 start a talk. Have you ever heard me speak? I often tell what I call nun stories because when you go on public dress like this, very interesting things happen to you. Okay, so I have to say that this lint, did anybody have like a lint that was about three months long this year? Anybody at lint? Like linty lint, like an all-capital letter. So I've been telling this story ever since lint that I too, I too had one of those lints and it started the weekend after Ash Wednesday. I got violently ill with very bad food poisoning. Have you ever had very bad food poisoning? Okay, so yes, you know what happens when you have very bad food poisoning. So I was in Dallas about to give a parish mission and very bad things were happening to me and I figured that that's where I died. Father would come give me the last ride to be buried at the Holiday Inn in Dallas, Texas. And this is it. And so I had to miss the first session of the parish mission and then the next day, somebody stole my debit card number and stole $500 out of our bank account. Then the day after that, I had two just really horrible, awful things happen to me and I thought to myself, you know, Lord, we don't have to fit everything in the first week. Like, it doesn't have to, I mean, it's like six weeks long, you know, we've got to space this thing out. And so if you've ever had food poisoning, you know, it kind of takes a while for your body to reset itself, okay? So a week later, the nun has reset herself and she is now hungry. And I am in the airport again in Dallas. I should just avoid Dallas. Sorry, I'm from the nation of Texas, but I should just avoid Dallas. So I'm in the Dallas airport at Qdoba people. That's what's happening right now. And it's after lunchtime and the nun is now hungry, which is never a good thing. So I get to the front of the line at Qdoba and you know, those restaurants are often very loud. And one must shout their order to the lovely employee in the back. And so I get up to the front of the line and I say to the employee, before I can even say anything, all I wanted was a chicken salad and it was Saturday during that it was Saturday. So I get up to the front of the line and before I can say anything, the guy looks at me and he says, Hey, do you want a vegetarian bowl? And I was like, Yeah, right. So he fills my bowl with salad and he starts putting beans on it. And I'm just, you know, thinking I just want some lettuce and chicken salad. But he actually bypasses all the protein and he goes straight for the salsa was like, Oh, could I have some chicken on that? And he says, you want chicken? I said, Yeah, I want chicken. And he said, it's lent. And I said, but it's Saturday. And he says, yeah, okay, we're shouting this at each other. Okay, in front of everybody. He's like, he's like, Yeah, but it's lent. And I look to my watch, I'm like, am I losing my mind? I thought for a second. I sometimes I said, but it's Saturday, I just wanted chicken salad. And so he puts the chicken on my thing. And he's clearly confused. And he says, he looks at me and he says, you're not giving up meat for all of lent? And I said, No. And then he says, Well, I am just like embarrassed. I was like, blushing. And he's clearly disappointed in me, right, that I'm like the loser, none. And so he like puts on my cheese on and he's just kind of disappointed in me. And I'm just watching him, you know, and I'm like, sorry, man, just, you know, so we get to the end of the line, there's all these people in front of me. And I'm just like standing here looking at him. And he looks at me and looks at me, he takes my salad. And he walks and he bypasses all these people. And he gets to the front of the line and he gets to the cash register. And he pays for my chicken salad himself. Okay. And he gives it to me says, Here you go, loser. Okay, so to myself, you know, I don't, I don't know why he was giving up meat for all of lent. Obviously, that was clearly important to him for me to pay him to point that out to the nun. But I don't know why he was doing that. But I think at some point in lent, like you probably do in different points of your life, you said to yourself, Why am I doing what I'm doing? Right? If you're sending it to somebody you live with, you might be wondering, sister, I have no idea why they're doing what they're doing. Okay, like, why, why do we do what we do? Or as the venerable Dr. Phil says, How's that working for you? Right? How is that working for you? It's interesting, you know, when we think about intimacy with God, intimacy, and how that works for us, and why we do what we do, there's a lot of reasons why we do what we do. And I think we come to conferences like this, and you might come to this one every year, and you might have some graces. And you know, we talk about the scripture for that's outlining the whole conference is that God's going to make things new. And I was thinking about that of how Christ comes in His power to make things new, to make all things new. And it reminded me so much of what St. Paul says, yes, St. Paul and his letter to the Romans, such a great part, such a great passage that we hear often, but I was just really listening to it recently in the depths of my soul, and allowing it to minister to me. And so Romans 8, 31 to 38, St. Paul says this, he says, What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? Because it is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died and who was raised and who has the right hand of God and who intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress, persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? Oh, he says no, no, no, no, no. In all these things, in all these things, he says we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. And this just is like his epic cry from his heart. He says, Because I am convinced, I am convinced in neither life nor death, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God and Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Amen. Amen. What will separate us from God's