kolbe writes: The concern is over, isn’t it? But you were worried…I am not surprised my friend that sometimes in weakness your hands fall. My hands also fell. In such case the best thing to do is to commit the matter to the Immaculata, to greatly restrain oneself, and not to interfere with the Immaculata, for difficulties which we have turned over to her are no longer our concern. I see Mary everywhere. I see difficulties nowhere.

vil is evil and suffering can result from evil, but suffering is not evil. The purpose of pain and suffering can only be understood within the overall context of the purpose of the human person. The ultimate purpose of the human being is union with God. Suffering can be, is meant to be, something that moves us forward towards the divine destination, and it plays a crucial role at every stage of that journey. Pain and suffering can rouse us from our spiritual sloth and indifference so that we take our relationship with God and way we are living seriously. Once we are on the right path, suffering can prevent us from standing still, it keeps us moving forward toward God. Finally, suffering can empty us of all that has blocked God from filling our soul with himself. Therefore, the last leg of the journey, as St. John of the Cross describes it, is the Dark Night. Not Batman, but the Dark Night of the soul. (Sirach 2). We don’t have to wait until after death and purgatory to reach heaven. Heaven is transforming union with God and we are designed for transforming union here. At every moment God wants to flood our souls with His Divine Life. The problem is that we have BLOCKAGES! We have filled our soul with everything but God, things that need to be emptied out so that we may be filled perfectly by God. John of the Cross says The more he wants to give, the more he makes us de sire - even to the point of leaving us empty in order to fill us with goods. You will be repaid for the goods…that you leave behind… Since the immense blessings of God can only enter and fit into an empty and solitary heart, the Lord wants you to be alone. For he truly loves you with the desire of being himself all your company. Our soul is emptied of disordered attachments to be filled by God through two things: The Active purification; and the Passive purification We do our part to empty our soul of disordered loves and attachments by: Daily meditation and resolution, living a balanced life, frequent sacramental life, and meeting with a spiritual director. If you want to reach Heaven, do your part. We can only carry ourselves so far on this journey up the mountain to God. There is only so much we can do to purify our soul on our own from our disordered attachments. They are too deeply rooted, too hidden from our sight. But God Our Father knows exactly what we need to be purified and emptied so that we can be flooded by His life and be perfectly happy. This is when he allows the Passive Purification. If something occurs in your life that you did not choose, do not like, and cannot change, say yes to God even if you don't feel like it. This is where God, by heavy trials, particularly interior ones, perfects and completes what the soul has begun on its own but cannot complete on its own. That is why it is Passive but not In-Active b/c we cooperate by saying yes to God and by not escaping through any means available. John of the Cross describes the purification of The Dark Night using two images: In the purification of the senses, God is likened to a loving mother who first nurses her child, carries and caresses it in her arms, but who then must wean it, teach it both to walk on its own and to put aside the ways of childhood. In the other, the purification of the spirit, God's action is likened to fire working on and transforming a log of wood. In this process of purification which is painful we must allow God to lead. Our job is to say yes, and to accept the Lord's work with all its consequences. Our temptation will be to escape. The pain of body and soul is so great in the Dark Night that we would do almost anything to stop it. Resist this temptation. Keep your eyes fixed on the good you want – transforming union with God and the bliss of heaven on earth. Certainly do what is reasonable and moral to change what is evil or broken or diseased in your life, but do not try to escape those things you did not choose, do not like and cannot change.

Our meditation yesterday and today has been adapted from the draft of a book called, the Morality of Drug Use by John Mark Miravalle The Purpose of Suffering and Pain Suffering itself is not an evil. Evil is evil. Evil is the problem. Evil – whether physical, psychological, or spiritual – is the thing to eliminate. Salvation from evil is the main objective of God. Salvation from suffering is not the goal. If it were, we would just create a government office that distributes freely morphine, opioids, pot and meth. Or we could just organize a concerted drop of nukes on as many human habitations as possible – we’d all die instantly and painlessly and no one would ever suffer again. Within the broader category of suffering, it’s helpful to distinguish between pain, which begins in the body, and sorrow, which begins in the soul. Pain motivates people not to harm themselves, not to stick their hands in the fire or poke forks into their eyes. People who can’t feel physical pain tend to hurt themselves much more regularly, even if they’re aware that their activities are objectively damaging their bodies. Pain is a basic response system for which there is no substitute. And the same goes for sorrow. Sorrow, for instance, can cause us to reconsider what we think about everything. Where do we come from, what happens after death and what is the meaning of life? Do you think you came from nothing, and that you’ll just dissipate back into nothingness after death? The sorrow provoked by that empty outlook should prompt a more careful assessment. If you don’t know what the meaning of life is, and you’re unhappy about that, good – you ought to be! Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist and Holocaust survivor suggests, we should not numb the pain, the pain is good, it has a purpose, to motivate us to go in a search for meaning that will lead us to union with God. If we just numb the pain then we never seek or find God. Sorrow Sorrow can motivate us to change from a bad to a good person, from vice to virtue. If you find yourself deprived of some good, your spiritual dissatisfaction may make you reflect on how you’ve either neglected that good, or, worse, discouraged that good by directly acting against it. Loneliness, for instance, might make you realize that you haven’t put enough effort into friends and family, or that your habits of greed and envy and lust and anger are consistently cutting you off from other people. When the sorrow becomes great enough, you will be motivated to change. But as long as the pleasure of the vice outweighs the sorrow, you will never change. Sorrow, like pain, has a purpose. Leading Us to God The purpose of pain and suffering can only be understood within the overall context of the purpose of the human person. The ultimate purpose of the human being is union with God. Suffering can be, is meant to be, a spur that drives us forward towards the divine destination, and it plays a crucial role at every stage of that journey. To begin with, suffering wakes the soul from spiritual sluggishness, and demands that we take the question of our own existence seriously. CS Lewis writes: We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities; and anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but SHOUTS in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Suffering will not let us rest content, because it is itself discontentment. It demands we seek an answer, a solution to the human question. Before we even begin our journey to God, suffering motivates us to search for a path to a better mode of being. Once we’ve found the path – the one road to God, the one way, the one Mediator, Jesus Christ – suffering may prevent us from idling, from procrastinating.

