St. Mary Parish Mission featuring Sr. Miriam James Heidland, March 7, 2021

good evening say mary oh that was so weak good evening say mary that's awesome you guys we're in for a street i've been so excited for you know these weeks that we've been knowing that sister is able to come to saint mary um i think the holy spirit brought her because i've been trying to get her for three years and she had a cancellation because of kovitz so she's here with us right so here's a little bit of her introduction okay so sister miriam james hydeland is a former division one athlete who had a radical conversion and joined the society of our lady of the most holy trinity s-o-l-t salt in 1998. her story has been featured on ewtn's the journey home s-e-e-k seek conferences the usccb convocations she's been there the steubenville conferences and other outlets she holds a master's degree in theology from the augustine institute and she speaks extensively on the topics of conversion authentic love forgiveness healing and sports so sister miriam's podcast is abiding together it's very popular podcast i know a lot of people here uh participate in that and she can also be found on itunes her book is called loved as i am and it's found on amazon i think we're also selling them out today so you guys grab one they're going like hotcakes okay she tweets at one groovy nun that's her thing at one groovy nun please join me in welcoming our wonderful sister miriam well good evening friends here we are together here we are together and as father mentioned um i i really believe it's providential i i just really believe it's providential that i'm here i mean we know that there's no such thing as coincidence ever but when things cancel and then i have something else that fits rightly in that same schedule i always have to wonder what is the lord doing and as i prayed for you i i give parish missions i've been speaking publicly for many many years now and i speak to thousands of people every year but i can tell you that i've never ever ever ever ever given the same exact talk twice ever and even when i give parish missions many times the content is similar but the person the parish mission is never the same because the people are never the same and so when i was praying for you and i was asking the lord you know lord what do you want me to tell your people like what do you want me to say to them what what do you want them to hear the word that kept coming to me over and over and over again was just the word healing healing which when we talk about healing is bringing your heart into wholeness bringing you home where you belong and there's many ways that the lord does that as he brings us into his heart but that's my my prayer for you is that because what's going to happen over the next few nights is i'm going to give three different talks and the talks will build on each other and we're going to go as you know we're going to go together on this little journey but i'm going to give you one talk and you're going to hear me audibly but every single one of you is going to hear something that just you need to hear because that's the holy spirit speaking to you and i can't wait i think it's so beautiful how the lord ministers right to you exactly where you are and most beautifully in ways that we don't even know that we needed have you ever been to something and you hear a talk or you visited a friend and you drive home and you're like i did not know how much i needed that and i think the lord wants to surprise us these next few days dear friends because he has deep his deep desire for us to bring us into wholeness to bring us into communion so what i'd like to do is something that i often do is i'm going to actually have you before we can have you stand up if you could if you can stand i'm gonna have you stand and i'm just gonna have you set anything down that you have in your hands so your hands are free and i'm just gonna have you stand up nice and tall okay i'm just gonna have you take a deep breath let's just take a deep breath all the way in and all the way out okay and i just want to invite you if you want to close your eyes just for a second and i just want to invite you just to speak to the lord for a few moments about whatever is on your heart what's on your heart this evening whatever it is i just want to give you a few moments just to talk to the lord very honestly about that okay i'm gonna have you take another deep breath all the way in and all the way out i just want to ask you just to ask jesus what his heart is for you this evening and just ask him say jesus what do you what do you want what do you want to do for me this evening what do you want to give me this evening what is his heart for you this evening and just let him speak to you for a second let's just take one more deep breath all the way in and all the way out and ask the holy spirit to fill us and holy spirit we just open our hearts to you jesus says we are here before you tonight we just ask that you would surround us in your sacred heart we ask that you would bring us home lord everybody watching on the live stream all of us that you would speak very deeply to each one of us in the way that we need it the most holy spirit melt our hearts any place that is frozen any place that is afraid we just ask you holy spirit to come into the depths of our hearts and we turn to you mother mary you who are all beautiful mother who are so kind we pray that you would intercede for us as your sons and daughters as we pray together as a family hail mary full of grace the lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb jesus holy mary mother of god pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen our lady queen of peace pray for us in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen you may have a seat i was mentioning to some of the parish some of the masses earlier today that i live in texas we affectionately call it the great nation of texas and i live in corpus christi which is very far south we live about four hours south of houston or seven hours south of dallas so it's very very it's on the gulf coast and right now it's 80 degrees okay so a few weeks ago it was not but that's a different story so it's 80 degrees now and we've reached the point to where we can no longer open our windows and we will have the air conditioner on until christmas right so we've kind of breached that point um but a few months ago i was at a retreat i was going on a retreat in austin texas which is about four hours north of where we live and it was the middle of november and in the middle of november it is still very common for it to be 80 degrees in the middle of november and so i was going to visit the art museum right before i started my retreat because i love art i love beauty and so i was driving into the city of austin and i'm not familiar with the city but the art museum that i was going to was on the campus at the university of texas in austin and so i'm driving the freeway there and i'm getting off the freeway and i'm just noticing as i'm going from stop light to stop light on on the side roads that i just started to notice there were massive amounts of tents and the overpasses under the overpasses in the freeway lots and lots of tents you know there's lots of homeless population especially in warmer climates and i just happened to notice there was just so many that i really i just it kind of just caught my attention until i got to the stop light to where i was going to make a left to go to the art museum and to my left right was another tent right off the side of the freeway but what caught my attention was this young man and he was probably about 24 years old and he had on white athletic socks and he had on cargo shorts and he had on a t-shirt and he had this kind of messy blonde hair that was pulled into this messy bun and i was watching him and what captivated me about him was that he was folding his blankets and i was watching he would shake out the blanket he would fold it very meticulously and then he would shake it out again it wasn't