Desiring More of Jesus

Sometimes I wish Jesus and  I could  be alone on a deserted island. There would be no distractions, just the two of us. Being.

Sure you might say that I have that when I pray. And that is true too. But after prayer I have to get back into the swing of things and continue on to an errand or an appointment or some task at home. On an island, I wouldn't have the distractions. I'd just have Jesus and we could be together, and there would be sweet  peace. Nobody else could walk over and disrupt our time together.

I wouldn't be hungry or thirsty or cold or hot or tired. I would be in complete peace. I wouldn't have to deal with gruff people like I have to do every day at my job. I wouldn't be assaulted by technology or TV or interuptions of any kind. I wouldn't have to get anxious about things happening at Church, or within the wider Church.  I wouldn't have to hear horrible news about shootings, bombs, terrorism or abortions. I could just look into Jesus' eyes. He has the most magnificient eyes you know. He is always patient and He always says the perfect thing. Sometimes He doesn't have to say anything at all and I know exactly what He means.

Jesus and I have been together a very long time and we have eternity ahead of us. I don't know if a deserted island is part of His plan. I guess for now I have to have 1:1 time with Jesus as I can get it. There are just so many distractions......

A Message from God

Here is a true story that has been entrusted to me:  Many years ago two friends went to Montreal, Canada - to St. Joseph's cathedral. If you've ever been there you know that the Cathedral is on top of a huge hill.  One friend was resting at the bottom of the hill in the pilgrim's house where they were staying, and the other went up to the Cathedral. Along the way she found a path to the Stations of the Cross that was to the left of the Cathedral and took it.

She didn't have any written Stations of the Cross prayers with her, so she made up her own prayers as she went. She was all alone on the path. It was a quiet day, blue sky, gentle breeze, perfect temperature. She got to the very top, the final station, and there was a big pool/fountain there. It was about 2' deep. She was at the top of the hill by the dome of the Cathedral. It was so high that small planes were flying just above the dome and she could read the numbers on the sides of the planes.

Anyway, she sat at the edge of a large rectangular pool/fountain and was enjoying the silence. After several minutes she heard someone say "I love you." It was a little louder than a whisper and sounded like it was right behind her. She turned around, thinking that perhaps there was a couple that had appeared, and one was saying "I love you" to the other. Nobody was there. ODD.  She turned back around and continued her thoughts and reflections.

A few minutes later again she heard "I love you". She turned around again thinking that perhaps this "couple" was coming up the path and was just beyond the bushes where she couldn't see them. She watched and waited. Nobody came into view. The odd thing was that it sounded like the words were said right behind her, not 10' away behind the bushes. ODD.  She turned back around and continued her thoughts and reflections. Totally alone.

Several minutes later again she hears "I love you." This time she spun around really fast - a bit scared and a bit annoyed - because the voice was so close. She looked around. NOBODY was there.  Feeling fairly freaked out at this point, she sat back down. She calmed herself, then the rest of the sentence came: "Tell My People that I love them."  At that moment, she knew Who it was.

She started crying. After a few minutes she thought that maybe she had lost her mind. I mean this was an AUDIBLE voice and now she was attributing this voice to GOD. Really......who hears God? Moses ! She was certainly no Moses.

She stayed up there quite a while thinking and reflecting and crying. It was an event where you know in your soul that it was truly God speaking. Even today when she closes her eyes, years and years later, she can remember that day as if it were yesterday, or even this very moment. As she reflected she was very aware that the message was not in a male's voice, nor a female's voice, but it was a voice just the same. Soft. Confident. Strong. It resonates within her to this very day.

Anyway.... what did she do with that experience? Well, she went down the big hill. She was supposed to meet her friend for dinner who, at this point, was waiting at the bottom of the hill, worried. She had been gone a very long time - two and a half hours or so.  This was before cell phones..... she apologized to her friend  because she lost track of the time.  Her friend asked what she was doing for so long ( because she was getting really hungry and it was almost passed dinner time ) and so, being that she was one of her best friends on the planet, she blurted out to her exactly what happened at the top of the hill.

Her friend was astounded. When she got to the final comment about telling God's people that He loves them, the friend began to cry. She asked her why she was crying and she said that while she was up the hill and she was resting in the pilgrim's house, she was thinking about their conversations about God on the ride towards Canada .  She told her friend that when she was resting in the pilgrim house she was wondering very deeply if God loved her, and then here her friend comes down the hill and blurts out the answer to her question.

