 Good evening, how are you? Father is not joking when I tell you that I'm delighted to be here. I've been looking forward to this moment for a really long time. And I've been in my religious community 23 years and I spend a lot of time traveling throughout the nation speaking to different audiences and to people of all different walks of life. But I have to tell you that speaking to men with ordained hearts is my favorite thing. So I'm just absolutely delighted to be here. I come to you this evening. I come to you tomorrow morning with such great love for you and such great care. And I've just been sitting over here on the end and just watching you just watching you enter into the toxin into the mass and my heart is just spilled with so much love at your incredible goodness. I just want to tell you first and foremost something that I often tell when I speak to men that your masculinity is not toxic, it's glorious. It's glorious. And it's so good that you are here. And it's so good that you are men. And my heart for you during my time with you is to give you a place to rest. To give you a place to be encountered by the one who loves you. And I'm going to appeal to your intellect, of course, I'll do that, but I would love to appeal to your heart. That's what I'd really like to do, okay? So with that in mind, if that's okay with you, I'm going to have you stand if that's okay. And I'm just going to have you stand up nice and tall, I'm going to be your mom for a second. So have you stand nice and tall with your shoulders back, okay? Because it's easy for us to kind of cave into ourselves. But I'm just going to ask you to close your eyes just for a second. I'm going to have you take a deep breath through your nose all the way in. And just all the way out. Let's take another deep breath all the way in. And all the way out. My dear brothers, I just want to give you a few moments just to very honestly offer to the Lord whatever is on your heart this evening. And I'm just going to ask you to be very vulnerable. Because if it matters to you, it matters to him. Just to give you a few moments to do that now. Let's take another deep breath all the way in. And all the way out. My Jesus, we thank you. I just thank you for your tremendous love of these men who belong to you. And I just pray, Lord, in a special way, you would fill their hearts in the place each one of them needed the most. Father, I pray you would father us. We so desperately need a father. And I just ask you, Holy Spirit, that you would come alongside us and speak deeply to our hearts of the truth of your love and how we are loved in every place. We turn to you, Mama, you who are all beautiful. You whose heart is for these men. They belong to you, Mother. I just pray a special blessing upon them from your feminine heart, Mom. As we pray together as a family, Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death, amen. Our Lady Queen of Peace, pray for us. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. You may have a seat. So tonight I'm going to speak about your heart and I'm going to speak about the decisive encounter where the Lord comes to encounter you. And tomorrow I'm going to speak more about hope and healing in those areas. But I just want to give you, before I begin, I just want to give you three invitations for tonight and then tomorrow and then really honestly for the rest of your life. And I think a lot of times when we speak about healing or restoration or transformation, especially for the heart of men, for your glorious and beautiful hearts, there can be a bit of resistance sometimes when we go into these places. And so I just want to give you just some invitations to help free your heart so the Lord can come and encounter you in a deeper way. So number one, first of all, I would like to invite you not to self-censor, okay? Not to self-censor. So I guarantee you if it hasn't happened to you yet, it will happen to you at some point this week where a memory, a thought, an emotion, something will come to the surface of your heart and your first instinct will be to shut that down. And I just want to invite you, maybe for the first time, not to do that. I just want to invite you this week, maybe for the first time to just trust that whatever the Holy Spirit's going to bring up to your heart, even if it's something that you're saying to yourself, I've already faced that, I've already done that. Could we just trust that the Holy Spirit loves you so much and he's just going to gently bring to the surface of your heart whatever he wishes, okay? So I'm just going to invite you, number one, not to self-censor. Number two, I'd like to invite you to notice. Number one, what attracts you? What captivates you? Because you're going to hear things this week that are going to captivate your heart and going to set you on fire and you're going to say to yourself, I want to know more about that, I know about that, I want to delve more deeply into that. And I want to invite you to notice that because our hearts are always speaking to us. The deep place where God has made a covenant with you and I that is irrevocable, where he comes to commune with us, to become one with us. Hearts are captivated by his beauty, right? So I want you to know, just to notice what captivates you, what sets desire on fire in your heart because there's a reason why it does that. And I just want to also invite you to notice what challenges