Transcription
Recording in progress.
Great. And then the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus, you want to pray. So, we're going to pray with you. Come divine will, pray in our praying. Lord Jesus, we give you the little pebble of our will in exchange for the gift of living in your divine will. And Lord Jesus, we fuse ourselves into your divine will. We fuse into, well, every act that we've done today and every act that we will do. We act, we abandon ourselves to your divine will, and we resign ourselves to your will.
We pray the prayer for the glorification of Louisa. Oh August and most holy trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we praise and thank you for the gift of the holiness of your faithful servant Louisa Pigoreta. She lived, oh Father, in your divine will, becoming, under the action of the Holy Spirit, in conformity with your Son, obedient even to death on the cross, victim and most pleasing to you, thus cooperating in the redemp in the work of redemption of mankind. Her virtues of obedience, humility, supreme love for Christ in the Church. Lead us to ask you for the gift of her glorification on earth so that your glory may shine before all and your kingdom of truth, justice, and love may spread all over the world in the particular charisma of the fear of volunt. We appeal to her merits, obtain from your most holy trinity the particular grace which we pray to you with the intention to fulfill your divine will. Amen.
Our Lady, Queen of the Divine Will, pray for us.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
Saint Annabelle the Francia, pray for us.
Servant of God Louisa Vigoret, pray for us.
Our guardian angels and patron saints, pray for us.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus, you want to speak, so I will speak with you from divine will, speak in my speaking. Now, just a simple thing. If anyone wants to put anything onto the chat or to ask a question, before you do it, please make a prevenient act so that everything you do is fused in the divine will. So before you put anything on the chat, okay, Jesus, you want to type this out, so I'm going to type it out with you. If you if you want to ask a question, before you raise your hand or what have you, Jesus, you want to speak, so I'm going to speak with you. And it has to become habitual that we do these things. And you'll find out why as the session goes.
Now I'm on Matthew chapter 6. I'm on verse 25. But first, verse 24. Jesus says, "No man can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other." And he specifies mammon. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. Okay.
Now, this this can be a very painful but very crucial lesson in the spiritual life in general, but especially in your journey in the divine will. Um, because we can trust in our bank accounts. We can trust in our pension plans, in our income, in our finances. We can trust in the houses that we live in. We can place our trust in all the material goods around us. But that is a very poor trust. God. Jesus calls us to trust in God alone. You cannot serve God and mammon.
In verse 25, Jesus begins the sentence with a therefore. "Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life." Okay? Now, you can just stop it there. Jesus actually then goes on to say about your um what you shall eat or drink or about your body, but do not be anxious about your life. Okay? The word could be worry. Do not worry about your life. Do not be fearful about your life can be translated in a number of ways, but do not be anxious about your life. And the word anxious, he then uses around half a dozen times in the original Greek variant in the next basically paragraph um in verse 25. "Why are you anxious about clothing?" Then he asks us to consider nature and how nature has been clothed by God. What is nature clothed in? It's clothed in the glory of God. It reflects his glory. But nature has not been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. You have. You've been bought with the blood of Jesus. Nothing else in creation has. You and you alone have been paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ. So he's going to take extra special care of the ones who cost him a great deal. And we have to learn to trust this. And the way to trust it is to not worry about our lives.
In verse 31, "Therefore, do not be anxious." I was talking with a Catholic counselor who lives locally about a month ago. We just happened to meet each other in the street and just go into a conversation. Um, and we started talking about anxieties. And I said to her, "Well, let's say a person has got anxieties or an anxiety problem. How how are they? What's the ne what's the first step they're going to take in dealing with the anxiety?" And she said something which really surprised me. She says, "You have to befriend the anxiety. Most people want to chase it away. Most people want to run from anxious experiences, especially in the present, right? But she said, you have to make friends with it. You have to sit with the anxiety. And then she has, you've got to get to the root of it because if you're suffering an anxiety in your life today, the root of the anxiety is in your childhood. And therefore by sitting with it and processing it, you can get to the source of it. And what will happen is the anxiety, when you get to the source of it, the wound can be healed and the anxiety will vanish. The other problem you can have is you can be in league with your anxiety and not want it to be healed. It can become like a crutch, a friend that you want to keep with you. And that's something you also have to work on. And I'll be honest with you, um, this is where if you've been given the tools to deal with this, it's unreasonable then to go putting your anxieties on other people if you're not going to use the tools that you've been given because all you're doing is just spreading your your thing around town. You're not solving it. But if you've been given the solution, you need to deal with it. You need to use the weapons so that the the anxiety does not become somebody else's problem. Okay? But like I say, one of the tools, one of the great tools I was told is to sit with it and get back to the source because God's will is very clear. He wants you to have no anxieties. It's very clear. Okay, no anxieties.