Being that she told her friend that God loved her,she thought she had accomplished God's will. Maybe the message was just for her friend? As the days went by she thought about this message she received and realized that God said "People" not "person", so it had to be more than just one person. Since then, at various times in her life, she has felt called to tell certain people specifically that God loves them. It is a simple but profound message.

Why am I sharing this true story with all of you? Maybe because through this story you will come to see that God loves you too. He said so, and God's word will not come back void.

Important Questions

Do you ever why God created you at this time in human history?  

Do you ever wonder what you are supposed to be doing to make this world a better place? 

Do you ever wonder if you make a difference now in anyone's life? 

Do you feel you are using the gifts God gave you to your fullest potential?

Do you ever make the time for deep thoughts and deep discussions with the people in your life?

A recent TV report said that the IQs' of Americans are getting lower because we are so addicted to technology that we don't think for ourselves. We don't know how to read road maps anymore. We don't memorize phone numbers. We don't know how to have civilized debates or conversations. We don't think philosophically or think or talk about the really big issues in life. We don't realize that we are children of God anymore and our faith is going downhill. We don't talk about these things anymore....or at least many of us don't.

Today I am challenging you to think about these big questions.

Simplicity of Mind and Heart

Our world is getting way too complicated for me. All this high tech stuff drives me crazy. This blog is about as high tech as I get. People "encourage" me to get a cell phone that does more than just make phone calls or to get the latest gadget or to download apps and stuff. I've never downloaded an app and I have no desire to do so.

I understand that technology can help a lot. It has certainly helped spread the Gospel around the world. I mean, just this little blog alone has been read by people across the globe. So I'm not anti-technology. I just think it shouldn't run our lives and that we should have time for other things.

Technology can also be a vehicle for the devil - you know that little twerp down below.  He gets us so wrapped up in it that some of us have forgotten the finer things in life like an evening stroll with a friend and conversing about God and all things holy, or the twitter ( non technology word ) of birds, or the sound of a gentle breeze (I'm encountering one of those breezes now....). Or how about this.....even the sound of one's own thoughts?

I just heard on the radio of a study that was just done that showed how Americans' IQs have gone down since the advent of technology because we rely so heavily on it.  When tested without the aid of technology we are getting dumber.  They used the skill of map reading as an example. Lots of people have a GPS in their cars and have no more need of a map. I don't trust those GPSs. I have to use one for work once in a while and it makes me crazy. I purposely love to take a wrong turn just to hear the automated voice say "recalculating" !! LOL !!  Many times the GPS is wrong too. I do use mapquest on the computer and that is wrong sometimes too. So if I get lost I do the human thing: I stop and ask for directions!

So how does this tie into the title of this blog: "Simplicity of Mind and Heart"?  As Christians we are supposed to be singleminded towards God. Our world is so busy and technological that  we have to make a conscious effort to turn our minds towards God.  We also have to go beyond e-mails when communicating and focus on relationships in other ways.

Like St. Peter having to keep his eyes on Jesus lest he drown in the sea, we have to do the same except today the "sea" is technology. Like the saying goes: "Keep it Simple Stupid".  Jesus Himself said that we had to become like children and what are children like? They are simple and sweet and pure. They are honest and open and love unconditionally. Sadly once the world gets a hold of them that can change, but still we are called to center our lives around Christ and we must go forth in the world like "sheep among wolves" and we must be "as gentle as lambs but as wise as serpents".

I challenge all of you reading this today to think about how you can make your life more simple and your heart more focused on Jesus. I mean...do you really need to shop for four hours on a Saturday or have four TVs on in your house?  Do you have to constantly check your text messages ( I haven't done that yet either ) or take your cell phone when you go for a walk around the block?

Think about it. Pray about it. Thanks for reading my little blog.

Got Sin?

Do you know that I pray before I start writing my blogs?  I do. I know that whatever I'm writing will be read by someone else on the planet at some point in the future, so I want to make my message meaningful.  This is a challenge, so I must pray first and ask God what He wants me to write about. (Recently people from the US, Turkey, Jordan, Russia, and the Phillipines have read my blog! My blog stats don't tell me who reads the blogs, just where they are from and I find that interesting.)

Words have power and if perhaps a few of my words touch your soul or make you think, then I feel I have written a successful blog.

