Author: Lana Kaczmarek

“Blessed be God who refused me not my prayer or His kindness!” When the mind is agitated, heart heavy, thoughts and feelings gloomy, turn to prayer, turn to Our Lady for she gently hears us, cares for us, and graciously receives our poor little prayers then leads us ever so gently back to God. Mary understands us. She gets us. She knows where we are, where we have been and where we need to be. When we are lost or downcast, she shows us the miracle of the sun, of a cloudless day, of a deep blue sky, of the gentleness of a breeze and the grace and beauty of prayer when offered through Our Lady and Queen and Mother of Perpetual Grace. Mary helps us recall the Father’s loving embrace, the gift of a deep conversion, the grace of a good confession, the depth of heartfelt contrition, the room for true repentance. In prayer, the Father holds us. Never let Him go. It’s as if two individuals who have not seen each other for eons suddenly see each other after so many centuries and years. We hug as if to never let go. As prodigal children who left home seeking fortune and fame only to have squandered our inheritance, after so many years of searching and losing, losing, and seeking, seeking not finding until we remember to turn and walk towards home again. In prayer, we are back home in the Father’s house, in His home, in His heart, in His hand and grasp, in His loving touch and loving embrace and under His loving care. As prodigal children, we focus our attention on worldly things, gizmos, and gadgets, that only cause us to become lost faster, easier, cheaper, without ease. Until prayer, I never realized how beautiful being with the Father was. It is prayerful, dedicated time to reacquaint ourselves with heaven, with heavenly things and the joy and beauty of creation. It’s time to meet and serve with those who work in the Father’s vineyard. Time to rest and play by the meadow next to God’s house. Time to pray in His garden. To walk and worship in His field. God trusts us. It is a profound thing to consider. That God actually believes in you, has confidence in you. He really trusts in you. In prayer, love invites us to learn, to grow, to deepen our loving relationship with our heavenly Father. It’s a loving invitation to grow in God’s intimacy, through the heart and prayer of our beloved Mother Mary.   

Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you.” The word “repent” is an interesting yet important word to consider in our own individual relationship with God and our first and primary vocation as His beloved children. Repentance is important, necessary, and referred to several times in scripture and even highlighted as the theme for penitential services and certain liturgical seasons throughout the year. We hear scripture cry out to us when John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” However, what does that mean to you when you hear the word repent? Does repenting scare you or make you nervous or do you welcome it and are grateful to God for the gift and opportunity to repent? We hear Jesus in scripture echo John’s words to us and even begin every Lenten Season with the call to “Repent and believe in the gospel.” However, what does that mean and what exactly is Jesus asking you to do? It seems repenting is required in order to obtain the keys to unlock the doorway to heaven and enter the realm where angels get to sing, adore and play and all the holy servants of God get to worship, pray, and praise. We need to repent but why and how. Do you know how to repent? If asked to describe what repentance looks like, will you be able to do so with ease or even provide a helpful, useful definition to explain the concept of repentance off the top of your head and without using an on-line search? Can you explain the role of repentance with confidence and personally share with another the life-giving benefits derived from a life lived in a spirit of repentance? Repentance is significant to our spiritual pilgrimage leading us to the things pertaining to heaven. It’s also important in those deep revealing meditative earthly moments when on retreat or the deep contemplative state of divine intimate prayer. Repentance calls for true contrition, a change of heart, amendment of ways and behavior. The invitation we receive in our heart is for us to turn away from selfish disordered desires that give rise to disobedience and rebellion towards God and to “Repent, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.” We repent when we feel sorrow or when we genuinely express sincere regret. We repent when we freely say we are sorry and humbly ask for forgiveness from the heart.

“Lord Jesus, open the Scriptures to us; make our hearts burn while you speak to us.” I am often amazed and filled with such wonder when God spiritually uses us, all of us as His holy instruments to gather light and wisdom, to record the loving responses and answers to our prayers and to become lifesaving scrolls and sacred journals to document God’s everlasting word. God graciously uses us as instruments to reveal His holy, sacred presence, to provide others with gentle reminders of the healing power of His word and provide the lifesaving remedy His word brings to those who are open to His will and receptive to the life changing truth His word always provides. God graciously uses us in spiritual ways to record and recite His words to those who need to hear or read them, and to respond to those who trustingly cry out to God for the remedy His life-giving gifts bring to broken hearted, poor in spirit, sin sick sinners like ourselves. God graciously includes us and faithfully calls upon each of us to gather His wisdom and capture His insights to instruct those who have become deaf to His presence and to announce His word and share His divine message to those needing spiritual formation or lack spiritual direction. God desires to use us to bring hope to those who faithfully cry out to Him in their need and heal those who do not know how to ask or pray or have exhausted the patience to do so. God uses us in such wonderful ways that we can become holy instruments in God’s hands, bringing light to those in darkness and love and newness of life to those who seriously need Him. God’s words burn inside of us as a purifying fire burning away all that is useless, hurtful, or not helpful in building up His kingdom and presence inside each of us and outside of us as well. God’s word heals brokenness caused by foolishness and hurtfulness caused by the selfishness of others. His word is like a gentle fire that radiates warmth, comforts souls, heals division and consoles us when we need a gentle glow to provide light to our journey and insight to keep going. God’s word is often compared to a seed that needs a little heat to break open and be set ablaze like a furnace to spread and grow. Open your heart and life to Scripture. God speaks to lighten your load, melt away your sadness and set your heart on fire.

