"Thank You and I'm Sorry"

originally posted MONDAY, JULY 23, 2012

'Thank You' and 'I'm Sorry'

'Thank you.'     and      'I'm sorry.'

I was thinking in adoration tonight about all the problems in the world and these two little phrases. They are two of the most powerful weapons against evil -and two of the most underused phrases in our world today. Let's look at these a little closer:

'Thank you.' -simple gratitude for the gifts God has given to us, as well as gifts or gestures of love others have offered to us. Not focusing on what we don't have or on what others do have (and judging whether or not they should), we ought to simply be grateful for all the gifts God has shared with our very unique persons, families, etc. according to the personal vocations we each have embraced. Thankfulness is a powerful tool against negativity, self-pity, judgmentalness and complaining -and it spurns us to be selfless, sacrificial and generous ourselves. Simply thanking people for their kindness spurns us on to want to imitate it and be kind to others as well. Gratitude spreads joy, for everyone feels better if their acts of love are recognized, accepted and appreciated.  'Thank you' is a form of praise -and praise is a beautiful weapon to heal relationships and preserve them in love against the whiles of the dark one set about to divide. We all should try to be more thankful -not only to God for all His wondrous gifts to us, and not just to the random neighbor who made us cookies one time (that's easy), but most importantly to those who are close to us, who serve us day in and day out and who go unrecognized so often. The fact that Mom can make a warm meal appear on Sunday afternoon regardless of the fact that 40 of her 60 guests were 'surprises' calling after 2pm -that is really worthy of praise! Or the fact that your husband skipped his favorite TV show to make sure the kitchen was cleaned (even though he had a horrible day at the office and is absolutely exhausted) -that also is a gesture of love that should be appreciated! Or the fact that your 5-year-old poured milk for everyone at lunch (even if some spilled all over the floor) -her loving heart should be encouraged! 'Thank you' does that -it encourages goodness and makes people happy -which makes people inspired to acts of virtue and love -which spreads peace. 

'I'm sorry.' -This one's a little harder... and yet if you think 'thank you' was powerful, you ain't seen nothing yet about the power of these little words! Humility. Yup, I'm talking to you... each one of us needs to grow in humility because none of us are as humble as Mary or Jesus crucified. And that is what we are called to be as Christians -humble -authentic -full of Truth and Love. Just think a moment of how much your little house could be transformed if every time someone hurt another, or sinned against another, they recognized it (not making excuses or trying to puff themselves up -but truly admitted that they did something wrong) and apologized. 'I'm sorry' means 'I love you more than myself, more than my pride that wants me to pretend right now that I am right and perfect.' 'I'm sorry' in itself is a reminder to us who say it, that we too need forgiveness -and so we should quickly forgive those who seem to sin against us. Each one of us has faults and sins -and for these most of us go regularly to Confession. But what if there was a small group -in our family, for example, or workplace, or school -who were committed to truly seeking holiness? You know, that 'narrow way' Jesus talks about? Do you realize how such a commitment of even a few could change the entire world? All you would need for such a quest for holiness (as Jesus calls us to embrace) is true sacrificial, authentic Love -which has the foundation of humility. Beginning a life of holiness is pretty easy -just admit in humility when you are wrong or weak or hurtful (even unintentionally), ask forgiveness, and ask for strength from God to not fall in such a way again.  All we need to do to spread authentic holiness and virtue is readily admit when we have been controlling, selfish, possessive, prideful, untruthful, lazy, etc. and to apologize -not only from God, but from each other! Simply by embracing humility -which in its precise definition is simply 'truth' -relationships could be mended, grudges could be forgiven, world peace could be accomplished and God could pour out abundant spiritual gifts (for He only dares do that in a soul who is humble and will use such gifts for His glory.) My two years in Siberia taught me that the union of the Eastern and Western Churches could happen quite quickly if people would just live true humility. 

