- We're gonna talk about
how love, authentic love, authentic love in our life is the only thing that
will heal broken love. That's it, that's the
only thing in life that will heal our broken loves. - [Ralph] Can't
you just feel it? The conflict is becoming
apparent in our culture. It reminds me of those
words of John Paul II, we're now living in
the final confrontation between the gospel
and the anti-gospel, between the Church
and the anti-Church, between Christ and
the anti-Christ. And if we don't choose
to know God's word and to believe God's word
and follow God's word, we're gonna be a sitting duck
for all kinds of confusion, all kinds of disorder. Those are really
important choices that
people have to make. - [Man] And these
choices are difficult. Who am I gonna marry? What kind of life
am I gonna live? How am I gonna raise my kids? What am I gonna do with my
time, my talent and my treasure? But I have to make
a choice today. Jesus says to each one of us, I came that you might have
life and have it to the full. The question is, do we want it? (inspirational music) - Hey welcome to another
week of The Choices We Face. We're so happy we could
share with you again. Some tremendously inspiring
words from Sister Miriam James from The Society of our Lady
of the Most Holy Trinity. Who spoke at our
annual gathering, Renewal Ministries
gathering we have each year, which you're all welcome to. Check it out on our website. Peter, Sister Miriam's
just a beautiful testim- witness really to the love of God and to
the healing power of God. - Yeah and she has a capacity
that really help people feel free to look at their own
wounds that they're carrying and to help take steps toward opening them self
up to the Lord. So I'm excited for our listeners
today because I do think they're gonna be blessed
- Yeah. - [Peter] by her story. - Let's listen. - So I'm gonna talk a
little bit about the process of healing and just
about what I would call facing our brokenness and
I'm going to borrow heavily from a mentor of mine, the
material of the mentor of mine, named Dr. Bob Schuchts. Dr. Bob Schuchts heads up
the JPII Healing Center in Tallahassee, Florida. He has a book in the
back called 'Be Healed'. It's a blue-green book. That is the number one book I
recommend across the country. Okay, so it's
called 'Be Healed', it's for sale in the back
and if they sell out today you can find it on Amazon. I'm gonna borrow a lot
from his material here, which is just really,
really wonderful stuff. And so, we're gonna talk about
how love, authentic love, authentic love in our
life is the only thing that will heal broken love. That's it. That's the only thing in life that will heal our broken loves. And so, wherever we
find authentic love, we find healing and you see
that very easily in the gospels. You see that when Christ
is encountering people, like we talked about
Peter earlier today, that authentic love brings
healing to broken love. So, in our life wherever
we find parts of our hearts that are disintegrated. So, if we're talking about
holiness, my dear friends, and sanctity being wholeness. So that means I don't have
part of my life over here and part of this over here
and part of this over here and part of this over here. This whole thing as
Christ recapitulates all of salvation
history, he's calling, he's bringing all the parts
of our hearts together, all the parts of us
together, to make us whole. We're living out of
our identity, our
objective identity, and whatever subjective
experience you and I have, it's not going to mitigate
against the objective reality that I am his, I'm his daughter, we're sons and daughters of God. Any parts of our hearts that
we find are disintegrated, parts of our hearts that
are maybe living in lies or have parts of our hearts
that are just don't believe. Which is one of the reasons why I love this story of
where Christ comes
to encounter Thomas. (laughs) Because he comes
to heal him of his doubt, which is really beautiful. And don't all of us
have doubts in our life? We have doubts about who God is, who we are, what life is about, and so Jesus comes
to heal our doubt. So all the parts that
are disintegrated, Jesus comes to bring
us into wholeness. So we're gonna talk a
lot about authentic love because it's only authentic
love that heals broken love. And when we talk about love we're talking about to will
the good of the other, right? To bring the other
in to communion, to will what is good for them. So, God is always willing, he wills what is good for us to bring us in to his
own beautiful life, his own beautiful heart. I wanna talk a bit about story because see, story
is very important and I guarantee
you that you know as we talked about how
we all have a story and stories have many
chapters to them. And so, if you look
at any good story, if you think right now
of your favorite story, you have a hero of this story, you have a protagonist, an
