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to be great saints.</i> <i>Don't miss the opportunity!</i> Bill: Hello, family, and welcome to another episode of "Mother Angelica Live Classics." Mother will talk about "Living in a Dysfunctional World." And do we ever live in a dysfunctional world-- abortions by the thousands, killing babies in the womb after just being born, living relationships of all sorts, living in mortal sin. There is not one couple that I've known that has these live-in relationships that makes it. Not permanent. It's just having a good time, if I might say so. Stealing--and we blame, I think one of the worst faults we have, we blame everyone else for our problems. Yeah, we're going to have problems. We're going to have a lot of problems, but don't blame anybody else. Look inside your own heart. Look at yourself. What do we need to change about ourself? After all, we are the problem. What makes you worry about something that may not be any of your business? Even if it is your business, worry is not the answer-- prayer. Don't make it a problem. Prayer--give it to the Lord Jesus and let Him heal you. Here's Mother Angelica to talk about "Living in a Dysfunctional World." Mother: Tonight I would like to know, what is your burden tonight? How hopeless are things in your life? It doesn't seem hopeful. We don't see an end in view. Tonight we want to find out why we don't see an end in view. Why do we arrive at that kind of condition in our lives? I thought I'd look at St. Paul, and I found that he was in a dysfunctional society, too. Well, we could leave it dropped; it don't matter. This is a program, you see, if something don't drop out of the ceiling, it's going to drop out of my book here. So in your case there's something that's going to go wrong that should have never happened on TV. It just happened--and we can relax and I don't need to worry about anything here. Oh boy! I would like to show you something about St. Paul. I think I lost my place. Oh well, we'll just take another place here. Here we go. In St. Paul, 1 Corinthians and he says--here's a man who had a fantastic conversion, phenomenal conversion, blessed by God, a man whose handkerchief healed people--they used to snitch his handkerchief and it would heal people-- a man who was absolutely wrapped in God. Now, let me tell you what he says here. It's 1 Corinthians 4:11. He said, "To this day we go without food and drink and clothes." I mean he was hard up. "We are beaten and we have no homes; we are cursed, we answer with a blessing. When we are hounded, we put up with it." Now, I'm going to stop here a minute--"We are insulted and we answer politely. We are treated as the scum of the world even to this day, scum of the earth." Now, we have to ask ourselves a question. St. Paul was abused. If you were to say to Paul if he was sitting here and you could say, "I'm abused." He could say, "So was I." You would say to him, "But I'm hungry," and he would say, "So was I." "And I have no one, no friends," and he would say, "Neither did I." You would say, "I'm insulted; I'm offended" and he would say, "Well, so was I." So why is a difference now between Paul--who suffered a lot of the things that everybody suffers today --and not only that, the persecution that we have today, are little insults. "Mother Angelica is behind times. She's pre-Vatican." We've got a lot of saints pre-Vatican. Did you know that? I mean we must have thousands of saints; they are all pre-Vatican. I'll buy it. Whatever they have, I'll take it. Now, you get these little jibes every so often, you know. But there's nobody threatening to throw you before a lion--well, at least not yet. When they said "persecution," they weren't talking about words badgering back and forth. They were talking about being put up and lit, set afire or their heads cut off or thrown before a lion. That fear was so constant they had to hide in catacombs. So now we've got to ask ourselves, "How did they make it and we get so in such despair and disheartened?" Tonight you call me and tell me what puts you in that despairing mode. What are you disheartened over? What are you disheartened about? I want to think the little thing more here with St. Paul, "We are in difficulties"--this is 2 Corinthians now. This poor man had a problem, didn't he? "We are in difficulties on all sides but never cornered." This is also the 4th chapter. "We have no answer to our problems but we never despair." Well, here we're talking about despair tonight. "We're persecuted, never deserted; knocked down, never killed." Now, if you look at these 2 passages, you will find the reason why we don't react in the right way to all these horrible things going on in the world. In here St. Paul tells us that, he says here, "We answer with a blessing when they're cursed." When he worked and got nothing out of it, he was gentle. When he was hungry and beaten and had no place to go, he praised God. Now, if you'll look over here, you'll find out that he had terrible, terrible difficulties. He would go and he would preach to a whole group of people and maybe stay there 6 months, a year and as soon as he left, they start going down the drain. That's why we got these wonderful letters. So there was in the life of St. Paul, the almost same difficulties, same fears, same anxieties, same persecutions, same insult, same abuse. And yet he became a great Saint and he died. They cut his head off. Now, these people had a different outlook than many people today and the reason is in the beginning of Christianity I think the faith was so strong. Today, I think especially in America, our faith is