How the world would be changed if people would just use these two phrases more often... daily... as a habit. Simply say 'thank you' when someone gives you (or more importantly does) something nice -even if its not the cup you wanted or the idea you had in your head... let go of your own plan and simply recognize and receive other's love in gratitude. And admit your fault (whether you are a sibling, parent, child, priest, teacher or friend) by asking forgiveness on a regular basis from those you may hurt (either from a willed action, as well as simply by accident.) 

Love is a powerful weapon to change the world. It is patient and kind, never jealous, possessive (of people or items) or boastful -but it also is never rude. 'Thank you's' and 'I'm sorry's' are just plain Christian. And when I look at the whole big picture of this crazy world, I simply think it would be much better off if more of these 'polite words' were shared between people. 

Be a Vigilant Candle of Resurrected Hope in the Night...

MONDAY, APRIL 05, 2010

The world is silent.

Jesus rose from the dead.

 

And Spring seems to have risen to new life around us this weekend as well -flowering trees and singing birds. Heaven seems close at hand.

And yet -as we look at the world around us -is it living as if Heaven is as close as it is? We love the peace of Easter -and yet the Cross that had to be endured completely in order to open the gates of Heaven to us has quickly been forgotten.

Even if the Resurrection is present in our hearts -the world is still crucified in a long Good Friday. For the true, everlasting Easter that our hearts long for will only be lived fully in Heaven. The Easter we celebrate this week should not turn our heads away from all the real suffering of people around us -nor should it lead us to put our arms down against the devil who is still roaming the earth looking for weakened prey. Instead, this great Feast of Resurrected Love should be kept in our hearts as a Lantern of Hope in the midst of the reality of this dark world's sin and pain that pushes in around us. 

I wiped many tears on Easter -for so many people are struggling without seeing Him. And I wept more on Easter than on Good Friday over my brothers and sisters in the world who were in such pain or sin that they could not feel the light of the Resurrection kiss their hearts yesterday morning. The gift of Easter rejected is worse than the Great Calvary Pain that won the grace for us to believe. The Church is being Crucified -even in the midst of the Resurrection. Some even question, 'What is the point?'

But the Point is that we have a Redeemer -a Strong, Powerful, All-Loving, All-Just, All-Merciful God as a Savior -and Easter gives us this hope. Easter does not take away our pain -but makes it new even as we are in the midst of it by giving us the Hope of His Love conquering all in the end. The battle is still raging... and mothers cry for their children, sisters cry for their brothers, the Church cries for the littlest ones, as well as for the servant priests who undergo mockery, betrayal, scourging, exhaustion every day of their priesthoods. But Easter gives us a smile on the Cross, a twinkle behind the tears of our eyes, even a shout for joy -of 'Alleluia' in the midst of the confusion, pain and attack so many endure in this world, on this Easter Monday.

Please remember the suffering ones today in your prayers of Easter Joy. They need your hope in their struggle. They need His Light coming from His wounds. For Jesus was not woundless when He appeared in the Resurrection to His Disciples -He instead had wounds transformed by Love. And that is what He wants to do for all of us in this time of waiting. He does not take our wounds on Easter morning, but instead enters them to transform them with His Hope, Light and Love.

We waited for Easter during 40 difficult days of Lent. And in Easter we continue to wait with an increased longing for Heaven, which we only had a tiny taste of on earth in the Easter Liturgy and celebration yesterday (and all this week). And we continue to wait, in hope, for the great Pentecost -the coming of the Holy Spirit -who will anoint our hearts -washed by tears in Lent, transformed by Jesus' Light, Love and Life in Easter -with the FIRE of His Truth, the Courage of His Conviction, the Power of His Tornado of Faithful Love when He comes in 50 Days. And then, with the Holy Spirit, we will begin to burn as a fire of longing as we wait with Jesus for Heaven -for He is waiting for us to join Him there soon. Yes... soon. Life ends in the blink of an eye -and then true LIFE begins for eternity -in our only true Home of Heaven. Do we live this hope, this truth of Easter daily? Do we long in love to dwell with Him -our Creator -forever? Do we live as if we are the 'pilgrims' that we are in this world? Do we remember that He is watching us, waiting!?

