WITH URGENCY I write this tonight… we must put our hearts right with God. We must look squarely at our sin, and repent of it — leave it behind, at the foot of the Cross.

CONFESSION… we must go regularly. St. Pio said every 8 days. Pope John Paul II said every week. Once a week… come to the Father, pour out your heart, and let him speak words of forgiveness and healing. Why be afraid of so great a gift?

I can hear objections. But it is more important than work. More important than kid’s soccer. More important than watching television. Our soul is more important than these things.

We must prepare our hearts to receive a great Light by ridding anything in our heart which would create a shadow.

IN REPLY to someone who wrote, doubting that God could speak through the violence of nature:

Creation belongs to God, and as such, he has the right to assert his presence when and how he pleases. We know from the revelation of Jesus Christ, and of scripture, that God is not just loving, God IS love. Thus, he is merciful, patient, and forgiving. But he is also just, and because he is our Father, scripture teaches that he also disciplines us.

Neither does God force humanity to love him… but the wages of sin is death. In other words, humanity reaps what it sows. If we sow destruction, that’s what we reap, both naturally and spiritually. Continue reading →

LOVE has no denomination.

DURING prayer today, a word came to me…

It is no longer the eleventh hour. It is midnight.

Later on around noon, a group of women prayed over Fr. Kyle Dave and I. As they did, the church bell tolled 12 times.

AT MORNING Mass, the Lord began speaking to me about “detachment”…

Attachment to things, people, or ideas keeps us from being able to soar like an eagle with the Holy Spirit; it muddies our soul, preventing us from perfectly reflecting the Son; it fills our heart with other-ness, rather than with God.

And so the Lord wishes us to be detached from all inordinate desires, not to keep us from pleasure, but to enrole us in the joy of heaven.

I also understood more clearly how the Cross is the only Way for the Christian. There are many consolations in the beginning of the sincere Christian journey–the “honeymoon”, so to speak. But if one is to progress into the deeper life toward union with God, it requires a self-renunciation–an embrace of suffering and self-denial (we all suffer, but what a difference when we permit it to put to death self-will).

Didn’t Christ already say this?

Unless a grain of what falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. –John 12:24

Unless the Christian embraces the crosses of life, he’ll remain an infant. But if he dies to himself, he will produce much fruit. He will grow into the full stature of Christ.

FROM the first night of the St. Gabriel, LA parish mission:

Pope John Paul II seemed to speak as the eternal optimist — the glass was always half full. Pope Benedict, at least as a Cardinal, tended to see the glass half empty. Neither of them was wrong, for both views were rooted in reality. Together, the glass is full.

TODAY’s best line on the tour bus (writing from St. Gabriel, Louisiana):

Mommy, I lost my gum!

Where is it Greg?

In Levi’s mouth!

JESUS continues to send me to near empty churches… but there is at least one lost sheep in attendance. This I am sure of.

Which of you men, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn't leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it? –Luke 15:4

AT times God seems so far away…

But He is not. Jesus promised to remain with us until the end of the age. Rather, I think there are times when He draws so near in His transfigured brightness, that one’s soul squints until it closes its eyes. Thus, we think we’re in the dark, but we are not. The soul is blinded by Love itself.

There are other times also when the sense of abandonment comes because of adverse trials. This too is a form of Christ’s love, for in permitting this particular cross, He is also preparing for us a tomb from which to rise.

And what is supposed to die? Self-will.

FAITH is not believing because we have proof; faith is trusting when we’ve run out of proof. –Regina concert, March 13, 2006

Consolations, warm feelings, spiritual experiences, visions, etc. are all like fuel to get one down the runway. But that invisible thing called faith is the only force which can lift one toward heaven.

I JUST walked into my prayer room, and my third son Ryan, who just turned two, was standing on his tippy-toes trying to kiss the feet of a crucifix. He just turned two… So I lifted him up and held him there for the kiss. He paused, and then turned his head and kissed the wound on Christ’s side.

I began to tremble and was overwhelmed with emotion. I realized that the Holy Spirit was moving deep within my son, who cannot even form a sentence, to comfort Christ, who is looking over a fallen world about to enter its Passion.

Jesus have mercy. We love you.

AFTER the Divine Liturgy (Ukrainian Mass) during Lent, all of us enter into the aisle beside the pew, while the priest recites a prayer: “Having suffered the passion, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy us.” Then everyone kneels and bows their face to the ground. This is sung three times–a beautiful act of humility and homage.

This morning, as the priest began to recite the prayer, I heard in my heart what I felt immediately was my guardian angel speaking: “I was there. I saw him suffer.”

I bowed my face, and wept.

FEELING the drag of my flesh after Communion, I had the image of being on the edge of a very dense and ancient forest….

Barely able to move through the dark thicket, I was entangled in branches and vines. Yet, the occasional ray of Sonlight pierced through the foliage, momentarily bathing my face in its warmth. Instantly, my soul was strengthened, and the desire for freedom was overwhelming.

How I long to reach the open plains, the rugged wild where the heart runs free and skies are limitless!

…then I heard a whisper, seemingly carried on a shaft of Light:

OFTEN we enter Lent with a sense of trepidation–a fear of the sacrifice of dying to self.

I suppose it is how the grain feels as it is buried beneath the furrow, or the caterpillar as it is entombed by the cocoon, or the trout as it is encased beneath the winter ice.

But how tragic if the seed were to lay on top of the furrow, only to be blown away by the wind! Or the caterpillar to refuse the cocoon and never rise with wings! Or the fish to escape icy waters and suffocate in the snow!

O Soul, embrace this Cross before you. There is Resurrection beyond the tomb!