antagonist, you have a mission. The story's going somewhere. It's on a journey
so, for example, one of my favorite stories
is 'Lord of the Rings' okay. So here, this ring has been
given to Frodo and Sam, these little hobbits. That ring is not given to
elves or dwarves or to men, it's given to these
little hobbits and they're set
out upon a journey which they have no idea what
they've signed up for. (laughs) And how many times I was
saying this the other night? How many times in our life
do we have parts of our story where we say to ourselves, I did not sign up for this part. (laughs) Like, this,
yeah not this part, like not this part of marriage, not this part of the priesthood, not this part of Christianity, I did not sign up for that part. And so we have these
parts of our hearts, that kind of
mitigate against us. What's the response that
we're going to give? In all of this I wanna
say one thing to you. I'm all about
growing on maturity and I give you a lot of talks
on how to grow on maturity but one of the things
that my spiritual director often will say to me, which
I've really taken in to heart in a lot of ways. Many times in our
life, especially I
think as we begin to, and I'm going to
very reverently today look at some wounds
in our life, okay, and sometimes in our lives
we say, not unlike Job, but many times we say,
why did this happen to me? Why? Like, why did you
allow this to happen to me? Which is a very human
question, right? Many times we want to understand because we think if we could
understand, we could accept it. I think there's a
certain truth to that. If you've ever had something
happen in your life where you've said to yourself, I remember when my father was, when I was in Rome as a novice, the phone rang one night and
you know when the phone rings at night it's usually
never good news. I remember being upstairs
in my room in Rome and I heard the
phone ring downstairs and nobody ever called us
in the middle of the night. I can't explain it to you but I just had this kind of
sick feeling in my stomach, like mmm this is not good, and five minutes later my
superior came up to my room and she had tears in her eyes and I could see them cause I
could see in the streetlight had the tears were
glistening in her eyes. She said, Sister your mom
and dad are on the phone, and I said, okay. So I went downstairs and
I picked up the phone and I knew whatever it
was, was not good news. My mom, it was my mom, and
my parents were very healthy. Actually my dad retired
early to do volunteer work for my religious community. They're just wonderful
people, wonderful people. It was my mother on
the phone and she said, honey your dad went
to the doctor today, their actually
volunteering at a mission it wasn't even their
regular doctor. She said, your dad went
to the doctor today and your dad is very sick. And I said how sick is he? She said he was diagnosed
with pancreatic cancer today. That was fat Tuesday, it was
the day before Ash Wednesday and we buried my dad
on Ascension Thursday. I remember coming home when I
was 24 and saying to myself, this is the worst thing that has ever happened
to our family. Like, this is, well one of 'em. It was like one of
the worst things that had ever happened
to our family. I remember thinking,
my dad's a good man. Like he's like, Lord have
you noticed him (laughs) cause he's like a really
good man and he retired early to do volunteer work for
you, like, who does that? You know, like, who? And they would pay for all
the repairs for our convent out of their own pocket and
they just gave and they serve and my mom is President of
Legion of Mary and brings communion to the shut in. You know and we had all these
holy priests pray over my dad and I really thought, I was not unlike the Disciples
on the Road to Emmaus, I really thought God
was gonna heal my dad. So many people
prayed for my dad. They had novenas of
masses prayed for him. Everybody came and
prayed for my dad and we were at the
hospital that night and it was very interesting because the journey
started with my mom and I and it ended with my mom and I. We were there in the
hospital the night he died. I remember just the
room was very quiet. They took him out
of intensive care and they put him
upstairs in a room and it was just the three of us and my mom and I began
to pray The Rosary and as we finished The
Rosary and as we said amen, my dad went home. There was something very
beautiful about that moment. It's still one of the most
beautiful and one of the most sorrowful moments
in my entire life. I just remember sitting
there in the stillness and realizing at that moment, and not like in a pious way
because we were in deep grief, but remembering and
seeing for the first time that God did heal my dad. Took him home. At his funeral we had the
reading that where Jesus says, I'm going ahead of you to
prepare a place for you. So I remind my dad of that a lot and like don't forget me, okay