Over the next few days, we will meditate on truths that I hope will begin to transform the way you see suffering and help you see the way that God sees our suffering. CCC 412 concludes the section on Original Sin by asking "Why did God not prevent the first man from sinning?" Evil exists because angels and humans abused their freedom. To prevent evil, it would be necessary for God to take away our freedom. But then we would not be persons, and we wouldn't be able to love. Love requires freedom, and God wants lovers, not pets. I speak often of offering up suffering and suffering is closely related to evil, but they are not the same thing. People always mix up suffering and evil, probably because suffering always indicates the presence of some evil. If we suffer, it’s either because we accurately perceive some present evil, or because we mistakenly think something’s evil when it isn’t – and that very mistake on our part is itself a failure in our judgment. So suffering doesn’t happen without evil. But the correspondence between evil and suffering shouldn’t lead to confusion. Only evil is evil. Suffering can be good. It can be the right response to a perceived evil, the sign and substance of a healthy emotional life. More than that, it can motivate change, and so improve both our understanding of reality (the intellect’s attainment of truth) and how we live our lives (the will’s attainment of goodness). Still, only evil is evil and suffering can be good. We need to define the word evil. Since all existence comes from God, and God is all-good, it follows that evil cannot come from God or be a form of existence. Evil, consequently, is a specific form of non-existence. It’s a privation, that is, the absence of a good which should be present. If something is bad, it’s because it’s missing something it should have. It’s bad to be blind because it means you don’t have sight; it’s bad to have cancer because the cells lack the proper harmony with the rest of the body in their process of replicating; and it’s bad to do poorly on a test because it means that your test suffers from an absence of the right answers. Finally, it’s morally bad to be wicked, because it means you lack the virtue – the honesty and prudence and love – you ought to have. To repeat, evil, is the absence of a good which should be present. What then is suffering as distinct from evil? Suffering is the felt response to something perceived as being evil. Different evils are all unpleasant in different ways, and the crucial point is that they should be unpleasant to motivate us to change things. We ought to be repulsed by evil. We should be disgusted at the thought of eating rat poison, …It’s not enough just to know abstractly that these things are bad; it’s a sign of human excellence to feel a concrete emotional repugnance for them. Indifference, callousness, nonchalance in the face of evil – these aren’t strengths, but defects of character. We ought to dislike evil But if we dislike evil then when we experience evil we’ll suffer. And that’s as it should be. St. Leo the Great writes, "Christ inexpressible grace gave us blessings better than those the demon's envy has taken away." Suffering is the felt response to something perceived as evil. If I lack something I ought to have such as health or a relationship, I do what I can to change it. If I can’t change it, then God is allowing it to bring about a greater good. I can choose to believe this which changes my emotional response and therefore I suffer less. Another powerful way to transform our suffering is to thank God for everything even if we don’t like it or can’t see good from it yet. In this way we stop living by the feelings that say - this feels bad therefore it is bad. Instead we begin to live by the reality that God works all things for good for those who love him.

As a consequence of original sin the powers of our soul have been wounded. Our passions, feelings and desires now propel us toward sin rather than toward God and our intellect has become darkened and confused while the will is weak. As a result, we desire and choose things that are not good for us, we sin, we turn away from God and toward the devil, even if unknowingly. (1 John 3:7-8, CCC 407). Even though Jesus conquered the devil by his death and Resurrection, tragically, people still choose sin which keeps them under the influence of the devil. That is why the devil is the Ruler of this world. People choose to serve him under the guise of all the idols of our age. You are I are not immune to his influence. There are vices, temptations and sins we are powerless against. Do you know the ones you cannot root out? (CCC 410). Revelation chapter 12 describes the cosmic battle between the Woman, Mary, and the great Red Dragon, Satan. The Catechism then connects this prophecy with the Antichrist who will usher in a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers, causing them to turn away from Christ and the Catholic Church. There is a universal spiritual battle raging right now Not between the US and Russia, Christians and Islam, but between the Woman (Mary) and Satan Mary stands on the battlefield, inviting her children to fight with her to save souls from hell and to bring about the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart The weapons she offers are Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Rosary and by taking up our cross and following Jesus. At Fatima in 1917 Mary revealed to the three children that God wanted to save the world through devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Devotion means to consecrate oneself to Mary. Consecration is an unconditional gift of self to Mary so that the Holy Spirit and Mary may form Jesus within you. This is not a one-time event. We must live the consecration, moment to moment, day after day, by living in imitation of Jesus’s relationship with Mary as he grew up under her influence and care. Practice living in the presence of Mary. Do this especially when you are plagued by some spiritual storm, temptation, sin, doubt, weakness or fear. Turn to Mary and say, “Mary, I surrender to you, take care of everything!” Or simply say, “Mary.” I say Ya Adhra – The Virgin Pray the Rosary every day At the approved apparition in San Nicolas Mary said: “The weapon that has the greatest influence on evil is to say the Rosary." Sister Lucia of Fatima The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new power to the praying of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether earthly or spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families…that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary. Take up your cross and follow Jesus Lourdes, Fatima and every approved Marian apparition emphasizes the power of uniting our sacrifices and sufferings to Jesus to save souls. The Angel of Portugal said to the visionaries of Fatima: "Make of everything you can a sacrifice and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners. In this way, you will draw peace upon your country…Above all, accept and bear with submission the sufferings which the Lord will send you." What you did not choose, do not like and cannot change Accept it with trust and unite it to the Cross of Jesus to bring about the final defeat of Satan and the salvation of souls. Your own cross is a T-bar, a lever to move the world and souls Archimedes: “If I had a lever long enough and a place to stand, I could move the whole world.” Do not waste the gift and power of your suffering; Leverage your cross for Souls and help Our Lady crush the head of Satan.