right wasn't quite right and he would shake out again he would fold it very meticulously and i noticed that he had another blanket that was already folded over his shopping cart and as i watched him do that so meticulously the thought that came to me was i bet his mama taught him how to do that and as i just watched him i just got kind of lost in thought and i thought to myself i didn't speak to him but i just was looking at him and i thought to myself man how did you get here how did you get to be probably 24 years old and living under an overpass in austin texas because i bet you when he was a little boy that wasn't the goal of his life and i just wondered about him and i thought is this an improvement is this is life an improvement from what it was or are his parents looking for him do his parents live like eight miles away and they're looking for him they haven't seen their son in a long time and i was captivated by him and then the light turned green and i turned left and i went to the art museum that day but i tell you that young man he lives in my heart and i thought to myself you know such a great question really of how did you get here have you ever wondered that you wonder how you get someplace like how do you get here i think we've all had moments in our life where we've driven to the work or we've driven home and we've been thinking about something very you know very seriously and we get home and we know that we left the grocery store or you know that you left work or you left school but you have no idea how you got home like it's because it's a different part of your brain actually that governs repetitive motion but we have moments where we're like i i know i'm here but i have no idea how i got here or have you ever been in a heated argument with somebody or you have a relationship that's kind of soured and you just kind of looked at that person either audibly or into your heart and you just said how did we get here what happened or moments of intense beauty where you experienced something incredibly wonderful that pierces your soul and makes you long for heaven and you say to yourself how did i get here and these questions that you and i have that sometimes they're disturbing for us because they unsettle us because it it it comes it's like where jesus comes into the temple of our hearts and he starts to overthrow the tables and we're like i don't know if i like this but yet in the same tone in the same token we ache for it and it's just always very interesting one of my graduate school professors he would often repeat the same thing over and over and over again until finally we started listening to what he was saying but one thing he would always repeat to us was actually the very first paragraph of the catechism and tonight what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the heart like why our hearts matter like why this matters and what the heart really is and in the catechism paragraph one it says this it says god infinitely perfect and blessed in himself in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life for this reason at every time and in every place god draws close to man and he calls man to seek him and to know him and to love him with all of his strength that god infinitely perfect and blessed in himself that god has no need of anything in a plan of sheer goodness freely creates man to share in his own blessed life which says to you and i to you sitting here this evening is that god has no other motive for creating you than other than to bring you into his own beautiful life none there's not compulsion he's not controlling that you are a spark of his goodness you are a spark of his beauty and the you that exist now will never exist again just the staggering dignity of the human person is overwhelming and it's for this reason for no other reason than that that he i love it because it says at every time and every place god draws close to man but he's drawing close to you and i which means that right now as we sit here we're sitting in a church that has the blessed sacrament so jesus christ body blood soul and divinity is is literally present within us and he's drawing close to us and he's drawing close to us and every time and every place he comes to us he's coming and he's coming and he's coming and he's coming because he loves us he loves us he has no other motive than that than for us to share in his own beautiful life and i think many times what happens is what this does this reality of this truth it challenges and thank god it challenges our view of god because it said that our view of god is not too big it's far too small and you see that today in the gospels about i love i love the gospels how jesus is always shattering the paradigm of who people think god is it's so wonderful and i hope to my si and i say that to jesus all the time please come and shatter the paradigms i have of you because i know they're too small and he comes and he he cleanses lepers and he touches them and he spits on the ground and he makes clay and he heals people and he raises the dead and he multiplies loaves and he heals the sick people that are the refuse of society that come and they touch him and they find healing and it's so beautiful it is that jesus it is that jesus that draws near to you and i right now right now and he's coming to speak the truth of who he is and who we are and he speaks to it he comes to meet us up here and like the generalities of our life he comes to meet us in the day to day he comes to meet us in the carpool that takes like 45 minutes and why does that still take 45 minutes we don't have any idea but it still does you know it's all the little things in life that we find so irritating where he comes to meet us right there and he comes to meet us in the mundane things of life the ordinary things of life he comes to meet us in the beauty of life and he comes to meet us in the sorrow of life he comes to meet you in your marriage he comes to meet you where your kids have left the church and you haven't seen it for 20 years he comes to meet you in the place where you have that secret that you've never told anybody and you're afraid that if you ever uttered it nobody would ever love you he comes right right there and it's so incredibly kind the way the lord pursues us how i just i love it even the language of the catechism that he draws near to us he draws near and if i were to draw near to i'm going to like step behind my outside my ambo here just let me see if my my mic works is it on can you hear me said okay how about now does that work is that better okay so if i were to if i were to draw near to you because even the language of drawing near to you is something a movement of grace it is a movement of kindness where the lord comes to us and he doesn't force himself upon us he doesn't kick the door in of our heart he doesn't come where he's not invited he gently comes to us he draws near to us and i love there's a catholic speaker that i love very much his name is father jacques philippe if you've ever heard father jacque philippe speak or read his books his books have sold over a million copies in 24 different languages he's a french priest and he's such a just a fount of wisdom and i was listening to him give a talk to some i'm just gonna use this mike i was listening to father jacques philippe give a talk to priest about 200 priests over the summer um for where the diocesan vocation director's meeting and he was talking about the priesthood and he was talking about the fatherhood of the priest but he was talking about the fatherhood of god and he said something there that i've been thinking about ever since and he said modern man he said modern man without god modern man is condemned to success because without god without a father he has no place to take his failures modern man is condemned to success because without god without a father he has no place to take his failures and do you have any place in your life if you're very honest with yourself where you feel condemned to success you better succeed because if you don't