love? Because you know when we talk about intimacy and we talk about receptivity, what does it even mean to receive? I think you and I, I know in my own journey in life, I've had just many, I talked about this earlier in my forgiveness workshop about what I call break points in my story, where I heard the word of God, even as many years in religious life, I've been in religious life almost 20 years now, many years in religious life of hearing God's word proclaimed to me, but yet somehow it didn't settle to the parts of my soul. And as you know very well, our hearts are like diamonds. They have many facets, don't they? So what does it even mean to receive? So if we talk tonight about, and tonight Jesus is going to come, he's going to walk among us, we talk about intimacy and we talk about receiving the heart. I love that. Receiving the heart of the one who loves us. If you look at the dictionary, you just find words interesting. If you look at the dictionary and you look up the word receive, you're going to find a couple definitions. Okay, one of them says this, to take into one's possession, okay, so something offered or delivered, so to receive many gifts. Number two, to have something bestowed upon you or conferred upon you, to receive an honorary degree. Or number three, to have delivered or brought to one, to receive a letter. So to receive is to take in and to admit into one's self, which requires a tremendous amount of vulnerability. Do you have a friend in your life who's very generous? They are generous to a fault, so to speak. They are so generous, but they will not receive anything from you. Have you ever fought over somebody at the restaurant for a bill? Like, you thought of like, no, you're going to pick non-pay for, no, you're like wrestling the waitress is like, this is getting awkward now, you know, it's like, just a couple of days ago, we were at a restaurant, like, I was at a retreat in Tallahassee, Florida, and four priests and two nuns walked into the restaurant, pretty sure everybody thought the world was coming to an end at that point, you know. And we sat down, and I mean, I invited, it was my idea to have dinner, so you never invite somebody to ask them to pay, but at the end of the dinner, one of the priests was going to pay for us, and I said, oh, no, father, I, you know, here I am talking about receptive, I'm like, I don't know, I'll get the bill, I said, let me get, I was going to take his bill, he's like, sister, just receive, I'm like, okay. Just receive, because it's vulnerable, isn't it? Isn't it vulnerable to receive even something? Because to admit and to be vulnerable and to receive means I have a need, and that can be scary. So when we talk about intimacy with God, I'm going to just frame this whole talk by a beautiful quote by a Dominican priest who wrote a lovely book called Friendship in the Lord, and here's what he says about intimacy. This is gorgeous. He says, the need to be known is the need for intimacy. Intimacy means being fully at home with someone. Home is not a place, it is where I am fully known and loved and received just as I am. It is where I am free to be completely myself without putting on acts to win another's approval, only in the presence of my family and true friends am I at home, and only trusted love can give such intimacy. Intimacy means being at home, and we ache for home. If ever even as an adult just kind of in your heart was like, I'm going to take my ball and go home, man. I'm going, like, I'm going home, you know. We ache for home. I don't know, even sometimes in gatherings like this, I like to joke that I'm horrendously introverted actually, and so it can be very kind of just challenging at times to interact and to kind of find a place. And have you ever gone into like a huge, maybe the cafeteria today, you go into the cafeteria and maybe your friends got there first or you get to the cafeteria and you can't see your friends and you're standing there with your plate full of food and you feel like you're in seventh grade again? Oh, you happen that too, huh? Yeah, so you're standing there and you're like, where are my friends? You know, and you're looking and everybody's looking at you and you're like an idiot. You know, you got spaghetti hanging off your plate and you just like, I feel like I'm in seventh grade right now and I just, and all you want is somebody from the back saying, hey, hey, come sit here, come sit here. We got a seat for you right here. And you're like, oh, thank God, I want to be home. If I were to ask you right now, who do you feel most at home with? Who is home for you? See, the revelation of friendship, the revelation of this ache that we have to go home is God calling us home. And I live in South Texas and a couple of years ago around winter time, it's very common for it to be 75 degrees in January and I know, right? And so right now it's, we're all melting. It's okay, it's like 112, but that's all right. And I remember going for a walk in the Corpus Christi, Texas is right on the beach and 70 degrees or 75 degrees, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest where it's cloudy and we're all depressed, we drink coffee and we're flannel. And so that's like a summer day for us, you know? And so there I was walking along the water and somebody at the park had just cut the grass. You know what fresh cut grass smells like? And there was a breeze blowing and there was a huge storm moving in. So on the wind was a smell of fresh cut grass and rain. And as I crested that hill and I walked down the hill, this huge gust of wind caught me and as I smelled those scents in an instant, I was a little girl again. And I was just running through my parents' backyard and I could just see myself. I had pigtails and I had no shoes on and just free and just running. And in an instant that moment passed and it was like me again, you know? And I kind of came to myself and I thought to myself, man, where did she go? Where did she go? This desire that we have for friendship, the