And that -the heavenly Easter -that final union with our God waiting for us -is the point of our lives now.

How has Easter changed us? Just as we are called to lose ourselves, our own sufferings by burying them in the wounds of Christ on the Cross -we are also called to lose ourselves by incarnating the Joy, Hope, Peace and forgiving Love that these wounds experience in the transformation of the Resurrection. Are we living as an 'Easter people of Hope' to those still crucified in the world?

So, as the Church's Heart carries the tears of Her children in its bosom today, our joy is to look at the Cross and see Hope through the great light of Faith -and to desire the Perfect Love that comes with the Holy Spirit's presence, which we will taste as our 'food for the journey' on earth and will consume totally in our banquet of Love finally in Heaven, our Rest.

"Behold, He is coming amid the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him... Yes. Amen.

'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord God, 'the one Who is and Who was and Who is to come, the Almighty.'" (Revelation 1:7,8)

Alleluia! Come, Lord Jesus!

We love You,

and we want to know and love You more.

Are we ready and waiting for His coming?!

He is knocking... and He will continue to knock louder on the doors of our hearts.

May we answer Him, always -the Voice He speaks to our hearts, and the Voice He speaks to our lives through the voices of those in our family and world who need our love most.

A Holy Saturday Lament with Mary…

Oh sweet Mother Mary,

Your heart is like a tomb…

For your Love, your Life has been crucified!

Death –His Death on the Cross –seems to consume all space and time.

The Spirit making you one –Who enfleshed within your womb

–gave human life to the very Word of God –

seems to be buried in the tomb of silence this long day.

Cold body –frozen in death.

All life poured out by the lance in His side.

Emptiness –numbness –silence

What would you give, dear Mother –your very life and heart –to hear His breath on Calvary once more?…

Altar and victim consumed in the flames of love

–and all that is left on earth is the ashen flesh of your heart awaiting….

Yes, waiting alone –enduring deeper than even Golgotha’s pain

–where union with your Son gave beat to your bleeding heart…

Waiting alone speaks … lives… hopes…

Mary, let me wait with you –for nothing but the life of your Son

…could give breath to my suffocating prayer this day…

Mary, let me wait in you

-in hope –without His fire

-in faith –without His light

-in love –without the warmth of His presence

Only in you –from whom His flesh came forth

–can I find a seed of meaning for existing today…

Heaven seemed to die this day…

For Jesus –our only path to the Father –has died! Has died!

And left only the silent, still, empty, dark, cold Heart pierced by our sin

–locked in a tomb –and guarded from our kisses by suspicion….

Oh never would that Eucharistic gift mean more than on this day –when Love and Life is buried away in a tomb in wait…

            Oh Love –locked in the tabernacle of the Father’s will in wait… hear and answer my longing heart for Your return in glory!!

The only memory of His goodness is His death –death on the Cross

Which spoke final words of forgiveness and ultimate surrender.

Oh Mary, pray with me, in me, for me… teach me the art of waiting in hope this day.

For my breath expired yesterday at 3:00 and my heart has no tears left to weep…

My prayer is numb, empty silence.

Silence –holding hope –make my heart reflect your Own, dear Mother

-for you remember the Father’s promise –speak to my darkened memory –prepare and cleanse me for the gift of His redeeming Love resurrected tomorrow.

What a long, crushing night this Holy Saturday weighs –heavy in my soul!…

Yes, tomorrow –the Easter shadows peeking through the wilted flowers on Calvary –soaked by His blood –will overcome the darkness, the silence of this empty day of death.

                        But how shall I endure the silent wait today?

Sweet Mary, pray for me… teach me to wait in silence full of hope.