you. Because everything that you're going to hear this week is true. It's orthodox, it's true. But because all of us have different stories and all of us have different ways of seeing the world and different experiences of love and how we see God and what we believe about ourselves and believe about others, things come into our heart and they hit against the broken parts of our heart. And usually what we do is we push those things away and we judge them. But what we don't understand is that just the other side of our heart trying to tell us something, right? So just to notice what captivates you and what challenges you, okay? And lastly, I want to invite you just to engage your story because I'm going to talk about a story, I'm going to talk about fatherhood, I'm going to talk about who you are as sons and I just want to invite you to engage your story with two things, with curiosity and kindness, okay? Because usually what happens in our hearts is when we have the shameful parts of our hearts or all of us have places in our hearts that we're not proud of, all of us have places in our hearts where we know we're aching for something more and we don't know how to get from here to here, so to speak. And all of us know places in our life where we just like settled for sin or things like that and usually what happens is the shame comes right away in our hearts and we shame ourselves and we never ask the deeper questions in the Holy Spirit. So when that happens, what we do is when we notice those parts of our heart that we self-censor, okay, we push that away, is because that's our heart trying to tell us something and if we could, my dear brothers, if we could, just to instead of going right to shame or blaming other people or the things that we do just to self-protect, just to ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, why am I doing this? Why do I do this? Why is it that when that one parishioner comes up to me and says it like that and I promise myself I wouldn't respond to him that way, but man, I did it again, you know? All those places that we have, those are parts of our hearts trying to tell us something and if we could bring the kindness of the Lord there because the kindness of the Lord is tender strength. It's not niceness. Niceness is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit, kindness is. And Jesus, when you study the Gospels what you notice about Christ is that he never shames the sinner ever, ever. And he doesn't shame us. And can I just tell you tonight that the Father is not disgusted with you and he's not disappointed in you and he's not comparing you to other people in the Presbyterian, he doesn't do that. But that he loves you. He so loves you. And I think it's in these tender places where we often are afraid to go, but this is the very place when we talk about the restoration of the church, we talk about the restoration of the bride, this is the very place that we must go into the depths of our hearts, into all the facets of our life, into all the places where the Lord wants to come visit, to bring us to life because we know that love never ends. So let me ask you this, and I know you're not girls, but I know you know this, we know that in the Western world, in the Western world, every fairy tale ends with what? And they lived what? Oh, you've seen a few fairy tales, okay, right? So we know that story, right? That's a Christian world view. Did you know that the fairy tales and other parts of the world don't always end like that? But that is a Christian world view for us that we know that we want to live happily ever after. We want a love that never ends. We want a love that keeps growing, that keeps captivating us, a love that just grows and roots us and grounds us and brings us into communion, the fulfillment of every desire that we possibly have. We ache for a love like that. This is why we want our parishes to be happy, the priests to be happy, the deacons to be happy, we want our marriages to be happy, we want our children to succeed and thrive because we know that no matter what happens in life, no matter what the world has settled for, we know there has to be more. There has to be more. And I live in the great nation of Texas. I must tell you that. So I live in the great nation of Texas and we have two seasons in Texas, hot and hotter. And it's very common. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest where it's rainy and where y'all wear flannel and we're depressed. We drink coffee. That's what we do out there. But now that I live in Texas, it's a different way of life. I've been sharing this story a bit with some audiences, but about in November, I was in the city of Austin. I live in Corpus Christi, but I was in the city of Austin and it's very common in the middle of November in the state of Texas for it to be 85 degrees. So I was going to do a private retreat up in Austin and I wanted to go to the Art Museum before I started because who doesn't want to do that. So I was driving to the Art Museum and I'm not familiar with the city of Austin, but this Art Museum is on the campus of the University of Texas. And so I was driving on the freeway and I got off on my exit and I just noticed as I got closer to where I was going to turn that there were a lot of tense underneath the overpasses in the city. And you know very well that cities that are warmer in climate often attract very large homeless populations and I just noticed