I am greatly honored to share with you the holy experience we had at the Shrine in Hanceville. It is a real treat for anyone interested in the great work of one wonderful human being who heard the call to serve Christ globally, and listened, and as she listened God's perfect plans unfolded. Mother Angelica was in tune with our Lord. She is a saint in my day, devoted to prayer, devoted to obedience, she lived out her faith in loving service toward others. She didn't allow the setbacks in her life to stop the progress God was asking of her to be involved with. She made fishing lures, she sold peanuts, she wrote booklets to help raise money to build the largest catholic television network in the world. One woman! One very determined woman who had faith beyond most of us. I was very moved by her lifetime achievements to serve God. I cried when I learned about her passing, for I was hoping to one day meet her, but Jesus came for her in 2015 on Easter Sunday, and I did not get to the Shrine until May of 2016, so a year had already passed and Mother went from this life to receiving her eternal reward. Mother Angelica gives me the greatest of all hope, for I hope in the same Christ she served. I knelt at her grave in thanksgiving to being blessed for a second time to be on holy ground and pray with the sisters and priests and seminarians. God introduced us to Ethan. He certainly has my prayers, as I had advised him to ignore the whispers of doubt, from the enemy. But this weekend was full of the Lords plans for us. It was a prayerful time, we prayed with the cloistered nuns the divine office, and listened to their angelic voices all throughout the catholic hymns being sung, it almost felt like heaven on earth. While waiting to receive Christ during Holy Communion, I watched the sisters receive our Lord with great reverence! They inspire me to be more reverent in the company of my Lord. We could all practice an extra dose of silence after receiving our Lord, after the mass is over, we can remain in him, and he in us, but silently. Distractions should not take place ever in the chapel. No voices should be heard only the precious and silent voice of our Lord speaking directly to our hearts, thats the only sound we should hear, but not everyone understands who it is we are receiving, and if we truly knew, we would greatly relish that time. We are so blessed as catholic christians to have a faith that has survived so many battles. We are the oldest faith, dating back to Christ himself. There is no arguing about that. And we have every opportunity to meet him in the mass, in the form of the holy eucharist, in adoration, and probably the most important place of all, is meeting Christ in the confessional. It is there Christ is revealed, and our every sin forgiven! It is of utmost importance to know repetitive sin is the greatest loss. The opposite of loss is gain. Christ deserves our attention in this manner. I once learned the meaning of sin. It is the abuse of a relationship. And that is very appalling not only to God but to those we abuse. And we make the mistake of alienating our Lord through our failure in being mindful of him all day long. Can we at least try a little harder at this attempt in making him a priority in our life. I believe that the day we do, we will see him, and we will desire to be like him. Being nothing less than perfect for Christ, is a huge high bar of expectation, however, if we could go out on a limb and be perfected, we can live life to the fullest potential of his original plans for our very lives. We need to have the greatest faith and least amount of doubt. Christ wants us to have more, in the sense of goodness, kindness, and peacefulness, we can get there, if we desire to.