And you're going to think to yourself, "How can I have a life without anxieties?" Well, I would put another question to you. "How can you live your life without peace? How can you live your life without peace? How can you truly live a Christian life? How can you truly say you are a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, a prince of peace, and have a relationship with his mother, the queen of peace, and yet be dominated by anxieties?" It's a contradiction, right? So God gives us the tools, the weapons, the insight, the healing. He gives us everything we need so that so that we can live this one scripture. Right? This is Matthew 6:31. There's about five words. "Therefore, do not be anxious." Just five words, right? "Therefore, do not be anxious." Just living those five words. And there is the will of God revealed. He's saying, "Do not be anxious." And he repeats it. How many times in the New Testament does Jesus repeat one word so often in one paragraph? Verse 34. "Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself."
Why do we? Let's take another look at why anxieties might be a problem. Now, I'm going to go to Louisa and I'm going to come back to something else. Okay. So, uh, this is um August the 16th, 1912. So, we're going to look at the problem first and then come to the solution. Volume 11, August the 16th, 1912. "My daughter, the thought of yourself blinds your mind. It forms a sort of human enchantment in them. And this human enchantment forms a net around man. This net is made of weaknesses, of oppressions, of melancholies, of fears, and of everything evil, including anxieties, fears, and worries." So thinking of yourself causes this. Okay.
I'm now going to give you a shocker. Okay, if you if you've already read these entries, then you'll know what's coming. Thinking of yourself. Okay, forms that that horrible net. This is volume 12, May the 10th, 1919. "My daughter, so I was very afflicted and worried about my poor states." How many of you have been afflicted and worried about your poor state in the last few weeks? Don't put your hands up and don't nod. Please don't don't do that. Hands down, one of you. Okay. Um, so Jesus wanting to distract me from thinking about myself told me, "My daughter, what are you doing? The thought of yourself makes you go out of my will."
Now, I've heard a lot of discussion on different YouTube channels about people's obsession with sin and how sin takes you out of the divine will. I have not heard anyone say that the thought of yourself takes you out of your will. Jesus makes it very, very clear. This one thing takes you out of his will. So you got to say to yourself, okay, the thought of myself forms this net of weaknesses, of fears, of worries and anxieties and it blinds me and it takes me out of the divine will. The thought of myself. Okay.
So try to nail this. When Jesus says, "Do not be anxious." What causes the anxiety in your life today? Well, there's wounds from your childhood. But also thinking about yourself causes you to be anxious. So we got to think, "How do I stop thinking about myself?" Well, God obviously wants to give you the grace to do this. By the way, as we go into this, bear in mind that the culture in which you live is utterly self-obsessed. So by stopping this, you are totally countercultural. You really are. Our culture is completely obsessed with self. Then you have to ask yourself the question, "Do I really want to be like the culture I'm in? Because it is desperately unhappy. It is full of fear and worry, anxiety, and stress. Do I really want to be anything like that? Do I aspire to be like that?" No. You are citizens of heaven according to St. Paul. And therefore you are citizens of a culture which is completely centered upon God and his divine will. That's what you belong to. But you are called to renew the culture.
Now let's just get read a little bit more of May the 10th, 1919. "Don't you know that for as long as my will lasts in you, so does the divine life last within you? And as soon as my will ceases, so does the divine will cease, and you take back your human life." Beautiful exchange you make.
Now the second paragraph, and this is about the chastisements. I wanted to draw this one out. There's those saying he added, "You do not know the ruin the world will fall into." And don't forget, at this point, World War I has been over for six months. Okay? And World War I was the most devastating war in the history of the world up to this point. Everything that has happened until now can be called a game compared to the chastisement that will come.
Now let's just go back to our very first point. Do not be anxious. Okay? Do not worry. Learn one simple lesson here. Everything in this world that is not founded upon the will of God is going to be shredded. Everything. Okay? And today, this week, we see in Iran that the internet has collapsed because the government has taken it down. So, you have these indicators as to what's going to be happening. Okay. Um, I could go into a little bit of a story about what is really happening in Iran that most of our modern media won't tell us about in terms of the renewal of the faith in the country. The fact that Iran is becoming more Christian than it is is that it is Muslim and is one of the reasons why they've had enough of their government. Um, I was actually watching an interview with an Iranian about four weeks ago. I think it was an Iranian Christian and he said that they've had to close, I've said it before, they've closed over 50,000 mosques and he says one of the problems in our country is that there are 10% of the country which is Muslim is armed and the Christians cannot take up arms against the rest of them because we're because of the is and he says and that's what you're seeing now. But that's going off on a different slightly different topic. What I was saying that therefore was that Jesus refers to World War I, the greatest war in human history up to that point, as a game in comparison with what's coming. And he tells us we must not worry or be anxious about anything that's coming. We have to keep our eyes on him. All right.