Holy Saturday –a day without light –a life without breath –a prayer empty of meaning as the soul of my Beloved has gone from earth!

Three days in a tomb –three hours on a cross –one suffering between the Mother’s Heart and Yours –sweet Jesus –to whence have you gone?

Heaven speaks not of your resurrection yet on this day following death –and yet earth sees your breath no more….

“Pray and wait… hope and believe… and love in the silence enduring…”

Those were Your instructions for this heaviest of days lived in union with Your Mother’s lonely, abandoned heart of fiat.

Today I have no blood to offer prayer –no pain, for stillness consumes all.

Beat, my heart! Believe, my hope! Beat on in hope, my faith! Love enduring unto –and through this night of awful death.

Mary, hold me and let not my heart’s life stop beating…

His Love enflames my love and yet it seems to have died.

From the grave He speaks in the echo of Psalms:

“I waited, waited for the Lord;

who bent down and heard My cry.

Drew Me out of the pit of destruction

Out of the mud of (man’s sin) –of the swamp

Set my feet upon rock, steadied my (newly born, resurrected) steps.

And put a new song in My mouth

A hymn to our God

Many shall look on in awe

And they shall trust in the Lord.”

My heart trembles as it waits for the earthquake of tomorrow morning’s resurrection song!

Holy Spirit –hide no more –come and pray within me in my wait with the Mother.

-We put our hope in You…

Sweet Jesus, locked in the Garden –please rise and call my name!

“Fiat! Fiat! Fiat!” –somehow my heart beats tucked between the Mother’s and Yours…

Father, have mercy on your child today and answer my prayer…

                                                                                                Amen. +

Comfort Me by Letting Me Redeem You

Comfort Me by Letting Me Redeem You

ByMary KloskaonMarch 29, 2013

It is Friday.

All is pitch black darkness. Only a small light comes from bloody footprints on the ground.

The stench of rotting sulfur – one that always accompanies Satan – fills the ice cold air. The wind rips and rain pelts like razor blades.

Vulgarities pierce one’s ears.

And you climb alone.

You are exhausted – consumed by the nausea of evil – hemmed in by fear, by shock at the scandalous profanation of One so holy, by panic, by confusion, by dread and by the fierce battle to believe, to hope, to love and to forgive in the midst of such perfidy and hate. Your heart is buckling in weakness, as you fight against a great repugnance in your will to surrender to this will of the Redeemer and his Father in Heaven.

Heaven is silent. Where is His Beloved Father in all this? What is He allowing? It is as if He turned His back in total indifference and rejection.

And then you see Jesus.

He is hanging like a carcass – shredded flesh from head to toe – naked – blood gently raining everywhere as His body sways, hanging forward from the Cross.

And you see His Mother – a burning bush consumed by His pain – so sensitive, so innocent, so surrendered in their union of martyrdom. She drinks His gift of suffering to the depths of Her immaculate soul – and answers it with a fiat in Her Own flesh and will.

You freeze and simply cannot breathe.

The scales fall from your heart. You see His Crucified Love in all its Reality.

This is the price of your redemption.

Your mind is filled with a tornado of thoughts, “What have I done? My indifference, my jealousy, my pride, my greed and selfishness, my vanity, my lust, my gluttony, my unforgiveness… What have I done, Lord!?”

The freezing cold voice of Satan surrounds you, trying to push you to despair.

And then you feel a gentle hand lift you from the ground and draw you forward. It is the merciful gaze of your Mother. Her eyes have not turned from a penetrating union with Jesus’ Heart –and yet Her glance reaches out to you to help you stand beneath the Cross and listen. 