God created the world and humans in four-fold state of harmony Harmony or good relationship between God and mankind in which God literally dwelt in their souls as in a Temple Harmony between men and women – I have no idea what that could have been like so I can’t describe it. Harmony between Man and creation – there was no sickness, no disease, no natural disasters, no death for the human person – we were created immortal with all of creation serving us. Finally, there was a harmony within the human soul. The intellect, will and passion worked in a perfect accord As a consequence of original sin, CCC 400 states, The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man. Because of man, creation is now subject "to its bondage to decay". Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will "return to the ground", for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history. To understand what happened to our soul we must remember from a few days ago the way the powers of the soul were originally designed to work. The Intellect is designed to know reality – how things really are. Once the intellect grasps reality it has the truth. Then it must make a judgment: this is good or this evil. Our passions are designed to respond to the truth perceived by the intellect and Motivate the will to choose the good and avoid evil. Through my intellect I know coffee is good for me. My passions respond to this truth by moving me by my desires to make a pot of coffee as soon as I get up. This is the case of the powers of my soul working as they should. The intellect perceives reality, then give this info to the passions that respond to the truth perceived by the intellect which then motivate the will to choose some good In our fallen state, it goes more like this: I get up in the morning after a very restless night sleep; I feel rotten, this passion or emotion causes me to treat myself and everyone around me rotten (I could have substituted others adjectives here). The point is, I let my feelings of pain, fear, frustration and despair determine how I choose to live. We were designed to live according to reality and truth not fallen and disordered passions and emotions. Is your life based on feelings or on reality? Almost all people say reality or truth. Almost no one lives according to reality. If they did then they would live continuously in a state of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control; the fruits of the Holy Spirit which are the results of living according to truth rather than disordered passions. Which passions, feelings or emotions control you? How do we reintegrate and heal the soul? I get up in the morning feeling rotten. Now what should I do? Think, the way I am feeling is going to lead to a lot of destructive choices today. I don’t want that. Plus – the way I am feeling – is it reality. Is everything terrible and is all hope lost? No, that is not reality. The reality, even if I don’t feel this way and don’t particularly like it right now is that suffering brings us closer to God and it brings us the grace to accomplish great things. That is good. Since God works all things for good for those who love him, then this suffering has meaning – God is using it to bring about some good. Therefore I can choose and even like the good God will bring about by this suffering. Furthermore, I can be thankful for suffering that God uses to bring about the good. Gratitude then sets me free from destructive feelings. Simply stated – I replace the wrong feeling with the right thoughts that begin to change my feelings which motivate good actions.

Today we meditate on the nature of the Fall and Original Sin Genesis 2:15-17 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil signifies the power to determine what is good and what is evil God alone has this power God created the world; he gave angelic and human persons their design. Something is good for us when it helps us fulfill our design, it is bad for us, it is evil when it frustrates our design. But we do not have the power to change our God given design, therefore we cannot determine what is good and what is evil We have Intelligence and Freedom – we must use our intelligence to learn what is good and evil and then choose But we cannot make something evil good and good evil. Even though we make something legal – that doesn’t make it good because we can’t change reality, God’s design for the world. Genesis 3:1-7 The serpent said to the woman, "Did God say, `You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent… ‘God said, `You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." St John Paul II “This is truly the key for interpreting reality” The Devil seeks to destroy the Fatherhood of God by spreading a lie that sows doubt in His Goodness. The devil says: You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, determining good and evil. The implication is this: God is keeping you from happiness by his moral law. God is not a loving Father. He is a Master and you are his slaves. God told you not to eat of the Tree b/c He does not want you to become like Him. It’s God’s laws that are keeping you from Freedom and Happiness.” The devil sows doubt in the Goodness of God. We have all given in to the lie and we distrust Him In the Diary 300 of Faustina Jesus said: Oh, how much I am hurt by a soul’s distrust! Such a soul professes that I am Holy and Just, but does not believe that I am Mercy and does not trust in My Goodness. Even the devils glorify My Justice but do not believe in My Goodness. How many of you would be comfortable praying this prayer? My Lord and my God, take from me everything that distances me from you. My Lord and my God, give me everything that brings me closer to you. My Lord and my God, detach me from myself to give my all to you. No way! I’m not going to pray that and mean it – are you crazy! God will do it! He’ll take from me things I like that aren’t good for me He’ll give me things I don’t like that are good for me CCC 397 Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command…All subsequent sin would be: And a lack of trust in His goodness Disobedience toward God How can we grow Trust with God? Spend time with Him every day in prayer. You can’t trust someone you don’t know. You can’t get to know someone without spending time with him. Spend time with God in silence and solitude, meaning, put away the distractions. Read the Scriptures and reflect on what God is saying to you through them Then make the Resolution to remember and live out what you meditated upon in prayer We grow in trust by gratitude and thanksgiving At the beginning or end of each day, think of all the things for which you are grateful to God. These are the concrete manifestations of his love and care for you. We tend to focus on the negative but if we consciously think about all God has and is doing.

