Journeying With The Saints

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 378-382. I think it is common for us as humans to focus more heavily on Christ as Judge instead of Christ's Mercy. Sister Faustina writes, "He desires everyone to know this before He comes again as  Judge. He wants souls to come to know Him first as King of Mercy." This is so key to leading people to Christ. I give my thoughts on why we focus more on j...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 374-377. As I read through today's writings, I realized that for someone who is far from God, her reflections would cause disgust. Who is this woman that wants to deny her own will, her own judgment, her own tongue? It is a sure fact, though, that our judgment and will is clouded if left to ourselves. That is why it is so important to gather confessors...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 367-373.  Congrats on following along for 3 months!  Christ reveals today in Sister's writings how much He desires to pour out more love, more mercy, more goodness on souls, but they just don't trust Him enough or come to Him enough. God wants to rain down mercy, grace, and love on us and it is sad that too many souls don't accept this. God's love, mer...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 362-366.  Sister Faustina gets called out for being self-willful. What she wants to do seem so small to some of the disobedience that we see out in the world today. However, Christ tells her that we have to be obedient in small things. This will help us to be obedient in bigger things. Too often, people think that they should be obedient only to themse...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 358-361.  Sister Faustina writes about a special practice that her convent does at the beginning of each new year. They pick out a patron saint to carry with them through the year. I LOVE this idea. What a great practice to add into our faith lives. Think how great it would be if each year we select a patron saint for that year and work to know them be...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 356-358.  Our readings today are different than any other day. We will be praying a litany to the Blessed Host. I would invite you to think of any intentions you have before starting this prayer. This is a beautiful, short litany for poor sinners and it will be a great way to start or end our day.   

This week we are reading the 13th number from "Way to Inner Peace." We are moving out the section titled: Goodness. We are now moving into the section titled: Happiness. Our topic for this week covers joy and sadness. As I read through this week's reading, I felt it was describing a very dark time in my life when I was very sad. I didn't know how to climb out of that sadness because I had chosen t...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 351-355.  We hear today about living a life of faith. We must live our faith life in even small things. It is very common for Christians to compartmentalize our faith life: We live our faith on Sundays for an hour, the rest of the time we fully live our secular life. Often we do this because we've been told to hide our faith from those that it would of...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 346-350.  Sister Faustina asks Christ for a share in His suffering that He endured with the Crown of Thorns. She wakes up and she can feel a thorn piercing the left side of her head. This reading reminded me of when I saw the thorn tree on the Mount of Olives. The thorns on these type of trees are what were used for Christ's crown.   

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 342-345.  Sister Faustina thanks God today for the many sufferings in her life. Her list is actually incredible and would baffle so many in the world today. "She's thanking God for being humiliated, treated rudely, and having spiritual dryness?" Too often we don't understand how suffering shows true love. But...just think about how Christ on the Cross...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 336-341. Sister Faustina's confessor encourages her see if she has any attachments to things or any other creatures. This is a great practice for all of us. We ALL have attachments to things and we must be careful not to let our attachments turn into idols. We have to look deeper than just attachments to material items. Do we have attachments to comfor...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 331-335.   In our readings today, we get a lot of talk about being childlike in our faith. Many of us take "childlike" to mean immature and silly. But, Christ means that we should come to Him in wonder, awe, and simplicity.  As adults, we sometimes complicate our faith and try to be "too smart." Children, though, love simply. They just want to please,...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 325-330.  One of the best prayers we can say when we need a quick, effective prayer is, "Jesus, I trust in you." We must remember,  though, that God may not answer our prayer in the way that we think best. We must trust that God knows what He is doing and that we may not fully understand His answer in this earthly life.   

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 318-324.  Sister Faustina is attacked by demons at two different points in her writings today and her response to them is pretty awesome. Sister Faustina also prays deeply for souls that don't know God's love and mercy. Why don't more souls let God love them? There can be many reasons: Feelings of unworthiness, anger at God, or a lack of knowledge of C...

This week we are reading the 12th number from "Way to Inner Peace." Our topic for this week is on hospitality. This week gave me all the feels because it made me reminisce on my time in Turkey. In Turkey, I experienced hospitality like I've never known and it's something that I greatly miss from my time there. I think you are going to get so much out of this week's important topic.  Three points t...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 312-317.  Sister Faustina is quite upset with how Christ looks in the painting of the Divine Mercy image. She doesn't feel it captures Christ's beauty well enough. Have you ever thought about what Christ looks like? I do all the time. In fact, when it comes to images of Christ, I'm pretty picky about how He looks. Not that I really know, but there are...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 305-311.  God's mercy is so boundless and generous. We often forget that and we often don't trust in God's mercy. Sister Faustina writes about God's Mercy over and over and Christ reminds us over and over. If only we understood how much God wants to pour mercy over us. It is our duty to pray for all souls that have passed on, no matter the state of the...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 302-304.  Sister Faustina writes about how she desires to save souls, be a missionary, a preacher, and a martyr. Basically, she wishes she had loads of gifts so that she can reach many souls. Her true gifts are the gifts to endure suffering for others and she's a mystic. So often, we want God to plainly point out to us our gifts.   

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 294-301.  We get some great words from Christ in today's readings. We hear about what the two rays mean in the painting of the Divine Mercy. Reading through Sister Faustina's writings today, I was struck by all the ways we can love Christ more: Trusting in Him, staying close to Him, working on virtues, and seeking to better ourselves.   

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 289-293. How often do you think of Heaven and eternity? What kind of person are you? One that lives in the past? Only lives for the present moment? Or pines away for the future? Sister Faustina tells us that she gets fearful of eternity and its mysteries. I think we all feel that way a little bit. We must always live in the present moment but live as t...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 285-288. Sister Faustina states that she will never leave the battlefield. What she is saying is that she will always fight against sin and evil. We, too, must be willing to enter into spiritual warfare. We can't just allow anything and we must be willing to say no to evil. I get pretty fired up in this podcast because this is a topic I am very passion...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 279-284. Christ's words today can cause us to feel uncomfortable. He talks about suffering and how much it can show that we love Him. This can be hard for us to hear, especially in a world that sees suffering as pointless and something to be utterly avoided. But, it is exactly Christ's suffering that helps us to recognize how much He loves us.   

This week we are reading the 11th number from "Way to Inner Peace." Our topic for this week is about restoring stolen goods and Bishop Sheen is going to tell us the great story of Zacchaeus. It's very easy to look at rich people and judge them for having too much and being greedy. However, there's a flip side to this: Communism and Socialism can breed envy and jealously within people who are not w...

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 273-278. There is so much to get out of today's readings. They are packed with all kinds of wisdom and good food for thought. We talk about Marilyn Monroe, asking others to call us out, suffering for the good of others, and angels. You just never know where her writings are going to take us!  

Today's readings are from Notebook 1, numbers 270-272.  Sister Faustina gets laughed at by a stand-in confessor. It's not a laughter of joy but one of disbelief. It causes her to falter. This made me think of an essay I had read by a female author from the turn of the 20th century. It was an essay on the different reasons we laugh and how we laugh. It was a very thought-provoking essay. Not all la...