nobody's going to be there for you you better succeed because if you have any weaknesses this will happen you better succeed because in the past when this happened to you this was the outcome and in our hearts what happens is we we we close our hearts and we kind of muscle on through and we say we're fine and we show up and we do the things and the lord just comes into these deep places and he said that kind of father that kind of father is the father that when you come home there's a fire lit for you even the way he set it up there's a fire lit for you in the fireplace and there's a there's a table set with your favorite food and there's a seat there at the table that's just for you where the father says you know come in come in i'll take your jacket he takes your jacket off i'm waiting for you i've been waiting for you kid welcome home puts his hand on your face i'm so glad to see you come sit down come sit down tell me everything i want to hear i want to hear that place of welcoming that we ache for that we long for this place in our hearts where we ache for that kind of welcome that kind of reception that kind of restoration in our hearts this is who god is this is who god is and even though he comes to speak to us in all these different places and he goes out into the desert you know in the season of bloody we we we follow him in the desert who is led by the holy spirit that he comes into these places of our hearts so that nothing in our hearts is without his tender mercy and love that we do not have to live our entire life in secrets or hard-heartedness or or unforgiveness or that the lord comes and he speaks to every single part of us every single part of us in your particular story as you find yourself right now and i find it very interesting i often use this example i find it very interesting that you know i just i have the best seat in the house right now can i just say that because i can see your beautiful faces so i have the best seat in the house and i can see all of you and all of you are very different you know and all of you have stories and all of you have experiences in life and all of you have ways of seeing the world and i always find it very interesting when i look at an audience like this and i see your faces and your unique faces to think of this just think about this for just a second that from the beginning of time when god began creating and he creates adam and eve and through all the all the all the years until right now in 2021 you think of all the billions of people that have been created that we'll never even know about i mean the even from that moment adam and eve until right now as we sit here that god has never ever recycled or cloned a single person i mean the creativity of god is just staggering dr peter kreif says we're artists because god is like the artistry of the human person the artistry of who you are the artistry of how god speaks to you of how his heart is revealed through you that you love god in a way that nobody else can and he notices i don't know if you have people in your life that just are really good at noticing details and they just notice isn't it nice to be noticed where somebody says hey i noticed you weren't at this are you okay or they call you they text you like what's going on you know i noticed you didn't seem very happy or i noticed you're really excited about that i'd love to hear more about that can you tell me more about that that where we're attended to and it's this invitation that god draws near to us that he's bringing us into his own beautiful life his own blessed life to restore us to prepare us to go home and saint john paul ii uh in his very first encyclical called the redeemer of man he's talking about this about you and i in the heart of christ and he's talking about how do we understand ourselves because when we speak about the crisis in the church you know it said that for the first thousand years in the church since christ died and the first thousand years the crisis in the church was who was god is he true god and true man like the fact that when we say the creed we kind of just blow through the creed the part of the creed that says consubstantial with a father do you know how big of a deal that was in the church there was a schism over it that christ is consubstantial of the same self i mean it so there's a bitter war over who christ is who is god but i think we have to say in the last thousand years and to what we face now the crisis isn't so much who is god but who is man what does it mean to be human what does it mean to love what does it mean to be male and female what does it mean to live an abundant life what does suffering mean does it all matter and i love it because this is from like 1976 that very for john paul ii this paragon like if this his foresight he says the man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly okay and not just in accordance with immediate or partial or often superficial or illusory standards he must with his unrest with his uncertainty even in his weakness and his sinfulness with his life and in his death he must draw near to christ he says he must so to speak enter into jesus with all of his own self where jesus comes to you and i and he comes to meet us where we are and he's coming to bring us into his own beautiful life in his own heart and so i love what the what holy father is saying there is because he's not saying just bring your best parts or bring the things you're really proud of bring your whole self bring your whole self because that's the beauty of a covenant and that's the relationship that god has with us the in a covenant a covenant is an exchange of persons a contract is an exchange of people so say for example i mentioned she was kind of cold in texas a few weeks ago and we we can't deal with that apparently and so it at the place where i live we got down to like 18 degrees or even like 10 degrees it was very cold we had icy rain we had all kinds of stuff and we have five houses on our property and every single one of us had busted pipes like every single one of us had busted pipes um we had no water we had no power we had no electricity and when the of course when the weather began to thaw out and the pipes began to to thaw we had like water just showering everywhere and we called the plumber and we were 200 people deep in the list of plumbers and so you i mean everybody has the same situation and so we to this day still have one of our houses that still is without water because the plumbers ran out of supplies like they can't find any supplies anywhere there's no supplies anywhere but for example the plumbers came over to our convents and they fixed our convents and we signed a contract with them so they came over and they fixed our pipes and we'll do this for a certain amount and and we pay them and they do what they're supposed to do when we shake hands and then they finish it and we pay them and we're good we don't they don't come over for taco tuesday the next week that's not what's happening at the convent you know because the contract is complete but a covenant is very different a covenant is an exchange of persons a covenant says i am yours and you are mine forever forever no matter what and we see the beautiful icon of that in the sacrament of marriage when a man and a woman stand in front of this altar and they look at each other in front of the presence of god and witnesses and they say that i am yours and you are mine in good times and in bad in sickness and in health i will love you i will honor you i will cherish you all the days of my life it's a covenant and what a covenant that marriage of the icon of marriage is a small window into how god loves us because his love is eternal and he is the one he's the keeper you and i break covenants we have hard times with that and you see that in broken humanity human beings and our brokenness often break covenants for a variety of reasons but god never does and you see that throughout the old testament that he makes a covenant with adam and eve they break it he makes a covenant with