that as I got closer to the stoplight there just more and more tense, more and more tense, more and more tense. Until I pulled up to the stoplight to where I was supposed to go to go to the Art Museum and out of the corner of my eye a young man caught my attention and he was wearing white athletic socks and he had some cargo shorts on and he had a t-shirt on and he had his blonde hair like piled up in a bun on his head. And I was watching him as he was very meticulously shaking out a blanket and folding out a blanket and he was going like this and he was folding it and it wasn't right and he did it again and I noticed on his shopping cart he had a blanket that was already folded over and he was probably a young man like probably 24 years old but as I watched him very meticulously shake this blanket out the first thing that I thought is I bet his mama taught him that. I bet his mom taught him that and I watched him shake his blanket out and just in a moment my heart was just pierced for him and I just thought to myself man, how did you get here? How did you get here? Because I'm guessing probably when he was an eight-year-old boy his goal in life was not to live under an overpass in downtown Austin, Texas. I thought to myself what happened? What happened in your life that you got here? And is this an improvement of what life was? Are his parents looking for him? Do they think he's dead? Does he have an addiction? I don't know but I was just captivated by the beauty of who he was and that question of how did you get here? And then the light turned green and I went through the intersection and I turned left and I went to the art museum and I never saw him again but you can tell that he lives deeply in my heart. And if I were to ask you the same question my dear brothers I would ask you this like how did you get here? How did you get to where you are right now and whatever age you are and whatever stage of formation that you are whatever how many years you've been a priest or a deacon or a seminary and how did you get here? How did you get here mentally? How did you get here emotionally? How did you get here physically? How did you get here spiritually? How did you get to where you are as a man? Because there's a beautiful beautiful and very deep stories and everything that has happened to you up until this point in your life has a direct impact as you sit here this evening and as the Lord comes to speak to you and it's a glorious reality. So how did you get here? And as you look at that what's happening in your heart right now as you think of it what's going on in these places because your life poured out who you are poured out is the most incredibly beautiful thing and I live in a rural part of Texas I live outside of Corpus Christi and I live in a very rural part of Texas and there's a Polish priest he's the pastor he's not one of our soul priests but he's a Polish priest he's the pastor of this tiny little country like country, country parish and he's got this big gray beard and he rides his bike to Mass every day you know and so I just love him and so I was going for a walk down by the church before Mass began one morning and I was watching him ride his bike and I was just at a single moment just captivated by his beauty he was so beautiful and I thought in an instant you know because I travel and speak and I hear a lot of stories and I've just for so many years heard the stories of so many people and I hear a lot of beauty and a lot of sorrow and a lot of brokenness but at that moment it was such an impact to me that somebody could run up to both of us at that very moment and they could tell us the same story and they could tell us they could tell us both about their sin about their sorrow about their brokenness and I could sit and pray with them and minister to them which I do so often and that's a beautiful and wonderful thing but they tell the same thing to Father and he has the power to raise their soul from the dead and to heal them stunning your vocation like St. John Vianni says if the priesthood is a love of the heart of Christ if we really understood what it was we wouldn't die out of fear we'd die out of love and you know that very well as ordained men just the crushing glory the crushing weight of such a call of such a beauty of such a love for a time such as this and I'm sure you've all been in situations where you go to the hospital to anoint somebody and you're at your you know you're going to anoint your parishioner and all of a sudden somebody comes out of the hospital and they're like, hey Father can you come and know my grandmother and you stumble in there and there's a whole family gathered around and they are looking at you and you don't know them and they're staring at you and some are crying and some are angry and they're like, Father say something please say something and you're saying to yourself how did I get here what's happening what's happening you are thrust into people's highest highs and lowest lows and everybody wants the priest just watching you hear each other's confessions last night was so gross we all need priest and it's such a beautiful reality because it's a revelation that ordained heart is a revelation of the love of Jesus Christ that you love in a way that nobody else loves and it is stunning to behold stunning if men stopped saying yes to the priest that our world would cease to exist as we know it if you stopped saying yes