 Good morning, y'all. How are you? Good morning. It's Sunday morning, amen. So what I'm going to do because we're Catholic is I'm going to have you stand again, okay? All right? And really what I'm going to talk about, I'm going to talk about my conversion story, but really this talk is really about you and about the fact and the reality that your life matters, that every life matters, okay? So I'm just going to invite you just to kind of stand up nice and tall with your shoulders back. We did this yesterday at our workshop. Okay, tell me if you like this, you're doing it wrong. Okay, so, stand up straight, shoulders back, take a deep breath, all the way in, all the way out. Let's just do one more as Abba is saying, let's breathe in the Holy Spirit, breathe out. And let's just ask the Father to give us the Holy Spirit. We're going to hear that in the gospel today. Just ask the Father, Father, give us your Holy Spirit. We did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but a spirit of adoption through which we cry out Abba, Father. And then we just ask that you would open our hearts, that you would anoint our hearts. Open our hearts to hear you and give us the wisdom and the courage to take the next step forward. And I just want to ask you, my dear friends, if it's okay with you, and if it's okay with the person to your right and to your left, because your life matters, which means their life matters. So, like you, they also have a heart full of many things inside, aches and dreams and hopes and concerns and desires. So, if it's okay with them, could you ask them if you could put your hand on their shoulder? Okay, is that all right? Okay. Like awkward, that's okay. All right, here we go. And what we're gonna do is, we're gonna actually pray for each other, okay? We're gonna pray for each other, so I'm, because you can't do this, I'm gonna make the sign of the cross for you, okay? And what we're gonna do is, I'm just gonna have some moments of silence, and like you just prayed for yourself right now, I want you to offer a sincere heartfelt prayer for the person next to you. Even if you don't know, that's okay, if you don't know what they need, the Lord does, all right? And then I'm gonna lead you in a prayer and I'm gonna have you repeat after me, okay? So here we are, just some moments of silence and just make a heartfelt prayer for the person next to you, okay? In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Lord, we come before you today as a family, as your sons and daughters, and we desire to see your face, we seek your face, and we pray that your life, your light, your beauty, your truth, your order, your goodness would wash over us. We pray now, right now, for the person right next to us, whatever they need, Lord, that you would speak deeply to the deepest places of their heart. And I just ask you, if you would just repeat after me for the person next to you, Lord Jesus, bless my friend, I thank you for the gift of their life and that they are fearfully and wonderfully made. I pray that you would bless the deepest parts of their heart and open their hearts to you, heal them from any discouragement, any fear, and any anxiety, and any hopelessness, and fill them with your grace, your encouragement, your love, and your mercy. And my dear friends, once together as a family, it's turned to our beautiful mother. Let's turn to her as a family and say, 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 of Victory, pray for us in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Give somebody a high five and have a seat. Yeah, there you go. All right. So here we go. So indeed, I'm going to share with you my conversion story and a bit of how I got up here dressed like this on this stage. Can I just say this real quick, okay? In 2019, when you go out in public, dressed like this, very interesting things happen to you. Okay, can I just say that like all the time? And so I have tons and tons of nun stories, especially around Halloween. Okay, people can't. You know, because I get it, like I know people and I, you know, I watch people. So you go to the airport and you watch people and they watch you. You're being watched all the time as a religious sister when you step outside. Your life is not your own and amen because it belongs to the Lord Jesus, right? So, but I'm at the airport. I spend so much time at airports now that I watch people, watch people. Like that's a totally different level of watching people. So it's just, like, but here I was, I was at, I was at Walmart the other day, affectionately known by some people as the shrine because everybody goes there all the time. Okay, so I was at Walmart and I was minding my own business. I was in line and there was a man standing next to me in line as well and he was staring at me, just staring at me. Now I usually know how these things go. It's like one of two ways. They will either just awkwardly stare at me until they leave or they'll actually come over and talk to me. So he's on my radar because you know when you can feel people staring at you? So I'm like, okay, here's this older man. He's on my radar and he just keeps staring at me. And sure enough, he's, which is a brave move at Walmart to step out of your line. Can I just say that right now? Like, it's like Friday afternoon and he's living on the edge already. So he comes over to me and he says, so great. We're in South Texas, y'all. Can we just say this right now? Okay, so he looks at me and he says, looks like you got your superhero outfit on today. And I said, I said, well, and that kind of looks at him like, well, this is my daily