Faith, Do I Believe? Part II

Lourdes Pinto

Isaiah 7:2-4

• When the house of David was told, "Syria is in league with Ephraim," his heart and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.
• And the LORD said to Isaiah, "Go forth to meet Ahaz… and say to him, `Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint.

I. TAKE HEED

– To be attentive to our hearts and to God

– During the storms of our lives we are also shaken, and our emotions can be so intense that we too become confused, scared, and react in those intense emotions.

1. We need to be attentive to what is happening in our hearts, so we need to BE QUIET

– PRAY, and ask the Holy Spirit & Mary to enter our hearts with us.

– Simple Pathpp.106-107, Being attentive and going deeper by asking, “Why?”

– What is the piercing I am feeling?

– What is the pain? Name it.

– Why am I feeling such intense sorrow?

We need to begin to dissect the pure pain from the emotions of resentment, anger, revenge, hatred, disappointment, frustration & discouragement by asking the questions in prayer and journaling the answers. This process will begin to quiet our hearts so that we can become attentive to the movements of the Holy Spirit guiding us through this process.

– What negative emotions am I feeling? Be transparent with God.

– Why do I feel so much resentment, anger…?

– How have I reacted? What did I say? How did I gaze?

Simple Path, #105, p.292

• By being attentive to how you use your hands or fail to use your hands, how you gaze at others, and how the words flow from your lips, you will come to know the sin that remains in your hearts. My Mother is forming each of you to be My living chalices.

2. Give the negative emotions to Christ and REMAIN in the PURE PAIN.

If I reacted in anger, REPENT. First, to the person I hurt and then in confession.

3.   Suffer the pure pain WITH Christ, NOT ALONE! See our sorrow in Him. Jesus cries in the Eucharist with us and for us.

- Allow the Holy Spirit to be our Spiritual Director through The Simple Path.

- Simple Path, 3-A-4, Tears, p. 124-129

- Simple Path, #34, p.104

• Be attentive to each person you encounter in your life. I live in them. I suffer for them and with them. This is My Body (Mt 35:31-41). My little one, have the docility of heart to receive the brokenness of all people into your heart as ONE with Me. This is participation in the love of the Trinity: to receive the wounds of your brothers and sisters and to give the sacrifice of your life, as ONE with Me, for their salvation and sanctification. This is Love.

Simple Path, p.117, Fruit of Healing

• One of the fruits of healing the core wound is that you find your heart freer. You can feel emotions that you had only read or heard about, and feel to a more profound depth the emotions you already knew. Another fruit of healing is that we come in touch with our interior life, with our hearts. We come to know ourselves and to be attentive to what is taking place within us. We no longer live disconnected from ourselves and others. When we lived in our wound we were unhappy, afraid, depressed, in bad moods, we lived according to our emotions but were not aware of what was taking place within us. A healed person is “tuned in.” This sensitivity becomes the means to live as victim souls receiving the wounds of others and participating with Christ in their redemption.

4. During the storm our hearts can feel wounded as if pierced, and at that moment when we are feeling wounded, hurt, vulnerable, scared, confused, angry, frustrated, discouraged, or resentful when we’ve been “shaken” like the Israelites, the blessing of the grace of that particular storm—the grace of the KNOWLEDGE of the condition of our hearts is available to us.

– What is the blessing (knowledge) God is revealing to me in this storm?

Simple Path, #148, David & Goliath, p.437

• These stones are your weapons for battle, for the dragon will not be defeated according to the standards of the world but in the Light of Love. Therefore, My family, prepare for battle. Be attentive to Me.

5. The process of how we are living the storms in our lives should be taken to SPIRITUAL ACCOMPANIMENT. When we are living in the midst of the storm, we forget, and the intense emotions can easily take over. It’s similar to a woman who takes classes with her husband to prepare for childbirth, but when she is confronted with the intensity of the pains, she forgets much of what she learned and she needs her husband to help her remember as he coaches her through the different stages of childbirth. Our spiritual accompanier is our coach.

Special note to our men:

Pope Francis said of St Joseph: Simple Path, p.299

• How does Joseph respond to his calling to be the protector of Mary, Jesus, and the Church? By being constantly attentive to God, open to the signs of God’s presence and receptive to God’s plans, and not simply to his own…. Joseph is a “protector” because he is able to hear God’s voice and be guided by His will; and for this reason, he is all the more sensitive to the persons entrusted to his safekeeping.

Men are protectors of their wives and families; they defend them if they are attacked physically, but sometimes they fail to realize that God has entrusted them with the protection of their hearts as well.

How to spiritually battle the “thorn in the flesh” of pornography?

– Pornographic addiction has serious consequences: it destroys relationships, destroys marriage…

– Be attentive to anything that triggered the temptation, such as, stress.

– Immerse yourself in the Immaculate Heart of Mary & chaste heart of St Joseph and pray to the Holy Spirit to help you. Illicit the protection and help also of St Michael.