noah he breaks i mean the people keep breaking covenants and jesus the lord keeps establishing new covenants until he gives us a sign he says this is the new and everlasting covenant because there is nothing you could ever do in your life he's saying to us that would ever make me stop loving you and that is etched in our baptism that is etched in our soul that you want to have an ontological mark a mark that literally changes us in our baptism forever marking us as belonging to god himself and that can never change he loves us and he is with us for the whole journey and he brings us into his own heart and he heals us and for me one of the best things i think about a covenant is in a covenant you're safe enough to have everything come out without fear of abandonment without fear of being left without fear of being judged without fear and this is how god relates to us is because he sees us saint julian of norwich i love her when i love one of her sayings is this when god sees our sin he sees our pain we sin we'll talk more about this tomorrow night we sit out of our own pain these areas that were broken but god sees us according to the whole he knows us and his desire is for us and so he comes to heal us and he doesn't just stop here thank god he doesn't just stop here at the top of the tree he goes to heal the roots and this is exactly one of the things that he does during the season of lent and this is this is why you and i take up the practices of prayer fasting and almsgiving that they're not arbitrary practices i remember many years ago i was listening to a christian comedian and it was it was very funny and he was saying you know he's like any catholics in the house like woo catholics he said let me ask you this he's like i just i don't understand lent he's like i don't really understand that so let me ask you this he's like okay so he says let me say so jesus christ king of the universe lord of lords risen from the dead you know suffers and dies for us he's like he does all that for you and you guys give up cheetos he's like can you help me understand this he's like i don't i don't i don't understand that you know and indeed right if we're still giving up cheetos if that's the source of our lunch we got to talk about a couple things you know but that's not the it's not the arbitrariness of lent prayer fasting and alms giving actually literally heal our souls because where adam and eve broke with god in the garden these are these practices come and heal these very places because we know very well that adam and eve broke a covenant and we are bearers of that covenant breaking to this very day oh my goodness it's called original sin and what happens when adam and eve break the covenant when they turn away from god they turn away from the one who loves them that their hearts in that moment in their lives shatter and you see them in the garden and you talk about the beauty of the heart you see adam and eve in the garden and you see adam receiving eve and you see the crowning of creation and the beauty of of that witness and and just the the order of life that their intellects were ordered their wills were their passions were ordered and it says something very interesting in genesis that they are naked without shame which their physical nakedness is a sign of their interior nakedness which means they had no places to hide they saw each other as a gift and they received each other could you imagine your relationships that you have relationships that are lived in total purity where you see people for who they are you're not being used you're not being manipulated you're not you know you're not being abandoned but people see you and they're with you and they love you they see the truth of who you are they see the wholeness of who you are and receive you it's stunningly beautiful but as we know as adam and eve bought into the lie of the enemy the enemy says god doesn't love you god is not good and if you want to be happy you better take what you can take while you can get it because god's not going to give it to you and that is the source of all of our sin we don't want to suffer let me just ask you this if you're if you're in your own heart right now just think of the last time you sinned okay the last time where you were about to say something the holy spirit's like don't say that don't don't do that and you're like oh no i'm gonna tell her you know so it's coming out of your mouth and it's coming out of your mouth you're like no you know and it comes out of your mouth and what happens it lands on the other person and your first thought is i can't believe i just said that you know and when we examine why we do those things there's a whole myriad of reasons why but a lot of it is an avoidance of suffering it is a fear of being left behind with all these things in our hearts where our hearts are disordered where we we feel like we have to get that in right now this is it's an it's an interesting kind of mix of things that happen in our soul and that's what the enemy keeps telling us is we don't have a father who loves us we don't have a home to go home to and then once we do that he sneaks right in there and he says god will not forgive you look at you you did that again we've all had that experience we've all we all have it and so where the enemy's tactics are is where jesus comes right in that very place my dear friends into this part of our heart to speak the truth to us because what prayer does where adam and eve were shattered with god all of a sudden god's inheld in suspicion now and it's so incredibly beautiful the heart of god because he goes in search of adam and eve it's just wonderful how jesus always comes in search of us even after the crucifixion after all of his friends abandoned him after they promised him to his face we'll be with you we're gonna die with you will go with you and he knows them and he knows what's about to happen and every single one of them except for a couple epically fail epically fail and i could imagine just what their life would have been like as they see christ crucified and they know what happened at last supper they know how they failed him especially peter just even like having christ look at him knowing that he said he wouldn't deny the lord and he did we oh my gosh we all know that and even after that when he rises from the dead jesus comes in search of them he comes in search of them like he's coming to you right now my friends no matter how young or old you are because all of us have places in our hearts that are just like that that are just like the last supper that are just places where we've learned how to manage our life and jesus comes to bring us into communion there and you see the beauty even in the garden of adam and eve where the father he comes in search of them and i love the question that he asks them and i think we have to be really kind of careful of how we assign like a tone of voice to god because they've sinned and the first thing that they do is they go and hide which is very typical for you and i which is why going to confession is really difficult at times isn't it it's in a sense like easier to sin than it is to go and tell the heart of christ through the priest that i did that and here's why i did it it's very difficult as you'd rather hide we minimize or we'll tell somebody else's sins because that's easier well they you know we're just funny people and where the lord comes in search of them and i love the question that god the father asks them in genesis and i would imagine that he asked them that question like this he went to look for them and they weren't where they were supposed to be and he says to them where are you where are you and if you were to ask you that's very similar to the question that i had looking at the young homeless man but if the father comes and he's asking this to you tonight he says to my son my daughter where are you where are you and we can be physically here i mean we've all had the experience of being physically in a place but being mentally a million miles away i've been out