V.J.E

Praised be Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament now and for ever! Amen!

“He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ He said, ‘Who are you, sir?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.'” (Acts 9:4-5)

The Conversion of St. Paul: such a powerful feast day for the Church! St. Paul gives me hope for my own conversion and journey to heaven. The readings for this feast day bring me back to a Christology lecture last semester that really struck me. (We take classes at St. Mary Seminary & Graduate School of Theology.)

In this class, we discussed a section of a book called Knowing Jesus by James Alison. I remember vividly our professor passionately saying, “You know Jesus because He is the one you are trying to persecute!” There was a deep silence that filled the room after he said this. In that moment in class, I felt as if I had fallen to the ground and had to face the question, “Who are you persecuting?” Alison’s approach to knowing Jesus is indeed Pauline in that he says the way to know Jesus initially is by knowing Him in the one you are trying to persecute. More often I identify with being persecuted for being Christian, but I fail to recognize that, in my weakness, I persecute my own brothers and sisters, and this is hard to admit. Facing the question, “Who are you persecuting?” was and still is difficult for me because there is an answer that I do not want to confess. I bring this question to prayer quite often and ask for the grace of humility and honesty in order to answer this question. In the silence of God, the answer comes to my heart in such pain: “My Sisters.”
Those closest to me are the ones I persecute, and it is through them and in them that I will know Jesus. My Beloved dwells in each of my beautifully created Sisters, and in my weakness, I persecute Jesus in them, and thus, I also persecute them. Yet, there is a sweetness to this awareness – God’s Mercy. With the help of the Holy Spirit, I recognize that I am the persecutor of my own Sisters. I do not desire to be but many times I am, but this gives rise to moments of repentance and deeper acceptance of God’s Love for me. The Gospel calls us to love our persecutors as well. I am called to love the persecutors of my Sisters, and since that includes me, I must learn to love myself, to be merciful to self. Community life isn’t all roses, but it is always filled with grace and love. I am called to love my Sisters as Christ loves them, but sometimes it takes seeing how I am not loving them as I should in order to grow deeper in my love for each of my Sisters. The Way is not comfortable, but it promises us salvation…heaven!

This may not be our favorite way of knowing Jesus, but I do think it is necessary because we need to surrender these dark spots of our lives to the one who is Light – Jesus Christ. If we don’t, we will fool ourselves in thinking we are perfect Christians and no longer need God. Actually, we’d be quite the contrary.

My brothers and sisters, I desire that you may know and love Jesus. My prayer for us is to be open to the voice that calls out to us to face our shadows with Him who redeems us. Do not be afraid to listen to the voice of God and in turn, to respond to Him by totally giving your whole life. Remain in the Heart of the Trinity and never abandon His gaze. You have the capacity to love and to be loved. Trust in God always.
My Sisters and I commend you to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
Please keep my Sisters and me in your prayers.

With Mary in the Eucharist,
Your little, poor sister,

Sr. Kathryne Lopez

“For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective. Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God [that is] with me.”
(1 Corinthians 15:9-10)

V.J.E

Closed off from love, I didn’t need the pain
Once or twice was enough and it was all in vain
Time starts to pass, before you know it you’re frozen
But something happened for the very first time with you
My heart melted to the ground, found something true
And everyone’s looking round thinking I’m going crazy
But I don’t care what they say, I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away, but they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein that I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open
Trying hard not to hear, but they talk so loud
Their piercing sounds fill my ears, try to fill me with doubt
Yet I know that their goal is to keep me from falling
But nothing’s greater than the risk that comes with your embrace
And in this world of loneliness, I see your face
Yet everyone around me thinks that I’m going crazy
Maybe, maybe
But I don’t care what they say, I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away, but they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein that I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open
And it’s draining all of me
Though they find it hard to believe
I’ll be wearing these scars for everyone to see
But I don’t care what they say, I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away, but they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein that I keep on closing
You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love

– Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis

I am in the midst of realizing how much this song is my life. Yet, I am no longer living my own life as I did in former days, but truly it is the life of Christ being lived in me; for He first bled for love of me and so now I bleed for love of Him. Indeed, this is my only desire, to allow Christ to be manifested in me, incarnated in my person, so that just as His entire life was an act of worship to the Father, so too is my entire life made into an act of worship unto Him and His glory…

But I’ll tell you straight up though, this bleeding heart no joke is BEYOND PAINFUL. There is no other way to explain how I feel than to compare it to my heart being stabbed with a lance repeatedly and then having my heart torn open, and stretched beyond reasonable capacity. And the more I reflect on this I think about how I felt before it all started and I realize that I had been feeling like gold in a furnace for quite sometime now. Clearly then, that was preparatory fire to make my heart of stone soft enough to be pierced now with this Lance of Love.

When I am tempted to try and close up this heart wound, by putting up a wall against the Lance, or by numbing the pain by distracting myself from it, I am not at peace with myself and I simply cannot go on doing either. I actually begin to yearn for my heart to be pierced. I begin to remember that I freely have chosen to give my heart to my Love, and that for love of Him I do not wish to take it back from Him…so I must not go back on my word… and truly I don’t mean to go back on my word.

…so yeah, it really is true what the saints say: the pain is sweet; to suffer for my Love is pure joy… I could not and would not endure such pain if it were not for Love and if it were not for the fact that Love is worth it. HOW PARADOXICAL IS THAT!!! It doesn’t make sense to us. We don’t like pain. We run away from pain. But I promise you, this pain is VERY necessary.

Why???

Because it causes three things to happen:
1) It removes all the junk inside your heart, all that nastiness and all those lies you think about yourself, all the misconceptions you have about others that you didn’t even realize you thought you had because you thought you were omniscient and omnipresent and all that jazz, etc.
All that stuff oozes out like poison being drawn out from a wound. You realize that you have been set free from chains that kept you in dark bondage, that kept you from realizing what true love is all about.

2) It reveals you to yourself as a creature that was made with the capacity to infinitely receive others into your heart. Now that all that stuff that was in there before is gone, and as you continue to feel your heart being stretched past natural limits towards supernatural limits it is simultaneously filled with a countless number of souls to guard, to guide, to pray for, to love, to carry in solidarity. Their pain becomes your pain and you see yourself being more than just sympathetic or even empathetic but rather compassionate; your heart suffers with the hearts of others, for others, on their behalf.

3) It makes you ready for what’s next: God has great plans for us, plans for our joy and not for our despair. We must trust Him! He is good and His deeds are good!

So yes, Leona is a true prophet in this song. Every single word in this song speaks truth. I invite you to mediate with these lyrics and I pray that you will not be afraid to allow your own heart to be pierced by Love. God bless you.

In the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus,
Sr. Yvelyne Bernard
Second Year Novice