terribly, terribly, terribly weak. Why? Because we constantly compromise; we are always compromising. We compromise everything. When you compromise, you remember, you always lose something. something. If you do it constantly, the first thing you wake up some morning and you have nothing. But the faith that the people had then--and we should have now--they knew there was glory and merit in their suffering. They knew that they were imitating the Lord Jesus. They knew there was a most wonderful place in store for them--but Jesus said that. So with all that in mind, they never despaired. I mean, they had the same things. Women in those days there were nothing--even in the Gospel it counted men. "There were 5000 men." They never even counted women and children. Now, you don't have that today. But a lot of people despair over that. Never despair. These things must come. Do you realize that Our Dear Lady, who must have known for a long time--especially since She read the Scriptures so much--what our Lord would go through, She never despaired. Why? Well I think the first thing we need to do is to see the Father's hand in everything, everything! Our Dear Lord is wonderful example of that. See Him in everything. Even before Pilate He said, "You don't have power over me unless it's come from Father, from above." We don't see God in everything. We think, "Well, if God is in everything, why doesn't He change it?" You and I, each one of us, has our own kind of purification. There's no way of getting rid of it. I think that this nation is in store for great purifications. I've been telling you that for year and I'm going to tell it to you for a few more years. Because of abortion, because of a lack of adherence, a lack of trust in God, this nation is no longer under God--we don't know what its under but its always under God--people are not faithful to the laws of God. So the more we drift away, the less able we are able to accept the persecutions, the abuse, the despair in the world, the wars and everything. We can't accept that. Why? Our hearts must be filled with God if we are going to live in joy and hope. That's why a Christian has to be head and shoulders over the world. Because when you have faith you see what nobody else sees. Everyone just sees headlines, sees terrible things going on. Everybody sees the wars; everybody sees the worst and the terrible things going on all over the world--the famine, the wars. It's nothing to do with you being arrogant. It's a real humility to know that this is all in the hands of God. Whatever is coming today-- not 20 years ago, not 30 years ago--today is purification from the Lord. We have created it. We create our own. If you smoke a whole carton of cigarettes today--I don't even know how you do that with that smoke coming out of your ears and your mother and everything else-- but if you did, you couldn't blame God for getting cancer now, could you? Mmm? What would it mean? It means that you must take the consequences of your actions. All the things that are going on in the world today --even those that are not at all responsible for any of this, we are all one body. We are all together. We're all sons and daughters of the same Father. Whatever anyone suffers, we are going to suffer. There is no way you can get away from it. But if we don't always keep our minds in Heaven and have joy in our hearts and know that we're all going to another land, to another place, if we don't understand that then I can guarantee that all the terrible things that are going on all over the world --not counting volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, the whole thing--you'll despair. There is no other way to go. We have a call. Hello. Male Caller #1: Hello, Mother Angelica. Mother: Yeah. Caller: We're from New York. Mother: Great. Caller: We love your show-- and continue the great work! Mother: Thank you. Caller: Mother Angelica, my wife and I, we have 3 children and we have one on the way in June. Mother: Praise God. Caller: We were just wondering what advice you can maybe give us. When my wife and I grew up the world was a much different place. There were a lot of family- oriented things going on and values and what-have-you. It just seems that as the world progressed--it's much more difficult now than ever, to try to raise your children properly. I was just wondering what type of advice can you give us. I am very concerned with what we can do to really try and put them in the right direction. And not only our children, but parents of other children, because I feel its so important because they're the future of our country and then of our world. Mother: How old are your children? Caller: One is 8, one is going to be 7, 3 and the baby coming in June. Mother: Praise God. Caller: Well, like I said, I'm just very concerned. I know when I was a kid that we could watch a lot of good family-oriented programs on TV. You could leave your house open and your car open and then you didn't have to worry or anything. There are all these drive-by shootings, and the lists goes on and on, with the drug problems and what-have-you. What can we do? I mean until the Lord comes and then changes it around and puts this world straight, what can my wife and I and all of us other parents out there, what can we do to contribute to trying to make our young people grow up and do well? Mother: Well, I think it's a process. First of all, you have to be those loving parents your children need to have amidst children who have no parents at all or parents who don't care. I think you have to raise them in the faith. You can no longer depend on Sister So-and-so because Sister So-and-so isn't there. You