Wyoming Birds!

When I got up this morning and after my cup of coffee, I found these two bald eagles in one of our trees!  Just beautiful!

Beyond the Love Languages: The sacrificial meaning of love

As I'm sure a lot of you have read the 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman, and that is a great book for understand how you and your spouse receive love and understand what you can to do love your spouse more authentically.  However, there is more to love than just understanding your spouses's primary and secondary love language.  It is one thing to understand the language, it is another thing to be fluent in it and go beyond.  Jesus Christ teaches us that love ultimately requires sacrifice.  To truly understand the power of love, we first have to look at the crucifix.  That is the ultimate sign of what it means to love.

Jesus gave his disciples the greatest commandment at the last supper.  "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another." ~ John 13: 34.  How did Jesus Christ show us his love?  He laid down his life for ours.  He gave us everything he had to give to save us.  The cross is the way of true love.  Jesus knows every one of us intimately, our greatest joys and our worse sorrows.  He embraced each one of us on the cross, and it was his blood that purified us.  Jesus showed us the way, the truth, and the life and he embodied what it means to love.  Thus love is more than just an emotion.  Love is a choice and that choice is for the greatest good of another at the expense of yourself.  It is in giving that we receive.

In order to love properly, you have to train yourself in selflessness.  To do that means to sacrifice things you want to do for what is in the best interest for your beloved.  It is training the mind, the body and the heart to be in a position to love in that sacrificial way that Jesus taught us.  One cannot run a marathon overnight, and so it is with learning how to love.  The best way to learn how to love is to spend time with love, and that means spending quality time in Adoration.  It is there that Jesus Christ will penetrate your heart with his love and mercy.  Old wounds may come up in adoration, and that is fine because Jesus is wanting to heal those wounds so you can stretch your heart's capacity to love.  As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, "Suppose that God wishes to fill you with honey; but if you are full of vinegar, where will you put the honey?  The vessel, that is your heart, must first be enlarged and then cleansed, freed from the vinegar and its taste.  this requires hard work and is painful, but in this way alone do we become suited to that for which we are destined."  It is in adoration that your heart can be healed and where it will be stretched to be filled more with Jesus' love.

When your heart is full of the love of Christ, you share it with the world.  You cannot give what you don't have, so my brothers and sisters in Christ, let your hearts be filled with the love of Jesus.  A love so powerful that can transform your world and the world around you.

"The proof of love is in the works.  Where love exists, it works great things.  But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist." ~ St. Gregory the Great.

Our Lady of Czestochowa: A Mother's Enduring Love

Our Lady of Czestochowa:  A mother’s enduring love

 Reflections from "Footsteps of St. John Paul II" Pilgrimage

           

          Our Lady of Czestochowa, an icon in Poland that tradition states St. Luke painted it, reminds us all that part of life will undoubtedly involve suffering and persecution.  Yet it is how we go through it that matters, and Our Lady shows us how to withstand it with love.  Our Lady of Czestochowa endured attacks from an arrow from a Tartar’s bow in the 14^th Century, a sword from the heretic group, the Hussites, in the 15^th Century, and even imprisonment from the communist government of Poland in the 1960s.  Despite restoration attempts to remove the scars of the sword and arrow, they have always returned.  Why?  Only Our Lord and Our Lady know, but I believe it is to remind us that Our Mother suffers for her children in order to help redeem us and teach us that love will triumph.  Our Mother is not some distant thought or idea.  She is present in each one of our lives and unconditionally loves us.

            Our Lady of Czestochowa has always been a sign of the resilient church in Poland, despite being persecuted and attacked.  As we look at the Catholic Church today, Satan is attacking it on all fronts.  From the destruction of the family to the murdering of millions of innocent babies in the womb to the attacks on the clergy and religious, the Church is the last bastion for truth in a world that is absorbed in the heresy of relativism.  The body, which is created by God and is very good, has become an idol for worship in the world today.  It is no coincidence that during World War II, a young Karol Wojtyła made secret pilgrimages to Our Lady of Czestochowa.  It was Our Mother who nourished and feed his heart with truth and love.  This allowed Karol’s heart to proclaim the beauty of the body as an icon not an idol. 

This truth is proclaimed in both Love and Responsibility and the Theology of the Body.  St. John Paul II understood that you cannot defeat the lies of Satan by ignoring it, but rather confronting the lies with the Truth in a loving way.  The victory may not be immediate, but we know that victory with Our Lady is assured.  As the visionaries of Fatima heard in Our Blessed Mother’s messages, “The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.  In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph.”  It is the blood of the martyrs that will renew the Church.  It is our Mother Mary, which will comfort the sorrowful and aid the renewal of the Holy Catholic Church.

            So we have to surrender ourselves to Our Father and Our Mother.  When we were kids and our favorite toy was broken, we went to our mother and father to fix it for us.  We had to surrender our favorite toy to them so it could get fixed properly.  It is the same with our own interior brokenness.  Pride tends to be an obstacle to healing.   We cannot fix it ourselves, but Our Father and Our Mother can heal our brokenness and our broken hearts.  As children of God, we have to give to them all of our brokenness and sufferings so we can let the healing begin deep in our hearts. 

            How do we surrender our brokenness?  It first starts with prayer.  St. John Paul II said that the rosary is “Our daily meeting which neither I nor the Blessed Virgin Mary neglect.”  It is in prayer and frequent visits to the Holy Eucharist in Adoration that we allow Our Mother and Our Father into our hearts.  With Our Mother holding our hand, we can enter into our past brokenness to allow her to heal it. 

Second is frequent use of the sacrament of Reconciliation.  The Church calls it a Sacrament of Healing.  It is there where we lay before Our Father all of our sins, in all of their ugliness so that we can hear the words, “I absolve you from all your sins” and be made new again.  When we grow in the love of Our Lady and Our Lord, we can give it to others.  You cannot give what you don’t have.  When your heart is filled with this love, you get this burning desire to spread the message of love.  We are all called to help each other, and when we know the way out, we have a responsibility to help others out of Satan’s clutches.  To love authentically means to suffer.  “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” ~ John 15: 13.  My brothers and sisters in Christ, Be Not Afraid!  Let Our Lady of Czestochowa enter into your hearts!  She always points us to Our Lord and Savior. 

Totus Tuus Maria!