desire that we have for a place to call home, we see it in every facet of our lives. We see all this biblically really because it's a call home. It's a call home to God. The reason why we're unsatisfied here on Earth is because this is not our home. If you've ever read the end of the story, the Chronicles of Narnia is that all the animals and the children go into Narnia and to Aslan's land. As they step further into his land, they begin to feel like a sense of like, we've been here before. I can't quite put my finger on it, but we've been here before. And they don't understand why, but everything is richer, everything is greener, everything is more full, it's more vibrant, it's more alive. And finally, I love that they could see us, Louis, you know who the character is that realizes that where they are, it's the unicorn. And the unicorn stamps his self and he says, we're home. He said, this is it. This is a place that I've been longing to be my whole life. We're finally home. This is where we belong. And then he shouts out this battle cry and he says, further up and further in. And they take off running. Further up and further in, further up and further in, further up and further until they finally encounter Aslan himself. The desire for us to receive, but the desire for us to be home, the desire for us for intimate love, to be seen known and loved, to be received, for somebody to know our own story, to know the whole story. And in our whole story, to love us even more deeply. That's the deepest ache of our heart because that's where we belong. You know what, something you can see very, even very silly, and I think you and I are the age we could remember this, and I'm not making a comment on the TV show, but there was a very famous TV show in the 80s and the 90s, I think what called Cheers, right? That is one of the most famous theme songs ever. The chorus says what? Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. And they're always glad you came. You want to be where you can see. Your troubles are all the same. You want to go where everybody knows your name. Wow, we're just saying the theme to your song, here we go. We want that. We want that in our deepest core. And I love it because you know what, in the Gospel of John, John chapter 15, 15, Jesus says what? I do not call you servants or slaves any longer because a slave does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my father, which means for God, he's holding nothing back from us. That he comes with a heart open, a heart pierced wide open. And you see that very beautifully in the gift of friendship, right? In this gift of home. And that's exactly what the Holy Spirit is working to do in our life. That the Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is a sanctifier who comes to make Christ's presence in you and I. That he's coming to bring us home. And I've recently come across a lovely book that's called Awakening Love, and it's by Father Cleveland, who's an Oblate priest, and it's an Ignatian retreat on the song of songs. And in one chapter of the night, when I was just preparing for this, you know, I was just thinking of this so deeply, and the chapter is called Beloved Friend, where the bride sings to the beloved, the bride sings to the bridegroom, and she says this of him. She says, the voice of my beloved, look, here he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or like a young stag. Look there, he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows and looking through the lattice. And Father Cleveland says this. He says, a desire for intimate knowledge of our Lord who has become man will lead to a friendship with Jesus. He says, the Hebrew word that the bride uses for her beloved also means friend, and friendship is a very profound form of love. The word intimacy sounds like into me see. It suggests the transparency of the bride and allowing the bridegroom to see into her inmost soul. Indeed, he is gazing in at her through the windows, looking through the lattice. For God is the one who sees the heart, the deep interior of the person, and doesn't judge by mere external appearances. Jesus also sees into and knows what is in our hearts, and he desires our friendship. That's the interesting thing to think about, isn't it? That the King of kings and the Lord of lords, he desires our friendship. He desires communion and relationship. He desires us just like anybody else in life. I was telling a good friend of mine about another friendship that I had with somebody else and they were listening to it and they said, you know, that's exactly how Jesus wants to be treated in our lives. Because what are the qualities of friendship, of loyalty and honor and respect and kindness, of gentleness, of truth, telling and love, of receptivity, of a willing to lay down our life for the other, to receive the other. The most noblest qualities we all desire in our friend, this is how Christ desires to be treated as well. I think we've all had experiences where maybe we've been the seventh grader in the cafeteria and there were seats at the table, but there were no seats for us. And we stood there awkwardly, we sat and we sat down by ourselves where we had different, you know, stories of our life where instead of experiencing communion and experiencing oneness, which is what we're made for, we experience isolation and we experience hiding, we experience rejection and we grow up and we call it adulting. And yet somehow those wounds can sometimes still remain. I remember my mom, you know, you talk about people that know each other, my mom, part of my story, you know, I was actually adopted, my biological parents were high school students and I was adopted after being on a foster home for three months and my mother and father who raised me loved me very much, they're wonderful people and my mom and I, even though we had, you know, lots of times in our life where we didn't get along, so I always love to tell mothers that if you have a daughter who's troubled, who's crazy, there's hope, okay? Can