need to take that responsibility fully upon yourself. You and your family need to pray together for the simple reason that when children learn to pray young; they continue to pray when they get older. You be a yeast. You forget that your duty in today's world is to be yeast in this sourdough that is the world today. We have to have a new dough and a new yeast. The Lord will provide this new dough. But in the meantime you have to give example of being loving, caring parents. If you go to any school-- private or public--where your children are not taught good morals, then have home school. If they are not taught the right catechism, you teach them the new catechism. I think you have to take this very seriously. But never allow your wife or your children lose hope. Christians today have to have Christian hope. That hope is not centered in the world. The world is falling apart. You have to have your hope in the Lord, that even though everything seems so terrible, its in His hands. If it's in His hands, we do what we can with those around us in our neighborhood--we pray. Our Lady keeps saying over and over since 1917, "Pray the rosary. Pray the rosary." We're all so sophisticated today that we haven't the slightest idea that little rosary can change the world. Well, now we know, not saying that little rosary what it's done to the world. We have to understand our own responsibility and you do that. I think you have to take that responsibility on yourself because if you look around… I got a phone call the other day from a teacher who quit school because 2 students came at her with a gun. I can remember a Sister I had, a nun, and I would have liked to see someone go after her with a gun (audience chuckles) I would have liked to have seen that happen. That poor kid wouldn't have known what world he was in. He would have seen stars like nobody ever saw. But there are these dangers, these are terrible, terrible conditions. They're not going to get better--they look like they're getting worse. But we've got to be like St. Paul. If we're insulted, we answer with gentleness. If we're abused we… We have to accept the conditions of the world. We do all we can to change it within the scope, within that little world we're all in. We're all in a little world. I went to see my aunt in Philadelphia one time and I went more places when I went to see her than she went and she lived there for 30 years. All she had was her little neighborhood, which was Paschion Avenue. Everybody is like that. Most people, they live in a certain place in their little world. That's what you've got to change. That's what you have to pray for. I think if you train your children to understand that the thing that's going to change the entire world is prayer. We need to pray for our President. You need to pray for your governor. You need to pray for your marriage. You need to pray for all of these people that have responsibility--for priests, for bishops, for cardinals, for our Holy Father. Maybe if we prayed more things would be better. If you pray and you say, "Well, things are getting better," than we must humbly accept what isn't getting better with humility of heart. It's my purification. It's your purification. We have another call. Hello. Female Caller #1: Hello. Mother: Where are you from? Caller: I'm calling from Chicago. Mother: And what is your question? Caller: My fiancé and I have been living together for the last 4 years. And we didn't do it intentionally to just live together. We were eventually going to get married, and I didn't think at the time that I would ever be able to have children. But that kind of changed after about a year of being together. Now he's 2 and I have another one on the way. Now my fiancé has changed his mind about getting married right now. I feel so bad about it, but I didn't do it deliberately (tearfully) to hurt Our Lord or anything like that. But it was just I was thinking of myself at the time and nobody else. I have gone to church but no priest will listen to me. Mother: Well, sweetheart, you made a mistake. I know you didn't want to, but you know, you are suffering the consequences of this now. The consequences are there because--I hate to say this --but men are so awful. We had one the other night that said the same thing. He doesn't want to get married. Why does he want to get married? He's got everything he wants. But you see, honey, you can no longer live with this man. You can't live like you're a married woman when you're not. It's bothering you. Do you see what it's doing to you, sweetheart? You've got to really stop this relationship. It's hard saying this. You can't compromise. You're all torn up inside because you understand now after all these years and 3, 2 children, one on the way. You see you can't constantly say "no" to God. You have to start saying "yes" to God. You'd be better to live by you're the one that's making the money. Be better to keep your job. And you say, "Oh that's terrible to leave him." Is it not better to leave someone than to lose your soul? I don't think your intention was to hurt God, but you hurt God. I wish I could have you right here and give you a big hug and dry your tears. I wish I wasn't so far away. I wish I could just give you a hug. Maybe somehow, through God's grace you'll feel that hug. But the hug I would like to give you is to assure you that God will forgive and forget. You owe that to your children. This man is wavering and if he loves you, marriage should not be a hard thing. Maybe that's what you're not able to face. You've loved him and you've been sincere and you've given him everything you have. It's time now to stop. It's time