Transcription
[Music]
Welcome to Lento, a podcast with the Sisters of Life. We invite you to join us for conversation looking at life through the lens of love. You are loved. You are made in God's image, and your life matters. Let's talk about it.
Hello, hello, and welcome back to Let Love podcast with the Sisters of Life. This is Sister Anne. You're with Sister Veritas, and we are thrilled. I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. We are thrilled to be back. You know, it's a joy. It's a delight. And I am, I have to say, Sister, I really, I love just being part of this podcast family. That's what it feels like to me. I think of everyone, and I love praying for everyone. You know, it really is something. Actually praying for, praying with, you feel that togetherness in it. It's really special. It feels like a family. Good. I know it's a digital environment, but I think connections and beautiful things can happen for the glory of God. Amen. I believe. My goodness. And even, and just the joy of really speaking about beautiful stuff. I mean, even like today's episode, "Love for You, What Free You?" I mean, who doesn't love freedom? And who doesn't like free? Right? Free stuff. To even, I mean, I love free. Right? I mean, even, can you think when you were a kid, like little free stuff in the cereal boxes? Oh yeah. The UPC codes. I sent in for a lot of cool stuff. I got a free Spider-Man watch, free t-shirt. Wow. What did you get? The books. Really nice. Free or like, buy one, get one free. Yep. I remember Whoppers. Yeah. Back in the day in high school. And buy one of those, get another one. But sure, we do like the free stuff. You mean, even for sisters, it's a new free holy card. Shameless 7-Eleven. Yeah. At least in the state of you. I think it's throughout the country. We should check. But you might be right. Definitely July. What's so, so 11th? July 11th. Throughout. Free Slurpee at 7-Eleven. Yeah. And we go. Yeah. Why not? Free. The Feast of Saint Benedict. Let's go get your free Slurpee. It's a great way to celebrate. So we're loving the free, free toys. McDonald's. I didn't want to have you the only one. The toy. Right. I can admit that now. Long time now. At a place. Yeah. So we're gonna talk about that. Love for you. Yeah. God is love. So how do we, like God, that love frees? That's a great question. And it makes me think, we maybe you just start with a prayer. Amen. Amen. All you sisters, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit. Come, Lord Jesus. Oh Jesus, thank you so much for your goodness, your grace, your blessings. Lord, you are that kind of freedom. You desire our freedom that we may live as children of God. Pray, Jesus, right now that you just fill us with your Spirit. Help us to know deeply what it means to be free. And all the places in our hearts that you wish to breathe your freedom and your new life. We entrust ourselves, all those listening, all the needs and intentions of our hearts to you and to our Blessed Mother, who freely accepted and assented to your will. We pray. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death. Lady, you've got a loop. Pray for us. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.
So freedom. What do I mean? What's the first thing you think of? What do you think of freedom? The Word of God. Wow. I'm serious. What do we get in the scripture department? I just feel like we gotta go there. Let's go to the scripture. I mean, one that comes to mind right now, Galatians 5:1. Hmm. Get this. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery. Wow. It's powerful. God wants our freedom. He wants to free us from slavery. Well, and he didn't just do it for the Egyptians. I mean, for the Israelites in Egypt. Yeah. But he wants to do it for us in our personal lives. Whatever we're enslaved to, he wants to free us. Isn't that powerful? Yeah. He wants our freedom. Yeah. He wants us to be fully alive. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. How about St. Paul? Tell me, Second Corinthians 3:17. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Wow. I love that. So yeah, I want to tap into that. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. That we're made for the Spirit of God, or temples of this Holy Spirit. And when we allow that Spirit to reside within us, welcome that Spirit, welcome that gift, it animates our freedom. Mmm. It's not opposed. Mm-hmm. And isn't it interesting because I think often, you know, people, you know, we can look in something, though sometimes the world or kids look and say, like, oh, God restricts our freedom. Hmm. But actually, it's the opposite. Hmm. For the Spirit, the Lord is there is freedom. There is freedom. You know what I think it is? I know we've talked a lot about it, but I think it's worth saying again. In a sense, ultimately, as made in the image and likeness of God, what is freedom for me? What does it actually look like? And it's the freedom to love and be loved. When I think at the beginning of the day, at the end of the day, I'm happiest. I'm most fully alive when I'm free to love others and to be loved, to receive love from others. Right? When we don't have barriers, walls up, you know, when there's no obstacles, when, when there's self-gift is not obstructed, you know, that's that's where freedom lies because that's love in essence. Gift. I mean, yeah. I remember distinctly. It's a moment I'll never forget. Gathering as a community, the Sisters of Life, just like any family would gather to talk about, what would we do in the event of a disaster? Good question. Okay, what do we do? And I remember our Mother Superior simply asking all of us sisters, sisters, what is our disaster plan? And she let us sit in that question and just kind of feel it, right? And then she came forth with this answer. She said, sister, our disaster plan is to help the person next to us. Wow. I loved it. And yes, we also have practicals and, you know, emergency supplies and everything else. But this more than anything is the important heart of any disaster plan. And I have to say, you know, my angst, my fears, you know, kind of all the daymares you might have about, what am I gonna do in the event of a disaster? It's like, oh, I'm gonna love. I'm gonna help the person next to me. I'm going to receive the love and the help of those next to me. And in this, I can do something. And I can do the one thing that at the end of the day matters most. So again, getting a pulse on freedom. Hmm. I love that. And that kind of, I mean, just what you're saying, it's so kind of counterculture or like what, you know, but that kind of like it's, um, like that Christian charity, you know, allowing us and enabling us to freely choose to love and to choose the person next to us, you know, and to choose to give ourselves away as a gift, you know, that that being freedom, you know, choosing the other. Love that. Amen.