that is how dependent the Lord is upon us it's his humility is just staggering there's a really wonderful book out that Father Jacques Philippe has just released I love Father Jacques Philippe and he talks about this very reality of how priests or the ordained ministry are just thrust into people's lives and we often ask ourselves how did I get here what's happening and he says this he says without a doubt I love this without a doubt the greatest joys of a minister's life are these moments when he experiences true fatherhood the ministry is often difficult and sometimes live through monotony of sacrifice more than endless enthusiasm but the priest's fate the ordained minister's fate is often a daily life led through a dryness of faith nonetheless he says if we are faithful to our mission there are moments of grace where we feel our hearts filled with a deep love and immense tenderness for the people that God entrusts to us we feel a paternal or even almost a maternal love for them at these times we feel our hearts fill up with a love that is greater than ourselves a love that cannot find its source and our hearts alone we feel a tenderness a much greater compassion stronger and pure than any of our natural capabilities could attain for it is God coming to love through us and that is the reality of what happens in your hearts that God comes to love through you that we see the face of God in you and in all of its beauty and all of its sorrow and all of its brokenness we see this revelation of Christ of who he is in a particular way through and in your hearts through your masculine hearts Jesus comes as a man and Jesus is the one crucified men are long suffering he is the one crucified he is the one who bears the blows for the bride he is the one who is pierced and his heart is pierced wide open so the bride can come and have life that is you that is you as men that is you as fathers as you mature through your identities as a son as brother as bridegroom as father this is your life poured out and it is glorious it is glorious to behold and it's in these very places because God loves you so much he's going to bring your heart to deeper freedom and one of the reasons why I stand up here before you today it's not because I'm wonderful it's because somebody loved me somebody loved me and I mentioned I know some of you have heard my conversion story I won't tell the whole thing this evening but I'm a former division one athlete I wanted to work for ESPN Aaron Andrews stole my jobs it became a nun instead and so here I am kind of kidding I do when I watch a Super Bowl though and I see you on the 50 yard line I'm like oh girl let me just say this very that's very tempting but I grew up Catholic like a lot of you but I never fell in love with Jesus Christ and what happened in my life is I grew up to a certain extent where I had two kind of narratives going on where I had a narrative that I saw that I wanted you to see that was very perfect and very perfect and I put that on purpose and then I had the real story of what was happening and let me just tell you that lasted well into religious life until about 16 years ago my life just completely internally imploded and the Lord finally opened my heart to a place where he wanted to encounter me more deeply and my whole conversion my whole conversion started because God brought a Catholic priest into my life and up until that time I had never met anybody who was so holy and he was not perfect he wasn't perfect at all this incredibly holy man who was so in love with Jesus Christ he was so captivated by the love of Christ he was so captivated by Christ's beauty it would come off of him like fragrant incense and I remember looking at him and I was 21 years old in college at that time I was an active alcoholic my life was shattered secondary addiction to lust brokenness, trauma, sexual trauma started drinking I was 12 years old my biological parents were high school students never married I believe my mom thought of aborting me at some point she gave me up for adoption I was in a foster home for three months so by the time my parents who raised me adopted me that was mother number three and you could just see how my whole life just fractured and my whole life just shattered and my parents, God bless them they did the best that they possibly could but my heart was completely broken and God sent a priest into my life who loved Christ and it was through his love my dear brothers that I'm standing here before you today because there were many times in my life where I could discount as a woman I could discount my worth and my value and my beauty but when I looked at him I could not discount the reality of what the love of Christ does and there were times I could see Jesus looking at me through his eyes I could see him I remember standing there looking at him saying he was like towering above me and I just remember looking at father saying like father I don't know what you have like I don't know what that is I don't know what this is but I want it I want that and his response to me was you come and see you come and see and it is why to my dying day I will always preach the power of personal witness the personal love of Jesus Christ because that kind of holiness that can't be faked I can't fake it you can't fake it we cannot fake that and that's what I really believe that's what the world is looking for today is they're looking for an encounter with