to say, "I've had enough. "I'm not going to offend God. "I'm not going to offend this temple of the Lord. I'm not going to offend my children." Your children deserve that. You've brought them into this world--an example of love, purity, goodness and charity, an example of God. There are no other words I can tell you. That's why I wish I could give you a hug and assure you of His love and compassion. But number 1, you need to go to Confession. Number 2, you need to end this relationship or get married. If he doesn't want that, show him the door. You must, if you are going to give yourself to anyone, do it in the Sacrament of Marriage. You are already are the breadwinner. The Lord will bless you and maybe wake him up. Men have a terrible habit of taking advantage of weak women. Be strong. Ask Jesus to help you and He will. I will pray for you and your husband--well not really husband, hopeful husband. Don't wait too long. Get your soul in order. We never know when the Lord will come. Let's be ready. We have another call. Hello. Female Caller #2: Hello. Mother: Where are you from? Caller: Mother Angelica. Mother: Yeah. Caller: Maureen Mallow from Middletown, Rhode Island. Mother: Okay. Caller: My daughter was murdered on the 4th of January and her husband set her on fire. Mother: Oh, dear Lord. Caller: And she came home to me with her little 6½ year old boy. Her legs were burnt. She looked like a mummy when she came home so badly burned. January 4th she had to go to the trial. When she went to the trial, into the courtroom, her husband shot her in the head and shot her in the chest and she was dead. She was shot at 8:30 and at 11:30 I was praying the rosary with EWTN, and that's when she died. My son called and had a priest give her her Last Rites before she died. Mother, it's been the Lord Jesus that has held me together and Our Beautiful Lady. I just want to witness to the world how evil this world is and so much violence in the world. I've had the media here and the papers and the Lord has just carried me all through this. I offered it all up for you and EWTN and everyone that supports EWTN. Everyone thinks I'm a little crazy and I know Jesus and Our Beautiful Lady, Mother, loves me very, very much. Mother: Yes, She does. Do you have the child? Caller: Yes, my grandson, we had to hide my grandchild but he was caught and he's coming up for trial. Please have everyone pray for justice in this man. He is only 23 years old. My daughter was 30. Just have everyone please pray for God's justice. Mother: Did she have any children? Caller: Yes, one boy, 6½, Mother. Mother: And you have him? Caller: Yes. Mother: Thank God for that. I thank God for you in this terrible tragedy--the very thing that people read every day and just get so full of despair. You proved tonight what I couldn't possibly have proven. No matter what I said, you proved that in the midst of a terrible, terrible tragedy and injustice, you followed Jesus as He was on the cross. If people say you're crazy, from the world that's a compliment. The world doesn't know what its doing. Doesn't know what its all about. You've done the most magnificent thing, and I want to thank you for offering up all that terrible tragedy for ourselves here and all our EWTN family. Thank you for your courage and your strength and thank you for thinking of us. Maybe that's why the Lord has blessed us, for people like you who have had a terrible thing happen and forgive. Come through it without bitterness or despair. If we didn't have a lot of time I think the program could have ended because there is no better witness. As Christians today with all this commotion going on all the time there's where you have a marvelous opportunity to witness like this woman. Yeah, we have compassion and we have empathy, we reach out. But it can never enter into that place where despair. Despair is never of God. Despair you lose hope. I means there is nothing you can do--the world is at its worse. It's going to keep getting worse and that's terrible. We have made it worse. We're the ones that condone abortion. We're the ones that condone crime and sex and no marriage. All the things we condone. We don't have the courage to stand up and say, "This is wrong and this is sinful." Oh, we never talk about sin anymore because we don't love enough to tell the truth. How many people do you know are willing to tell you the truth? How many people love you enough to say, "Sweetheart, you're ruining yourself and jeopardizing your eternal salvation? Now, stop it, will you?" This is the world of human respect. It's like a little boy running, getting near a cliff and his father don't want to protect him because if he tackles him, he'll scratch himself. So he just runs all the way down the cliff and kills himself. That doesn't make any sense. You know what human respect is? You don't know? Human respect is, if I have something to tell you, that I know you are not going to like but it's true--some harm you are putting yourself in, some danger you are putting yourself in or some error you are in or some heresy you're in--and I don't tell you the truth and the reason I don't tell you the truth is because I am afraid you will think ill of me or you won't love me anymore or whatever. That's human respect, which means I am more concerned about your love for me or your respect for me than I am for your salvation. That's dangerous. That means you don't love the law. I can tell you one thing, I love you all very much and I'm going to tell it like it is because I want you in Heaven. And I'm not going to let you go somewhere else. We have another call. Hello. Male Caller #2: Yes, Mother