THE FALL OF THE ANGELS 391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing." 392 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This "fall" consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: "You will be like God." The devil "has sinned from the beginning"; he is "a liar and the father of lies". If Satan was originally created as a good angel, why did he fall, why did he reject God? Teresa of Avila writes: I believe His Majesty desires to bring us along this way (the way of suffering, trials, crosses and difficulties) for our own good so that we may understand well what little we amount to. The favors that come afterward are of such great worth that He desires first that before He gives them to us we see by experience our own limitations so that what happened to Lucifer will not happen to us. Life 11:11 The devil, because he has no physical body, did not experience his limitations through suffering He thought he was without limits Therefore, he thought he did not need God So He did not want God Why is Lucifer in Hell? He did not want God Christianity is declining in first world countries, they are turning away from God, because they have everything so they think they do not need God and therefore do not want God and never set out to pursue friendship with God in prayer. This is pride which can only be overcome by grace and humility. Humility is recognizing two things I have limits I have a divine potential I need God, therefore I want God, so I pursue a deep friendship with God in prayer. CCC 393 It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels' sin unforgivable. "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death." This seems pretty harsh or frightening that the angel’s sin is irrevocable and there is no repentance for us after death. However, we must realize we create a reality by our choices that cannot be undone at some point. Because their knowledge was complete and because there was no material component to their person, the angel’s decision was definitive immediately. Our choices forge our character and destiny over time, bit by bit. In giving you a soul, God has given you a lump of clay that you are forming, choice by choice into either a God-like or demonic statue. As time goes by that clay, your statue, your soul, gets harder to change. The more you chose good actions that become good habits or virtues the more the statue becomes God-like. The more we make bad choices that become bad habits or vices the more the statue become demonic. At some point it cannot be changed for good or for evil. Even now it is getting harder to change. What kind of statue are you shaping? CCC 394 Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls "a murderer from the beginning", who would even try to divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father. Likewise, the devil wants to divert you away from the mission you have received from God, the devil wants to turn you away from doing the will of God. The greatest weapon we have to help us stay focused on the will of God is to go back to meditation each day, beginning with a brief examination of conscience – did I do the will of God yesterday. Do I want to do the will of God today? Yes, ok, now do your meditation, reflect and think about the Word of God, then make a simple concrete resolution.

Once Jesus was in a certain place praying, and when he had finished one of his disciples said, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them…‘Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him in the middle of the night to say, “My friend, lend me three loaves, because a friend of mine on his travels has just arrived at my house and I have nothing to offer him”; and the man answers from inside the house, “Do not bother me. The door is bolted now, and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up to give it you.” I tell you, if the man does not get up and give it him for friendship’s sake, persistence will be enough to make him get up and give his friend all he wants. ‘So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always have the door opened to him. What father among you would hand his son a stone when he asked for bread? Or hand him a snake instead of a fish? Or hand him a scorpion if he asked for an egg? If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’ The most important motivation to spend time with God in prayer is that we all want to be happy. Happiness consists in possessing those good things we need to fulfill our human nature. In general we need physical goods, food, shelter, ect., we need family and friends, meaningful work and achievement, knowledge, beauty and so on. But even if we had all these we would still not be perfectly happy because nothing in this world is perfect, its not lasting and it can never be enough. We were made for more. We were made for union with God. Nothing less will satisfy the infinite longing of the human heart. Prayer is precisely where we go to drink in God and become happy. Jesus said, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me! Let him come and drink…From my heart will flow fountains of living water. He was speaking of the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive.’” It is a consolation to learn that the Great Teresa of Avila, Universal Doctor of Prayer, struggled for 18 years with distraction in prayer until she read the Confessions of St. Augustine which made her realize her problem in prayer was that she thought her prayer depended on her. She learned that Prayer is more about what God wanted to do in her more than what she was doing in prayer. If you want to grow in prayer; abandon yourself-reliance; learn to depend entirely upon Jesus; and just spend time with Jesus in friendship. As Teresa writes: Meditation in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends: it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us. Finally, just persevere Teresa of Avila says we need to add courage and determination to our perseverance Have great confidence, for it is necessary not to hold back one's desires, but to believe in God that if we try we shall little by little, even though it may not be soon, reach the state the saints did with His help. For if they had never determined to desire and seek this state little by little in practice they would never have mounted so high. His Majesty wants this determination, and He is a friend of courageous souls if they walk in humility and without trusting in self. I have not seen any cowardly soul or any of these who under the pretext of humility remain along the bottom of this path who do not take many years to advance as far as these courageous ones do in a few. I marvel at how important it is to be courageous in striving for great things along this path. For though the soul is not yet strong enough, it nonetheless takes flight and goes very high although like a little fledgling it soon tires and stops. Teresa of Avila, Life, 31:3

