John 10:10

What were YOU made for?

Simplicity of Love

This weekend at home I went to Mass with my mom at our home parish. The Pastor, Fr. Brian gave a homily that brought me to tears. It was a God-moment; God poured down a flood of graces in just a few minutes time. He told us that just that morning he had received two different calls from parents needing help for their teenagers. One of them was struggling with suicidal thoughts. The other had turned to cutting. It was heartbreaking. How Fr. Brian responded to this was profound for me. He said, "it's my job to go over to talk to them and tell them God loves them, that is all I can do, but it is important they hear it." It is that simple: people need to hear that God loves them. In a culture where young people are surrounded by death and darkness, God's love is the beacon of light we are all desperately searching for.

I had a new revelation about my job. I am a missionary and I get to tell people all the time about God. So it's very easy at times to forget what a gift this work is. I was renewed with a conviction that while I may not be the best at what I do all the time, I can never be bad at sharing love. Everyone needs to hear that God loves them each and every moment.
Have you been told lately that God loves you? He does. Don't ever forget it.

Mission:Possible

"My Mission is to make God loved!" ~St. Therese

St. Therese says it the best, and so I'm stealing her words.

The Mystery of Femininity

In reading "The Privilege of being a woman" by Alice von Hildebrand, my eyes have been opened to a beautiful reality about femininity. There is a sacredness about a woman's body because she is the only person with the ability to carry two souls within her. A man and a woman do play an important part of procreation but it is God who creates the child. Man and woman cannot create something out of nothing; only God has that power. When a child is conceived, God creates the child in the woman's body. Von Hildebrand writes, "This implies a direct contact between Him and the mother-to-be, a contact in which the father plays no role whatsoever. This contact give the female body a note of sacredness, for any closeness with God and one of His creatures is stamped by His Holy Seal." The sacredness of a woman's body needs to be protected. This is why a woman's mission should be to guard and protect the virtue of purity. God saw the womb as a fitting place for His only son to dwell for 9 months, and so we too should look upon the womb as a sacred place and worthy of protection. "If, in schools today, little girls were taught to honor their bodies and were taught the great mystery that lies within them, purity would be more guaranteed and kept." (von Hildebrand).

It saddens me to think that feminists of today have managed to convince women of the ideas that The Church is sexist. It is in fact, the very opposite. Our Blessed Mother paved the way for all women 2,000 years ago when the words "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus" were first spoken.

World of Souls

"He showed me the book of Nature, and I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose her spring tide beauty, and the fields would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues.

It is the same in the world of souls. Our Lord's living garden. He has been pleased to create great saints who may be compared to the lily and the rose; but He has also created lesser ones, who must be content to be daisies or simple violets flowering at His feet, and whose mission is to gladden His divine eyes when He deigns to look down on them: the more joyfully they do His will, the greater is their perfection."

~St. Therese of Lisieux The Story of a Soul