cause I (laughs) you know? But something else that
happened that night is my mother and I had a huge
healing in our relationship. Because as I told you
before in the earlier talk, my mom and I were
not getting along. We had so much, I was very
broken, she was broken and we were transmitting our
brokenness onto each other and so out of that,
as you know very well, when you're taking care
of somebody that's dying it makes life very clear,
very quickly doesn't it? You just do not have
time for such nonsense. So my mother and I had a huge
healing in our relationship that began during that
time and it just continued. It's continued the 17 years
since my father has passed away. I can look at that situation, and even though we still
miss my dad to this very day, when I visit my mom at home I still will expect my dad
sometimes to come downstairs with coffee, you know
just those little things where you're like oh,
he's having coffee where he belongs but
(laughs) you know we miss him but I can honestly
say that there are threads. So, the threads of God's will, the threads of God's
plan that I can see. I can see that something that
was so epically sorrowful for our family, that I can see
these golden threads of like, wow had that not happened,
this wouldn't have happened. Have you had those moments
in your life, okay. But I do, so many times, we say God why did you
allow this to happen? And so we have, just cause
we're so little, but we have these little understandings
of kind of God's plan. But I really do believe
there's certain things in life that we will not understand
until we see God face-to-face. When we finally see him
face-to-face-to-face with unveiled faces
as Saint Paul says, we will gaze upon him
with unveiled faces, we will finally
see as we are seen and known as we are known
and all will be made clear. And I think there'll be
many things in our life where we will say, oh. That thing that I rallied
against you my whole life about was the one thing,
one of the very things that actually saved me. The things that we
have in our life and so my spiritual director
will often say to me, Sister Miriam, he said,
the question in your life is not why did God
allow this to happen, the question in your life
is how will I respond? So that's the true reason, the truly mature
spiritual person, the truly spiritually
mature person, does not sit in the
question of why, they sit in the question
of how will I respond? Because if God is good,
if we believe the premise, that if God is good that he
will bring all things to good out of what has
happened in our life. As we talked about, in the
divine economy of salvation, nothing is wasted. So, Saint Augustine says, God
will not allow anything to happen in your life that he does not plan to
bring something even greater out of, that he gives
us beauty for ashes. There's nothing that's
beyond his redemption. There's nothing
beyond, in our lives, is beyond his redemption. He's going to bring
authentic love in to our life and what that love does is
that love resurrects us. I was listening this morning
to a praise and worship song and the chorus of the song
says the resurrected King is resurrecting me. (laughs) I was like,
amen bring it on. Like, bring on the
resurrection, you know? The resurrected King
is resurrecting me. And so he's coming in to our
life and he's bringing us authentic love and what
authentic love does is it heals the cold parts of our
hearts, the calcified parts, the parts that remain in
doubt, the parts that remain in self reliance and self
righteousness and all the ways we try to make ourselves right. Which if you've ever
tried to do that is exhausting, isn't it? It really is exhausting to
continually try to prove to God why he should love us. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. Because what we find
at the end of the day is that we're lovable
because he loves us. It all just seems too
simple, doesn't it? Like, it can't be
that easy. (laughs) All beautiful things I
think are really simple, like God it ultimately is
very simple, very simple, and how he loves us and
so I think if I could just kind of illustrate this with
a story, we talk about story, let's talk about narrative. One of my favorite
stories is a story that's a tale as old as time, is called Beauty and the Beast. Beautiful story of a girl,
a lovable but a funny girl named Belle, who is in a
small French countryside who just wants more out of life. She just wants more. And so there's a wonderful
part in the story and it's in every
version that you see, whether it's on Broadway,
whether it's the cartoon or the live action version
of Beauty and the Beast, where she's just
kind of had enough of the smarmy man named Gaston who is pursuing her
and she runs out in to the clearing
of this mountain and she has a beautiful
Sound of Music moment because you know well,
every musical leads back to The Sound of Music.