Angelica. Mother: Yeah, where you from? Caller: I'm from Indiana. My name is John. Mother: And what is your question? Caller: Well, I have a comment and I'd like to, since the program is on despair, I'd like to offer like an antidote to despair. Mother: Good! Caller: This is my 11th year anniversary of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. Mother: Good! Caller: One of the things that I learned through all of the despair prior to my getting into Alcoholics Anonymous and returning to the Church was the benefit of prayer. Mother: Yeah. Caller: And I'd just like to share for all those 12-step people out there the 11th step, and I think it says it all. "It is sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscience contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge for His will for us and the power to carry that out." I'll tell you that's carried me through a lot of times when I could have despaired about sobriety; I could have despaired about my faith and a whole lot of other things. Mother: Right. Caller: One of the things that I do remember in all of my travels, you know, a visit to the Sistine Chapel back in the '60s. In the painting behind the altar by Michelangelo, in the lower right hand corner as you face the altar, there is a man sitting and he is the embodiment of despair. Mother: Right. Caller: I'll never forget that and I don't want to feel that way again. God bless you! Mother: Well, thank you. Caller: I love your program! Mother: Thank you. Caller: And I'd like to hug that lady from Chicago, too. I understand what she's going through. Mother: I know. I think we all want to hug her. But that's true. You see, without prayer you can't--and that's why the Rosary is so important. I don't care if you are Catholic or Protestant. I don't care what you are or who you are, you ought to say it. The reason you ought to say it is because it's a simple, simple prayer but it's powerful! Why is it powerful? God made it so. I don't have to know why. We always think we have to know why. Why this? Why that? Why this? Why, why? Why do you got to know why? Here it is. Do you see how simple that is? Just imagine that if we had all said this since 1917, none of this would have happened--how terribly simple. I hope you feel bad all you Catholics out there that haven't said a Rosary--you don't even know what one looks like anymore. I bet its somewhere in one of your chest of drawers, way in the back. Why don't you go get it tonight before you go to bed? See how rusty it is. I had a woman show me her rosary was silver but it was all tarnished. And she said, "Oh, I got to clean this." And I said, "Oh, I know how you can clean it." (all chuckle) If you had been saying it all this time, it wouldn't be tarnished. So I would like you all to go--all you Catholics out there that haven't said a Rosary in years--don't blame it on your priest because he won't let you say it before Mass, after Mass or in between. Are you deaf and blind that you can't go in your room and say it by yourself? This little thing here and its small huh, would have saved this whole country from being in and this whole world for being in the rotten shape it's in--but it is not too late. Start. Start tonight. We have another call. Hello. Male Caller #3: Hello, Mother. Mother: Where are you from? Caller: Pennsylvania-- Ringtown, PA. Mother: What's your question? Caller: Mother, I work in what is called the Student Assistance Program. I work with about seven different school systems in a small county in the Pennsylvania here. I'm dealing constantly with children everywhere from the ages of 8th grade up through 12th grade with--suicides, self-mutilation, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse. You name it, I mean I deal with it--kids who are really, really hurting. Really in a lot of pain comes from very dysfunctional families where there is a lot of pain. I guess my question is how do I keep--it's not that I despair but I find myself getting a real negative kind of an outlook. I'm trying to help these kids and half the time you run into a brick wall. I do pray for them at times but within the field itself, I guess it seems like a lot of professional people themselves have, shall we say a lack of faith. They are either agnostic or like atheistic in their belief systems. I really struggle trying to get across to these people that there is a God and just like you were saying earlier, He is in control of things. I find myself even doubting at times, when I deal with this day in and day out. Tomorrow I have to go out. A little girl was killed, run over by a car. I'm going to go into an elementary school and try to deal with those issues-- deal with the family and deal with those kids. St. Augustine, going all the way back to him it talked about if there's a good God, how could there be such evil? And I look at the issues, these kids and the pain and I, myself, am in pain trying to deal with it. Mother: Yeah. I think what you need to do is what Mother Theresa does --she sees the worst kind of poverty, leprosy, people alive being eaten up by maggots, the worst of humanity in every part of the world. I think a person like you-- and I address teachers, priests, religious, parents --you must see Jesus in all of this. In all of this you must see Jesus; otherwise, you will despair. You will become disheartened and you lose your faith. You must see Jesus in that abused child. Then when you see Him in that child your love for that child will come out and that will be the healing element, not what you say. You see a wino or a beggar and you see these children coming and they've black eyes and they're