Journeying With The Saints

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 610-614. Sister Faustina fears that she has possibly offended Christ. Because she is unsure, she decides to stay away from Communion until she can later get to Confession. While her desire to be free of sin is admirable, it is not good that she stays away from Communion. Her confessor even tells her so much. If we have mortal sin on our soul, we cannot...

oday's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 605-609. We hear about how Sister Faustina has a rough morning. She's sleepy, she struggles to stay focused in prayer and meditation. She talks about how each day she deals with battles in the morning and battles at the end. This is important to read because it helps us see that saints struggle, too. They have bad prayer times. They deal with constant b...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 601-604. Today is the first day where I truly was stumped by something Sister Faustina wrote. It caused me to raise an eyebrow, but it's not the first time a saint has talked about this certain issue. St. Paul does in Colossians. So, I had to do a little research to understand.   

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 596-600. Sister Faustina asks Christ to take on the sufferings of her confessor. Christ mostly grants her prayer and she immediately starts feeling struggles and aversions. I ask the question, "Are we willing to suffer for others?" I share a story of when I was asked to suffer for someone and how hard it was to do, even though the suffering was utterly...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 593-595. What makes a truly happy soul? Do whatever makes you happy? Do whatever it takes to get yours? Nah. Sister Faustina tells us that a truly happy soul must be humble. I have some ideas, too, of what makes us truly happy.    

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 587-592. Love conquers fear. When we love God and get to know Him better through reading Scripture and praying, we start to understand His heart all the more. Knowing Him better helps us to not fear God as just a God of punishment, but as a God of mercy. Realizing this, we lose our fear of God and, instead, our relationship with Him becomes so much bet...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 580-586. Christ tells Sister Faustina that those with a lukewarm faith break His heart. It even breaks His heart more than those who sin who don't believe in Him. The fact of the matter is, is that a lukewarm faith does absolutely nothing for us. Here's the thing, we don't want ANYONE to love us with a lukewarm love, why would we ever think it's okay t...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 574-579. Eternity with God is full of joy and glory. It will be better than we can even comprehend. Sadly, there are many that don't believe in eternity and this non-belief causes them to live their lives in a very different way than Christians. Sister Faustina expresses gratitude and praise for eternity in the writings today and it's a great thing to...

This week we are reading the 19th number from "Way to Inner Peace." We enter into a new section this week, one that covers external influences. Our readings this week cover the conscious  and unconscious influences. Typically, conscious influence is when one deliberately seeks to mould someone else. It rarely works because it often comes off as advertising. Unconscious influence is more genuine. "...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 570-573. Sister Faustina's greatest fear is to offend God. This is exactly right. Too often we worry about offending other people rather than worrying about offending God. To be sure, we shouldn't walk  around trying to offend people through hateful talk or nasty names. However, we cannot worry about whether our Catholic Faith offends others. We have t...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers  568-569. Sister Faustina defines how she wants the Superior to relate to the sisters. It is a fantastic look at true leadership. What is important to understand is that not everyone on earth has the gift of leadership. But, if you do, true leadership is about serving as Christ served. True leadership should never be self-serving. 

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 565-567. Sister Faustina writes today about the respect she wants the sisters to give their Superior. So, we are going to talk about worship, praise, respect, and honor. Catholics get accused pretty frequently of giving too much honor and respect to the Pope, the Saints, and Mary. People tell us that we worship them. We are going to discuss some big th...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 559-564. Sister Faustina has a vision of the building that is to house her new convent. The problem is that it's a run-down, crumbling building. She's a little disappointed. I share what it's like to visit the ruins of once-glorious Catholic Churches here in Turkey. Surprisingly, it doesn't cause me to despair. I try to explain why.   

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 554-558. This is the last day of looking at how Sister Faustina wants the new Congregation to function. I compare and contrast the Religious life with the life of a lay person. There are some things Religious do that lay people shouldn't do, or shouldn't do, at least, to the same extreme degree. There are some things they do, however, that we should mo...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 549-553. We are continuing on today with reading about how Sister Faustina's new Congregation will operate. Don't let this be dry readings to you. There are a lot of good things to reflect upon in these words. I want to focus on what she has to say about work and silence. My grandfather always told me to embrace work and he was a good example of that f...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 542-548.  Sister Faustina is laying out how the new Congregation will work. We made be tempted to see these readings as not really pertaining to our lives. I think, though, that it is important to understand and see exactly what the Religious give up for Christ. If we are looking for Christianity to be cushy or comfy, we are misguided and don't underst...

This week we are reading the 18th number from "Way to Inner Peace." This is the last reading in the happiness section. Bishop Sheen is going to show us how many of us react when we are faced with the reality that we are to blame, many times, if our life isn't going well. Often times, when we realize this we rebel even more against decency and the moral life. The prodigal son, though, shows us the...

Milestone Day! We are a third of the way through the year!  Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 536-541. Sister Faustina is envisioning what the new Congregation will look like. Our Religious do so much good in the world and I share a story of an atheist that ended up converting to Catholicism. One of the reasons was because of the witness of Religious.  Here is the interview with him. ...

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 530-535.  The podcast is a little longer today because we will be saying a prayer for our priests at the end. Christ tells Sister Faustina to pray for the souls of priests and I thought it would be a good idea for us to pray for them, as well.   

Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 525-529. The life of a saint is filled with ups and downs, highs and lows. There are moments of great feelings of joy; there are moments of dryness. If we are expecting our faith life to be full of nothing but highs, we will be disappointed and tempted to walk away from the faith. We must realize that the dry points may be times of fortification. Like...

We start Notebook Two today! Today's readings are from Notebook 2, numbers 522-524. It will be a short reading today. Notebook Two starts with a beautiful short poem and I will read it and then let you reflect on its message of mercy. It's a great way to start this next chapter.   

Congratulations! We made it to the end of Notebook One! Whoop, whoop! Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 512-521. We complete Notebook one and this is a big milestone for all of us. After our readings today we will summarize our journey thus far with Sister Faustina. We've been through so much with her and we've seen that the life of a saint is never easy but always full of intention an...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 506-511. All the writings today have to do with patience. Sister Faustina's spiritual director is encouraging her to be patient with regards to discerning whether she should start a new Congregation. Sister Faustina writes about how she is going to arm herself with patience. I struggle mightily to be a patient person. Learning to be patience requires t...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 498-505. Sister Faustina is always trying to find ways to be more obedient to God. She's always looking for some way to surrender more. That made me wonder about my life. What would it look like if I tried to be more obedient and to surrender more? I encourage us all to assess our lives and see what we would do differently. It wasn't too hard for me to...

This week we are reading the 17th number from "Way to Inner Peace." Melancholy is the topic we will focus on and it's important that we understand what it means exactly. It's more than just a little sadness; it's actually a deep, prolonged depression. Bishop Sheen is going to throw out some names from the past that we need to understand. I know sometimes it's easy to glaze over these names, but we...