– As any image comes into your mind, see your daughter, son, niece, nephew, mother, wife, sister, and see them being forced into human trafficking. See their pure faces in the horror of those sexual abuses.

– Enter the suffering of the torment knowing your weakness but TRUSTING in the strength and power of Christ Crucified as a warrior fighting to protect women and children. It is no longer about you, but about saving souls! This must be seen as war. As long as you remain entangled with Satan, you are his puppet spreading his darkness in the world. Instead of saving souls, you are cutting the graces that they could be receiving from you as a victim soul (think of the Image of a feeding tube).

2 Corinthians 12:7-10

• And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

–Example of lies: This temptation is greater than I am; I am too weak; I’m not hurting anyone, I’m alone on the internet; Pornography is going to help my sexuality.

You must battle with the TRUTH!

– Call on the help of your wife, spiritual mother, or brother in Christ to unite with you in prayer, especially the prayer of the rosary. BAND TOGETHER. Do not hide, this is what Satan wants. Be transparent and do not be ashamed to share your struggle with the men & women of prayer that God has placed in your life.

– The work of entering the root system of this disorder MUST also take place because God wants to set you free. The infected wounds at the core of these disordered tendencies need to be purified so that you can become God’s warrior against these demons. You must understand that when the door of your heart was opened to impurity, demons entered into your heart. You are now at war with very strong demons that want to destroy you, your family, and Church.

– The hidden life of the Mothers of the Cross holds the power of God to help our men!

– What will you do if you find out your husband or son is in pornography?

– As a MOC, how is our Blessed Mother teaching us to fight at her side for the men in our lives?

– The woman must understand that his vice is not her doing, it has nothing to do with her. The tendency of the woman is to go into her wound of rejection. She needs to understand that it is his addiction, not that she did anything wrong. She must come out of her wound to FIGHT FOR HUSBAND, SON, FATHER.

– Here we become the Joan of Arcs battling for our men to the end, believing that suffering this wound of impurity with the Lord WILL set a husband, father, son, priest… free!!! That MUST BE OUR JOY, even if it is not our husband, son, nephew, or priest in our life. The grace of suffering this pain with Christ IS NEVER LOST!!!

II. BE QUIET – SILENCE

– Simple Path – Silence 5-B, pp. 281-288

– Simple Path, p.284:

• Silence allows us to get in touch with our sorrows so that we can enter them and unite them to the sorrows of Jesus. Then our sufferings are no longer obstacles in our path to God but actually become the path to union with Him.

When Mary embraced her Son as in the Pieta, she embraced and received the brokenness of all of humanity. When we join her in this embrace of her Son, we too receive in our hearts the wounds of many souls, through Jesus, with Him and in Him. In this way, we live the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in our ordinary lives.

– Simple Path, #102 The Arms of Silence Embrace My Crucified Body, p.285

• Silence allows you to embrace fully the sorrow of your heart. Silence allows you to enter fully the sorrow I am permitting in your heart. As you embrace this pain and suffering, you are embracing Me. (Our pain becomes the personal encounter with Christ) You are embracing My pain and suffering and thus entering My Heart, for My Heart is all pain and love. This is My Mercy.
• To come to know the love of your Beloved is to come to experience My sorrow. This is why My Mother is the Queen of Sorrows, for it is she who lived most perfectly consumed in My Heart. My little one, this union of sorrow, must move your heart to love all, by suffering with silence, peace, and abandonment for all your brothers and sisters.
• My sons and daughters, exteriorly smile and tend to the duties of your vocation with detail and love; but interiorly, through the arms of silence, live embracing your sorrows. In this way, you are embracing My crucified Body and soothing My wounds. This is the life of love.

III. DO NOT FEAR

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 1 John 4:18

– Be attentive to the fear in your heart.

– What am I scared of? Why am I scared?

Simple Path, p450. Litany of Humility

• Deliver me, Jesus.
• From the fear of being humiliated…
• From the fear of being despised…
• From the fear of suffering rebukes…
• From the fear of being calumniated…
• From the fear of being forgotten…
• From the fear of being ridiculed…
• From the fear of being wrong…
• From the fear of being suspected…

–  What are the lies Satan is speaking in my heart?

–  We need to move through the fear with trust. If not, the fear controls us and paralyzes us.

You must not fear and believe with the innocence and zeal of David. 

Simple Path, p.68

• Do not fear to speak the truth of the sin in the hearts of My people with courage and love and call them to repentance at My crucified feet. 

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675

• Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.  

See: “The Church's Ultimate Trial”, Simple Path, p.406.

 Prophetic word of Ralph Martin at St. Peter’s Basilica. Simple Path, p. 433

• It is the truth of My Kingdom, My kingdom that will prevail… I want you to take that truth, to rest in that truth, to believe in that truth, not to compromise it, not to lose it in confusions, not to be timid about it, but to stand simply, in love, firmly rooted in the truth as foundation stones upon which My church can have new life and new power.