Responding to the Truth and Motivating Pursuit of the Good We have been meditating on the powers of our soul: the intellect, the free-will and the passions and their purpose. King Solomon had an amazing intellect, may be the smartest guy who ever lived. He also had a strong will – he got a lot accomplished. But his passions were totally out of control. Solomon never harnessed his passions and feelings which led him to be enslaved to his desire for power, wealth and women – 700 wives and 300 concubines. These turned his heart away from God to the worship Satan hidden behind the pagan gods Molech and Ashteroth, to whom he offered child sacrifice and burned his sons. In the end Satan always demands human sacrifice in the form of abortion, infanticide, suicide and war. The point is, Solomon made a train-wreck of his life because the powers of his soul were not integrated. It must not be so for us! The Intellect is designed to know reality – how things really are. Once the intellect grasps reality it has the truth. Then it must make a judgment: this is good or this evil. The Intellect then tells the will to choose what it perceives as good and to avoid what is evil. Our passions are designed to: 1. Respond to the truth perceived by the intellect 2. Motivate the will to choose the good and avoid evil The passions are situated between intellect and will, and they’re supposed to originate from the intellect and prompt a right choice of the will. Through my intellect I know fish and vegetables are good for me. My passions respond to this truth by moving me by desire to prepare and eat them. This is the case of the powers of my soul working as they should. This is not always the case…too often, my passions propel me to choose something that is not good for me which causes harm to my body and even more to my soul. The better we understand this, the more able we are to cooperate with God’s grace to get the powers of our souls working as we should. There are three ways we regularly screw up the way the powers of the soul should work and make a mess This happens first of all when our intellects and wills don’t do their jobs. If we don’t know the truth, our passions will be responding to a faulty picture of reality. If you have a wrong perception of things, your feelings will be correspondingly imbalanced. If you think the world is a brutal, senseless place, or if you think you yourself are worthless, you’re going to feel pretty lousy about everything – even though you shouldn’t, and these lousy feelings about the world or yourself will propel you to make the wrong choices. Often our thoughts and feelings are not in tune with reality, with God’s design for things. Catch yourself; think – what does God want; chose that. Are my feelings and desires in line with reality, with God’s design? If not, then I must choose to live according to reality as God made it and not according to how I feel or what I desire. The second way we screw up our soul is when we make a habit of the wrong choices. Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny. Do something bad enough and you get used to it, and then you get to like it, and then you get to need it. And at that point your emotional life will be all out of joint. One act of pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony or lust is bad. But if you do any one of these actions enough, they become habits, they become second nature. Now we have a vice, a bad habit. Vices change our nature and make it vicious. Even worse, the more we do what is bad the more we desire it and the more our passions propel us toward what is bad. This is how we form addictions. We have a routine of choosing something bad for so long that we have malformed our passions to desire it and propel us toward it without even consciously thinking about it. Do you know which of these deadly sins you have made a second nature?

Today we reflect on what the soul needs to live. Just as the body needs food, water and oxygen to live, the soul needs reality. Specifically, the intellect needs to be nourished by reality in the form of truth and the will needs reality in the form of goodness. Without food and water, the body will die. Without reality in the form of truth and goodness, the soul begins to die from a sense that life is meaningless. The intellect receives reality in the form of truth. Therefore, the soul needs to feed on truth to thrive. When the intellect grasps reality accurately – it possesses truth and then the mind is satisfied and can rest. That is why we are restless when we can’t understand something. The intellect rests when it possesses, locks in the truth it wants to understand. The intellect needs to be nourished on reality in the form of truth. We can know reality or truth through our experiences, that is, through science, and we can know reality through reason. But we cant know the answers to the most important questions in life by science and reason alone, such as, where did all the matter in the world come from in the first place, what is the purpose of life, what is the meaning of suffering and what happens after death? These questions go beyond what science and reason can tell us. To know the answers to these things God must reveal them to us, and thankfully he has through His Son Jesus Christ. His teaching is handed down infallibly through the Catholic Church so that we can know with certainty the answers to the most important questions in life. The question is – do you take the time to think about the most important questions in life and to seek the truth through what God has revealed? Goodness The intellect needs to be nourished by reality as truth. The second power of the soul, the will needs and desires reality as goodness. In general we need a number of good things to be fulfilled and happy: food, drink, shelter, safety and security; relationships and friendships, meaningful work, knowledge, beauty, etc… These things – all these realities – are “good” for us, because they help us become “good” (that is, they fulfill us). This is the proper need and desire of the will: realities which are good/complete in themselves and which enable us to become good/complete. But even if a person had all these good things – would we be perfectly happy? No. Because no good thing, and no amount of good things on earth are perfect, they are not lasting, and they can never be enough. We were made for more we were made for union with God. God is the ultimate reality, and the ultimate goal of the human soul. He is the source of all truth and goodness. Created things are really true and good because God made them, and following the trail of created goods and truths leads to God because He’s where they all come from. We need to pursue and possess food, drink, achievement, relationships and the like. But they are like cups and God is the Living Water. We need the cups to drink but without God, the Living Water, the cups are empty and unfulfilling. We’re supposed to pursue the good things of this world in such a way that it leads us towards the ultimate Truth and Good, God, who alone can give unending nourishment to the soul. “Whoever drinks the water I will give will never be thirsty again” (John 4:14). Our problem is that we try in vain to find all our happiness and identity in the truth and goodness of this world and we become addicted to these things, making them into idols. The goal of life is to be filled and transformed by God. In this process we need to pursue and possess what is true and good and beautiful. But allow God to strip and empty you, that He might fill you with himself – the ultimate Good. We are not talking about giving up things, because that does not strip the soul of the desires that remain set on them. We are talking about stripping away the craving for gratification in those things.