to lunch with somebody and you're talking to them and they're they're acting like they're listening but they're not listening and you say to them you're not listening to what i'm saying they're like i'm totally singing you're not listening at all i can tell you're physically present but you're not listening to what i'm saying and the lord steps into this place and he's very attentive to us and he's listening and he says where are you and so i'm like i don't know where i am i'm like the lord the lord is not lost we think god leaves us we're the one who lives we don't know where we are sometimes i think i'm at chick-fil-a i'm not really sure where i am i don't know lord could you come and find me because i have no idea i don't know where i am but i need you to come and find me and that my dear friends that's what prayer does prayer heals our relationship with god not on his end but on ours is that where you and i sit with the lord and we hear his heart for us and we experience him and we hear his word and we hear his his love for us the tone of his voice the way he ministers to us we come to meet him we come to meet him and i am so convinced i'm so convinced that this is exactly the sign of the times of all times in history i think this is a very special time because people are thirsting for an encounter with god they are thirsting and all the facades we have of i don't need god i don't believe in god many times those are those have a variety of reasons behind them but in our hearts i believe every single person has a desire to meet and a living encounter with love a living encounter with a person who tells you who your life is that your life matters that what happened to you when you were a little girl when you were a little boy those things can be brought into the heart of christ that it has purpose that has meaning that your suffering has meaning i i learned that very quickly i i you know i mentioned i speak to a lot of people and i i hear all kinds of stories and i hear all kinds of heartbreaking stories and beautiful stories and all kinds of things but very quickly the lord alerted me to this and i really believe it's true you know what people don't want to meet me they don't they want to meet christ they want to meet jesus and people today they want to have a living encounter with the living lord jesus and how do they do that many times they do that through you and i they encounter him through us and that's what prayer does in our life it actually puts us into communion it's a conversation it's people it's you and the lord coming together and him speaking to you and you speaking to him and him developing your heart and opening your heart and healing your heart so that your heart and your life shine with his vibrance and his radiance and that is a holiness that cannot be faked and it is stunningly beautiful to behold stunningly beautiful i one of the reasons i'm standing here before you tonight is a religious sister i've been in my community over 22 years now and i'm standing here before you tonight not because i'm awesome because i'm not i'm one of the reasons i'm standing here before you tonight is because a catholic priest came into my life and radically interrupted my life and i had never met i know it's the place where i get my deep love of the priesthood from because he came into my life and he was he'd been a priest a long time and he came into my life and i remember looking at him and i had never met anybody that holy it was tangible like the fragrance of christ you could just sense it on him the weight of this man and i've never met anybody so sold out for christ because really saints aren't weird they're captivating and he was not perfect he was not perfect he had his own story and his own flaws and his own foibles and the things he was working out in his life but that man loved god and i remember standing before him at 21 years old i'm playing division one volleyball i'm an alcoholic i'm living with a second guy my life is a train wreck and i remember looking at him saying i don't know what you've got father like i don't know what you've got i don't know what that is but i want that i want that and that's the tangible presence of christ who lives in you and i and that is what prayer does that is with the season of lent it draws us into these places into the deep as you've been journeying together as a parish family like drawing into the deep places of an encounter with the lord and it happens you know sometimes quickly sometimes slowly sometimes we we experience it and with feelings sometimes we don't that doesn't matter but that we keep going because he's drawing near to you and i and he's drawing near to us in the deep places fasting heals our relationships within our self where we're shattered within ourselves because we need order within ourselves all of us have parts of our hearts where we have disorder desires we have disordered affections we have things that are not out of order and when things are not out of order they go haywire and what fasting does fasting heals the disintegration within ourselves and brings us into wholeness it brings us into order why it brings us into order so we can love well so as john paul ii says so we can make a gift of ourselves and almsgiving heals our relationship between you and i in the giving of alms and the caring for you of being attentive to you it heals our relationship between humanity it heals the love between the human persons which we're also in desperate need of and these places right that the lord heals these places start deep within our hearts deep within our souls i think it's very interesting i mean i often draw on the catechism it's just a wonderful document the catechesis of so many beautiful things but when we talk about the heart we're talking about the deep places we're not talking about just passing feelings we're talking about the center of who you are and i love it catechism 25 63 it says this it says the heart is our hidden center beyond the grasp of our reason or of others and only the spirit of god can fathom the human heart and know it fully the heart is a place of decision deeper than our psychic drives it is the place of truth where we choose life or death it is the place of encounter and is because as image of god we live in relation it is the place of covenant it is a place within that you know that you know that you know and when you don't know the holy spirit knows it's the deep place of who you are it's a deep place of how we live our life because we will always behave my dear friends we will always behave out of what we truly believe and we can say whatever we want to say i can get it before you hear these three nights and tell you a whole bunch of things but what you're really looking for in my life is the congruity between what i say and how i live because we will always behave out of what we truly believe and so this is why the lord is always going into the deep places why he comes and he encounters people and he asks them questions and he makes them think and he disarms their hearts and he the people and they're watching him that he was always being watched and he's so beautiful as people come to carry him off to make him king he goes out by himself and he goes and prays to the father and i love it because we heard this recently peter all the disciples they're you know they're searching frantically and all these people that are sick and demonically possessed i mean you can just imagine just the chaos of it and jesus he's taking time with the father he's praying and he's resting on who he is as a son and i love it because the disciples come and they find him and they say jesus everyone is looking for you i'm like amen brother it's true jesus everyone is looking for you including you and i we are in a desperate search for an encounter with christ in the deepest places we are the hemorrhaging woman who's been hemorrhaging for years and who has spent all that she have have you ever had something in your life where you have spent everything that you feel that you have and it still is not