authentic love they're looking for a mature love a love that knows the depths of its own poverty a love that continues to go to the depths to encounter Christ so that we can give him to the world because I know that people honestly really they don't want to meet me they don't want to meet me they want to meet Jesus and no matter what walk of life they're whether they're bishops whether they're priests whether they're seminarians, deacons doctors, teenagers moms of seven professional women I mean I've spent hours praying with people from all walks of life and every single person wants to know two things that they are unconditionally loved and that their life matters and I think sometimes in our life what we do is we go on through these phases of our life and we leave kind of certain things behind and I was talking to the seminarians today about the identities of man of son of brother of bridegroom as father and these identities are continually being healed and your life is men they're always being healed as sons you're always being healed as brothers you're always being healed as bridegrooms and as fathers and it's the healing of these identities that allows you to give forth the gift of yourself because a man wants to give forth the gift of himself that's what you're made for that's what your body is ordered toward you know the philosophical definition of man is one who generates life outside of himself and as you that destiny the vision given to you is to cultivate the garden and to protect it and to receive the beauty in it and to protect the beauty in it so that beauty and love and goodness and the bride can flourish because a woman knows instinctively when she's in the presence of a man who is safe I know that in my own soul you intuit it very deeply and so like when Jesus gazes upon the crowd and his heart is broken for them and he says that his heart is filled with compassion for they're like sheep without a shepherd and I know you've experienced that in your own parishes I know there have been Sundays as you sit at the front of the church looking out over the people and I'm sure your heart has wept because they're like sheep without a shepherd and I could imagine probably sometimes it feels very overwhelming very overwhelming and it's in these places right where the Lord comes it's through him with him and in him that you live out this call of the restoration of your heart that you live out the call of his heart that you live out your life in these places in these beautiful places which requires what it requires you and I to be willing to allow the Lord to go down into the depths of our hearts because that's where the restoration begins that's where the restoration continues and that's where the deepest beauty is found all of us need a father no matter how young or old we are we all need a father we need somebody who watches over somebody who protects us somebody who accompanies us somebody who will come down to our level and to look us in the eye and to speak a truth to us in love somebody who will kneel down and receive our hearts and to heal our hearts to bring us to his heart every single one of us needs that no matter how young or old we are I'm so grateful we never outgrow the need to be loved to have compassion upon the deepest places of our hearts to have somebody believe in us to have somebody see the truth of who we are to have somebody call us to the excellence to which we belong that never gives up on us because that's exactly how a father loves and perhaps even as I say that I say that with great reverence and just great honor to your hearts because all of us here this evening we have various experiences with our earthly fathers right and as you live out your fatherhood whether spiritual or natural fatherhood you too have various experiences of that where you've seen the places where you have love through the heart of the Lord and you've seen that beauty and you've seen the places of healing where you brought healing to marriages and to children and you brought children to the church through baptism and spiritual grandchildren just the beauty of that and I think we also are very all aware of our places where we haven't done that and so sometimes what we do is like our tendency to compartmentalize or to kind of wish those things would go away or those places of our hearts would go away or just to say to ourselves well I've already dealt with that I've already faced that and the Lord is saying I want to come and can I just draw close to you here can I just draw close to you here and Father Jacques Philippe he continues to pick up on that theme because he talks about this really beautiful reality he says that modern man right modern man it's so great modern man he says is condemned to success because without the father he has no place to take his failures and his weaknesses modern man is condemned to success because without the father he has no place to take his failures no place to take his weaknesses do you have places in your life I know I do where you feel condemned to success where you feel like if you fail here there won't be anyone to come and find you there won't be anyone to welcome you there won't be anyone to speak a kind word to you there won't be anyone to have you come and sit down with them you must succeed at all costs and I think especially for men for your beautiful hearts is that the question that you have is am I strong enough do I have what