“I was hard pressed and was falling, but the LORD helped me.” Scriptural images are helpful to us and enable us to see, relate, identify with, and more readily understand how we react or response to God’s loving invitation to communion with Him. These images provide us with the opportunity to consider whether our thoughts, feelings, words, actions, and/or desires are properly aligned with and reverently correspond to God’s goodness, grace, and generosity. For example, the image of God as a nurturing caring parent, a faithful spouse, a divine physician or as the Good Shepherd or Teacher. Do we respond as beloved children who attentively listen and remain lovingly obedient? Are we faithful in fidelity to our baptismal covenant and wedding vows? Do we give God permission to heal us from the effects of our sinfulness or provide the remedy for moments we lacked kindness or charity? The image of the potter and clay is one of the scriptural images that most challenges us in our perception of corresponding properly to God. What is helpful to note is that the clay belongs to the potter and that the potter does all the work. The clay must remain open, vulnerable, flexible, trusting that God as the Potter will make the clay into something or someone that is worthwhile, most needed, helpful, useful, functional, productive, valuable, beautiful, priceless, unique, one-of-a-kind, good, and awesome. God provides all the tools. He has all the necessary supplies. He has the vision, the mission, the strategy, the objective. It is His idea. He created it. He creates the purpose, the need, the desire, and outcome. He formulates the plan and brings it to a successful completion. God does not need to know how to do something correctly. God is perfect. God does not need us to remind Him how to do something or when to do something. God is faithful, reliable and can be trusted. God does not need your input on how to create you. God has done this before many times and is the best at it. No one can create out of nothing like God. Trust that God has this, truly cares and only wills your happiness and desires what is best for you. Trust God knows what He is doing. Remind yourself of that. Say, Jesus, I trust in you. Have faith and confidence in God. Everything He makes is very good. He made you. You belong to Him. Let Him chisel away what is not useful or helpful and make you His beautiful masterpiece once again. 

“Everyone who believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sins through His name.” From the very dawn of time, from the very first moment light streams into existence, God already proved His love for you and all humanity. Foreseeing and anticipating any creation brought forth into existence, humanity, His very personal creation would reject Him as Creator and rebel against Him as our heavenly Father. Even foreknowing the egregious depth and hatred an envious angel would have against beauty, goodness and truth would cause humanity to fall from God’s grace through sin, delusion, lies and deception, God still loved therefore God still created. Not that God creates us to fall or fail, rather in His perfect wisdom and immense love God desires freedom, free will, to freely share and freely respond to a life and a love with God. Fashioning creation in a way that constrains its will and subjects it to slavery of love is not love but enslavement, not freedom but imprisonment. God is the One who imprisons Himself and subjects Himself to the slavery of a sinful humanity so that by the humility of God, he may serve us, His precious creation in His love and in the very essence of His love, we can become through His grace the beloved of His heart and the apple of His eye. “The Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages” descends into our fallen state in a mission of the Father’s will to heal the broken hearted and to reconcile poor sinners to the Father’s grace once again. The name given to God’s beloved Son is the essence of His sacred mission. Jesus means He will save His people from their sins. Jesus descends into death to bring forgiveness and pardon to sinners. All sinners. Those who sin just a little, those who think they do not sin at all and even those sinners who habitually sin and rebel against God. God loves all sinners and desires correction and conversion of heart. Jesus freely submits to the Father’s desire to restore all creation once again. Jesus freely and lovingly suffers for us, dies for us, and rose on the third day for us. Jesus humbled Himself to the point of death on a cross to renew and restore what was lost through envy and sin in order that humanity may love perfectly once again and so enter ever more freely into a loving relationship and friendship with God as intended by the Father and Creator from the very beginning.  