Tonight I feel called to talk to you about sin.  Sin is rampant and temptation is everywhere.  Sometimes we fail and we mess up. We sin. That is when we have to get ourselves to Confession. Sin is an awful thing that is part of our lives and we struggle with it every day.  If you ever find someone who says they don't sin, they are either deluding themsleves or lying to you because we all sin.  We have all fallen short of the  glory of God. All of us. Nobody is exempt.  Lay person. Priest. Religious. We are all sinners.

Jesus however,  has saved us from eternal damnation due to our sins by his death and resurrection. We have only to accept his offer - to say Yes to Him and live for Him, and live in His way. Most of us know the story of how Jesus took our sins to the cross. They were crucified with Him. As a result He has saved us and set us free. Yet .... we still sin. It isn't that we haven't learned our lessons. We know sin is wrong. It is just part of being human, thanks to Adam and Eve, and so God has entered humanity through the Person of Jesus Christ and He has saved us, and saves us daily by offering us His forgiveness.  There are some people that aren't aware of this.....even in our modern world! There are people who think it is a theory or myth, "but of course",  they say, "it isn't really real".  Boy are they wrong.

Someday,  we will each know for sure the depth of what Jesus has done for us.   But for now, we just can't wrap our minds around it. I often think that the world we live in is so clouded. It is a tiny reflection of what is to come. It is like a dusty knick knack that over time, has become unintersting and old.  It is like an old woman who was once  a soft cute little baby and is now like a wrinkled prune.  Our world is not the way it should be.  It is not the way God intended it to be.  Someday it will be.

Can you begin to imagine what it will be like someday when we are given a new Heaven and a new Earth?  Did you ever find an old mirror, covered in dust or a piece of brass that is tarnished? If you take the time to clean them you will be amazed at their beauty. I think that is how it is with earth. As beautiful as it is now - parts of it anyway - it wil lbe a milion times moreso in the future.  This is not only our hope, it is our promise from God.

So, we are sinners and our souls are like the dusty mirror or the tarnished brass.  We have to keep taking them to Jesus for cleaning and polishing.   Someday, when all is new, we will be eternally sparkling and clean. We will have no more sin. We will be truly free and sin and temptation will no longer hound us. We have to cling to this hope.

For now, we wander in the mire of our current age. We are like ships passing one another in the night. We are all off . This is our world now. But although we must be in the world we are called not to be of it. Jesus can help us do that.  We have to strive to be holy and to be saintly. This is so hard. I for one, know what a horrid sinner I am. Every day I pray to be made holy and to be who I'm called to be, and every day I go to bed with a heavy heart because I know somewhere along the line, I messed up.  Despite our messiness, we are loved by God.  The challenge is to believe it and live it. Otherwise we will remain a dusty mirror or tarnished brass.

Dear Jesus, make us new. Help us to see who we really are called to be in you. Mother Mary, pray for us.  Amen.

St. Catherine of Siena - Reflections and Connections

St. Catherine of Siena was an interesting woman and saint. I just finished reading the book "Catherine of Siena: a Passionate Life". Don Brophy is the author. This is the third "Catherine book" I've read.

Here is a quote from the book:  " Praying was one of the few things she (Catherine) could do in these months when she felt herself increasingly powerless to influence events in the church and the world."

Catherine of Siena was an odd person from a very young age. What I take from reading this particular book is that some people really loved her; treated her like a rock star by today's standards, and some people didn't like her.  After all, she lived eons before women's lib and for a woman to be so outspoken to bishops, priests, and popes, in the time she was living (1300's) well....that was odd.  Some people seemed to find it pushy and offensive. (Some people would still find it pushy today. Yet, God chooses who He wants to do His work in any century, doesn't He? Just look at the lives of St. Francis, St. Joan of Arc, Mother Theresa. God loves "odd people". )

The above quote is interesting to me because there was a time when her words fell on deaf ears. That is how I read it anyway. She, who had enjoyed, or rather, was given the privilege by God, to influence church leaders and to have access to them, went through a time when she felt powerless to influence anything in the church. So she prayed.

"Praying was one of the few things she (Catherine) could do in these months when she felt herself increasingly powerless to influence events in the church and the world."  I typed up this quote and put it on my wall above my computer. I have been reflecting on it for about a week now.