Now, let's take a look at what happens as a result of keeping our eyes upon him as we journey into this time. Oh, by the way, I don't know if you've noticed, but the year of Jubilee finished last week. And as the year of Jubilee was coming to an end, the conversation about war started kicking in again. A conversation which hasn't really happened in the last 12 months. Before the year of Jubilee began, there was lots of talk about World War II and other similar chastisements. And then that whole topic went very, very quiet during the Jubilee year. And almost immediately it's kicked off again. So we had that year of rest from that sort of language.
Now back to August 16th, 1912. "The more one thinks about oneself, even under the aspect of good, the thicker the net becomes, and the blinder the soul. On the other hand, not thinking of oneself, but thinking only of me and only of loving me, whatever the circumstance is light for the mind and forms a sweet divine enchantment. This divine enchantment also forms its net. But this net is made of light, of fortitude, of joy, of trust, of all the goods which I myself possess. And the less one thinks about oneself, the thicker this net becomes."
Now Jesus then explains in the previous entry how to stop thinking of yourself. And you probably all know this anyway, but we're going to go through it. Uh August the 14th, 1912. "As I was in my usual state, my always lovable Jesus told me, 'My daughter, in order to forget herself, the soul should make it in such a way that everything she does and which is necessary to her, she does as if I myself wanted to do it in her. If she prays, she should say, "It is Jesus who wants to pray, and I pray together with her." If she has to work, it is Jesus who wants to work. It is Jesus who wants to walk. It is Jesus who wants to take food, who wants to sleep, who wants to get up, who wants to enjoy himself and so on with all the other things of life. Only in this way can the soul forget herself. Only in this way.'"
So this should be a bit of a priority for you in order that you can forget yourself and become the person of peace. And also so that all the anxieties and the fears and the worries and everything else can all disappear and you will instead be dominated with light and hope and joy and peace. Bearing in mind the only reason we have these problems in our lives is because of the voids in the soul. Once those voids have been filled with the divine life, you will be completely focused on God. You'll never think of yourself again and you'll be happy with an authentic happiness.
Now going back to I will go on to another one to do with this which is basically that the thought of oneself makes the soul smaller. But before I do I want to go back to the scripture Matthew 6. "Do not be anxious." Um, and I'm going to go from Father Mary Carus's commentary on this scripture. Um, and he talks about from where Jesus says, "Therefore, do not be anxious." Um, and then talks about the birds of the air and so on. "The entire present passage is like a walk through the garden of Eden by the side of the beautiful creator. A healing stroll intended to open our eyes and cure the restlessness in our hearts by the contemplation of the natural world around us. Two verbs by the Lord encourage the purified vision. That alone will let light of creation flood my soul. The first one is translated as 'cast a long glance at' is translated into English as um, where is it? 'Look at the birds of the air.' Look. The word 'look' is in in English, but in the Greek, 'cast a long glance at the birds of the air.' And the the next one is 'learn your lesson from' in respect of the lilies." So Jesus wants you to contemplate the birds of the air and to learn a lesson from flowers. It's an interesting way to disciple people, isn't it? And in the divine will, he does no less than that as well. You know, he's telling you to look at creation and recognize his fiat in everything. One of our mistakes when it comes to our journey in the divine will is what's in this for me? A big mistake, especially as you're not meant to be thinking about yourself.