I just say that right now? Like there is, right? Miracles do happen, okay? So, but my mom and I had a huge healing in our relationship, which actually came through one of the deepest sorrows of our family is that my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 17 years ago and he was diagnosed on Fat Tuesday and we buried him on Ascension Thursday. It was a very fast thing and it was one of those things where we say to ourselves, you know, this is the worst, this is the worst thing that could ever happened and we say to ourselves, you know, why would God take somebody like my parents, like my dad? My dad, my parents, my dad retired early to do volunteer work for our religious community and wonderful man, you know, just holy. I'm like, dad, why would you take, you know, those things in our life that we don't quite understand but what happened through that whole, you know, walk, really that whole journey to Calvary, the whole journey from my dad on the cross of my dad ultimately going home was that the grace that poured out from his suffering allowed a lot of healing in our family. A lot of our family secrets came out, okay, so every family has secrets, people have secrets, a lot of our family secrets came out, a lot of healing and reconciliation came out but one of those things that came out from it was a huge healing in the relationship with my mother. My mom, I think, had always just because she just loved me so much, she always has a certain heart for me and when I was 15 years old, I tell this story in my book, I think, but when I was 15 years old, I wanted to watch for my birthday and my mother had gone to the store and she had picked out a watch for me but then she second guessed it because she really wanted me because it was my 15th birthday and I really wanted to watch, she really wanted me to have the watch that I wanted. So she took me to the store and she said, why don't you just pick out your own watch and I'll go ahead and, you know, we'll buy it and we'll call that your birthday present and there must have been at least 40 to 50 watches in this huge watch counter and so I looked and looked for a long time and then I picked one style and the one style had a black face with a mother pearl and one style had like a white, like a pearl face with a mother pearl and they both had these beautiful cut glass on them and I spent quite some time, you know, as a 15-year-old girl, like picking out your birthday present, it's been a long time looking at it and then I finally chose the one with the black face with the mother pearl and I put it on the counter and I told my mom, I said, this is the one that I want and my mom opened her purse and pulled out the exact same watch that she'd already bought me and the woman behind the counter was amazed. She's like, you guys must be really close. We're like, well, we could tell you feel stories if you wanted to hear a few stories. But how delightful it is to be known, isn't it so delightful to be known? And that is how God knows us, the human heart is made to be known. And so the parts of our hearts, my dear friends, that God is calling us into communion, these areas of our life where he's calling us into communion, he's calling us to receive his heart so that our heart is made known. And as we know very well, like I don't find myself, I find myself by looking at Christ, he's the one who knows me, he reveals me to myself. Ultimately, it's his heart that is my home. It's his heart to where we are going and all the beautiful things in this life are reflections of the deepest part of his heart, the deepest part of his intimacy for us to bring us to himself. We're always made known. We're his desire to reveal who he is, to reveal who we are, to reveal our destiny. We're his desire to heal all that seems lost. He heals it all. And this matter, this matter, this, you talk about the details of the heart, the details of the heart, go right to the heart because we all know very well, we can intuit usually very quickly relationships that are true and relationships that are false. Have you ever had somebody tell you something? There's an interesting thing called micro, have you ever heard of micro expressions? Right? There's these expressions that pass across your face in just an instant. And many times it's how people that study, you know, the people that study this, they know very quickly if you're lying or not because usually your body will leak information. It's why you at times watch somebody and they tell you something and you're like, I don't believe you. They're like, what I'm telling you? They're like, no, you're not. It's written all over your face, man. I can see it all over your face. Or many times when we avert our gaze, the first thing when we feel shame is many times we avert our gaze. And we say, what about the gaze, the eyes of the windows to the, did you know you intuitively don't trust somebody who won't look you in the eye? Because there's something about that. So when Jesus gazes upon us and he speaks deeply to us and his desire like anybody else in life, he's a person, a real person. His desire is to give us the gift of his heart. Because that's what friends do, is they share hearts. That's what lovers do, they share hearts. They share the deepest parts of their hearts with one another and that is what God does. So Jesus comes to us and he offers his heart to us. But I think we could probably all agree that there are parts of our hearts that have barriers. There's parts of our hearts that don't receive. There's parts of our hearts where maybe we just don't trust. And I found it very interesting in just speaking, reading the book from Father Hedda Bush about the friendship and the Lord and about his definition over and over and over again about what love is. Then he says, only trusted love can give such intimacy. Only trusted love can give such intimacy. And it's very interesting when you think about trust, is somebody trustworthy or not? And like I said, our hearts have many facets, like a diamond. And