My Brothers' Keeper

The wind whipped through the abandoned camp, the gaps in the barbed wire fences, the houses that evil built. My feet stepped cautiously along the cobblestone and dirt roads where evil tread. My eyes saw mounds of hair that evil sheared, piles of tattered shoes that evil stole, prisons where evil sneered, walls riddled with bullet holes where evil killed, ovens where evil burned. Evil was in the wind that blew through Auschwitz that day, chilling me to my core, taunting me, asking me, "Why did God forsake this place, these people who suffered and cried out for His help? Why did no one save them?"

I remembered words written by a young girl: "In spite of everything, I still believe people are basically good at heart," Anne Frank wrote from her attic prison. Did she change her mind when she reached this place? Evil made sure that the world will never know. I was different when I walked out of the ghost camp that October evening. I had seen and felt what could not be conveyed in a classroom history lesson. I wondered how God could possibly let something so terrible happen to so many innocent people. It was easier to trust in God's mercy and love before, but now that I had seen and tasted real human suffering for myself, how could I believe? A faint hope rose in me--at least I could rest in the confidence that we would never allow something like this to go on today. And then as quickly as hope rose, it disappeared: it is going on today. It began in 1973 and continues today--50 million innocent human lives destroyed. A force greater than the gusty Poland wind suddenly moved in my heart--the cry of God, "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground." (Gen. 4:10) The voice of our brothers' blood calls to us from the ground, from the dumpsters where they are carelessly tossed, from the jars that line the walls of an abortionist's office, from the execution rooms, from the battlefields, from a grocery store in Arizona.

There is blood everywhere. And we wonder, who is going to clean this mess up? In the film The Passion of the Christ, the Mother of Christ gets on her hands and knees to clean up her own Son's blood after His scourging. After His death, she holds his bloodied, bruised, broken, body and looks at us with haunting eyes as if to say, "See how much He loves you?" More than we can know. He actually did that for us, to cleanse us with His Mercy. He showed us what it means to be His brothers' keeper by showing mercy, by loving everyone, and by giving up His life so that we may live. He did this for us and said, "Now do this for others."

That said, the freezing march through Washington D.C. on Monday morning will quite literally be a walk in the park compared to His struggle up to Calvary under the crushing weight of our sins. But it is a step along the Way. With renewed hope and trust in God's mercy, I will march with fellow pro-lifers up to the steps of the Supreme Court building and I will PRAY to God that people wake up and realize that this is LIFE we are talking about, our brothers and sisters. Whether or not you are able to join the thousands marching through D.C. this weekend, I ask you to at least take a moment to pray with us for the souls of our brothers and sisters who will never see the light of day, the Abels of our time. Let us be the voice of our brothers' blood crying out from the ground--the voice of truth.

You will not silence my message;

you will not mock my God;

and you WILL stop killing my generation.

(Pro-life Youth pledge, Rock for Life)

A Love Letter

Last week, I became frustrated with myself for falling once again into an annoying habitual sin that I had confessed only a week and a half ago. I knew that God would forgive me once again in His infinite mercy, but because of my schedule, I didn't think I would get to go to confession for another month. Saddened by the thought, I continued on to daily Mass early for a little extra preparation. When I walked in the Church, a priest was hearing confessions for a handful of people who had asked him. I slipped into line and received the sacrament, feeling God's mercy washing over me.

I was so thankful and so humbled that the Lord wanted to purify me as much as I wanted to be purified. Tears trickled down my cheeks as I knelt and prayed before Mass. I imagined myself as the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, thanking Jesus for His infinite mercy. The days following my confession were difficult, as if God used the little sufferings of my days to continue to purify my heart and offer me opportunities for reparation. I failed to see this until I was at Mass today and heard the Gospel of the woman washing Jesus' feet with her tears. It was like a little love letter from Jesus--a correspondence between two hearts.

This is not the first time an opportunity for confession opened itself up to me in such an immediate way, but all of this confirmed in me the necessity to have humble confidence in His Divine Mercy. I see in a new light how our Lord thirsts for us, and longs for us to come to him in this sacrament of Reconciliation. One night when my heart hurt from the pain of my love being rejected, I cried out to Jesus. He responded gently, "I know how you feel. That is how I feel for every soul who rejects My Love." I saw Him on the cross, thirsting for love. Just as I--and maybe you--thirst for the love of another human being, He thirsts for the love of all of us.

He told St. Faustina: "The flames of mercy are burning Me. I desire to pour them out upon human souls. Oh, what pain they cause Me when they do not want to accept them!" He tells us this, encouraging us to come to Him with our miseries, our habitual sins, our weakness, our attachments. He desires to lavish His love and His mercy upon us. He finds rest in forgiving us, since He is able to pour out His love on us. His flames of mercy transform evil into something good. No sin is too big or too bad for the fire of His love.

The One True Love

While on retreat, we focused on being victims of love. The whole theme fit perfectly with Good Friday, the day that we remember Christ's sacrifice of Love on the Cross. This is some of my reflection from the retreat. I would like to offer a special thanks to all my beautiful sisters and our excellent guest speaker who gave the talks and allowed God to speak through them!

"I want this love which men reject. I open my heart wide to the Divine Love. Let it invade me, let it burn me, let it consume my heart completely. Thus I shall console my divine Savior. Thus I shall die a victim of love, immolated in this ocean of flames." ~from St. Therese's "Act of Oblation to Merciful Love"

He is the Divine Furnace of Love. We come as we are and He will cleanse us by purifying our hearts. Sometimes He uses suffering to purify our hearts--He knows exactly what He is doing! When we broke off into small groups, one of my sisters prayed for God to purify our hearts. I looked down at my water bottle and read the bold word, "Purified." It was as if God were telling me, "Done. Aaand done!" In a sense, I felt the reference to my past heartache, that God has purified me of the suffering. I no longer felt it negatively; rather, I felt the effects of it, the change that God had made take place in my heart. I felt the wild roses blooming--flowers from My Love. But I also felt the reference to all of humanity: He has already purified us. By His passion and death, He has washed us clean of our guilt by His Blood.

A beautiful image given by one of our sisters: Imagine that you are kneeling at the foot of the cross with Mary, Our Mother. You suffer as she suffers watching the Blood of Christ pour out of His wounds, from His hands, His feet, the places where the crown of thorns has pierced His sacred head. These are wounds He received fighting for your love! Let the Blood wash over you, cleanse you of your sins, purify your heart. This is His Divine Mercy. His Mercy is greater than our sins, breaking down the walls of all that keeps us from Him.

"Don't you know you take His breath away? Because He is madly, deeply in Love with you!" He died for us out of love for us, Loved us until His last breath. His Love for us literally took His breath away! He is the One True Love! (Click on the link for a video to the song "True Love," by Phil Wickham--the perfect Good Friday/Easter song!) Let us seek to be His victims of love, to let His Mercy wash us clean and His Love to flow through us. He calls us to love as He Loved, to set the world ablaze with love!

One way we can do this is by praying the Divine Mercy Novena (for more information on the Divine Mercy devotion, click here). It begins today (Good Friday) and ends on Divine Mercy Sunday. I will be posting the specific prayers for each day on this blog (see "pages"), if you'd like to come here for a reference!