Jesus speaks –each word burning your heart with His Fire of Redeeming Love. He says:

“Come to Me, child. Do not let My sacrifice be in vain. Comfort Me by letting Me redeem you. I thirst for your presence. I thirst for your love. I thirst for you to open your heart to receive Me. Come stand within the shadow of My Love –pouring as light to those beneath My Cross in the darkness. Come in! Come into My Heart, torn open on this Cross for Love of you. Come in and drink of My merciful Love! My Mother will lift you up to Me – and together we will teach you how to drink from the fountain of your salvation. Give Me your fears – give Me your wounds – give Me your pain – give Me your sins – soak them in the abyss of My Infinite Love flowing from My wounded side and I will make all things new. I forgive you. I do not condemn you. I have come to save. But you must draw close to Me in humility. You must admit your need for a Savior and trust Me. You comfort Me by letting Me redeem you – by letting Me see your ugliness and by allowing Me to touch it with My wounded Hand. I will heal you. Allow Me to bathe, purify and fill you with the fire of My Love. Stay here at this altar of My Love for the rest of your life –for I am with you always until the end of the world. I wait for you daily at My Eucharistic Calvary of the Mass. Come to Me – place your life, your faults, your needs, your fears, your wounds, and your prayers within the furnace of My Crucified, Eucharistic Heart each day. In this way I can consume you, I can transform you and I can give you rest…”

The Wedding at Cana and the Cross

SUNDAY, JANUARY 17, 2010

The Wedding at Cana and the Cross

How often in our lives do we feel like those jars sitting in the corner at the Wedding at Cana? They were ordinary –supposed to be used for special water for ceremonial washings (something holy) –and yet totally used up and empty. Yet Jesus is near them –and He is thinking about them –He is planning to use them for a miracle of His Love. And so a problem is presented to Him –‘there is no wine.’ There is no wine. Seemingly in our world very often it seems as if Jesus (obviously) is among us, but still there are problems –we have no wine –we feel like there is too little grace, too little love, too little hope for all the problems.

I look at those suffering in Haiti, for example, and my heart is ripped to pieces –I see a pregnant woman or a group of children trapped in pain under buildings for days on end and I see and feel the cries, the fears, the pain of my little brothers and sisters. What can I do? All I have is pain in my heart over their suffering. Or I hear from a woman about her adopted Russian child and how she is a stripper neglecting her baby and I don’t know who I suffer more for –Jesus (Whose Heart is broken over the sin and woundedness of this girl), the girl, her adoptive mother who tried to sacrifice everything for her or for the innocent baby wrapped up in the pain. I see people close to me suffer from those they love being indifferent, rude, unkind –seemingly little ‘sins’ and yet things that totally break the Heart of Jesus Who calls each of us and pours out overabundant grace so that we can imitate His Love –and yet so often this grace is left to fall to the ground. I see my own inability (through lack of strength, lack of grace, lack of ‘light’) to love as my heart would desire –to pray as others need –to trust as Jesus on the Cross. And these ‘ordinary sufferings’ of the world which overflow so many of our lives seem fruitless… seem ‘empty and unused’ as those jars sitting in the corner at the Wedding.

And yet, Jesus is near –and it is just not yet time for Him to do His miracle. He needs our hearts empty and waiting –and then filled with the ‘mundane’ sufferings of ordinary life embraced by love, offered by our will in acceptance and trust (even if we don’t ‘feel’ particularly graced and emotionally happy to accept and offer them) –and then He comes to do a miracle of Love. He filled the jars in Cana with ordinary water, and then changed it to wine to show the power of His Love and to give drink to those waiting. And the more empty we are in our hearts and the more we accept the ordinary sufferings of our lives –filling our hearts to overflowing with such crucified graces –the more the world will be given drink (a holy, miraculous drink which manifests clearly the presence, love and grace of God’s power and care) through us. We have to sit empty and let Jesus fill our lives with ‘water’ –the day to day sacrifices and sufferings we encounter. In fact, if we truly recognized the great worth of such ‘little things’ –then we would be like ‘packmen’ searching to ‘eat up’ any little cross we find offered to us from God on our life’s way. Because the day will come –maybe on earth, and maybe only in eternity in heaven –when Jesus will say to the angels: “Now go to the once empty jars now filled with water and bring that water to those thirsting.” And suddenly by His will and His word our ordinary ‘water’ (the crosses of our lives) will be transformed into unfathomable divine grace for others. The ordinary ‘water’ of our lives will sparkle as a jewel and refresh as Jesus’ Love alone can do –because His Love will enter it (through our fiat and union with Him on the Cross) and change it in order to do miracles in others’ lives. This we have to believe as Mary believed. This we have to ask as Mary asked. This we have to hope as Mary hoped against hope. And this we have to rejoice in now, in Love. For true faith, hope and love rejoices in the gifts of God before they are visible to our eyes… we must believe, hope and love in trust.