Matthew 20:17-28 Then the mother of James and John came with her sons to make a request of Jesus, and bowed low; and he said to her, ‘What is it you want?’ She said to him, ‘Promise that these two sons of mine may sit one at your right hand and the other at your left in your kingdom.’ ‘You do not know what you are asking’ Jesus answered. ‘Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?’ They replied, ‘We can.’ ‘Very well,’ he said ‘you shall drink my cup, but as for seats at my right hand and my left, these are not mine to grant; they belong to those to whom they have been allotted by my Father.’ When the other ten heard this, they were indignant with the two brothers. You may be tempted to accuse James and John of vain ambition, especially since the other Apostles were indignant, but I believe, with St. John Henry Cardinal Newman that this was not vain ambition, rather Noble Ambition, Magnanimity, the virtue to desire and do great things for the love of God and souls. They asked to reign with Christ. He in answer told them: Not that they were guaranteed of it But that they must venture for it, strive after it St Jerome says, “Jesus said not, ‘You shall not sit there,’ that He might not discourage the two brothers; neither did He say, ‘You shall sit there,’ that He might not stir the others to anger; but by holding up the prize before all, He might encourage all to strive for Him. So a just king presiding over a contest instituted by him, if his relatives and friends should come and say, ‘Give us the prize,’ gives this answer, ‘It is not mine to give the prize to you, but to those for who it is prepared, namely, to those who strive in the contest and gain the victory.’” “Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink…? They said to Him, “We are able.” Here then a great lesson is impressed upon us, that our duty as Christians lies in this, to take a risk to do something great for the love of God and the good of others without the absolute certainty of success. James did risk all for the love of Christ…Our Lady of the Pillar - On January 2, 40 AD James had made it as far as Zaragoza Spain, where he was preaching the Gospel but with little success. Feeling very defeated he sat down on the bank of the Ebro River, dejected. At this time, Mary, the Mother of God appeared to St. James, standing on a pillar of Marble and she said to him, “James, the faith you establish here will be more firm and last longer than the pillar I stand upon.” Do not be discouraged and do not give up. I am with you and will help you.” James arose, preached the Gospel, won many converts to Christ and the faith he established in Spain endures to this day. To remember the visit and promise of the Virgin Mary, the first Marian shrine was built around the pillar. And James began to convert the pagans of early Spain. This was the first Marian Apparition known as Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragossa Spain in 40 AD. Ten years before Mary was assumed into heaven. In whatever ways you feel defeated, dejected or just simply bored with life, entrust to Mary under the title of Our Lady of the Pillar and she will strengthen you to go on an be victorious. Jesus asked James, Can you drink the cup that I drink? James responded, “I can” and he did. In the year 42 James had returned to Jerusalem and King Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, as Luke tells us, “laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the Church. He had James, the brother of John beheaded, killed by the sword.” The gift Christ offers to us is that of eternal life and to reign with Him forever, which came at the price of His precious Blood Should we not respond in the most generous manner possible to such a great gift? Should not I be willing to give and risk everything in return for so great a gift as Christ is giving to me simply out of love and gratitude? Think of what He has done for us, Shouldn’t we try to give as much as we can in return?

Yesterday we reflected in the creation of the invisible world and better understanding of the Angels. Today, the visible world and a better understand of who we are as human persons. CCC 355, 1700, As human persons we were created “in the image of God.” This means we were endowed with a spiritual and immortal soul… To have direction in life we need to know the purpose of the soul To know the purpose of the soul we need to know the purpose of the powers of the soul There are Three Powers of the Soul: intellect, will, and passions. In the beginning, God designed the powers of the soul to work in harmony: The job of the intellect is to know reality and make a judgement – this is good, that is evil. The passions respond to the intellect’s perception of reality and prompt the will to go toward what is good for me or away from what is bad for me. Led by the intellect and propelled by the feelings, the will chooses what is good or rejects what is evil. Tragically Original Sin damaged the powers of the soul: We are born with a darkened Intellect - subject to Ignorance + Confusion about right and wrong, good and bad We now have a weak Will so that even when we know what is right we have a hard time choosing it We have Strong Passions or feelings inclined toward selfishness and use Our desires have become dis-ordered We have become slaves to our disordered desires Manifest in the 7 Deadly Sins Pride, envy, anger, greed, gluttony, sloth and lust The Vices that make us vicious They Destroy the good things we need to be happy Which 2-3 deadly sins are habits in your life? At the beginning of each day, the beginning of your time in prayer, or at the end of the day, take a few minutes for an examination of conscience which consists of three things: Gratitude, Acknowledgment of our wrongs A practical game plan to go forward Start with Gratitude – call to mind all the things from which you are you thankful to God? Then think back over the last 24 hours and admit where you have sinned in your thoughts, words or actions. Ask, why did I do these things? What was at the root? Was it Pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony or lust? Then make a practical game plan to live differently today.