(audience laughing) So she is out in the
hill and she says this, she just sings from
the top of her voice, from the depths of
heart, and she says, I want adventure in the
great white somewhere, I want it more than I can tell and for once it would be grand
to have someone understand, I want so much more than
they've got planned. She goes back to her
dad and she asks her dad and she says, dad am I odd? And her dad's a bit
eccentric himself and says, is my daughter odd why
would you say that? She says, well the
town people says so. And he says, they say that
because they're small minded but let me tell you something, there was once a woman
that people considered odd until one day they found
themselves imitating her. She walked forward
towards her father and she says to her father, tell me one more
thing about my mother, tell me on more thing about her, and he looks at her and says, you're mother, she was fearless. She was fearless
and what we find out is that when her mother, in Paris at that time when
the plague was ravaging Paris, her mother became
sick with the plague and rather than have her
husband and her child die, she sent them away so
that they could live. Cause that's what
mature love does, mature love wills
the good of the other and you see already in
Belle, this mature love. How her love, her
heart is different. She desires an epic adventure, and she desires authentic love and she desires a life
that's worth living. So you know, the story of she comes in to
contact with a beast and this beast was a man, a very narcissistic
self-centered man, who had the world at
his fingertips but
his heart was cold. And you see a woman shows
up to the castle one night and all she wants is
one night's shelter from the cold winter
and he mocks her and he makes fun of her and
he won't give it to her. And she offers him one rose in exchange for just one
night stay of shelter and he will not let her do
it and he makes fun of her. At that moment when he sends
her away, when he rejects her, she changed into a sorceress
and she cast a spell on the entire castle, now
everything that's inside of him that's already there
is now on the outside. Now I don't know what
your worse sin is or what you struggle with or
what you're most ashamed of but could you imagine
that if that was that, what's on the inside
of most of us, all of us have those
parts of our hearts, let's be really honest. Imagine is that's now on the
outside for everybody to see. And he's become a beast, what he was already inside
is now it's outside, it's manifested. You see, when people struggle
with that kind of shame there's a lot of anger
that comes out of it. People that are very angry a lot of times what's at the
heart is deep fear and shame. But it's manifested in anger
that's often destructive or it's passive-aggressive but so you see he's
very full of shame inside for his behavior. It's like these things
about him that he is broken and that he can't help
in a certain respect but also that he
keeps indulging. So like, there's this wound, it's such a great
analogy for our lives, and so as you know very well
she comes in contact with him and he comes in to
contact with her and what they realize
is that she realizes that that's not really who he
is and they each have a moment of self sacrificial love. Where she saves him, he
saves her and she saves him, actually he saves her twice. And she realizes that at
the heart of who he is, is not a beast but he's
a man worthy of love. And at the end of this, and if I'm spoiling
this story for you, I don't even know where
you've been your whole life, okay I just wanna say
that right now, (laughs) (audience laughing) if I'm ruining Beauty and
the Beast for you, wow, okay. At the very end of the story
he gives his life for her and as you know the prophecy
of the sorceress said once the last rose petal falls, that everybody in the castle
will remain the same forever. There is no hope of redemption. No hope of restoration and
only love can heal this curse. But the tagline of the
whole movie, it says, who could ever love a beast? So what we find out at
the very end of the movie as he gives his life for her, the beast gives his life for her and as the last rose petal
is falling off the rose, she finds him at the
top of the castle and she speaks out
her love for him and she says, I love you. As the rose petal is falling
her words are falling also. They come out of her mouth and they cascade down upon him
and they penetrate this deep, thick furry beast-like,
you know, exterior and they penetrate to
the depths of his soul and her words get there before the last rose
petal hits the ground and they resurrect him. One of the best resurrection
scenes in cinematic history is The Beauty and the Beast,
I'm telling you, okay? Because what happens is her words penetrate
the depths of his soul and as that happens he begins
to resurrect and light, light just shoots out from him. It shoots out from his
fingertips, from his eyes, from his heart and it literally
lifts him off the ground and he's being transformed
from this beast and he's being
transformed into a man and he's restored as a man but he's not the man he was,
he's a man who's authentically loved, who knows who he is. And when he lives in
that kind of love, the kingdom is
restored, what happens? When the beast is restored,
the kingdom is at peace. And it's her love
that heals him. So there is nothing else in
our life, my dear friends, that is going to heal us. It is not lust, it is not