Holes

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2007

Holes

When you feel like your life has holes in it, remember that it is precisely from these places that you can give thirsty Jesus on the Cross a drink of Love.

In today's Gospel He cries, "I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:49-50)

By accepting and offering your crosses in Love, you can bring peace to the world, heal the sick, comfort the abandoned, give hope to despairing, convert great sinnners, heat the lukewarm. Most importantly, you can console Jesus' anguish, just by allowing His fire of Love to burn in the little places He ignites.

If it doesn't hurt, if you aren't stretched, you won't grow.

If it doesn't bleed, it won't be clean and heal.

If it isn't a free, sacrificial forgetting of self, gift of self, it isn't Love.

Imitate His Footsteps...

Amen.

The dirty window

TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 2011

The Dirty Window

 It was the Fall of 2001 or the Spring of 2002 -all time runs together when I think back to those two years I spent smack in the center of Eastern Siberia. I had been put on a bus for the first time alone -shipped off 150 miles or so to the Sisters in Achinsk to help out on some sort of retreat they were having. I don't remember which specific event in Achinsk this bus ride correlates with -but I do remember being nervous, especially since my Russian was still very poor and I was quite unsure at which stop I had to exit. I sat squished up against a window with my big backpack on my lap -I was too afraid and too weak to try to push it into an overhead compartment. I watched as the endless line of people started cramming into the bus, wondering who would be next to me for the 2 1/2 hour ride. A young kid -in his second or third year of college if I remember correctly -wearing a leather jacket (looking a bit like the Fonzarelli) stopped next to my seat saying ever so politely, 'Hey, girl, I'm wit' you!' in perfect street Russian. I was petrified.

First, he was talking to me (I was assured that nobody talks in buses in Russia) -and I feared that as soon as I opened my mouth to speak my secret would be given away -he (and everyone else around me) would know that I was an American girl alone on a bus in the middle of Siberia. I smiled and tried not to draw attention to myself. I was a missionary, but I had been strictly warned and therefore already decided early on that young men (most men in general, actually) were not my 'mission' in any way but prayer. It was just way too dangerous. I smiled at this young guy and nodded -and then he asked me a question and I thought, 'Oh no, I have to speak.' He offered to put my huge bag in an overhead bin. I whispered 'Spaceeba' (meaning, 'Thank you') and handed my possessions off for him to pass and squish wherever he could find a place. 'O Lord, just don't make me talk,' I prayed. I thought if I just looked out my dirty window and prayed, God would lead our 'non-conversation.' But about 3 decades into my Rosary, the kid threw out a question. Looking at my Rosary he asked if I was one of those God-believing people. Then he asked me if God's existence was something I could prove. He asked if God had a place for him, or if he was just too evil. Then he asked if God gave second chances.

I talked to him for the entire ride that afternoon -in very broken Russian to a lost and very broken heart. I told him about Jesus' forgiveness, about Mary Magdalene and about the Catholic (and Orthodox) Sacrament of Confession. He was absolutely amazed. When he asked about what choices he should make in life, how he could know God's will, how he could know the 'right thing to do' -God guided my eyes to look out the window. And this became the example I gave to my Russian 'little brother.'