well and you said to yourself i've been in marriage counseling 25 years our marriage is still a mess i did everything i could my child's still an addict i have tried these certain things and i don't know i keep going to confession it's the same sin over and over and over again and it's in those places many times dear friends that we just like we said we develop like a hardness of heart and we just say to ourselves well i guess this is good as it's gonna get and i don't believe it for a second i don't believe it because i know in my own life when i see those kinds of mediocre like those kinds of lies arise to the surface of my heart what i know about myself now and what i really believe about the human heart now is there is an ache so deep inside that i need christ to come and find me there and father jacques philippe he would in that same talk he would say it's only intimate contact it's only intimate contact with the heart of jesus that can heal the human heart it is only intimate contact with the heart of jesus that can heal the human heart so where you and i are healed where our lives are set free where our wounds are opened where the truth comes into them is an encounter with christ which i think takes a lot of courage doesn't it it takes a lot of courage of dietrich von hildebrand a wonderful catholic philosopher he has a philosophical essay it's called the heart it's on human and divine affectivity and he talks about this part of our hearts he said when you i mean i'm going to paraphrase for you but he says when you love somebody when you love them isn't that isn't isn't it their heart that you want like don't you want to know their heart and he said it's one thing that they share with you their sports ideas and their interests and things like that and that's fine and we have different levels of intimacy with people but people that you really love your deepest friends your family people that you're married to don't you want to hear their heart which is why many times when we know somebody really well we say what we say the eyes of the windows to the what to the soul and you can have a whole conversation with somebody without saying a word because you know them and your best friend or your spouse or your kid might come and sit down and have a conversation and you're just looking at them and then you say how are you how are you really like i'm fine good busy our standard answer and then you look at them and you say no tell me the truth because i can see it in your eyes i can see it in your face which is why pope francis in his year of mercy when he wrote a letter for the year of mercy the very first sentence of his letter said this he said jesus christ is the face of the father's mercy the mercy has a face and so dietrich von hildebrand his essay is saying this is what we're really after because it's the heart that's the center of the person and if you had everything about a person but their heart you would be sorely lacking would you not if they didn't share the deep places of their heart with you if you had a relationship like that that lended itself to that and i have a wonderful mentor who's a marriage and family therapist for many many years and he tells the story that about 10 or 15 years into his own marriage he and his wife began to have really difficult problems difficult problems and they were considering divorce and they got married in the church and they i mean his parents divorced when he was young and it just a lot of things were happening but he when he got married to his wife he said i'm not going to divorce you i'm going to make a covenant with you i'm not going to divorce you but there were still so many problems and so many things that were being unearthed from their past when they were children that it was so overwhelming for him and he would say you know here i am sitting counseling married couples i'm in this therapist office counseling married couples in my own marriage i can't fix and he said that he and his wife kind of just decided to disagree over this and they lived in the same house and they have kids and things like that but he went away for a week and on a retreat and he really talked to the lord about it because he was at a has wit's end and he did not know what to do and he spent time with the lord and the lord affirmed their marriage that that was a valid marriage and they made a commitment they made a covenant to each other and so he decided you know there were some places in his heart where he still hadn't gone yet it's just he's a wonderful wonderful man such a wonderful spiritual father but he came home after that weekend and he looked at his wife and he said well you know i prayed about this and i decided i'm not going to divorce you like i made a commitment to you and i'm going to stay committed to you and he said his wife looked at him and she said something that changed his whole life and she looked at him and she said i don't want your commitment i want your devotion i want your devotion because devotion is about the heart it's about affect this is why as catholics we don't have first friday commitments we have first friday devotions you say i have a devotion to a saint i have a devotion to the sacred heart i have a devotion to our lady of whatever apparition for you did you know that jesus has a devotion to you that his heart is for you and that it matters to him what happens in the heart of yours that it matters and for us to open our hearts my dear friends to for us to open our hearts in these deep places it requires trust because we all know intuitively even psychologically speaking as you're with somebody your brain is actually sending signals to the other i mean the human brain is fascinating i mean forget about mars we can't even figure out how the human brain works you know but it's like this really beautiful what's happening in the symbiosis of people just sitting across the table from each other how their brains start to mirror each other there's mirror neurons there's all these things that are happening and you know instinctively in your heart and in your soul when you don't feel like you can trust somebody you just there's many times we have like a gut feeling they call your gut your second brain actually and we've all had moments where we don't feel like we can trust somebody or that all of us have moments and relationships because of our state in life and just the way relationships grow is that relationships grow over time and trust takes time to build so if you've known somebody for 10 15 20 years it's a good healthy relationship your trust will have grown in each other because you have presented those parts of your hearts that are that are troubling to you or that are weak and that person has received you there you said we talk about trust because trust is really dependence it's depending upon somebody that you are who you say you are and that you're going to show up for me and that you mean what you say and that your behavior and your words are as much as they can totally be as a human person as congress as they can they can be and that lends itself to trust i think we've all had moments as well where there's somebody that you love and you want to tell them something about your life or something that has to come out and you're saying to yourself i know this person loves me but will they still love me after i say this well they still love me after i admit this you know if i even you know if i go to confession and i confess this will god still love me it's very interesting in our hearts because to trust means that to depend upon somebody and that's why we say in the divine mercy nobina you know jesus i trust in you jesus i trust in you what we're saying is i'm going to put my weight upon you i'm going to depend upon you and i'm going to give you my heart and i think we could agree that we have places of our hearts that are really easy to do that that we're like yeah i'll trust you i'll trust you with that lord you can have that you know but then i think all of us myself included have places in our hearts where we