Pick Up Your Cross, by Melinda Velez
ARE you feeling the weariness of the battle? As my spiritual director often says (who is also a diocesan priest), “Anyone who is trying to be holy today is going through the fire.”
Yes, that is true at all times in all periods of the Christian Church. But there is something different about our day. It’s as if the very bowels of hell have been emptied, and the adversary is disturbing not only the nations, but most especially and implacably every soul consecrated to God. Let us be honest and plain, brothers and sisters: the spirit of antichrist is everywhere today, having seeped like smoke even into the cracks in the Church. But where Satan is strong, God is always stronger!
This is the spirit of the antichrist that, as you heard, is to come, but in fact is already in the world. You belong to God, children, and you have conquered them, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. (1 John 4:3-4)
This morning in prayer, the following thoughts came to me:
Take courage, child. To begin again is to be re-immersed in My Sacred Heart, a living flame that consumes all your sin and that which is not of Me. Remain in Me that I may purify and renew you. For to leave the Flames of Love is to enter into the cold of the flesh where every misdeed and evil is conceivable. Is it not simple, child? And yet it is also very difficult, because it demands your full attention; it demands that you resist your evil inclinations and tendencies. It demands a fight—a battle! And so, you must be willing to enter upon the way of the Cross… else you be swept away along the wide and easy road.