I suppose it strikes me  on a personal level because I used to be someone really involved in the Church and I honestly can say that I had some influence in my home parish and in two other parishes along the way.  Then the tide changed. Life changed. The church changed. Now I am largely a pew warmer.  I used to be involved in so many things. I still want to be and like Catherine, I feel powerless.  Although Catherine had tons of influence and I, just a little. But still there was a time when I was really active in the church and clergy asked me to use my gifts.

In the current climate of our church - post scandals - things are very different. Do you notice it too? Lay people are kept at arm's length by clergy and it is very professional and businesslike instead of like the ACTS 2:42 quote about how everyone lived in community and shared things. Now it seems to me that the Holy Spirit  is even being constrained too.  Maybe that is why the last few popes are caling for a New Evangelization?  We sorely need it and I am praying my little Catholic heart out for the Holy Spirit to come down in a mighty way upon all of us.

Today  is Pentecost Sunday, so this is a good day to ponder such things as power and influence, community, prayer, the Holy Spirit and the status of the church.  The Holy Spirit is so magnificent and wants to be poured out upon all of us. Yet, the Holy Spirit is trying, and we are an obstacle. He wants "in" and many of us say "stay out".

Our church has been slammed these last ten plus years or so (since the scandals) and although it is a fantastic thing that we are weeding out the few bad clergy who did unspeakable crimes against youth, it seems that we have thrown out the "baby with the bathwater" (or "community with the holy water").

Hence, the Holy Spirit seems to be constrained in many ways and it is our fault. (The Holy Spirit is perfect so it can't be His fault!) You know in scripture where Jesus said he couldn't do any miracles in a certain town because of the lack of faith? That is, in my estimation, a lot of what is happening today in our Church.  The scandals badly damaged our reputation as a church, damaged many of our productive relationships between clergy and laity, and now we are all afraid of each other. We are tense and defensive and the Holy Spirit is waiting for all of us to let Him back in so we can move on.

I think all of us; clergy and lay people, need to do what Catherine did. We need to pray because it is one of the few things we can do in the current climate in our church. We have to seek God's will first and we have to do it by praying for one another and with one another. We have to take time to listen.

I've been doing that... praying that is, in between my complaining.  LOL! I still have to pray even more than I am currently doing though. I am surrendering and trying to listen because, like Catherine of Siena, it is one of the few things I can do during this challenging time in our church and our world.

Lord, Have Mercy on us. Soften our hearts, open our souls, to your great Love. Send your Holy Spirit and renew the face of the earth.  Please......  Amen.

Lent , the New Evangelization, and Pope Francis

It is Lent. We are walking in the desert with Jesus. We are in the middle of the desert, watching him move closer and closer to his ministry and ultimately to his passion and death followed by the resurrection.  Despite the suffering our sweet Jesus went through for us we carry inside of us a quiet, sometimes hidden, joy. A joy that knows about the resurrection. A joy that has been very hidden for quite some time, but it is there.

This weekend I learned that two thirds of the world's population still does not know Jesus. They are still walking in the desert of their own lives, thinking perhaps that they are alone. All alone. Jesus is with them and they do not know it !  We have to tell them !

It is our baptismal call to evangelize and witness to others. God is calling us today, this very day, March 17, 2013, and all the days in the future, to do our best to bring the new evangelization to the world.

Now we have a great new helper to do this work - POPE FRANCIS ! Isn't that awesome?  I don't know about you, but Pope Francis has given me so much more hope for our Catholic future! All of a sudden, things don't look so bleak and I feel we can handle anything that comes against the church now because the Holy Spirit has heard our cries for help and has sent us Pope Francis.

I have been quite despondent prior to Pope Francis coming into our lives. In my area, the church has seemed so depressed - like a big heavy wet cloud hanging over us. But now, Pope Francis, chosen by the work and power of the Holy Spirit, has been given to us, and the cloud is starting to disipate.

I hope all of our priests are encouraged by this as well because they too need a strong, joyful leader. Even our priests have looked so burdened and sad and now....now....the wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing around the globe and I feel like the new evangelization will really take off now.

Yes, we are walking in the desert with Jesus. Lent is still here, but can you also see the oasis in the distance? Can you see that soon the suffering will be over and Easter will be here?

I can.

Prodigal Sons and Daughters

There comes a time in each of our lives when we realize that we are, or have been, a prodigal son or daughter. As sinful humans, we think at a much lower level than God does. Our reactions to life situations can sometimes be very impulsive and our choices can be poor. None of us can escape that because we are frail human beings and far from perfect. I believe we all have times when we run from our Heavenly Father – just like the prodigal son did in Sunday’s gospel (3-10-13). Can you think of a time when that was true for you? I can and I’m going to take a risk and share it with you now…..