abused-- see Jesus crucified with the black eye and abused. "What you do to the least, you do to Me." You above all people--all you social workers and teachers--Mother Teresa is that great example for you. She never despairs. She has on her face that serenity that comes from constantly saying these little beads. She never forgets Who's in charge. She's never forgotten where these children are going. How many lepers had she held in her arms and sent off to the Kingdom. If you look only at the horror of what's going on, you lose hope and faith. But if you take a hold of that abused child and even though they may be hard and callus because they've had to fight to survive… I didn't know God for a long time. I was busy surviving. Survival is the rule. Survival the law. You don't have time to think of God and pray. What good would it do--or at least that's what you thought at the time. That's how these kids think. But I've often wondered what I would have done if a sister or a priest or anyone for that matter, would have put their arms around me and said "Hey, have courage. "There is a God and He loves you. "Don't despair. Let's work on this together." I'm convinced that it isn't that bowl of rice that Mother Teresa gives-- anybody can give a bowl of rice. There's that part of Jesus in her that sees Jesus in that destitute, desperate, diseased individual. When Mother Teresa came here one time she said the poverty in America was much worse than India--not physical, not hunger--but the spiritual poverty. I attest to that. I attest that the spiritual poverty in this country is an abomination. You can pick up a leper in his destitute and pain, make him reach out to you in love, in gratitude but there is no desperation in the worldly, in the calloused, the hard. So, you be even greater than Mother Teresa. You must give even more love and more compassion. You must not only be Jesus to these children, they haven't seen any Jesus yet in this whole wide world. It's nothing but rot and pain and suffering. That's all they know. It's not their fault, either. Think of this little body who is bruised and hardened because it has no love, no joy. See Jesus. If you and I don't see in everything that happens-- good bad or indifferent-- I will not be purified or sanctified and I will not help to sanctify others. If I am as blind as they are, then it is the blind leading the blind, isn't it? You can't afford to be negative. You can't afford to lose faith. Your faith must increase with every new child you see that needs help. And yeah, they don't listen-- because sometimes they listen, they've been done in. They are streetwise. It doesn't take long to get streetwise. So it takes from you love and patience. Maybe that's how God is going to sanctify you. But that's what they need. More than anything else in the whole world, they need your love and your compassion. And you need to pray, not once--I think I heard you say "once in a while." (snicker) I've got news for you sweetheart, that's not enough. You've got to do it all the time. In your car going from one school to another school, you ought to really pray. If you don't, you're not going to make it. I don't mean you have to be praying "Hail Mary," "Hail Mary" all the time--it's a prayer in your heart. You have to really depend upon the Lord. That's what I mean. Anyway we have another call. Hello. Hello? Hold on…okay, we'll hold on. I want you to, all of you, to read St. Paul. Read St. Paul 2 Corinthians the 4th chapter and the 4th chapter in 1 Corinthians and find out why it is--I'll tell you right off the bat it's because we don't pray, we don't see Jesus in the present moment, we don't see Jesus in pain and suffering. We're kind of an alleluia people. Well, that's wonderful. We should sing alleluia in the midst of pain, if you really want to be a Christian. Some people can't do that. But there can be in all of us as Christians a love and a peace. If you are a Christian and you are despairing, who will be able to look up to you for an example? If you have made a mistake, then be courageous enough to handle it. Put your hand in the hand of Jesus and go on. Don't worry--He is not going to let you down. He'll never let you down. That's where St. Paul is. He says, "I'm cursed but I answer with a blessing." How do you answer? "I'm hounded"--he puts up with it--people after him day in, day out, day in, day out. Some of you have nagging wives. Some of you have nagging husbands. He said he puts up with it. He's beaten--how many times was he beaten? I forget. He's got the Perils of Pauline in here somewhere. (chuckle) Did you ever hear of the perils of Paul? Sure he was beaten up and scourged how many times? And he got thrown off a boat and in the ocean. And, oh golly, you just wonder how he survived. But he did. How? By prayer and by seeing Jesus in everything and everyone. That's the only solution to our problems. We're all going to suffer. We all suffer. Every time I think of a fetus being used for experimentation, I get the shivers all up my spine. It's just intolerable to think of a doctor whose hands were geared by God to heal, tearing apart a little baby. It's a strange world we live in. But what's going to heal it? God, prayer on our part. We have to be men and women of prayer and accept whatever purification the Lord gives the whole world. We're a part of it. We suffer with those who suffer; we laugh with those who laugh; we rejoice with those who rejoice; we cry with those who cry. We are brothers and sisters in the Lord. "What I do to the least, I do to Jesus." Keep your courage up, keep your hope up. Heaven's just around the corner. Bye now. (applause) ♪ ♪