recognition, it is not degrees, it is not money, it is not- there's nothing else in our
life that will heal broken love other than authentic love. And this is what God offers
to us at every moment. This is what God offers to us through people that
authentically love us. I don't know if you've ever
had a moment in your life where, I know many
times in my life as especially in the beginning
stages of healing for me when I had secrets that I
had never uttered before. There's a wonderful saying
in the 12-step group, this 12-step meeting is
one of the best ones, and they say we're only
as sick as our secrets. We're only as sick
as our secrets. And I had a lot of
secrets, I mean, you know, marriages have secrets,
families have secrets, churches have secrets,
and secrets as we know, the dark ones destroy, they
become very destructive. So I had a lot of secrets and
I remember part of my journey was just finally speaking
out those secrets. I was sure, I was sure and you
know you don't speak out your secrets to everybody. I mean you hear me
sharing my story with you and I'm very honest
about my story but I can also tell you
there's part of my story that will never be
uttered in public, right? So like, you speak your story
to people who can receive it, people who can bear
the weight of it, people where in your own
journey of where you can reveal your story and I know for
myself at the very beginning of my story and I was
revealing my story to a very wise woman who
God had sent in to my life to help me and I actually
couldn't speak it out loud. I couldn't utter the
words of the things that had happened to me, the things that I
had done in my life. So for an entire year, this
might seem silly to you, but for an entire
year all I would do is I would email her
once a week with a different installment
of my story. (laughs) And I would tell her,
okay well when I was 11, this is what happened and this is the story
of what happened. Just as I am typing those
words on the computer, that was the first time
I had gave an utter what had happened to me. And she would read that
and she would receive it and she would respond and
our journey continued, then. So it's a process
of speaking out, right, the secrets of our life. The dark parts of our hearts. I was very convinced every
week, it was very funny, and this is how God loves us, his love is so beautiful for us, the people that he
sends in to our life, that we call it
Jesus with skin on. The people that come in to
our life that just love us. Cause I was so convinced, not just with her but also
just parts of my story when I started to
speak it out verbally and maybe new areas of my life or even areas of my life now
that I find that I'm like, oh my gosh it's so embarrassing I can't believe I still
struggle with that or whatever. And telling somebody that
and you think for sure, well this is the part of the
story where there gonna be like so disgusted with me, they're
not gonna want to talk to me anymore, you know? Or this is finally the point
where the person in your life says, alright well,
that's enough. I've just had enough of you,
I'm just, ugh, ugh, you know? And unfortunately we have
people that, that happens with but with people that
authentically love us never, ever, ever do that. And I've been so
convinced many times, okay when I finally
tell this person this they're going to be
disgusted with me and I can't tell
you how many times I would finally tell the secret,
I would tell the struggle, I would tell the shame and I would look at
that person in the eye and they were just
looking at me with complete and total love. Complete and total love. When you know that you're loved, we only heal from what we
feel safe to heal with. So this is why the
healing journey continues, this is why love continues as the shores of love are shored up
so-to-speak, right, and the rivers of love flow, the deeper the love goes, the deeper the roots
of the tree go, the more that the
tree can bloom. So love is always deepening, healing is always deepening
and I think, honestly if I were to be very
honest with you and just as a religious Sister, you become by default
in a sense a leader and people are looking to you. And so I hear, like I said,
I hear stories from people all over the nation. I hear stories all the time and I hear stories from people
from every walks of life. I hear stories from
leaders in the church. I hear stories from priests. I hear stories from
religious sisters. A lot of them who
have addictions, that are really struggling, that have nobody else to talk
to and there's an unfortunate kind of reality a lot
of people buy in to is that if I'm a leader in the church then I
can't have any problems. If I'm the leader in the church then I can't admit
that I need help. If I'm the leader in the church, I can't admit that I'm still
in my day struggling with doubt or I'm still having this or I can't be accountable
to anybody, like, if I'm a leader I
can't be vulnerable. I'm telling you right
now, my dear friends, that is death to
leadership. (laughs) Because it might not be
where you're out in public telling your whole story
and I don't recommend that, you know, I don't, that's
certainly a marched call for certain people. But you and I must
have people in our life as leaders in the church, you and I must have
people in our life that love us as people. They just love us. That can hear our story, that we can be accountable to that call us up in to glory that are with us on the journey. Christianity is meant to
be lived as a fellowship. And it's not just a
gathering of bodies but a gathering of