I am a cradle Catholic. I have always believed in God. There have been good times and rocky times in my journey. I remember once, when I was 15, I was so angry with God that I told him to get out of my life. I remember the day: I was walking home from school, madder than a wet hen about a lot of things and hurting really badly. I was ranting to God from the depths of my teenaged heart. It was a rainy day, gray and cold, late fall. I remember stopping and looking into a puddle and watching my tears fall into the puddle. I remember telling God that I was done with Him, I hated Him, and wanted nothing more to do with Him. I meant it too. Then, BAM !!!! In an instant my world changed. It was if a door slammed shut. There was a sudden deep emptiness in my soul. Such blackness. God had listened. He let me go. I felt it. He let me run away like the prodigal son. Something inside told me I had just made a huge mistake, but I was so angry that I just kept going…further and further away from God.  (Perhaps you experienced something similar?)


For the next few months I made some stupid decisions including one that almost cost me my life. Like the prodigal son, I eventually got tired of running and cried out to God. He heard me, sent out angels to help, and I found the courage to head back to Him. I expected to be greatly chastised and perhaps not welcomed back at all. But….God took me back – without hesitation. I realized He was waiting for me to come to my senses and learn a few lessons. I apologized profusely. God’s love and acceptance were immediately present and powerful.


A few months later, I was still feeling icky about everything, especially my comment about hating God, and I was advised to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I didn’t really understand then as a teen that sin doesn’t just affect our personal relationship with God, but also our connection with the entire Church, the entire Body of Christ, so I needed to mend that through the sacrament of Reconciliation. So I did. To hear the words at the end of confession when the priest, representing Jesus, said – “I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” – was so powerful. To me those words were, and still are, the most wonderful words on the planet (well, then there is also “Body of Christ” at Holy Communion too! J) – Those words are so healing.  I only wish priests would say those words a lot SLOWER so they have more impact and are clearly heard and can sink into the soul more powerfully.


The one aspect of the prodigal son parable that I still wonder about is this: how long did it take the prodigal son to forgive himself? Sometimes forgiving ourselves is the hardest part of straying from God. Sometimes we are harder on ourselves than God is (He is so merciful and we often are not) and we subject ourselves to all sorts of self-imposed consequences, not all which are without merit, but still, I wonder about this….

I would say that it took me a few years before I could fully, and finally, forgive myself for hating God and for my actions. Looking back, I know that I was just a teenager and my faith life was very new overall, but the feelings were intense and real and I was really hard on myself.  As Dr. Phil says, it was a "defining moment in my life".......my life of faith to be exact.

So, to my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow prodigal sons and daughters, may God bless your day.

A Lenten Message: Desert Fears, one person's experience

I think we al have a natural fear of the desert. There are a lot of unknowns in the desert. Extreme heat. Extreme cold. Wild creatures. Spiritual deserts can be just as scary as earthly deserts.

Images of a stark landscape and deep solitiude and loneliness come into play when we think of the desert. Painfully hot days and shiveringly cold nights. No food. No water. No sustenance. Not sure how you got there and not sure how you will get out, or if there every will be a way out.

Additionally there are times of temptations, all sorts of feelings such as anger, despair, depression, anxiety, confusion. You name it. One can feel it in the desert. The desert is to be avoided at all costs, right?  We'd much rather be on the spiritual mountaintops - dancing and conversing with Jesus, feeling all warm and loved. The warmth of the sun on our faces, feeling healthy and grounded. 

Sometimes however, the desert cannot be avoided. Sometimes we are plucked off our mountaintop and tossed headfirst into the desert and , just like the cartoons, we sit up and have stars swirling around our heads and we think "What the heck just happened?".  Where is Jesus? Where is the mountaintop?  What is this place?

I have been on mountaintops with Jesus. It is FANTASTIC!  I have also been in a few partifularly severe deserts during my spiritual life. The most recent desert, still fresh in my mind, is a desert I entered about two years ago.  I wasn't just plopped into the desert. It was more of a slow slide off the mountaintop and then, tripping somewhere along the way, I fell off of a cliff, sailed through the air at breakneck speed and landed with a very hard THUD, face first in the desert.  When I sat up, I had a mouth full of sand, no water, a headache, and was frightened beyond belief. Enter, desert fears.
That desert lasted many months. It was an incredibly hard journey.