In the Creed we profess that we believe in God the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is visible and invisible. Well, what is the invisible? It is the spiritual creatures God has made, the Angels, one third of which rejected God, but that is for another time. These fallen angels became Satan and the demons. They were originally good angels who refused to love and serve God and share in His life. Angles and demons are a whole civilization of persons, pure spirits without bodies, who day in and day out which we ignore. It is a civilization that is far more intelligent, powerful and numerous than the human civilization. One key mission the angels have is to help us make it safely home, while Satan and demons do all in their power to destroy our souls in hell. We must start tapping into the supernatural power of our Guardian Angels. We are in a spiritual war. We pray to St. Michael, “Defend us in battle…” if you don’t see the battle, that’s the problem. We are in a spiritual battle between good and evil, a battle between God’s greatest creature, Mary and the most heinous creature, Satan. We need to recognize the reality of Angels and demons and develop a powerful collaboration and friendship with our Guardian Angel. CCC 330 As purely spiritual creatures, angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor of their glory bears witness. God is the first cause of all things and He works through secondary causes. The first of these secondary causes are the angels. There are nine groupings or Nine Choirs of Angels according to Scripture and Tradition. Colossians 1:15-16 Christ is the image of the unseen God and the first-born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible, Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties, Powers - all things were created through him and for him. 1st Order of Angels is focused on adoration and contemplation of God – they are the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones 2nd Order of Angels assigned to the Government of the Cosmos – the operation of all material things: planetary bodies and the courses of nature – the Dominions; the Powers, whose role it is to give us aid against Satan; and the Virtues – strengths against temptations. In Latin, virtus means strength. 3rd Order – Principalities, responsible for human government; Archangels, whose special task is to direct humanity; and the Guardian Angels CCC 336 From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. "Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life." Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God. God has created and given you a Guardian Angel whose principal mission is to help get you to heaven. This spiritual person knows you far better than you know yourself – they have a supernatural knowledge of you, your strengths, weakness and all you have ever done. God wants us to tap into the help of our Guardian Angel. We don’t have to fight this spiritual battle alone. By the way, your Angel is far more intelligent and powerful than you are. The Angelic intellect is immediate. Your Angel does not need time to think things over. He knows exactly what you should do – so why not develop a close collaboration with him. We can do this by developing a friendship with them. Pray to your angel, talk to him regularly, pay attention to his guidance and follow his inspirations. For more about Faustina and angels read her Diary, section 630.

Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? 309 If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist?... Why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better. But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world "in a state of journeying" towards its ultimate perfection…With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection. 311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, must journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can, therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. And because of the Original Sin of the first two humans, the harmony with creation is broken. Human sin brought sickness, disease, natural disasters and death into our world. The only way God could change this would be to remove free will from angels, Satan, and humans. But this would make us pets rather than persons capable of sharing in the Life of God forever. Better to suffer the stuff of this life than be a pet for a short time. Yes, the troubles which are soon over, though they weigh little, train us for the carrying of a weight of eternal glory which is out of all proportion to them. 311 God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it: (St. Augustine writes) “For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself. St. Catherine of Siena said to "those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them": "Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind." 312 In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: "It was not you", said Joseph to his brothers, "who sent me here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive." From the greatest moral evil ever committed - the rejection and murder of God's only Son, caused by the sins of all men - God, by his grace that "abounded all the more", brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. 313 "We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him." Romans 8:28 The constant witness of the saints confirms this truth: St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come but that that God wills. And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best." St. Julian of Norwich: "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith. . . and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time – All shall be well, and all shall be well. All manner of things shall be well.” 324 What God has revealed gives us the certainty that He would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life. What should we do when we face something that appears bad or very difficult? Pray, Think and Do all you can to change it. If you cannot change it, then God has willed it or is allowing it. It is not senseless. It has meaning God is allowing it and using it to bring about a greater good Trust him Accept it Offer it up in love Then it is meritorious for you – for we are rewarded according to our love And our suffering offered up helps save others - especially our loved ones and friends. Col 1:24