Well, and even to think, how do we exercise this or even work, work these muscles out, so to speak? Because I think to, when I think about it, it doesn't always come naturally. You know, there's a battle with him, right? Right. That I need a little training, right? Often I got to train up my will. And and that is community life or in the life of faith or, you know, spouses choosing for each other. I'm dying to self to to lift the other or, you know, reveal the goodness of another, the person next to them by choosing for them, choosing for another over ourselves. All these little acts of love in these moments, these heroic moments, they ennoble us for the bigger moments. Yeah. But I think for the most part, life is this choosing for in all the little ways that make a great and glorious love. Mmm-hmm. It's really true. And I think the more we can choose love, you know, and and will it, every time we do that, we actually grow in freedom because we're not something not bound by our own, you know, appetites or desires. And it's like, I can actually have a vision to look beyond myself and to see the other and to have a freedom enough to let myself go enough to be able to choose their good for the other, you know? So that could be like, I don't know, I'm gonna eat the crusts on that, you know, the ends of both sides of the loaf of bread. That's noble. There's nobody else like so, so, you know, it's like that's a lift, a little active choosing, freely choosing, but it actually, like you said, exercises it's a muscle of freedom. Yeah. You know, which has kind of been warped by original sin, but there's toward by Christ. And it's, it's learning to live in that. Amen. Yeah. And we need exercise. We do. We really do.
Well, even, um, I don't know, a paragraph in one of my favorite reads, Evangelium Vitae, which is the Gospel of Life, which is in a sense, the fifth gospel for the Sisters of Life. Number 81 kind of gathers this up, this idea of freedom and giving ourselves away as the ultimate freedom. And this is what it says. It says, "In a sense, this Gospel of Life is the proclamation of a living God who is close to us, who calls us to profound communion with himself and awakens in us the certain hope of an eternal life. It is the affirmation of the inseparable connection between the person, his life, and his bodily leanness. It is the presentation of human life as a life of relationship, a gift of God, the fruit and sign of his love. It is the proclamation that Jesus has a unique relationship with every person, which enables us to see in every human face the face of Christ. It is the call for a sincere gift of self as the fullest way to realize our personal freedom." Isn't that incredible? Wow. So that last sentence. Yeah. Can you say that again? It was so good. Oh, it's the call. This Gospel of Life, it's a call for sincere gift of self as the fullest way to realize our personal freedom. It's, and this is, it's stunning in itself, but also to to know the history. I mean, this is an encyclical written by John Paul II. Mm-hmm. You know, who lived through Nazi Germany, through Communist Poland, and who really, there's a Poland was in slavery, ultimately. And so he understood the freedom of the human spirit. And, and wow, even in quote-unquote captivity or or things that hinder our notice ID freedom, what did he find? Exactly what you said, this sense, your gift of self is the fullest way to realize our personal freedom. Isn't that power? That is always in our power to choose love. Actually. Okay.