so I think there's parts of our hearts, just like anything else in life, rarely are we all or nothing, where we have parts of our hearts that perhaps trust very deeply. And maybe by the very fact that you're here is a revelation of your heart trusting very deeply. And the fact that you have hope for the future. But I think there's probably, all of us, I know I can see it on myself because I'm speaking as much to you as I am to myself, that we have parts of our hearts where we just don't trust. And we sing songs at times to be quite honest with you where you say, God is very good, he's a good, good father. And maybe there's part of our hearts that says, I wish I believed that, but I don't. So what does it mean to trust, right? To trust. To trust, just like the word receive, means this. It says, the reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, or surety of somebody, a person or a thing, a reliance on someone, one as confidence in people as persons, trust them to be faithful to their commitments, and hopes to obtain from them what they promise and apply to God, trust is a form of hope. Trust is a form of hope. And I think of how Christ lives and I just think about all the ways that we resist and I would say that the ways we resist God, so when Jesus comes among us and he offers us his heart, the parts where we're afraid to receive, I really think it's probably the parts of our hearts where we're afraid, where we have experienced trial and persecution and hunger and nakedness and distress and the sword, where we've experienced darkness and we've allowed those places of our hearts for whatever reason to overshadow us and we say to ourselves, I wish I could conquer this, but I can't. Or this has seemed too much. Why did this happen to me? Why is this happening to my family? Why have my children left the church? Why is my son an addict? Why is there parts of me that just, I don't know what it is about me, but my heart just seems really hard and I can't quite seem to do anything about it. And I desire more, but I can't. And it's these parts of my dear friends where Jesus comes so gently toward us. Lent wasn't just about a chicken salad at Cutoba this year for me. Lent was very deep. And I was just sharing with the workshops. Sometimes I tell the same stories, but I was sharing with the workshop earlier that for myself, just what God has been doing the last 12 years of my life, God has been completely just restructuring the entire part of my foundation, just the entire thing. And I mean, if you ever watch Fixer Upper, okay, you know very well that if you ever watch Fixer Upper, you know that to do foundation work on a house, or if you're in construction, you know that to do the foundation work on a house is usually like a last resort thing, or it's something that you don't have to do first before you do anything else. But it's very time consuming, isn't it? It's very expensive and it's very hard work. And I remember 12 years ago, just, you know, I was in religious life for many years at that point, but just being tremendously unhappy. And I didn't understand why. And what I saw that there was these parts of my hearts where I wasn't receiving God and I wasn't receiving God because I had all these active areas of my life of fear, of trauma, of trial, of distress. And I didn't know what to do about it. So I began a long journey of healing, a 12-year journey of healing. But about two years ago, it was around New Year's on, like January 1st, really, 2016, God just took that to a whole other level. And he said to me, I love you very much. And because I love you, I want to take you down to the very foundation of your soul. It's not going to be easy. But you're my bride. And I want to see you fully alive. And out of my tenderness and care for you, we're going to go very, very deep. And that is exactly what's happened. Pretty sure Chip and Joanna Gaines have been there for the last two and a half years too. Okay, but I had this experience of just being completely and totally stripped of the things that I would rely on, the things that I would rely on to make myself lovable, though all the ways that I would try to perform, all the ways that I try to prove myself good, things that you would say, well, those are virtues, but these were areas of my life where I was absolutely striving, trying to make sure, trying to convince, as Chris Padgett was saying last night, trying to convince God that I was lovable enough, these gaping parts of my foundation. And I remember I had this image of myself in 2016 of being in the kitchen and I was hungry and I needed some food and I was opening up the cupboards and there was nothing in there. And then going through my pockets and looking for money, but there was nothing. I had no money to go to the store and I just remember being totally stripped bare and I was just standing before the Lord saying, you're the only thing I have. You're the only thing I have. And this last year, he's taken it even deeper. And I had this image, you know, just part of my own story as I'm a recovering alcoholic, I'm an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse and rape. I've had a lot of trauma in my life, a lot of addictions to alcohol, to lust, to all kinds of things. A lot of hopelessness, a lot of clinical depression. I mean, you hear about the deaths of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade and people that have taken their own life, battled those temptations for a long time. Deep struggle, deep struggle. And there's these parts of me that felt so deeply abandoned in life. And nothing, there was like this gaping hole and nothing seemed to even come close to touching that. And I've had these deep encounters lately and one of the things that God did is he showed me something that actually profoundly changed my life. Because see, you know, when Christ was crucified on the cross, one of the things that the Romans did to you before they crucified you and left you there to hang, to suffocate and die was that they actually