don't trust god we if we're very honest we don't because we're afraid we're afraid we're afraid of what's if i let go of this what's going to happen if i let jesus see me here what's going to happen if i'm really honest about this what's going to happen and what jesus does for you and i my dear friends is that he comes to us over and over and over again to tell us the truth of who he is you read the entire gospels jesus christ never once ever shames a sinner a single time never once and the people that other people find so odious you know that the people that are sinners he goes out of his way to find them and i love even the story it's just still the great just the graciousness of jesus even the story i love the story of bartimaeus the man born blind and he's on the side of the road and he's blind and it's dirty and he's i mean these the streets are full of animals and animal manure and just like it's dirty and he's sitting he's low class and i mean could you imagine the fear of not being able to see having one of your senses taken you have no idea you're so vulnerable oh my gosh you're so vulnerable and he's sitting by the roadside begging and he hears that christ is coming into town and i love it because he's so humble at that moment this beggar this like people that consider dirty or unclean he starts to shout at the top of his lungs jesus son of david have pity on me and he's shouting so loud he's embarrassing people and they're telling him to be quiet and i think oh my gosh we're i we're far too sophisticated i think to cry out to god it embarrasses us when when you see people in deep poverty it's just it's embarrassing to us sometimes and we don't know what to do so we just tell people to be quiet but i love it because bartimaeus will not be quiet and he shouts out the letter like jesus son of david have pity on me and i love it because out of all the people that christ hears that day and all the chaos and all the loudness of the city jesus hears him and he calls him and he sends for him and the people the same people that were telling to be quiet are like no get up he's calling you get up you know they're like escorting him to the front row you know here we go and i love it because the graciousness of god and one of the reasons why i asked you the question or i asked you to ask jesus what he wanted to do for you this evening is because of this that jesus is so gracious he doesn't assume what bartimaeus wants he like he looks at him and he says what do you what do you want me to do for you god's so kind like what do you want me to do for you and you know what it's that's a huge risk it's a huge risk for bartimaeus to be honest because i think all of us have had moments in our life where we've had jesus come to us in one form or another and say what do you want me to do for you and we're so embarrassed to really risk what we really want that will say whatever you want lord that's fine and jesus is like no like what do you what do you want me to do for you and i love it because here's bartimaeus blind in front of all these people and they all know him and he's going to take the biggest risk of his life and he's just going to say what he really wants and it's just so lovely because he says master i want to see like i want to see and just love it at that moment this powerful witness in front of all these people this poor man with you know no sophistication he just cries out to god from his heart asking for the deepest ache of his heart and the lord heals him and the crowd is stunned and the man gets up and he doesn't go back to his man he doesn't go back to his coins he doesn't go us back to his life he's healed and he follows christ and he's a powerful witness of who jesus is so if i were to ask you tonight my dear friends what do you want jesus to do for you if you're really honest what do you want him to do for you could we allow our hearts even maybe in a small way this evening to be uncovered there because the lord does that very tenderly and i'm sure you know that on december 8th um the holy father pope francis declared a year of saint joseph which i was like if we need a year of st joseph it is this year it was just so wonderful i don't know if anybody even knew he was going to do that but he did and he wrote a letter for the year of saint joseph and it's a beautiful letter if you haven't read it yet but i just want to offer this to you and then i'm just going to kind of lead you through a bit of a meditation but he talks about tender love tender love and if you know people in your life that are very tender they're very attentive there's something that like we said this is disarming about it people are very tender and we talk about you know fruit of the holy spirit we talk about you know kindness the kindness is the fruit of the holy spirit kindness is not niceness kindness that kindness is tender strength so the holy father is talking about saint joseph and he's talking about his tenderness but he's talking about our hearts and i just want to offer this to you because he's talking about the weakness of joseph how he doesn't know what he's going to do and he you know hears mary and she's pregnant you know all these he's he's a man like us and joseph is a man like us and god works through the places that he doesn't know and he says this this is a part of our economy of salvation he says we have to look upon our weaknesses with tender mercy and i offer this to you he says the evil one satan will make us see and condemn our frailty whereas the holy spirit brings it to light with tender love tenderness is the best way to touch the frailty within us pointing fingers and judging others are frequently signs of our inability to accept our own weakness and our own frailty but it's only tender love only tender love that will save us from the snares of the accuser only tender love and that's why it can be unnerving to us it's the tenderness of god that comes to you tonight and he says to you what do you want me to do for you it's the tenderness of god who comes to you and he says come bring me your sin because i want to heal you it's a tenderness of god that comes and he says bring me your hopes and dreams because i want to fill out that vision and i want to bring the essence of my heart for you to life it is tender love and i tell you the lord is so kind so kind so kind and now he ministers to us in these deep places so i'm wondering um if it's okay with you is i just would like to lead you through a bit of a meditation if that's okay and so i'm just going to kind of lead you on a little journey and i'm just going to ask the lord to speak to you i'll make it very simple for you just to have an encounter with the lord here for you or wherever you find yourself on the live stream and i just want to because i'm on a time continuum i'm going to keep kind of going on the meditation but if you find that you need to stay in a certain place i just want to give you the freedom to do just that right and just to allow the holy spirit just to bring to your heart and your mind tonight whatever he wants to many times what we do is we we in our life we self-censor things come to our heart and we're like oh i don't want to think about that i can't think about that i wonder if tonight just tonight and just for the next couple days my dear friends that if we could just trust that what the lord's going to bring to our heart is something that he wants to to speak about okay so if that's okay who's going to have you settle in and just kind of set everything down in your hands and i'm just going to ask you just to close your eyes and just once again as you're sitting there just to take a deep breath all the way in all the way out and i just want to invite you just to imagine yourself going for a walk what is your favorite place to go for a walk it's your favorite season maybe it's in a forest somewhere by the beach but just imagine yourself going for a walk in your favorite place what does the air feel like on your cheeks as you walk what does it smell like and just walk for a bit and as you walk