'Look out my window,' I told him. 'What can you see?'

'Nothing,' he answered, 'Its too dirty to see anything.'

'Exactly,' I responded. 'If the window is full of dirt, you see nothing. But look out the front window, the one the driver is looking through. He keeps washing it off, and so you can see the great beauty around us through that window.'

He liked the example.

'Your heart is like that window,' I told him. 'When it is full of 'dirt' -the bad decisions you've made, the sin, the weakness and falls and wounds -then you can't see God and His Love trying to fill you and His Light trying to guide you. You have to 'clean your heart' -just like that window -to see all the beauty of His Love, His plan for you. He has a plan -to pull you from the pit you are in now -but you must take the jump, the risk, and clean off your heart -and then you will see for yourself.'

How true is this same idea for all of us today. How often in my own life have I seen that the more I go to Confession, the more I begin to see little failings I missed before. Once the big sins are removed, the little specks of dirt become more glaring -and by apologizing to Jesus for these, too, and by allowing Him to wipe them away -my vision is made to be more like His. And the cleaner my heart is, the more purely His Love can flow forth to others through me.

I think of this often as I weed.

The weeds choke the flowers -sometimes their root systems are completely interlocked. But as I remove the weeds, careful not to disturb the flowers, within days the flowers begin to fill out, to grow leaps and bounds. And as sin is regularly uprooted in our hearts through Confession, the flowers of God's gifts can explode in our lives. Once I get the big weeds, the little ones become visible to me. And I continually go back in the evenings to grab the little one here or the hidden one there that I missed. Its much easier to weed this way than to wait until everything is overgrown.

Confession is the most amazing Sacrament for us sinners here on earth. Baptism makes us children of God, but Confession can be renewed over and over again each time we fall in human weakness.There is no sin too great for Jesus -when we are sorry for our failings, He will always wipe them away without question. And then we get to go on living with a light heart, a peaceful smile to others around us, and with renewed vision of Truth. We cannot see Truth clearly through the dirt of sin on the window of our hearts.

Jesus suffered the most hideous death to save us from sin.

We must not let His suffering be for nought.

We mustn't leave His blood to be wasted on the ground.

We must let His Blood wash us in the priest's words in absolution. His red blood will make our hearts white, clear. How sad for one to love and give so much, just for His gift to be ignored. The more we 'use' the gift He gives us of forgiveness, the more we give joy to the Heart of God.

So, please remember to go to Confession. Often. If it has been a long time, it might be hard to find the courage to step up and go -but how wonderful it will feel afterwards to be free, and there is no sin you can say that a priest has not heard over and over again. Blessed JPII went daily -not because he had big sins, but because He wanted to be perfect in Love. I promise that if someone not accustomed to going to Confession weekly or every two weeks begins this practice, their lives will be totally changed. For a heart empty of sin is able to receive God's graces MUCH MORE ABUNDANTLY than one that is dirty. God pours out His graces on all, but we have to make sure we have the freedom to 'catch them' -and this happens through Confession. Invite someone whose been away from the Sacrament back to it this week. For as we learned from Johnny, none of us knows the day nor the hour of our death. And we want to keep our hands open and free from sin to receive the Mercy of Jesus as He offers it.

Be Courageous today! Go and clean the window of your heart in a way you've never done before. Confess sins you never dared, or mention weaknesses that are not necessary to mention in Confession, but helpful in making you pure. If you start to make true order in your heart, you will be amazed at the beauty you begin to find right before your eyes. The image of the broken, dirty window above, can be changed to this image of your heart below:

And if you are a practicer of frequent Confession, please pray for all those who neglect or do not understand the deep riches of this Sacrament. So many wounds would be healed, relationships would be mended, families would be strengthened, peace would spread in all the world -if only people approached the Sacrament more often.

'A broken, humbled heart, O Lord, you will not scorn.'

-(Psalm 51:19)