stripped you naked. So you are in the most vulnerable position a person can possibly be. And this lent he was convicting me very deeply of all the ways that I self-protect. All the ways that he's so delighted and desired to give me his heart, but I was self-protecting and performing and trying to cover up all these areas, parts of my heart where he was calling me as his bride to come close to him, but I just couldn't do it and I would just keep a distance. And in a moment I saw him and I saw him completely vulnerably nailed on the cross, as you know, Bishop Olenshin said that the cross is the marriage bed. And here's Christ our bridegroom, complete, he has no self-protection at all, no self-protection. And he's nailed to the cross, completely stripped, completely naked, completely vulnerable. And in that vulnerability, he's stripped and he's bleeding out for us and he's calling out for us and he's taking upon himself every trauma, every area, every hardship, every trial, every distress, every persecution, everywhere you felt naked, at that moment he's taking it on himself and in that cry of his own abandonment, he cries to the Lord, he says, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? And in that moment I saw myself and I realized that the paschal mystery is real. The Christ takes our deepest sorrows, our deepest traumas, all the ways that we resist him, all the ways that we self-protect and he unites those parts to ourself, the things that we can't even possibly utter, he unites that to himself and it becomes one in his sacred heart where he calls us to bring us home. And sometimes, you know, man, just like myself, your story has long roots to it at times, doesn't it? It has long roots. And his heart is broken, it's pierced, it's pierced wide open. It's pierced wide open to bring us home. One of my favorite quotes from Pope Benedict comes from a book called Behold the Pierced One. And he says this, he says, stoic thought, I love this, stoic thought regards the heart is that which hold things together and it aims at self-preservation. But the pierced heart of Jesus has overturned this definition. This heart is not concerned with self-preservation. But with self-surrender. It saves the world by opening itself. This heart saves by giving itself away. His heart is for you. I love it, St. John Viani. He says that the priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus. And he says a priest is not a priest for himself. He's a priest for you. It's the heart of Christ given away. And it's only trusted love, only trusted love that can produce such intimacy. There's something beautiful when you talk about a heart that's open, a heart that's vulnerable. You know, many times we call that, in a sense, we see that very easily in children, don't we? It's one of the things we love about them. You know, they have very little filter from here to here, for better or for worse. Sometimes, you know? And they're, they say what they mean and they just, you know, they have no hiding, many before they've been wounded, many times they have no facades, they have no areas of self-protection and they're just totally out there. And they see the world very differently. And I think before a child comes in to compare themselves, many times you see in children, you know, we talk about being comfortable in your own skin, being at home, right? Being at home in the trusted love of who you are and you've had wonderful parents, this beautiful journey of being trusted, of being loved, and just being comfortable in your own skin and just kids just see the world differently. And many times as adults, you know, these things happen to us and we kind of cope, right? And we tell ourselves different stories or these parts of our hearts where the receptivity is not there because the trust is not there. And what we do is we just pull back a little bit. We pull back a little bit. And many say, we say to ourselves, well, I'm managing just fine. If you ever get tired of managing because life is not meant to be managed, as St. Paul says, we are more than conquerors because of him who loved us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. I'm gonna show you just a little video and it's a video that features adults and children. And what they're gonna do is it's gonna be obvious, but they're gonna ask the adults one question, all right? And then they're gonna ask the children one question. And as you watch, I would just invite you to especially listen to the difference in the answers that the adults and the children give. So can you all play that video first? Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. All right, let's do this. Scene zero, take one. Mike? So we've got one question that we want to ask you today. Okay, well, what's that question? The question is, if you could change one thing about your body, what would it be? Um, only one. I would change my forehead. I have a really big forehead. I'd like to be taller. The puffiness of my face. My ears, my big ears. Drenched marks after having a baby. A lot of times like kids would make fun of me, like, hey man, your big ears got dumbled over there, you know? Definitely my skin, because I've dealt with acne and eczema issues ever since I was a little kid. Growing up, like a lot of people call me like five head or like, if we're so big, they've always like would say something to me about it. When I was younger, I felt like I wasn't quite adequate enough. Can you sit on the chair? No. I'm going to ask you one question. What's the question? If you could change one thing about your body, what would you change? I'll have a mermaid tail. Probably like a shark's mouth. I thought I could eat a lot of stuff. I could have teleportation on my body. Extra 20 years. I want legs like a cheetah so I can ride faster like a cheetah. I could have wings, like fly. I don't think there's anything to change. My leg, my body actually. Yeah, you wouldn't change anything? Nothing else. Just a mermaid tail. Just a mermaid tail, that's all I want. Did you