hearts, you know? So, I just want to say
that, just as a caveat, because I think it's very
easy, I know for myself I went back to
counseling this last year just because I needed some
extra help in certain areas and I tell you I can
see that in myself. Saying, Lord have mercy girl, (laughs) you've been
working on this a long time are you really gonna go through
yet another layer of it? And that was like, that was a
lot of my own stuff coming out right there and I could
see the truth, thank God. I'm like no, this is what I
need and I'm gonna go for it. And here we are, right? So you and I, no matter where
we find ourself in leadership, we must have people in our
life that have permission to speak in to our life and
that we can be people with. That we can have
no pretenses with. Okay, so, we just
wanna kind of go there as we talk about authentic love. - You know Peter, I'm so happy
to hear about the healing processes that Sister Miriam
James has gone through and is going through and the way the lord has
given her spiritual directors and counselors and people that
she can reveal her heart to and love her but
there's a lot of people who don't have that
available to them, you know? Like the Catholic church
right now in many places isn't a communion of hearts
it's a communion of bodies and people are isolated
but I know at the same time people can look for the kind
of help they need and get it. - Yeah, I mean I'd say if
you don't know of anybody, I'd say begin to pray and
just ask, Lord help me. Help me find somebody and other
people who I can speak to, who I can trust the rest of it. You might be able
to find someone, almost every parish has at least pockets of people
- Yes. - [Peter] or people
working the parish. It can be the pastor himself, who can be a source of helping
direct and give some advice. I think there's some
wonderful ministries out there like Unbound Ministry, where that's really
grown across, it's a simple five step prayer. What ends up happening is
people are in a safe environment where they can receive prayer for a place where they
can describe the battles, the wounds, the hurts
that they're dealing with and they can receive
prayer for that. And then those people often
also know other people who are on the process
in the road to healing and are experiencing
the kind of grace of God and you start coming in to
a living community of people who are growing in the Lord. I think she makes a
really great point, Ralph, about the importance
of authenticity,
kind of transparency and there's a risk. Is there anybody in the world, the question you raise, is
there anybody in the world that would be willing from
their heart to hear my story or - And stand, still love me-
- hear what I'm battling with, - and still love me
- Yeah, right. - [Peter] and not judge me. Sometimes that is true,
it's hard to find people but sometimes there are people
like that but we hold back - Yeah. - Because of the,
because we're afraid. We're just afraid - Right
- to take that step. - [Ralph] And you know, even
if there's no Unbound seminar being offered in their
parish they can get the book - Yeah. - by Neal Lozano
called 'Unbound' and go through it themselves and get a lot of help or
get a lot of freedom by- - I think Bob Schuchts' Ministry that Sister Miriam
- Yes exactly, - [Peter] works for to be healed - The book that she
recommend would also be good. - Look up Bob Schuchts,
Sister Miriam James and the work they're doing
- Yeah. - [Peter] and they
could help direct you. They could, they put on seminars - Yeah.
you can go to. - [Peter] They travel to
parishes and things like that. - So there are resources. There's resources they
can reach out to, yeah. Hey, we got a resource,
her name is Mary the Mother of Jesus, the
Mother of God, our Mother. I've written a
book that's called, 'Mary's Mission Our Response'
we'd like to make it available to you at no cost,
just for the asking, just go to our website,
renewalministries.net, click on the free booklet button and we'll get it
right out to you. We're not alone, even if we don't have a friend
right now we could talk to, we have some heavenly friends
that are very real friends and very much want
to be with us. Everything Sister Miriam
said particularly about the negative things in our
life that are permitted by God, they don't come from God, they come from the
evil of the world. God has a plan for
redeeming them. God has a plan for
bringing out good out of the most horrible
thing that we've ever suffered that other people
have done to us, or that we've done to ourselves. I wanna encourage you,
along with Peter Herbeck, to trust in Jesus. Say if I was standing
here and was told, just say that prayer,
Jesus I trust in you, Jesus I trust in you,
Jesus I trust in you. At times of great
crisis for the church and for humanity, God has
sent a very special messenger. When the New World is not
responding to the gospel, he sent Mary at Guadalupe. When Atheism was aggressively
growing in Europe, he sent Mary at Lourdes and the living
waters began to flow. When perhaps the greatest
crisis began to unfold the domination of the world
by an Atheistic materialism, which is still growing,
he sent Mary at Fatima. The world is again in danger, the church is again confused, and she is here
again to help us. I've written a booklet
about her and her role and her mission today and
we'd like to give it to you at no cost, just for the asking. Go to our website
renewalministries.net and we'll send it
right off to you. (uplifting spiritual music)