i just want to invite you just to bring to mind something that's been troubling you lately just to know that you're in a safe place but what's something on your mind that's just been weighing on you a bit and just notice what that is maybe it's something from the past or maybe it's something that happened a few days ago but what is it like to kind of think about that part of your heart and your life as you walk along and just notice that and you might feel certain places in your body like your shoulders might feel tense or you might feel it in your stomach or a bit of resistance that's okay we'll just notice that and as you walk along and consider that part of your heart you hear behind you that somebody is walking on the same path and as you turn around you see it's jesus himself and you notice that soon enough he's walking right alongside you someone's gonna give you a chance just to walk with the lord in silence there as you ponder that part of your heart and just notice what it's like to walk with him there and you notice how attentive he is to you that he looks at you with such kindness but he doesn't say anything but he's very concerned about your heart and he cares for you what does it feel like to think about that part of your life with him and you notice that as you're walking you can tell that he would like to hear about that if you want to share so if you're willing and if you'd like to i just want to give you just an opportunity maybe even for the first time just to walk with the lord and finally tell him about that part of your heart and tell him the whole story if you want tell him what it's really like just tell the whole thing to him if you want because he cares about you just let the whole thing out and you notice that as you share he's listening very attentively with such kindness for he understands you and you notice that he begins to slow down his pace a little bit and so do you and then he stops and if you're willing he's just going to turn toward you and just look at you right in the face if that's okay with you i just want you to see his face for you what does it look like as he beholds you as you look at him what do you want to say to christ about this part of your heart or about this situation what do you want to tell him and jesus what do you want each one of us to know what do you want us to know about this part of our heart what do you want to say to us here and i just want to invite you my dear friends just to imagine yourself kind of holding that part of your life out in your hands in front of you and maybe for the first time kind of seeing it for what it is right in your hands out in front of you and just look at it maybe it's an old resentment or a bitterness or an argument or an addiction or disappointment whatever that is could you hold it out in front of you and just let jesus see it too he's not afraid he loves you and would you be willing tonight maybe in a new way to surrender that part of your life that part of your heart that area to him and that might seem scary but would you be willing to do that maybe just one small step and if that's okay with you jesus is just going to very tenderly with his pierced hands just reach out and very gently take that from you and as he does you watch him and you see a place he places it in his own pierced heart for you because he wants to be one with you in everything so he's going to bear this with you and you see him gently place that part of your life in his own heart and because the hands of the king are the hands of a healer if it's okay with you he's just gonna gently place his hand on your heart there and as he does so his hand is strong and warm and so healing and jesus i pray that you would speak your love into this place in our hearts i pray that you would come to heal any lies we believe about ourselves because of it i pray that your tender love would just melt any areas of fear i pray in a special way tonight for marriages the healing of marriages and the healing of families lord that your gentle love right now lord would come and encounter us and bring us into communion with you jesus we thank you for how you love us we thank you for drawing near to us we thank you for the covenant that you make with us we just ask that you would move deeply in our hearts even now that you would make us new and we make this prayer through christ our lord amen when i leave this meditation people have a variety of experiences and sometimes new things are revealed or sometimes things that haven't been seen before or seen and i just want just to invite you just tonight before you go to sleep just to maybe take note of what happened and even if it seemed like nothing happened just to notice that because the lord is still at work even that and he comes to us he brings us on this journey he brings us into his own heart he brings us in his heart to make us whole and tomorrow night we're going to talk deeply about those areas of our hearts and we're not going to talk deeply about forgiveness and mercy and restoration and the triumph of christ of who he is for us but my heart for you tonight would just um just to be a tender encounter with the one who loves you and there might be some things that are stirred up in your heart that you want to talk about and maybe some things that you don't but just to let the lord continue to speak it's amazing even as you go to sleep tonight and as you go about your day tomorrow and we come again together tomorrow evening about what the lord will do and what the lord will speak to in your hearts in new ways perhaps unnoticed before because he loves us so so maybe what we'll do is we'll disclose with a final prayer here and then father i think we'll come back up and we'll have some announcements so in the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit well jesus we thank you for this time together and we know that you who have begun a good work will see it to completion lord pray that you give us each the courage to let you come more deeply in our hearts we just pray that your precious blood would cover every single one of us defend us from the attacks of the enemy and keep us safe lord we pray that your gentle love would massage our hearts that our hearts would be hearts of flesh and openness and tenderness to hear your love to see your face and to respond to it mother mary we pray for your continued intercession you who literally held christ himself mama i pray that you will hold each one of us in a very beautiful way they'd intercede for us and bring us back together tomorrow as we say glory be to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit as it was in the beginning is now whenever shall be world without and amen our lady queen of peace pray for us in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen you are deeply loved god bless you thank you for coming this evening [Applause] thank you so much for being here i just wanted to call your attention that we do have a free will offering if you feel called for sister's order so that's by the baptismal font and her book sister miriam's book called loved as i am is for sale in the narthex for 13 thank you so everybody just uh yeah we're so i'm so grateful for sister to help us to to really heal because i think i think that's what the world really needs right now so much healing because it's been a tough year very tough so always come you know here with everything you have and give it to god give it to jesus so tomorrow i think we're going to meet again and wednesday i mean monday and tuesday and wednesday right no monday and tuesday sunday monday too and i know we have con we have meditations and there'll be a worship aid that'll be virtual so we have to do some texting to find that okay and also we're gonna have reconciliation one of the days as well for the mark is anything else i'm forgetting no all right so god bless you have a great night you

Channel: Saint Mary Mokena

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Length: 71min 20sec (4280 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021