Now this is what Father Mary Kakis says when he's saying 'cast a long glance at' and 'learn your lesson from'. He says, "In other words, turn your eyes away from yourself and look at the things around you. The presence of God is not found in human anxiety, but in the ongoing life of the cosmos." The verb 'to be anxious about' or 'to worry' is used in different forms no less than six times in 10 verses. As if Jesus were attempting to exercise this addiction to worry from our souls. And it needs to be exercised from your soul. And it is an addiction and it can't be. There is no place for anxiety, fear, and worry in your journey towards God. This is what the footnote in my Bible says. Right? Remember a few minutes ago I talked about how Jesus says that thinking about yourself causes you to flow out of the divine will. This is what the footnotes in my Bible says about anxiety. "Anxiety over earthly goods and comforts draws people away from God." So these two things are actually extremely detrimental to your journey in the divine will. And so you should wage war on them. Jesus gives you the weapons. Oh, I love this. I love this. The way his language is when I think of the divine will. So, think of the divine will. "The service of God to which you have been invited is here defined in a marvelous way as being essentially an existence based on trust and free from anxiety. To be the slave of God results in a life as effortless, glorious, and beautiful as that of the birds, the wild lilies in the grass. By an extraordinary juxtaposition, the life of God's servant is defined by the absence of those tasks which make for arduous living, i.e., sowing, reaping, storing, spinning, which are the things that Jesus talks about here. He said he talks about the birds and the lilies. They do not sow or reap, yet your heavenly Father takes care of them. The service of mammon, on the contrary, which is supposed to intend to provide lasting security, produces a permanent condition of anxiety and continual effort."
What does Jesus invite you into? He says, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your soul." And Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 says, "Enter into his rest while the promise remains." Then it says again, "Do not be anxious for your soul." Anxiety for one's soul, when it translates into the search for mere physical survival, becomes a self-perpetuating infection. Anxiety for your soul. Well, what can you be if you can't be anxious for your soul?
I've been reading um several books on the spiritual life over the last couple of weeks while I was while I had the flu. I I was actually meant to be on retreat and then I got hit with the flu. So, it was a flu-filled retreat. It was actually very nice. I can't complain. It was really lovely. Um, my mobile has been off and I've hardly touched my computer and I've just been reading, reading, praying, and sleeping. Perfect. Right. Doesn't get any better than that. Um, and I was reading "I Want to See God" by a Carmelite monk and "The Silence of God." I forget the name of the priest, Father Basil something. Um, and I was also reading a book called "Unwanted," which is an incredible book written by a Christian psychologist. And it's all to do with the source of sexual wounds and how to get back to the source and to deal with the problems. And when I was reading the books on the uh the spiritual life, they keep coming back to similar points all the time about the absolute necessity of about how we have no idea what God is doing in our soul. No idea. Jesus gives us nourishment for our soul to feed us. But we have no idea about the oceans of grace that God is constantly pouring in to the soul. No idea. But it's the same with the body. You know, how many of you are having a drink while listening to this? And all you know is that when you're sipping the drink, there's a taste and a texture, warm or cold, thick or thin, sugary or bitter, and then vanish. From there on in, it hits your stomach and you've no idea. Unless, of course, you've been a highly trained physician and you know the exact route the molecules are going to take. But the body and the soul are very similar. We feed the soul sometimes with utter garbage and we hope we're going to be healthy. And God has given us rich nourishment.
Now when we say these things, cuz I I'm reading this sentence out, this one here about anxiety. "Do not be anxious for your soul." Okay. "Worry over food, drink, and clothing in fact becomes fallen man's substitute for concern over his soul's salvation." So worrying about the ordinary things of life becomes a substitute for the one thing we should be focused on, our our salvation. Now when you read something like that, it can almost cause us to bulk. It can almost like, oh my gosh, that's such a radical, extreme thing. It can't be true. And yet, this is nourishing your soul. This is showing you that the food you've been consuming, the anxieties, ruminating over your life's situation, ruminating over money, ruminating over wealth, ruminating over food and drink and clothing, ruminating over these relatively meaningless things is nourishing your soul with poison and it's weakening the soul and constricting the soul.
Now, when we ruminate on the word of God, that expands the soul and strengthens the soul. So, we actually throw the dice. We decide on what we're going to ruminate. And the worst thing is our culture has made a virtue out of fear. We think worrying is virtuous. We think anxiety is something we should all have and is normalized. What people find it amazing and staggering and they cannot believe is when somebody says to them, "Oh, I'm not worried." And they actually think it's unloving. "What do you mean you're not worried? You must be worried about this. You can't be so cold and heartless as not to be worried about this." You see, so it suddenly becomes a virtue. You've got to be worried about something. Well, actually, what you need to be is trusting in Jesus. "No, I'm not worried about this at all. I'm completely trusting that God's will is being worked out here. I have no worries about it at all." Then people sometimes think you're inhuman. "How can you not be worried about this?" And so what they've done is they've distorted the reality and they've taken something which is poisonous and made out to be nutritious. And they've taken what you've got as nutritious and made out to be poisonous. You can't just say you trust him through this. You just can't do that. You've got to be worrying about this. But actually, it's trust which is going to bring everything to a peaceful conclusion and worrying will be consigned to the history books, if there are any, in the new era because there won't be much we want to remember from this period of time, folks. I can guar. Have you ever noticed in the majority of history books? I mean, I'm no historian, but I've read history books. Most of them just record war after war. Whereas when you read church history, you get the lives of the saints and it's breathtaking and the church councils. I love that's what I love about when I studied church history. I thought, gosh, this is very different to secular history. It actually records good news. Secular history can only record bad news. It's unbelievable.