notice the difference? Were you thinking of the one thing you would change? Like did you hear the adults talking about what happened when they were kids? I think the woman at the very end sums it up quite nicely for a lot of us adults when she says, when I was younger, I felt like I wasn't quite adequate enough. And then the children come and one of them wants legs like a cheetah so he can run faster like a cheetah. And one wants a shark mouth so he can eat a lot of stuff. But my favorite is the little girl who says, I wish I had wings so I could fly. Give me two. What would be one thing in your life, my dear friends? When Jesus approaches us and he desires intimacy, he desires to be at home with us. He desires that you find yourself fully seen and fully known and fully loved and he desires to do the same thing with you. He desires to reveal to you the secrets of his heart and his full power and who he is as Lord and King, but also his deep devotion, his deep reverence, as a friend, as a bridegroom, as for us the church. Do you recognize part of your hearts that resist because sometimes, you know what, those parts start very early and may result from just areas of trauma in our life. Maybe you grew up as a child who you didn't ever want to go home because home wasn't a safe place. Or maybe even in the womb, you heard stories later that maybe you were not quote unquote wanted by your parents. I remember meeting a woman many years ago at a conference and she was about 60 years old and she came up to me and she said to me, when I was five years old, my parents came up to me, talk about brokenness, and they said to me, we wanted a boy but we got you. And they had named her a girl's version of a boy's name on purpose and they dressed her in boy clothes. They gave her boy toys and they discouraged anything feminine at her and she grew up hating herself. And she thought for about 60 years, almost 60 years that God had played some cruel joke on her. She hated her body, just her beautiful feminine body, just the way her mind thought just her heart for others as the feminine genius, the attendance of the person. She thought it was all some cruel joke. And it was only now, after nearly 60 years, was she beginning to realize how beautiful she was as a woman of God. What would be part of your story? I'm just going to spend about 10 minutes, if that's okay with you, just praying with you, is that all right? And so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to ask the Holy Spirit to be very present. And I'm just going to, from the beginning of life, you know, up until season life, I'm just going to call out just potential areas where perhaps we could be resisting God and just ask for healing. And so I just asked during this time, you know, just the Holy Spirit, that you would come, that Jesus as your heart is a heart of self-surrender, your heart for us, that you are tender, you are kind, and that you desire to bring us home. When the Holy Spirit reveals things to us, He always does it in such gentleness and tenderness. And His only desire is to heal. And tonight Jesus Christ Himself will come in the monstrance, He will process among us, and we can cry out to Him, we can bring these things to Him. But just as the bride of Christ, I just want to call out for you, call out for you and ask for healing and restoration. So Holy Spirit, I ask that you be made present right now for all of us, myself included. Lord, we cry out to you, we cry out to you, and we ask that you'd help us surrender to your goodness, to your kindness. Tonight we bring to you any part of our hearts that doubts your love, because it does sometimes, and that's just what happens when we're broken. And we know that you know our hearts and you receive us deeply. Tonight we bring to you the parts of our hearts that are skeptical. Maybe the parts where we say, I'm too old for this, there's no hope for me. The parts of our hearts will re-resist your love, Lord. We're just afraid to be seen. We're afraid to be rejected. We're afraid to be abandoned. And I pray that you would meet us there at this very moment. So Lord, I just pray for all of us, at the very moment of our life, the life, the time that life began in our conception, that as you willed us into existence, we are your choice, we are your divine masterpiece. That it is you who knit us in our mother's womb, you who have known us from all time, and as we were created at that very moment, you said, behold, it is very good. We just pray for anybody who has experienced trauma in the womb, any of us who have experienced the parts where we were not welcomed by our mother. Maybe mom was overwhelmed, maybe we were seen as an inconvenience. Maybe we were unplanned, so to speak. Children are very sensitive, even in the womb, they know things. Maybe where our father had left, or our father had left our mother, or our father was not happy that our mother was pregnant with us. Any area we've taken on of shame or guilt or self-condemnation because of that, Lord Jesus, we ask for your healing at this very moment. Just pray a blessing over your life. You are very good, and God desires your existence. He delights in you. You are one of a kind, and you are beautiful. Just pray for us as we transition from being in the womb to being infants. I pray for anybody in this room who had a traumatic birth, anybody who was separated from their mother, be it through adoption, be it through a traumatic health problem, be it through the health of the mother, be it through being abandoned. Any part of our lives or that attachment was not secure. We just offer these places to you, Lord Jesus, you who heal all things. Just pray for your safety, Lord, your refuge to wrap around us at this very moment. Just pray for those of us who maybe did not have a home for quite some time. Just pray for those of us who suffer with anxiety in this room, those who worry deeply. Lord, I pray for your healing that we could trust your love for us. Just pray for a healing of wounds from infancy, and that