Well, and as you speak of that, Sister, it reminds me of someone else and another good read. Have you ever read Man's Search for Meaning? Oh, it's so good. It's so good. Okay. So this is profound though, because Viktor Frankl, he was an Austrian neurologist and a psychiatrist. So, and Jewish. So not necessarily coming from a perspective of faith, but he wrote this book, Man's Search for Meaning, after surviving the Holocaust, in a sense, seeing, yeah, the oppression, the suffering, the human spirit being bent beneath the cruelty. I mean, terrible, terrible ultimate cruelties of another. And he arrived at a very similar conclusion. Just to quote him a little bit. I know I'm full of the quotes today, but he said this. He said, "After this experience," and I think he made it through numerous concentration camps and terrible experiences, he said, "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." Wow. It's powerful. Mm-hmm. In a sense, I can be living in the worst of circumstances, and yet this God-given freedom I have of my will, it is free, and I can still choose to love. And he even landed on that. He said, another quote, "For the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth that love is the ultimate and high school to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and believed have to impart: the salvation of man is through love and in love." Wow. What a quote. The salvation of man is through love and in love. Wow. And this is a, he's a psychiatrist, neurologist. You didn't, this was not a religious book, so to speak. But here, in the midst of darkness, the light of this truth became evidently clear to him. Mm-hmm. And it's really powerful to me. It really is. You know, sometimes, I mean, the light is sometimes most evident, you know, when it's shining in darkness, and it's like, wow, you see this splendor of it, you know? Absolutely tremendous.
Well, think about the light of the saints. Exactly. What an amazing that you mentioned that. I was just thinking, actually, just continuing with Auschwitz, Maximilian Kolbe. Well, really a stunning, stunning witness of true freedom, you know? And I don't know if you've ever been to Auschwitz, but I had. I haven't. I've had the sobering gift, I guess you could say, being there three times. And it just, you don't leave the same. You're, you're completely changed being there, just seeing the absolute horror of what, what happened, the traces of the horror of what happened. And it's just, it's the most raw and, yeah, sobering place I've ever been. Wow. Actually. And going, going into, you can so you can go into Maximilian Kolbe's cell. So just a little history, just want to mention. So, St. Maximilian Kolbe was a Franciscan friar, Polish. He was very brilliant. His evangelization, basically, he founded a magazine called The Knights of the Immaculate. He founded monasteries in Japan, in India. He was really like cutting edge in his use of technology, like the modern printing press, had to evangelize. He loved Our Lady, you know, he just loved her. But he was basically, he was captured by the Nazis during the Second World War and taken to Auschwitz. And one day, you know, a man escaped from Auschwitz. And the penalty for that, they lined up all everyone. And the penalty was, 10 men were chosen to die in this man's place who had escaped. And so these 10 men were chosen. And one of them cried out and said, please, like, I'm my husband and my father, like mercy, you know? And Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward and said, like, I'm a Catholic priest, let me take his place. Which, anyway, which this never happened that they let someone swap out, but they let him swap out, you know? And so he was condemned with, with these other men to a starvation cell. And if you go into the block or the barrack that he was in, you go down into the basement. And it's like this little tiny concrete cell, dark, damp. And you had like, ten men in there. Like, it's just, it's completely inhuman. And they were left to starve. Well, you know, it's a death. But what did Maximilian Kolbe do? You know, he, he prayed with the men. He had them all singing songs, singing hymns to Our Lady. Their spirits are up, they're buoyant, you know? And one by one, he, he was with them as they, as they died, you know? But he didn't, after two weeks of being in this cell, you know, start, he didn't die, you know? And so they ended up injecting him with, with poison to kill him. But what, to me, what a witness of freedom. Wow. You know, to freely give your life in place of a stranger that you don't know. And then to have the freedom to sing as you're starving to death and praise God because you're not afraid. Nothing is binding you. Oh, you know, wow. It's just, it's really stunning. That is, if that is a great love. Yeah. Wow.
Sister, I can't help myself. To add to the beauty of this great saint's life. I heard it was said that Our Lady promised St. Francis that none of his brothers, no, no Franciscan would ever die of starvation. And I just think that's remarkable to see this promise be fulfilled in St. Maximilian Kolbe's life in the sense that every other, and he should have died from starvation, every other prisoner did. So and yet he had to be put to death. And it, by another means, because of this promise that stood, that God held. Just incredible. You know, the lives of the saints reveal God's power and his glory. And then the other add is that I heard it said that when they put St. Maximilian Kolbe into the to cremate his body into the crematoria at this death camp, the crematoria actually broke. And it actually saved thousands of lives because they couldn't execute more prisoners. So you just see the power of love, and it wins the ultimate victory. Wow. It's like, it's like evil crumbled before this truly free man, and it had no hold on him. I would like, just, I mean, it's amazing. It's absolutely powerful. Absolutely powerful.