So a being betrays itself when it becomes the slave of its lowest needs. This constitutes the reign of mammon. The spiritual acts that Jesus here prescribes as a divine physician are contained in three verbs. Okay? Consider, learn your lesson from, and seek for. And these lead us to healing and salvation. And this is where you get Jesus speaking to the man by the pool of Siloam. "Do you want to be well?" And you have to ask yourself that question. "Do I want to be well?" Because being well means I have to forget myself, and that's going to be a challenge. Am I ready to forget myself? Because this is going to be my growth in the divine will.
The teaching on forgetting yourself is in volumes 11 and 12. Um, the volumes follow a two-fold or three-fold division. The two-fold division is from volumes 1-24 and 25-36. And Jesus describes that two-fold division in volume 25. At the beginning of volume 25, he says, "Up to this point, all of the teachings and the penances, the sufferings and the joys have all been gathering the material. From here on, we will start to build." So that's in volume 25. So volumes 25 to 36 are the building of the building. Okay. There is another subdivision which is 1 to 12, 13 to 24, I think it is, and 25 to 36. Um, the first subdivision is the feat of redemption. The second is the feat of creation, which is volumes 13 onwards. And then the four, the third one, volumes 25 onwards, I think it is, is the fiat of sanctification. So you have a you have a subdivision of the three fiats, but you also have a subdivision of gathering the materials and building. Okay.
Now the words of Jesus on forgetting yourself come at the end of the fear of redemption in readiness for the fear of creation. Why is that important? Because the main purpose of creation was the glory of God. And you cannot give God an appropriate glory while thinking about yourself because you will want to have a piece of the apple. You will want a piece of this cake. You will want the glory. And the best way for you to receive the glory that God has prepared for you from before the foundation of the world is for you to be completely focused upon him and to forget yourself. And we see this in the lives of the saints. The saints are glorified because they glorified God. They forgot themselves. That's how they that's how they become saints. They forget themselves. That's kind of like the secret to holiness, to forget yourself.
Let me go back a little bit to Father Mary Carus because he gives some beautiful words. "Christ challenges our worldly values and norms of behavior. The warrior, the overachiever who is always calculating losses and gains and providing for tomorrow, the person the world considers a responsible adult. Brace yourselves. Is here judged by Christ to be wasting his time on trifles, to be throwing away the better part of his energy and talents on a cause without a future. His soul is a trophying from lack of use, choking from incarceration." He's got away with words, as Father Mary Khakis, right? Very gentle and subtle. But the one whose spirit soars about heedlessly with the freedom of the birds of the sky and whose life blooms as spontaneously as wild lilies that no one has sown. This is the true adult in the kingdom of God because he has been perfected in the art of trust. "Come eat my bread and drink the wine I've mixed for you. Forsake your childhood and live and walk on the paths of prudence." Proverbs 9:6, according to scripture.
Now he uses the word adult. But actually, the scriptures read, don't talk about adult. They talk about mature. The mature person. Okay. The mature person in the sight of God is the one who accepts the divine invitation to come to the banquet of grace in order to eat God's bread and drink his wine. While the immature child is the one who prefers to go on eating bland pap, that is the insipid products of his own efforts. And this is seen with our blessed mother. She would only receive. Her life was all about receiving from God. She didn't bring anything to the table. At the moment of her incarnate, of of her incarnation, of her conception, she was offered the divine will at the very moment. And she had in one hand her human will and in the other hand the divine will. And at that moment, she gave her human will to God and never took it back. Her life was totally governed by the divine will from the very first instant. And she says that she and her son competed in how much he could give to her and how much she could receive from him. She doesn't talk about what she gives to Jesus. She talks about what she receives from him. So this is the rich banquet to which God has invited us. And our task is is is very simple here tonight. Our task is very simple. Okay. Forgetting ourselves. Uh, I'm got my Bible. I just want to get the book of heaven back up. Right.
