I TURN TO MY LORD AND DIE TO MY SELFISH WAYS

Written during my retreat on First Saturday:

The world is suffering and in pain. To reach for momentary gratification will not satisfy the starving soul.

For years, I reached for food, for momentary pleasures: popcorn and movies, all things to make me feel better. I wanted love and approval of others to make me feel better.

What makes me feel better is healing the wounded soul, the wounded heart. Christ's Heart bore the wounds of rejection, suffering and pain. His body shows the marks of His sufferings, but He rose above all this and loved.

I give to You my wounds, Lord, my sins, my failings. I give You all the things I have chosen before You to gratify myself. I put before You all those things that I used to give me satisfaction, love, and approval.

I put them at the foot of the cross and give myself as a sacrifice, faults and all.

I give myself to the Father. I join with Jesus and give myself as a sacrifice to the Father. I ask for the graces I need most in this retreat to draw myself closer in union with God, Mary, the angels and saints.

I turn to You and cry out for Your love. Your love is the medicine to heal my sick soul. My soul thirsts for Your love. I am sorry for the times that I looked for momentary gratification in worldly things. My soul becomes "sicker" as I give into my appetites and whims. A soul that is filled with His love is not hungry for the things of this world!

Our souls are hungry for God. The members in the Church must be fed with His love. When souls in the Church are fed with His love, they will come to the Church for their feeding. To try to feed the hungry souls with other things leaves them empty and in pain.

When we look at our sins, we see what was more important than God in our lives. When we sin we chose something in place of God. At these times, when we have sinned, we chose our own gratification over the will of God.

Let us pray for the Church and the priests. Let us go to Jesus in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and be fed with the Bread of Life! He gives us Himself. He gives us His Body and Blood!

What am I using to feed the cravings of my soul? My soul craves His divine life. He comes adorned in white, glistening, glorified. He bares the wounds of His death. We share in His life. He raises us from our doom. We must first die to ourselves, abandon our sinful ways and we will grow deeper in His life.

Jn. 12:24

…unless a wheat grain falls into the earth
and dies,
it remains only a single grain;
but if it dies
it yields a rich harvest.

We must die to our selfish ways. We must be purified. We must put to rest all our evilness and walk in His way. Walk on the path He has shown us.
If we abandon God and give into selfish pleasure, we receive only momentary gratification. We are in sin. The pleasure is soon over.

As there are degrees in being saturated with His life, there are degrees in being deeper and deeper in sin. Depending on the depth of our sin, there are different levels of separation from God.

Oh, Lord, let my soul be filled with Your life.

After Communion:

When I am with my spiritual director, I do not want to talk about incidental things, I want to talk about Jesus. He is very close to Jesus and he knows so much that I do not know - I long to know more about Jesus.

When I receive Jesus in Communion, it is God Himself, and He unites to me in such an intimate, deep way. It is then He prints upon my soul deep knowledge about Himself. As I share in this intimacy with Him, a knowing He gives to me, a knowledge that cannot be acquired in any text.

He calls us to holiness. We cannot give in to our appetites and whims. We must realize that we will only be happy when we live according to His will. We must discipline our wills and seek only what He wants. As we are in our hearts, we will be in the world. If Jesus lives in our hearts, we are one in God. He lives in this world through us. He takes care of all our needs.

I had such an experience at Holy Cross-Immaculata Church reading the rosary meditations of March 17, 1995. I felt close to Him in my heart through these meditations. I felt the same way when I said the Stations.

Mt. 6:10

your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as is in heaven.

See Him adorned in white and standing in the town of Jerusalem. His hands, outstretched, the town behind Him, preaching. I see the rounded dome building behind Him.

We must identify with Him in every thing that we do. We must be conscious of Him at every second. As we are in our hearts, this is how we are in this world. The chains are removed and we are set free by His might. We are set free of all of our bonds when we stay rooted in Him. We feel as though we are flying above the earth. We are all children of the Father. We must spread His love to all the children of the world.

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Copyright © 1997 Shepherds of Christ Ministries
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First Printing: September, 1997