Well, it is. I think it's the freedom that the human spirit is born for. We want to live this way. We want to love this way. And, and even, it's in, it's in the day-to-day. It's in your local convent, I'm loving your sister next to you. I'm living for her. This is the, this is the school of love. That's in the family, you know, choosing for our, our husband or our wife, choosing for our kids, reading to them when all you want to do is take two Tylenol and go to bed. But those little sacrifices, it actually, it fills us and ennobles us and allows us to, it's like in giving of ourselves, we we come to know the great capacity and grow the great capacity of our love. It's pretty incredible. And just thinking about freedom too, like there's almost two kinds of freedom in the sense of saying, there's freedom from sin, bondage, you know, whatever holds us and bound. And there's the freedom for the freedom for love, you know? I think that's what we ultimately all desire. Mm-hmm. To be free of the shackles that, you know, keep us, keep us in dark places and stuck places. And to be free to love, to be free to make that self-gift. Yeah. So I look, I just love thinking about that. And maybe we could unpack that a little bit. Yeah. You know, gosh.
Well, I love to, in a sense, and it says it in the Gospel of Life, that there's an essential link, link that freedom has to truth. So the truth that you're saying, the freedom for love, self-gift, and the freedom from sin, in a sense, the truth of of me is that I'm not made for sin. I'm not made for darkness. I'm made for truth, light, goodness, beauty. This human spirit, right? Like, it needs to rest in God. St. Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, Lord." Or even, it makes you think of a story. We're on a Franciscan kick today. I think a good CFR Franciscan friary, the renewal, told me this story. He said he was hanging out in the South Bronx and just standing on the sidewalk. And I think he was praying or he's walking, walking the streets, just ministering to people. And he said this giant SUV, black SUV, tinted windows, pretty heavy beat going on in the back, you know, the beat of the South Bronx street. And so he was kind of like, okay, here we go, Lord. I think I think we're gonna have ourselves an encounter. So a man got out of this SUV and walked by the friar and stopped and looked the friar up and down. And the friar smiled. And the guy's like, "You a real brother, man?" Mm-hmm. "Friends again?" Yeah. "Real brother." He's like, "Well, I got a question for you." He's like, "Tell me, brother, why does sin feel so good?" Friar was like, "Hmm. You know, it's a pretty good question. Come, Holy Spirit. Gosh, what's this gonna look like?" And indeed, the Spirit, when he asked him to come, he comes. And so the friar replied and responded to this man. He said, "Yeah, I get you, man. I get you." He's like, "But tell me, what does it feel like after you sin?" And the guy was like, he just kind of nodded his head and he said, "Empty, brother. Real empty." Wow. And I think, I mean, sin lets us down, right? It's, I think it paints a beautiful picture that we're not ultimately made for it. No. So what's gonna ennoble us? What's gonna allow love to set us free? You know, to, let's a gift the fullness of life that God has invited us to?
That's a great question. And I, I mean, I mean, ultimately, I mean, Jesus, you know? Yeah. I just think of that from Luke, where where Jesus is in that synagogue and he's quoting Isaiah. He says, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free." Jesus is the one who will free us, you know? And, and as you're saying, like, how, how do we let this happen? I mean, I just, one holdout, two, two thoughts: confession and the Eucharist. These are the sacraments of freedom in a very deep and real way. I love it, Sister. Yeah.
Well, in a sense, where we encounter Christ in truth. Mm-hmm. His very person, his very life. We have access to Jesus in and through these sacraments. Yeah. And we can receive this love, um, and be made new. It's true.