"Thinking of oneself." This is volume 11, August 17th, 1912. "The thought of oneself makes the soul smaller." Now, you might think to yourself, "Oh, yeah, great, cuz I want to be one of those small saints." No, no, no. It makes it constrict. It's not a good thing. Okay? Your soul needs to expand. Because it's got to be filled with God. Thank you, Rarity. Appreciate that one. It's got to be filled with God. So, your soul has to expand. Think of um Isaiah, I think it's Isaiah 53, "Open wide the space of your tents. Burst out to the left and right. Your descendants will dispossess the nations." If you've got children that you or you know whether they're physical children or spiritual children, people in your life who you want to come to Christ, how are you going to get them to Christ? Your soul needs to expand so that you can feed them. Verity, you've popped in. "Open your mouth and I will fill it." It's from the Psalms. That's one of my favorite lines in the Bible. "Open your mouth and I will fill it." And you also find it in Ezekiel chapter 3 where God gives the prophets a scroll and says, "Eat the scroll." Yeah, eat the scroll.
"So from her smallness, she measures my greatness, almost wanting to constrain me. On the other hand, one who does not think of herself by thinking of me expands within my immensity and renders me the honor due to me." Okay. So no anxieties, fears, or worries. Stop thinking about yourself. That does not mean you should not deal with your issues. Okay. How do I deal with my anxieties which are rooted in my childhood wounds if I can't think about myself? You ready for this? This is not difficult. Okay, just very simple. So you you sit down and pray and you say, "Okay, I'm feeling overwhelmed with anxieties." Um, so I'm sitting down. Derek said, "Make friends with the anxiety." So, we're gonna I'm going to call the anxiety um Anthony. Okay. So, Anthony, you're the anxiety. Hi, how you doing? Um, we're going to sit together and we're going to have a chat. So, how do how do I do this in the divine will? It's very simple. Jesus, you want to sit with the anxiety. So, I'm going to sit with this anxiety with you. And we are going to go back to my childhood and we're going to revisit the the the the root of the wound that has caused this anxiety troubling me today. So you take the hand of Jesus and you go back to your childhood with Jesus. So you're not thinking of yourself. If you're focused upon Jesus and he takes you back and he unveils the wound and what you do is you say, "Okay, Jesus, you want to write, so I'm going to write with Jesus." And you journal the childhood experience which caused the wound. Now, what that is doing, and again, you'll get this on some, there's some good psychology about this out there. What that is doing is it is unpacking a memory. You're unfolding the memory and the memory loses its power. So instead of being an anxious memory, it becomes a peaceful one. And when you have finished writing, and don't just write down the experience, write down how it feels and so forth. Just keep just keep writing until you run out of words. All right? You will feel peaceful.
Okay, just bear with me. For some reason, I didn't plug my laptop in and it's just told me that. Hold on. How much have I got left? Oh, I've got 10%. I've got enough time to do it. Let me just see if I've got my lead. That Father Mary Carus, the that Derek keeps referring to, how do you spell that? Carcass?
>> Mary Carcass. M E R I K I K I S. Mary Carcass. It's it's say Greek and he's a he's a Cistercian. Um, and this is the book. It's called "Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word." But brace yourselves because, you know, you're all reading the book of heaven, right? And we we know how thick the book of heaven is, right? It's about a thousand pages or more. Uh, mine is 1,600 pages. Right. This is um, this book by Father Mary Carcus is just over 700 pages long, but this is one of four volumes. So, you've got a choice. You can either carry on reading your book of heaven and then just let me bring some gems out from Mary Carcass or you can um make a little rod for your back by buy the four volumes and then realize, oh my gosh, I'm never going to read all this and then I've got catechism in a year and Bible in a year as well. Oh my goodness.
>> I hope it was a present to somebody else.
>> There you go. There you go. But they are beautiful. I I, you know, if I whenever I find a scripture that I want to just dig into a little bit more, I pull Mary Carcass off the shelf and he really helps me to dig in and as you know, I sometimes bring it out as a little treat for you all. Um, now where was I before I was so rudely interrupted by my fading battery? Yeah. So when you're dealing with these anxieties and fears and worries, instead of ending up in a naval-gazing situation where you're constantly looking at yourself and oh my gosh, there's another childhood wound. Oh my gosh, it's another trauma and so on. Just place your fuse yourself in the divine will. Um, do an act of resignation because that is the medicine for the soul. And then when you get the opportunity, just sit with the memory and take Jesus by the hand and walk with Jesus through the wound and then let it rest because you can get really obsessive. Sorry, we can get really obsessive about the wounds of the soul and the need for healing and it can actually distract us from the mission to which Christ has called us.