it takes it's like a certain like a reverberation in your heart in that regard where you have to succeed at all costs but I just want to invite you to consider the cost of that reality right because Father Jacques Philippe when he talks about that he says you know we know the prodigal son we know the story so well the prodigal son where the son comes home and he's prepared the speech and the father comes running to meet him we're all very familiar with that story where he comes running to meet him and he puts not just the robe but the finest robe I mean he kills the fattened calf and he throws a party for him but he says this and I just want to offer this to your heart okay he says this he says let's take up this story again but this time let's eliminate the father figure when the son comes back to the house there is nobody the house is empty hopelessly empty and abandoned only the wind beats against the doors and the windows there is nobody to welcome him no one to pardon him no one to love him no one to tell him in spite of what you've done in spite of your errors in your sin in your well-loved son you can regain your full dignity you have a place here you belong here you can be free here and happy in my house this house is also your house because everything I have is yours everything he says I think we cannot forgive ourselves for the sins we've committed we've all committed sin he says we cannot absolve ourselves from our errors we need to receive the absolution and the healing and the love of someone bigger than ourselves where in your life my dear brothers we're very honest where in your life is that place for you the place in your heart because I know we all have them where it feels like there is nobody to receive you there is nobody that understands there is no place you can go it's a secret you've never told anybody or it's a struggle that you have or it's an ache, a longing and a desire of your heart that you feel like I just can't share this and I don't know what to do with it could we maybe tonight in a new way just allow the father to come and be with you there I'm not sure if you're a Russell Crowe fan but it was in a great movie about 15 years ago called Cinderella Man it's a story of the depression era of a boxer and the depression era of a father who is working to make something of himself and they're poor, they struggle a lot they have hardly any money he gives his food to his children he often times boxes on an empty stomach and his children are not immune to the situation and his oldest son sees what's going on and his oldest son one day decides to try to take matters in his own hands to fix the problem of their suffering I just want to show you a clip from that movie and I just want you to notice as you watch what happens but I want you to really notice Russell Crowe and just his heart for his son and his posture toward him as he encounters his son and the truth of who he really is can you guys put that clip for us what are you doing son? I'm being good I'm being quiet I'm being hateful great Rosie Cheek how you doing? your brother's in enough trouble without you telling on him you understand? it's from the butchers and he won't say a word about it will you Jay? will you Jay? okay pick it up let's go do not test me boy right now Howard stay here I have to go away to Delaware to learn with his uncle his parents didn't have enough money for them to eat yeah all things ain't easy at the moment Jay you're right there's a lot of people worse off than what we are just because things ain't easy they don't give you the excuse to take what's not yours does it that's stealing right? we don't steal no matter what happens we don't steal not ever yes I promise and I promise you we will never send you away you got a little scared I understand there's so much I think we could say about that the beauty of that of that reality you see we're all Jay we all have ways we're desperately trying to fix the situations in our life that we think we know best and I love what the father does in that situation because that's a mature man like a father loves with a disinterested love not uninterested but a disinterested love a love that pours out a love that gives no matter what he's guided and received he continues to pour he continues to give he continues to love that he sees the truth of his son and you see him even in his posture as he encounters a situation where his son will not talk to his wife it's very interesting he won't talk to her but as the father with the authority of the father as the one who blesses identity as the one who reveals identity a father is strong affirmation where a mother is tender communion and so he steps up and he's going to encounter his son and the place where he needs it the most and you see him calling his son to account and the son gets up and you see him correcting the wrong of returning to the butcher what was stolen and it's just very beautiful as the accompaniment I just like even love the body language of the accompaniment as he's walking with his son he doesn't have us by the arm he's not berating him he's not pushing him he's just accompanying him because he knows that there's a story here something that needs to be encountered and I love it because he doesn't look at him and say why'd you do that what's wrong he just waits for a son to speak and you hear his heart I'm talking with that little boy down the road who's sent to live with somebody