Well, which one should we start with first? It's confession. Confession. I want to start. Well, tell me about confession. I love confession. Good. It's, I mean, that Jesus gave the authority of forgiveness of sins to his apostles and to his priests, and that has continued down to the apostolic line. And it's like, we can go to a priest, Catholic priest, and he sits there, you know, in the confessional, in persona Christi, in the person of Christ. And it's like, so we actually confess our sins, all that the junk, the stuff, the stuff that's clogging up my, the arteries of my interior heart, you know, like, and bring it to Jesus. And he, and when, you know, it's like, we, I mean, if you've been for a long time, I'll just quickly mention what happens. Like, we go in, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been this amount of time since my last confession. Here are my sins." And just to say, just the same, the number, just to sam, get them out. It's like, just get out the poison, you know, spit it out, you know? And then he, you know, often the priest will say something back, a little bit of advice, I'll give us a penance, some little prayer we can do, you know, it's just a sweet act of love to the Lord. And then what does he see? You know, "I absolve you from your sins." Well, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. And they're literally gone. They're gone. Like they don't exist. They're gone. I mean, it's stunning. I can't think of a greater freedom than that, to be released from the burden. You know, I remember my grandfather, who hadn't been to Mass and sacraments in 35 years, who stopped going. My mom remembers the day he stopped going. And then he came back when I was a novice. Mm. And went to confession for the first time in 35 years. And it literally, I've never seen. I mean, he was so changed after that confession. It was like this lightness, his eyes. Like, I'm like, this is a new grandpa. Wow. It really is freeing. It's transforming. It is. It's what I'm so grateful to our priests. I remember I was recently at an event where I, it was a huge room where I was a youth event, and there's an opportunity for confessions. And I would say there's probably a hundred, a hundred confession sites, so a hundred priests. And the chairs were all spaced out so this could be very reverently done. And I had the task of of just making sure those who wanted to go to confession could get to a place to do that with a priest. And I have to tell you, just being in the radius of this, and to see the sincerity and the compassion and the depth of listening and the the radiance of fatherhood that flowed from these these good shepherds. And just, just the mercy, then, you know, seeing that hand go up and absolution, and the, the tears and the new life that flowed forth from all these souls being able to come into such a deep encounter with, with the mercy and the love of Christ. It, it was probably one of the most powerful moments of my own experience of the power of that sacrament, just being in, again, just being aware that it was happening and assisting in this great gift. I have to tell you, even the freedom that it brings. I remember we had a day, a retreat for women seeking hope and healing after abortion. And there's such beautiful retreats in which a woman is able to bring her burden to our Lord and receive His mercy. And it's incredible to watch the transformation and the transformation that these women share with us. And so one of our sisters was helping to serve this retreat, and she happened to look out the window and she noticed that one of the women on retreat was doing cartwheels across the front lawn with this huge smile on her face. And later spoke with this woman, and the woman shared that it was the only thing she could think to do. Like, this was her spontaneous reaction after the grace of being able to finally bring her experience of abortion to confession and mercy. His mercy makes us new again. It sets us free. It is real. I mean, even St. Faustina would say, the saints aren't the ones who didn't fall. They're the ones who rise immediately to glorify His mercy and claim and receive that gift. Wow. That's amazing. So what a grace we have in confession. It really is. I mean, it's, it really is the sacrament of freedom, you know? And it frees us to to receive the Father's love, you know? And to know who we are. And, and I mean, the Lord said, like, the truth will set you free. Mm-hmm. Right? And it's like, the truth of His mercy. I know who I am before Him. And then I am beloved, and I belong to Him. Mm-hmm. And that we rest in that, and that that does set us free, you know? And it also, it also takes this pressure off to have to create ourselves or like fix ourselves or figure things out. No, like I have all the freedom of a child of God, you know? And confession really kind of awakens that freedom in my heart and holds me in that. Yeah. Love that.
But it kind of probably leads to the next sacrament that Jesus gives himself to us. Yes. In the Eucharist. Yeah. I mean, totally given. Outrageous God himself. Mm-hmm. With us. So humbly. So he, in a sense, exposed. He wears his heart on his sleeve. So this week, truly gives his whole heart to us. Mm-hmm. In and through, yeah, the Eucharist. Yeah. And that it's like, this is him. This is the same Jesus. Like our founder, Cardinal O'Connor, would say, this is not an exact quote, but like, "This is the Eucharist. This is the same Jesus that walked in the hills of Galilee, you know, that was born in the stable in Bethlehem, that, you know, healed the leper, that was crucified. This is this is Jesus. There's one Jesus." I think Reese is not a symbol. This is the Lord, you know, giving himself to the Father for us. Amen. It's, it's just to actually sit and marvel. Like, this is the Creator of the universe who made himself so small, freely, freely to give himself to me that I might be free. Amen. Wow.