Heaven is the goal of life. Heaven is transforming union with God. Why wait, why put it off? Nothing less than union with God can satisfy the deep longing of your heart. Five simple steps to achieve union with God: Do and accept the will of God; flee from sin; develop a deep friendship with Jesus; have a profound interior life; belong to Mary. If we want to be united to God, then we must strive to do His will in everything. But just saying I want to do the will of God is too general, too vague. There are areas in your life you know you are not bringing God into because you are not thinking about it or because you don’t want Him in there. It could be work, relaxation, family, friends, your summer, vacation…You know what you are doing wrong. What are you going to do the make a change? If we want to be united to God then we must flee from every sin, both serious and small sins, and flee from every occasion of sin. Be intentional about identifying and rooting out the deadly vices: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust. we are scandalized by the way other so-called Christians acct; yet we excuse our own bad behavior – or we don’t even notice it. This is case of plank eye. Take the plank out of your own eye before you call out the speck in my eye. Don’t be discouraged, these things are a reminder of our personal powerlessness and the need for constant surrender to and reliance on Jesus and Mary. The point is not to live a mediocre, lukewarm life. Be determined to reach union with God here! Our Goal is Heaven and Heaven is transforming union with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. We want to say, like St. Paul. “I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me.” Therefore, we seek to know and do the will of Jesus because we want to be united to Him. We accept our own crosses as a way to help Jesus carry His cross and save souls. We flee from sin because sin is a personal offense to Jesus and I don’t want to offend Him. I become virtuous so that I may love Jesus better. I want to go to Mass to enter into the sacrifice and thanksgiving of Jesus and to receive Him in the Eucharist, the closest possible union with Him this side of death. I see prayer as friendship with Jesus; talking to him from the heart, listening to him and thinking about him by reading Scripture and just being with Him. And as my friendship with Him grows, I want others to experience the same happiness meaning and fulfillment, so I act to help others to friendship with Jesus. To reach heaven we need a profound interior life. Things in this world a good; but nothing is perfect, its not lasting and it can never satisfy our longing for God. And where do we find God? He dwells in your soul. But we never look for him there because we are too busy doing things or too busy with entertainment. We don’t find God in our soul because we are addicted to work, kids, entertainment, news…on and on it goes. Stop – put away the excuses and distractions. Go into silence. Talk to God from the heart. Read the life of Jesus in the Gospels. Think about him. Be with Him. At first you will go crazy as you suffer withdrawal from your addictions. But don’t escape back into the addictions. Admit to Jesus you are powerless, surrender to Him and beg Him to do it for you. I you want to reach heaven, then give yourself to Mary. The Holy Spirit brings us into union with God and the Holy Spirit works through Mary. The more you belong to Her, the more the Holy Spirit will unite to Jesus. Develop a personal relationship with Mary – a real concrete friendship and dependence upon her. St. Maximilian Kolbe said: I see Mary everywhere, I see difficulties nowhere. Live continuous friendship with Mary; have complete confidence in her.

Thank you for joining us for our daily meditation!

If we respond to the Message of Our Lady we can change world events and save souls Mary is asking for Five things Faith and Conversion A greater faith in Jesus Christ as the one mediator to the Father Conversion flowing from a frequent reception of the Sacrament of reconciliation- at least once a month Consecration to Mary Accept Mary as your spiritual mother, Give yourself to her as her child, so that the Holy Spirit and Mary may form Jesus in you. Live the consecration -live in imitation of Jesus’ relationship with Mary as a little child depending upon his mother, moment to moment, day after day. A greater quality and quantity of prayer Moving from vocal prayer, talking to God and saying prayers, to listening, to meditation through the Rosary and with the Word of God At San Nicolas Mary said: “The weapon that has the greatest influence on evil is to say the Rosary." Penance and Sacrifice by taking up your cross and following Jesus Offer Sacrifice What you did not choose, do not like and cannot change Accept it with trust and unite it to the Cross of Jesus to bring about the final defeat of Satan and the salvation of souls. Fast on bread and water on Wednesday’s and Fridays Mary is asking for peace.

In the book the Ascent of Mt Carmel, St John of the Cross says “the ascent to God…lies in keeping the soul empty, naked and purified of every disordered desire. The only desire should be to fulfill the will of God and to carry the Cross of Christ.” The question for us is: are we doing the will of God; and are we carrying the cross? What criteria do we use to judge whether we are doing the will of God? Too often men measure their success or their impact based on their profession and their ability to provide financially for their family alone. This is not universal but often women judge their success or impact based on the health and well-being of their children and their relationships. How do you judge how you are doing in life? Secondly, how would you judge yourself in the sense of doing the will of God? How does God measure our success or impact? Let me suggest eight criteria that reflect whether we are doing the will of God: Am I changing from a life of bad habits, vice, to a life of good habits, virtue; Am I living a deep friendship with Jesus in prayer, especially daily meditation and a resolution; Do I love and honor my spouse (if you live with your parents do you honor your father and mother); Are you doing all you can to help your children reach not only their human but even more their divine potential; am I fulfilling my work responsibilities outside the home and inside the home; Am I helping others to a deeper friendship with Jesus by living authentic friendship; do I accept with joy the will of God in the things I cannot change; finally, do I accept the Cross in my life and offer it up to save souls? As we do an honest evaluation of each area of our life, we will see that in many ways we have made progress, we have grown and there is much for which to give thanks. However, if we are honest, we must admit there is more in my life that I cannot change or fix and more that is out of my control than within my control. If we are honest, we see clearly our limitations: I cant seem to change myself any further from vice to virtue. I confess the same sins over and over. I cant heal my broken body or soul. I cant fix this or that relationship or person. I cant fix the problems in the world or in the Church – heck I cant even change the problems within myself. This may seem to be a recognition of defeat, but it is the moment of triumph. It is the moment of triumph because if I am to make any real progress, I must admit I am powerless to transform myself from a sinner to a saint – that my life has become unmanageable. But there is Someone greater than me Who can restore me to sanity. I make the decision to turn my life and my will over to the care of Jesus and the Holy Spirit through Mary. Then I make a thorough examination of my life and go to Confession. Now I am entirely ready to have God remove all the defects of my character, so I humbly ask God to remove my shortcomings. Then I make a list of all the persons I have harmed, and I am willing to make amends to them all whenever possible except when it would injure them or others. Finally, I commit to a daily examination of conscience, to daily meditation and a resolution and to go out through authentic friendship to help someone else to a deep friendship with Jesus. As we go forward, striving to do will of God and carry the Cross Christ we must resist the temptation to give into frustration anger gluttony lust ect. When you experience the temptation to any of these, immediately turn it over to Mary, the principle instrument of the Holy Spirit, wait for her to act, hold fast, don’t give up because God always provides a way forward.