else because mom and dad can't feed him anymore and you can just see the father's heart break like his heart breaks for us when we're trying to solve our own situations we're trying to medicate our own pain we're desperately trying to make sense of things that are nonsensical we're desperately trying to cover ourselves and we're hiding more and more in the garden like Adam I was naked and I'm afraid so I hid myself and I love it because the father doesn't turn away and you could just see his heart break for his son and I love it because that right there they stop walking and he turns to him and he says you know that yeah it's not easy there's a lot of people that have it more difficult than we do and you can see his own struggle as a father because he can't provide for his own family and at that point he could have given in the temptation to berate his son or to turn it on himself but you see him in the most humble manner possible that even though things are really difficult and he can't right now make a decision or make that better for his family he's going to instill a truth in his son and I love it because you see as he gets down to eye level to speak the truth to him of saying to him that this is the truth of who we are we're not going to believe lies about ourselves we're not going to do things that are wrong in a way to try to make something else happen he says you need to look at me he's not towering over him with his hands on his hips but he's down him one on one looking at his face because he knows his son he's gazing upon his face and then it's so beautiful as the son says he promises he won't do that anymore but then you see his heart is broken and I love what the father does in such humility as he bends down to go beneath it to go beneath his own son to receive his heart and that's when he says I promise you I promise you we will never send you away no matter how bad things get you will always have a place at our table you will always have a place at our house you belong to me you are mine and I will never leave you I will never forsake you it's just the humility of the father where he comes to this place my dear brothers where he comes to this place with you and I and he's speaking to the deepest needs of our heart and I love it because as he picks up his son and he picks up and he stands up again and he raises him up and this time on is hard so if I were to ask you in your life and I'm just going to let the Holy Spirit just bring to mind maybe a place in your life where is that place for you that you need to be encountered where is the place in your life maybe you have been trying to manage or you've been trying to fix it yourself or you've been trying to be self reliant and you know it's just it's very interesting the extent that we will go to because we're just so afraid of just standing before the Lord naked and vulnerable like we all have our fig leaves that our tailor made just to us and what does the Lord do he comes to us in these places because he sees us he sees us and you know after so many years of just praying with people I prayed with so many priests and so many deacons and so many seminarians and I prayed with men at the top of their game and I prayed with men that are continuing to receive the intimacy of the Father and that men are just living their best life ever and I prayed with men who have a mix of things in their hearts which most of us are a mix of things and then I prayed with men in devastating addiction devastating brokenness and I can honestly tell you I've never met a man no matter how he is in his own heart whether he's beautiful or sorrowful or broken or all those places of his heart I've never met a man in his heart who is okay with settling for mediocrity I've never met a man in my life who is okay with not wanting to give the gift of himself not wanting to be strong and also be tender not wanting to be life-giving and also life-receiving because that's the deepest part of your heart but in order to have access to these parts of our hearts we have to let the Lord come and find us there so where do you need that in your life as men very honestly we have the spirit speaking to you right now right where you need him to accompany you you need him to walk with you you need him to put his arm around you and to walk with you and he's not going to demand you talk to him even he just wants to be with you where do you need him to bend down and to look you in the eye to gaze upon your face the face of the son that he knows better he knows you better than you know yourself where you need to hear a truth from his heart to yours a place in your life you've been leaving lies about yourself for a really long time and maybe tonight in a new way he wants to say son I need you to look at me because I need you to I need to tell you something and then a place here right where he wants to receive our hearts and I have a really beautiful wonderful spiritual father who's just my father died 20 years ago and the priest that I mentioned to you wonderful man he died in the carcass like eight years ago and so it's just really beautiful to see how God has sent fathers into my life as one passes away God will send another one to me and sometime ago everything I was saying to you tonight I know as a woman I know these places in my own heart as well because it's the continued restoration of my own soul like I've been sober many years and I take that journey