Well, in a sense, the Catechism has beautiful thoughts as far as the fruits of receiving Jesus. Because in a sense, we can't give what we don't have. And to receive our Lord, to receive love, it in turn sets us free to give of ourselves in imitation of Him. And that's Christian charity. Knows no borders. Can go anywhere. And Christ wants to be brought. And so in the Catechism 1416, it says, "Communion with the Body and Blood of Christ increases the communicant's union with the Lord, forgives his venial sins, and preserves him from grave sins." So isn't it amazing? It unites us to Jesus. It forgives us of even the little sins we carry. And it actually protects us from from falling in the future. And it continues, "Receiving the sacrament strengthens the bonds of charity between the communicant and Christ. It also reinforces the unity of the Church as the mystical body of Christ." So it actually unites us all closer. Mm-hmm. Which is a great. The enemy wants to divide. He wants to break up. And this is a great sacrament of of union. Communion. Communion. Mm-hmm. And with my brothers and sisters. Mm-hmm. It draws us all closer.
That's so beautiful, Sister. I, I wanted to mention too, like the amazing thing too, is even if we can't receive Him, you know, if we're prevented from receiving Him, we can still actually unite ourselves to the eternal sacrifice of His offering. So the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, you know, which is happening somewhere in the world at every moment, you know? And we can make also, in union with that, we can make a spiritual communion, you know, throughout the day, really inviting Him into our hearts, unifying ourselves with Him, asking Him for whatever graces we need and whatever graces He wants to give us. It's really, really beautiful. Amen.
Well, even a closing thought. Our founder, Cardinal Connor, he used to go when he had priests that were sick in the hospital, he would go and he would visit them. And as they, and he would tell them, "You're the most powerful priest in this diocese right now." Wow. Just simply uniting yourself to Christ, allowing Him to to share in your suffering and to share your suffering with Him. And in that, that oneness, being united to Christ in this way, you are radiating this incredible gift of love. You're finding freedom in Christ's own self-gift to the world. And I just think it's so powerful that you can look at Jesus on the cross and think, gosh, this was a total failure. And yet, no, no. Again, our founder, Cardinal Connor, would speak it was not in his preaching and his teaching and his working of miracles that he saved the world. It was on the cross. Mm-hmm. Totally given. Freely given. Mm-hmm. In love for the Father. Freely given. In love for us. And in the sense, inviting us to receive and to live that invitation to freedom and to love in our own lives. So it's an incredible paradox. It's an incredible scandal. And yet, there He is. And there is how do we let love set us free? We go to the cross and we receive our Lord, His love, His mercies, and be filled by this, transformed by this, and then give ourselves away in the same way. Spend ourselves in love. Wow. I love that, Sister. Amen. That's so beautiful. Amen.
Well, my goodness, Sister. Before we go. Before we go. Do you thought? Sister, this is my thought. Yes. It comes from another Saint, Padre Pio. It's one of my favorite little sayings. And this was his little prayer: "My past, O Lord, to Your mercy. My present, to Your love. My future, to Your Providence." And I, I love this prayer because let all things be covered in His love. To to live, letting ourselves be loved. That's never a question mark. And Padre Pio says it so well. My past, O Lord, to Your mercy. My present, to Your love. My future, to Your Providence. And this sets us free. This sets us free. It turns us out to the Lord and to receive ourselves in turn from Him. Wow. I love that.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna piggyback on that one because it's that kind of turning out. I think before we go, I would say, you know, this week, to kind of, we're talking about exercising the freedom muscle. Just, you know, find one way this week, you know, where maybe the Lord is calling you to choose the good of another at a little bit of a cost to yourself. It could be very small. Mm-hmm. You know, but but to practice that, that one act of choosing the other, you know, even at the cost of self-gift, yourself sacrifice. And just see what that does, you know, to your heart for the freedom of your heart. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Can't wait to live it. Amen. Amen.
Maybe do you want to close this at a prayer, Sister? I would love to, Sister. And then even the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Father in Heaven, we just ask that you send Your Holy Spirit to anoint us, to anoint our minds and our hearts and our souls. To fill us with the Spirit of freedom, to love, to be loved, and to give ourselves away like Christ in love. We ask in a special way, Blessed Mother, that you pray Your own yes within us, to let it be done according to the loving will of the Father. And that you strengthen, pray that our hearts be strengthened with courage, just to welcome His will as it unfolds throughout the day. And we ask, Blessed Mother, that you pray for us. And we just give thanks. At a time, 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, and ever shall be, world without end. [Music] God bless you all with us listening. We're praying for you. Amen. See you next time. This was Let Love podcast for the Sisters of Life, a religious community of women consecrated for the protection of the sacredness of human life. Be assured of our prayers and learn more at Sisters of Life dot org. [Music]