When He entered Jerusalem the whole city was shaken and asked, “Who is this?” If we knew and really understood who Jesus is, truly we would shake inside. Those who came to know Jesus through His prayer life and through His healing ministry became afraid when they encountered the holy and divine in His presence and in His presence their own weakness, sinfulness, and insecurity. In His presence, we experience both our own smallness and need of salvation. How often Jesus encouraged and said to His disciples not to be afraid of Him. To not doubt or disbelieve but rather to be confident and trust He was the Son of God and the Son of Man who was coming into the world to heal the broken hearted, to reconcile poor sinners to the Father and to one another and renew our loving relationship with God as His beloved children and his beloved creation. Do you know who this is? Do you know, truly know the One who created you in beauty, redeemed you in love, restored you to innocence, sanctified you in grace, saved you from death and welcomes you to eternal life? Do you know the One whose words have the power to heal, the mercy to forgive, the strength to move mountains, the spirit to lift up, the grace to renew to help you to start all over again? Do you know Jesus, really know Jesus who taught us how to pray and said, “Let there be light,” “Love one another as I have loved you,” “Behold, your mother,” “I thirst,” “You will be with me in Paradise,” “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Do you know the One who prayed to the Father for you, who intercedes to the Father for you, who asks that you will be one with Him as He and the Father are one? Do you know the One who asked the disciples to look deep within themselves and consider the truth about who He is when He asked them directly, “Who do you say that I am?” How do you respond to questions about His divinity or His identity when asked who do you say Jesus is? How will you respond to faith filled relatives, unbelieving strangers or fallen away friends you encounter on your own road or faith filled journey to Jerusalem, to Calvary or your own Emmaus? Perhaps we might need to rephrase the question to “who is this to you?” A valid response requires knowing Jesus personally and intimately through prayer.

“I trust in the LORD; my soul trusts in His word.” Will you come to the deep with me? These exact words the Lord expressed to me, but they relate to us all. Will you place your complete trust in the Lord and trust the Lord to forgive you, trust that He loves you, trust that He will provide everything you truly need? The deep is a place we long for and truly need but are afraid to let go of the fear of drowning in our sorrow, of being alone, of losing control of our life or entering the unknown. The Lord invites us not to think of the deep in terms of human constructs, images, thoughts, or experiences but rather as a spiritual exercise on trust. We think of the deep as dark, violent, filled with terrifying creatures, terrifying indeed. We think of large waves overwhelming us. We sink, are taken down, take in water, drown, and die. The Lord shows us a different image and suggests different thoughts to consider, ponder and pray. The deep God invites us into is calm, warm, sparkling blue. No one there but God and you. The water appears as a crystal blue clear sky with the most beautiful, radiant clouds as pockets of air and light that reflect God’s glory, reflecting God’s presence under the water. Like light that bounces off a crystal, God reflects beauty in the deep. The Lord extends a loving invitation come enter the deep with Him. No fear or concerns, no hesitation or anxieties, no worries, just you and the Lord in the silence of the calm. This is a heavenly invitation to deepen trust in the Lord. To surrender your fear and embrace God’s loving presence. God continues to invite and encourage trust in Him. He says, stay here with me, pray here with me, obey here with me, love here with me, minister from here with me. The Father invites us also to consider the unfortunate consequence of not being in this place is like a fish ensnared and caught in a net. As if one being hauled on to the shore and left to die. On the shore awaits war, darkness, chaos, division, death. If we remain in trust with the Lord, we live and are loved, cared for, and remain under God’s loving protection. The deep is a spiritual exercise of self-surrender and trust. Can you surrender yourself and surrender it all to God and simply trust that God will provide all you need and everything else?   

“Man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.” I recall once being so captivated in the middle of an Alaskan city by a snowcapped mountain. The waterfalls were not particularly impressive but nevertheless, beautiful. From a distance, one could not hear the water flowing but if you listened carefully by listening to it from your heart, you might have heard water flowing. That day, many individuals simply walked pass the scene photographing the city sites, taking pictures of themselves or just breezed by in conversation taking no notice as if the mountain was invisible, perhaps just one of the buildings or not worth the time, a glance or a look. It stopped me in my tracks. As vehicles passed by, I found myself just looking, wondering, taking it all in as if the mountain was speaking directly to me. I saw beauty, beheld goodness, saw truth but the mountain appeared sad, weeping as if wanting to be seen, noticed, heard. After several moments of stillness and silence, the city and all its noise disappeared. I realized that I was smiling and crying at the same time. I felt somehow at that instance, God captured my undivided attention. As I beheld God’s creation with such awe and wonder, I could sense and feel God’s merciful gaze looking upon me and able to penetrate and pierce my inmost heart and being. Through this mountain, God touched me with His eyes. Seeing God seeing me caused the inner coldness in me to be warmed by a smile and the inner sadness and weeping in me to be flooded with great joy. God looks into the heart. He invites us to take a moment and to do the same. We often see things on the outside by what we see or notice. However, we know looks are deceiving. We all have heard you cannot judge a book by its cover, yet we usually do. We project ourselves onto the image we see. Our vision skewed and impaired by our own limitations, by our own weaknesses, and our own insecurities causes us to be blind to God’s beauty, goodness, and truth in one another. We can misjudge by appearances and fail to see the hurt and weeping of another caused by coldness, indifference, humiliation, abuse, or neglect. We may miss seeing the pain or the suffering Christ in one another because the appearance was not impressive or beautiful like a snowcapped mountain or how we would see, judge, or perceive ourselves. God simply sees Him in you.    