Over the years, I've been involved in Catholic ministry now for 35 years. And I remember when I first started walking the the root of inner healing about 33 years ago and going on a healing retreat and being confronted with my own weaknesses and woundedness and the tears and everything else. And at the time, I was involved in evangelization in Birmingham quite a lot. And I was thinking, "How can I do this evangelization work while I'm carrying all this garbage?" And I actually felt like resigning from the evangelization ministry I was in. And I bet I've got to tell you, I feel like doing that so regularly. It's frightening. You know, you confront your wounds, you think, "Oh, Lord, I can't carry on with this work." Um, and the people around me are saying, "No, no, no. You you you're like a soldier. You're wounded. You just have to keep on battling with the wounds. You just got to keep fighting the battle. You can't run from the battle just because you're wounded. Okay? God only has wounded people to work with. He hasn't got any perfect soldiers out there. Every one of us is the walking wounded." And in fact, when I used to stand up and give some retreats, the Friday nights, so the the retreats would generally begin on a Friday and then run till a Sunday. And I'd stand up on the Friday nights and look at the people in front of me and think to myself every time, and I can tell you this is almost every single time, I'd have this thought go through my head. I'd be looking at thinking, "Wow, they all look so fit and holy and healthy and on fire for Jesus and everything else." And I stand there thinking, "I'm the only one here who's wounded." Three or four conversations later, by Saturday afternoon, I'd realize I was actually dealing with people in intensive care. You know, you sort of get to know them. You think, "Oh my gosh, you you are as wounded as me." You know, and we really are the walking the living dead here. We really are walking with our wounds. But Christ is bringing us alive in Christ. Um, so it it takes a while to get used to it. It takes a while to realize that everybody who is involved in Catholic ministry is wounded. Everybody. And therefore, it does not exclude you, but it includes you. Okay? It includes you.
Now, this is the last entry. This is August the 20th, 1912 from volume 11. This is just a sentence from the first paragraph. "Jesus sees the soul operating by herself. He's close to her and looks at her. And seeing she's unable to do well what she does, I wait for her to call me and say, 'I want to do this thing, but I am unable to do it. Come and do it together with me, and I will do everything well.'"
Now, take this for what we've been talking about in this session about if you're worried, anxious, or fearful, or any other of those things. And you know the solution, you know, you need to journal and process the wound. So, Jesus, this I feel weak. I don't feel I've got any power here. This is overwhelming me. Will you please take me by the hand? Show me how to journal this and bring this wound out into the light. Okay. So it's a very simple process.
Now the last paragraph of this entry, he said, "It is said, 'Man proposes, God disposes.' As soon as the soul proposes to do some good, to be holy, immediately I dispose around her the things that are needed: light, graces, knowledge, and stripping." So everything in your life at this moment, because you have decided for holiness. Everything in your life has been disposed by Christ for your sanctification. He says here, "Immediately he demonstrates that he is almighty God and he can do anything he pleases." The moment you decided you wanted to grow in the divine will, everything in your life was disposed towards your growth. Now you might think to yourself, "Okay, so my relationships, my work or retirements, my home, my family, um, etc. Okay, I can see all that. What about my falls? What about when I fall into this repeated pattern of sin? What about this bad temper of mine? What about this obsession with myself? What about this um this draw towards possessions and materialism? What about the glass of whiskey I like every single night? What about all these little weaknesses and flaws?" There is nothing in your life that Jesus cannot use for your sanctification. And every saint in the history of the world, with the exception of one beautiful woman, our blessed mother, had falls every single day. And those falls did not prevent them from becoming holy. The falls do not kick you out of the divine will. They're part of your journey in the divine will. They're part of it. Okay.
Jesus himself says a few, as we said in the diary entry in volume 12. What sets us out of the divine will? Thinking of ourselves. How do we forget ourselves? Jesus, you want to do this, so I'm going to do this with you. And if we are doing something and we happen to fall, we get back up. Okay, we just get back up. Jesus has been dealing with this since Adam. He knows how to deal with it. Okay, you just get back up. There is nothing in your life. If you have decided, "Lord, I want to grow in the divine will," then there is nothing in your life which is preventing you from growing in the divine will because he says here, "Immediately I dispose around her the things which are needed." So he has disposed everything in your life which is needed. And now tonight, he has taught you about how to forget yourself. And so some of you might actually have a pang of fear. I'm really fearful about forgetting myself. So bring the fear to Jesus. Work on the fear. Make a friend of that fear. What? Why am I fearful of this? And go into it. Go into the fear with Jesus.