very seriously and it's a journey to take very seriously and the restoration of my heart and soul that continues as tonight I stand here before you like just this morning in my own prayer I was praying about these places and I hope I never come to a point I hope I never come to a point where I say to the Lord you know what I'm good I don't need you I hope I never say that because I hope he always continues to come that I would continue to allow him as the bride of Christ to come into my heart to open my heart that he could have access to every part of me and I just have a wonderful spiritual mentor a wonderful spiritual father in my life and a couple years ago we were having a conversation and it was a very conversation similar to this that there was something in my life that I wanted to admit to but I just did not want to I was like skirting the issue a little bit and he's like my daughter let's get it out I'm like nah you know he's like come on you know so I took a risk and I finally was able to articulate some things in my heart that needed to be articulated and because my spiritual father knows me very very well not only did he affirm what I said but he also offered a deeper reflection that I was not yet ready to be honest about and he did it in such love in such kindness and such truth as my father and I knew he meant well I knew it and my first reaction was one of just anger and I got defensive and I was driving this car and we were talking and I just I could see and I know myself but I could feel like this deep anger coming out of me and I just said to him like I know that like thanks a lot like I know that about myself like don't you think I know that like this is the very thing that I'm trying to talk to you about and I just kind of went on this thing and my beautiful spiritual father he just kind of let me emote there for a second you know and I just started to cry I was like this is an area of deep poverty to me I know that I know that and he just looked at me and he said oh my daughter do you not in my own way when I share parts of my story with you my life with you do you not just come and sit beside me and just bring the Christ there don't we just invite the Lord to come and sit beside me there and I said of course I do I love you there's nothing you could ever do that would ever turn me away from you I love you and then he looked at me and he said something to me that just changed my heart forever and he said to me well then will you not let me do the same thing with you you just let me come and sit beside you in this place and just let Jesus let's let the Father speak to you just let me sit with you here let's let the Lord speak right so tonight if I could just sit with you in these last few minutes I'm just going to offer a space for your heart just to sit with the Lord and let him speak if that's okay so I'm just going to invite you I'm going to have Bob come up and we're just going to just play some music just gently underneath I'm just going to invite you if you would like to just to close your eyes just for a second and just once again to take a deep breath I think you just stay seated but just take a deep breath and I'm just going to invite you just to notice what's happening in your heart and just notice that I'm going to invite you not to self-censor just let whatever happens happen right now is there anything that's challenging you in your heart right now and what is your deepest desire here and I'm just going to invite you if I could just to encounter with the Father in these next few minutes and I just want to invite you just to call to mind to ask the Holy Spirit to call to mind just a place in your life lately that's been distrustful maybe it's something happening in your personal life maybe with your family maybe something at the parish or maybe something from long ago I just want to invite you just for a second just allow that situation to surface what's happening in your heart there what are the details of it why is it so difficult and hurtful just notice do you feel alone there do you feel like maybe nobody understands or nobody would understand maybe it's a place that feels hopeless or you feel powerless to do anything to change it or maybe just afraid but I just want to invite you just for a moment as you ponder that situation just to imagine yourself holding it out in your hands in front of you and just look at it it might seem embarrassing or it might seem scary or it might seem trivial to you I promise you that the Lord is not embarrassed it's not trivial to him he's not afraid but what does it look like as you gaze upon it in your hands would you be willing to ask the Father just to be present with you there so just ask you Father in whatever way you wish to reveal yourself that you would just come and be with your son here that you would place your hands upon his hands and just be with him and my dear brothers what do you want your Father to know about this part of your life what do you want him to know about this part of your heart and I just want to invite you just to be very honest as you speak to God about this part of your heart what do you want him to know about it and if it's okay with you your Father would like to speak a word to you so he's just going to gently bend down and he's going to come to you eye to eye and just gaze upon your face that he knows so well and just speak a truth about your heart right here for he knows you