“True worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth.” The Holy Spirit moves hearts and reveals God’s presence. He makes God truly known and felt. It is as if God were simply present all night watching, waiting, setting His gaze upon you as a parent would with a newborn child anticipating the moment to make their presence known and felt and welcome the child into the dawning of a new day. We rest, God watches. He smiles and waits. When one becomes aware that the night is far spent and morning is about to arrive, we often are not aware or ready to welcome a new day or look forward to the beginning of another day with its uncertainties or possibilities or its vulnerabilities or the opportunities it could bring. One quiet moment, in the stillness of the dawning of the day, God helped me in an instant to know He was there, watching, waiting to welcome me into His awesome presence. The truth is I had no words and did not know what to say. I wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind. God then read my heart and shared with me what my heart wanted to say. He said that I wanted to be honest with Him and less afraid. To speak honestly and share more openly with Him what was truly on my heart and really on my mind. Yes Lord, I pray for that. God then shared I wanted to engage Him in prayer as in a covenant mutually sharing our thoughts, feelings, and desires, sharing all life’s experiences from the heart. I acknowledged that was something I was hoping for as well. God then said that I wanted to be authentic and real with Him. Seriously Lord, you know me better than I know myself, better than anyone could ever know me. Yes Lord, it is true. I pray to be more authentic and real with you. To be genuine, not fake, or plastic or insincere but to share more freely and openly with you without false pretenses or trying to impress you in any way. Then God said I wanted to trust Him more. So thankful for the gift of being transparent with God. Lord, you see everything. Nothing is hidden from you. Yes Lord, I pray for the grace to place all my hope and trust in you, in your grace, in your word, in your holy will. Thank you, Lord, for revealing my heart and yours as well. HEART: Honest, Engagement, Authentic, Real, Trust.  

“Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.” Trust is such a fragile and delicate thing. We trust, we want to trust, we need to trust, we offer our trust to one another, to a spouse or friend, a family member or associate. Unfortunately, trust is often shattered, smashed, and betrayed. We are left bewildered wondering why a promise was broken, a commitment not kept or a confidence shattered. We risk losing and ending long-term friendships, fellowships and relationships built on trust, meant to last and founded on so much hope. We cannot trust anyone, including ourselves because we are also betrayers of confidence and trust. God has entrusted us with a message of hope, a gospel of life, a mission of love. Have we maintained the trust God has placed on all of us to listen to His beloved Son, Jesus? Has your poor heart ached and burned with the fire of eternal love to listen to God’s Word proclaimed to you personally at Mass, in liturgy, in prayer? Have you become a person of great prayer? Have you generously dedicated time from your busy schedule and day to know God more intimately, love Him more profoundly, serve Him more faithfully and minister in His holy name? Can you truly be trusted with sharing the Good News, faithfully receiving the Eucharist, joyfully celebrating the Sacraments, extend God’s peace, mercy, and forgiveness to others? Trust is the perfect gift we can offer our Lord this Lenten Season. God entrusted us with His Son even though He knew we would betray and crucify Him. We continue to betray Jesus when we break our baptismal promise to renounce sin and temptation and believe and trust in God. We say, “Jesus, I trust in you” but do we truly understand what we are saying and mean? Do we trust Jesus enough to care for us, provide for us, bestow His infinite love and divine mercy upon us? Do you trust that Jesus can forgive your sins? We all face difficulty with trust. Not that God cannot be trusted; God is faithful always and devoted in fidelity to His covenant. It is difficult to forgive, to heal, and trust again. Nevertheless, God gives us the remedy and the cure. Allow God to heal the betrayal you experienced. Permit God to flood you with His love, fill you with such gratitude that you can learn to trust again. Trust God always because He is trustworthy and will never betray you. Never has. Never will.