I am thinking of desert fears now because it is the Lenten season. Jesus spent 40 days in the desert and for some reason the reality of that hit me hard this year. Jesus Himself, the Prince of Peace, could not escape the desert. In fact, he willingly walked right into it.  That just blows me away. He could have hung out on the mountain top forever, but He chose to walk into the desert. I didn't choose it. It was apparently given to me as a "gift", but I didn't know that until afterwards.

Just like Jesus' experience in the desert, there are reasons why we must walk through it.  There are benefits to the desert. I found that out the hard way.

I learned a lot from being in the desert. First of all I learned that it didn't kill me, although on some days I felt very dead.  I learned that intense and prolonged solitude can make a person stronger instead of weaker.  I learned that wisdom develops in the desert as a result of all the solitude and reflecting that goes on.  I learned that Jesus allows us to wander through deserts to get us to other destinations (spiritually speaking).  I learned most of all that the desert makes us into very different people than we were upon entering it.

BUT - and here's the clincher - the only way we can become different and leave feeling like a better person instead of a more angry and bitter person, is that we have to come to a point when we SURRENDER to the desert.  There comes a time when we can't do it anymore. We can't fight anymore. We have no more prayers. No more reflections. When we don't know what direction to walk in next and all seems lost...that is when things start to change. Because then, and only then, do we shout out to the Heavens "I GIVE UP! I HAVE NO ANSWERS. I AM LOST. JESUS SAVE ME!" and then we collapse into the sand. We lay there motionless for what seems an eternity. We are too weak to do anything. We look and feel dead through and through.

In essence, we sleep, we rest. We can do no more. We are near comatose, spiritually speaking. 

Then, slowly something starts to change within us. Not sure what it is, we pick our heads off of the ground. with the little bit of life we have left in us. We spit out the dirt in our mouths. The desert is silent except for a distant wind. It is night. The stars are out. We cannot stand, so we remain seated just looking up at the stars. It is in that moment that we realize how small we are. How invisible we are to all of humanity. Nobody will come looking for us, yet.......suddenly we feel we are being watched and there is a sense that we are not alone. God is there. Watching us. 

There comes a period of waiting. We cannot ask any more questions. We do not complain anymore. We can barely eek out the words:  "Ok, Jesus. I'm here. Lead me." We feel the breeze on our face and through our hair.  We watch. We listen. We are silent.  We hear out own heartbeat and our own breath. We feel intense hunger and thirst.

Slowly we are given what we need from above. I will not share with you what Jesus sent me because that is too personal to share in a blog ( one must have some discretion, you know ), but just know that I got what I needed. I rose, listened, and walked according to His voice and where He was leading me.

I had forgotten that deserts have oases. In my case, Jesus knew I needed a break. I had lived through enough and if I didn't get a break, I would not make it through the desert.  He provided for me a special place in the desert in which to seek refuge, to have some comfortable temperatures, and to feel some relief. In essence, I was in a place where I had time "to be".  To be in His presence. Saying nothing for I had no words.  I stayed there for quite a long time.  I started to feel very comfortable there - so much so that I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to have to venture back out into the desert, even if it meant that I would know a way out. It was too scary and I was quite weak.  The thought of going back "into society" was also a fear because I knew I'd be going back much different and wondered if I would be accepted ( which is always a fear of mine, desert or no desert ).

However, the day came when Jesus asked me to leave this oasis and start the journey out of the desert. I obeyed. Obedience is something else you learn in the desert by the way. One of the promises I received from Jesus was that I could always go back into my oasis whenever I wanted. Having that comfort, I felt strength to leave it.

Many months went by. The journey was long. Every step forward gave me more strength, more wisdom.  When I reached the end of the sandy desert I came upon a beach. It was empty. Jesus came, hugged me, and we walked for a long time, talking and enjoying each other's company. The desert had ended. THANK GOD.  But a new way of being had begun for me.

As I said before, when a person goes into the desert, they go in one way, and they come out much different. That is what happened to me. Oh, I know most of the people around me probably can't even see that I am different. But I know I am. I still get up every day. Go to work. Do the things I have to do. But inside my soul, I am a very very different person.