mother Mary, sweet mother, that you would reveal yourself to us in these moments, that you are the one who holds us so tenderly and who rejoices in us. Just pray also for mothers and fathers in this room who weren't able to give all that they wanted to give to their children. Just want you to know how much the Lord loves you, how he sees your heart, and he forgives and heals all things. His desire is for you. And his desire is for you to receive his love here in these parts that many times are very painful. You just pray for us now as children. Many times as children, when we're learning how to navigate the world with others, we experience a lot of just wounds and a lot of sorrow in those places. And a lot of times we self-protect from that point on. So just pray for anybody here who's ever been bullied, anybody who has picked last for the sports teams, anybody who is considered odd or left out. Just pray for those who've struggled a lot with a sense of deep isolation or abandonment, perhaps never being known by their mother or father, never being known by friends of even now sitting here feeling unknown. We just pray for those who also maybe were bullies of others, those who made life really unkind for a lot of people. Just pray for healing and mercy in these very tender parts. Just pray for those of us who have received any trauma in these areas of abuse or neglect or have perpetrated abuse or neglect. I just pray, Holy Spirit, at this very moment that you would speak healing into these deep parts. Lord Jesus, you've come to set us free. We just open our hearts to you. We just pray for us as teenagers as well and as we try to learn how to navigate independence and many times it's in the teenage years where we get into just difficult parts of our story. We just pray for anybody who for whatever stage of their life is still struggling with something that they've done from the past. Maybe an intense guilt or shame or a secret that they haven't told anybody. Maybe you too despise your own masculinity or your own femininity. Just pray for healing there where Christ comes to you in those places and invites you home to speak his tender love to you. Just pray for those of us as young adults as we get older, perhaps we got married or perhaps we're still looking for a spouse or maybe we kind of make in our way in the world and we're not really quite sure what's happening. Maybe parts where we felt abandoned or we signed up for things in life and we're not really sure what we signed up for. What would I pray for your clarity, for your healing? Tonight I especially pray for marriages, for a deep healing of marriages. Pray for a thawing of hearts and opening of hearts of man and wife. Pray for those of us who have lost children or lost parents or lost spouses or people close to us. Many parts where we're afraid to trust because the loss is so deep. I pray Lord Jesus that you would speak your healing into those parts. And as we get older, as children graduate and they leave the home and perhaps other things happen Lord, I pray for healing there too. I pray for people that are trying to figure out what to do now with their life. People that are older wondering if they're still valuable and still useful. Lord that you would speak your purpose, your destiny. Anybody who feels tremendously alone. Lord Jesus I pray at this very moment that your heart would be made known. That home would be found. Lord I pray for a newness of life to spring forth tonight. Not out of hiding and not out of pretending but a true newness that goes to the depths of the core of our being. And we just humbly bring to you right now Lord just one thing. What is one thing my dear friends? Just one that you would like to bring to the Lord tonight for healing. What is the one place of resistance? Perhaps you've been resisting him for a very long time. Feeling unworthy or unlovable or trying so hard to be perfect so you're lovable enough. Could you bring that one thing before him? That's the most I'd like to imagine it like this. Could you hold that one thing out in your hand in front of you? What does it feel like? Maybe it seems small to you but I tell you that all things that are important to you are important to him. Would you be willing to offer that to him tonight? And maybe it is something from early childhood. Maybe it's something from a teenage. Maybe it's something you're dealing with right now. Whether it's hopelessness or a confusion or whatever that is. Would you be willing to hold it out in front of the Lord? His heart of self surrender for you. His heart to bring you home to bring you further up and further in. What does Jesus want to say to you about that one thing? So Lord Jesus I ask that at this very moment you would speak to each one of us about this one thing that we hold out in front of us. He is so kind. He is so beautiful and his heart is for you. What does he wish to say to you about it? And if you could imagine Jesus reaching out with his scarred hands, his hands that are wounded but now shine with glory for you. If you could imagine him taking that gently out of your hand and it might be hard even to let it go because we get used to holding on to these things because they seem safer. But if we could be willing just to let that go and allow him to pick that up it's not heavy for him and he's going to take that and he's going to place it right in his sacred and wounded and pierced heart and as he looks at you in such kindness, such kindness you as his child, you in whom nothing can separate from his love. Nothing in your life can separate you from his love for you. His love is passionate. It is all consuming. It is all seeing and it is all fully loving. Is there something you want to say to him now? It can be something you've said a million times but what do you want to say to him? Only trusted love can bring such intimacy and he knows that we come to him sometimes in very small pieces and that's okay. His desire is to receive you and to have you receive him in whatever way you can.