I have a few questions on the chat. So I'm just going to quickly look at it. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. What about all the illnesses you must go through with Jesus? Are they for reparations for others and our own weaknesses? Well, there's a good question, Carolene. Thank you for asking that. Um, well, you have to be careful in that we can say this is definitely for reparation. So we can kind of slam it down and say this is definitely for this, this is definitely for that. But in the divine will, everything you do is universal and multiplied to infinity and for all people of all time. So there is a almost unlimited how you can apply your sufferings in the divine will. Whether it's a virus like we have a lot of flu and COVID at the minute. So you can, you know, on your bed of suffering, just, you know, okay, Jesus, I just give you myself in this bed of suffering, uh, for all people of all time. And you can bring it down to the individual. It doesn't have to be all people of all time all the time. So when you do your rounds in the divine will, for example, Jesus, I place my I love you and I trust you in all the stars of of the heavens, but also, Lord, I place my I love you in this blade of grass. So there's a macro and a micro. And you can do the same with with, you know, with praying for. You can say, "Lord Jesus, I'm really suffering at the moment. I'm focusing on you, Jesus. You want to suffer, so I'm going to suffer with you." And then the Lord might bring an individual to mind. You might say, "Okay, that's the one I'm offering my suffering up for at this moment." And an example of this is in the hours of the passion. You know, one at one one hour, Jesus is specifically targeting his sufferings on all the popes, the bishops. I think it's when Peter denies him. And so he has a particular focus upon certain individuals, certain sins, certain groups. Um, at one point he's talking about all the saints who responded and then all the sinners who rejected, the two groups, the John and the Judas, right? At the last supper, the John and the Judas. So you can do the same. You know, and it's just a case of turning to Jesus and say, "Lord, what what do you want me to be praying for at this moment in time?" And this is very important. When I think about this, often think of Our Lady of Medjugorje and how she asks us to give her our intentions because I can be sort of praying my Rosary and thinking, "Okay, I'm going to be praying for my next-door neighbor who doesn't know God." And Our Lady could be saying, "But Derek, there is a soul about to go to hell and I need your Hail Mary." And I'm completely ignorant of it unless, you know, I turn to Our Blessed Mother and say, "Blessed Mother, is there someone who needs this decade in the divine will?" And then she will hear everyone's voices crying out for that one soul. And in fact, if you go back to the message of Fatima, Our Lady specifically asks for prayers for those who are going to hell. She specifically asks for that one group of people. Pray for poor souls who have no one else to pray for them and they're going to hell. So she specifically requests that one. And Jesus does very similar in the Divine Mercy.
Okay, I've really gone on, haven't I? As usual. So, um, I think we've gone on the chat. Um, thank you. Uh, Psalm 81:10, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Open my mouth and I will fill it." Thank you, Helen. Thank you for putting up the little prayers. That's okay. We got that. Um, and I think we're good. Have I survived my first class with the remnants of the flu? I've still got a little bit of a nose going on here. So, you've been very good to me. Thank you so much for not giving me anything awkward to deal with. I really appreciate it. Um, so for my part, I think we should pray for you lot. Um, I have got a new icon. I was given a new icon for Christmas called Our Lady of Silence, but unfortunately it's in the lounge. I'm hoping the visitor family will understand the message, but it's not working just yet. Anyway, just joking. I just love having it in the lounge. Um, but I do have behind me, if you can see, I've got St. Joseph on the left and St. Joseph on the right.
So, okay, Jesus, you want to pray. So, we're going to pray with you. Come divine will, come and pray in our praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So Lord Jesus, you say to us, "Do not be anxious about your life." And you say to us that if we think about you, all of all of these negatives will fall away because the soul will expand and be filled with light. So we ask you, Blessed Mother Mary, to intercede with your Son. And I pray for the grace for everyone here that before they do anything, they remember to say, "Jesus wants to do this, so I am going to do it with Jesus." We ask our guardian angels to remind us of this. We ask the Holy Spirit to prompt us every time so that this grace will increase in our souls. And tonight, for those of us who are getting ready for bed, Jesus wants to rest and sleep. So, we're going to rest and sleep with Jesus. For those who are in the afternoon, Jesus wants to do whatever's going to happen next. You're going to do it with Jesus. For those of us who are in the morning, Jesus wants to carry on with his day. So, we're going to carry on with the day with Jesus. So wherever you are at, you're doing it with Jesus so that you can forget yourself and grow in his will.
Our Lady, Queen of Peace, pray for us.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
And the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Thank you everyone for joining me. Love we have you tonight. God bless you.
>> Thank you, Jerry.