I guess one way to describe it is that of a clay pot being fired. It goes into the kiln as soft fragile clay and after being subject to 2000+ degree heat, it comes out a transformed pot, much more solid.  Now it can be painted beautiful colors and the next firing in the kiln will make it even more beautiful and useful. Does that image help you understand?

So yes, there are many things to fear about the desert. The pain is real. The process is real, although invisible. I share this with you to give you some words of  wisdom that I learned in the desert : if you find yourself in the desert, know that it will end some day. Remember to surrender. Remember to listen. When you are presented with an oasis, visit it.

Thanks for listening. Hope this helps.

Fighting Apathy within the Church

One of the biggest problems in my beloved Catholic church today is apathy. I have been thinking about this lately. The culture of death has infiltrated itself so thoroughly within the church that apathy has been allowed to flourish.

It saddens me. It isn't just a problem in the church, but in the world at large as well.  It is like massive amounts of people have blinders on. Blinders that they chose to put on. So many important issues are being igored by otherwise good people. Did they put blinders on because there is just too much information coming at them, or life is just so overwhelmingly busy that they just have to shut some things out?  What is it?

I can give you the answer in a nutshell:  It is the evil one. He has deceived so many people. He has built a huge rift of mistrust between our clergy and their sheep. The apex of the sex abuse scandals is over, but the ramifications trickling through the church are many and are still very present. I feel bad for the good priests who are out there every day trying hard to make a difference, especially in the areas where the number of priests are low or where the church is being persecuted. I feel deeply betrayed by those few clergy who have been in short, stupid and reckless and in essence have been re-crucifying my sweet Jesus with their total disregard for the priesthood and who have been misusing their priesthood. I am very very angry with them.

Every day I pray for priests. I love the priesthood. It is such a huge gift from God. I guess that's why I get so angry when I see it misused by men who perhaps were once good, but chose bad, or perhaps they were bad to begin with and thought they could get away with their misdeeds by hiding under the cloak of the priesthood. 

Anyway, the other problem we have in regards to apathy is that the laity can betray Jesus and His Church just as poorly.  Now, I'm not saying that because I am some "holier than thou" person. Sin is sin after all and I am as much of a sinner as anyone else. I have experienced my share of apathy too. Over the last few years I have experienced the devil attacking me on so many levels to the point that I have felt some apathy and have had times when I wanted to walk away from it all. But thankfully, I am a sinner who prays and praying has helped a lot. It has helped me see that there is hope for all of us. There is HOPE to end the APATHY.

My heart aches on such a deep level for our Church - for our clergy and our lay people alike. It is like there is a heavy wet blanket over all of us and it falls heavier on some than on others. Those who have room to breathe under this wet blanket are shouting out "Don't quit!" " Stand tall!" "Fight the suffocation that is being thrust upon us!"  Sadly there are some who have been snuffed out altogether, crushed by the weight of the wet blanket. I imagine it to be a dark grey rough blanket - a blanket that smells.

I have a little breath left in me and I am shouting under the blanket of apathy - RISE UP PEOPLE ! DON'T LET THE DEVIL WIN ! HANG ON TO JESUS !

Many people do not see the storm ahead of us that we are going to have to walk through. The only way we will be successful is if we hang onto each other and Jesus. Priests and laity alike. Soon we will all have to choose what side we are on. Are we truly Catholic Christians who love Jesus and who would do all He asks of us or are we people who want to give up and die under the heavy wet blanket of apathy?

Apathy is a terrible disease ! It is a manifestation of evil and it must be stopped. I urge anyone who is reading this little blog to please take some time each day and pray for a powerful outpouring and indwelling of the Holy Spirit upon every last person in God's Church. Pray for protection for our good priests and pray yes, for healing for the bad priests who have been abusive, who have stolen, who have sold drugs, who have broken their vows, etc..., While they must be silenced and removed so that they can no longer be the agents of the devil and turn good people away from Jesus, they also must be sent away for healing and accountablity so that someday they may return to us.  God loves them as much as he loves the holiest of us and we must not discard them, but they must not be allowed to continue being wolves in sheep's clothing.

May the Holy Spirit empower those who seek to know Jesus better and walk in His ways. May the Holy Spirit fill all of us who go to Church with His power so that any apathy that is hanging around us will be obliterated for all eternity. Then we will be left to be, as St. Pauls says: "that we will shine like the stars in the sky".

My brothers and sisters - we must stand together. We must fight apathy with PRAYER.  Let's get busy then..... are ya with me?