outfit. You know, like, I don't know if it's a superhero outfit, but he starts to ask me questions. He's like, you're none. Is that, is that what you are? You're none. I said, yes, sir. Yes, I am. He's like, where do you live? So we're having this little conversation. And then he kind of steps back at me. I mean, because he's not Catholic, and he just looks at me and he points to my veil and he says, I like your cape. And he just walked away, you know. But I thought, you know, here is the real Wonder Woman, right? There she is right there. So wherever you find yourself on the superhero spectrum, we are all loved as God's children. Okay, so I'm going to actually open this whole talk and I'm going to weave it into two things. The thread of the prologue of the Gospel of John. So if you have your Bible, I'm going to have you open to the Gospel of John and we're going to look at the first five verses of the prologue. And I also want to frame this entire talk through the lens of a man you might know named Father Jacques Philippe. Okay, any Father Jacques Philippe fans at all? Yes, he's wonderful. Okay, so let's look a little bit at the Gospel of John because I've been captivated by the prologue for a very long time. And I was, as Dr. Scott Hahn mentioned, I was a student at the Augustine Institute. And so Dr. Sri, Dr. Edward Sri was one of my professors. And so I love Dr. Sri and his heart for the scriptures and just his heart for life really set me on fire. And I remember just learning so much as a student there. So if we could look at the beginning of the Gospel, the prologue of John, because I'm going to talk about three things today for you from here. So it says this, okay, chapter one, verse one through five. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be. And what came to be through him was life. And this life was the light of the human race. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And there's so much in it because today what I'm going to talk to you about is I'm going to talk to you about logos, which means word, as you know, it means word. But it also means order or reason. And I want to talk about the connotation of that word, meaning order. So I'm going to talk to you about order. I'm going to talk to you about life. I'm going to talk to you about light, okay? So order, life, and light. So we know that all things in life have an order. And we've heard many of the speakers talk about, really, but that's what Dr. Ryan Anderson was talking about in the opening address. He's talking about the order of the human person and the crisis of the anthropology of the human person of what it means to be human. Because if we've forgotten or we don't understand what it means to be human, how are we going to live this life on the trajectory of humanity if we have a fundamental misunderstanding from the start? And so many times I was talking about in our workshop yesterday about our areas of healing and our areas of brokenness, many times both the beauty and the sorrow come from the foundations. So we must always go back to the beginning. In the beginning, and the beginning was the word, and the word was of God, a direct allusion to the very beginning of the Bible and the very, very beginning when the Spirit hovered over the waters and God creates. And He creates then and He creates now. And from that beginning, from the book of Genesis all the way to the very end and the book of Revelation, what happens is God is making all things new. He's making all things new. And so you know very well in your life and my life when we talk about order, we're talking about this direction of what it means to be human and where we came from and where we're going. And you see that very clearly in the Genesis. You see Adam and Eve living in the garden and their lives were ordered. There's a beautiful thing about order, you know? Any Marie Kondo, if you like Marie Kondo, you know she's all about order. She's about going into people's lives that are totally a mess which really is indicative of usually a larger kind of symptomatic behavior. But she goes into your house, it's a total mess, and she folds everything including the couch should be about this big, right? Then she puts it away. And you're like, I like her, you know? There's something about order that we like but we can also fear it at the same time. But if things are not in proper order, things will not, they will not go well. They won't go smoothly. And we know that very well. So you see in the garden, you see in Adam and Eve, this order, this order of their intellect, that their intellects are ordered, their wills are ordered, their passions are ordered. All the components that you have, you and I have as human beings, made of the image and likeness of God that we can know and we can love. And you see that they're ordered. And I love the order of that because at the deepest order, they receive the relationship, they receive the relation that they truly are as sons and daughters of God. That as a brother and sister in humanity and as son and daughter of God. I love in Genesis it says, they walked with God in the breezy time of the day. They walked with Him in the breezy time of the day. And there was order. Father Jacques Philippe, if you've ever read this book, I love so much of his stuff. It's so wonderful. But this is a book about St. Therese. It's a guided reflection about St. Therese, you know? And he says this, and if you can hear this at the deepest part of your heart, because this is what we're all about, as Christians. So he's talking about your heart and my heart and he's talking about the heart. He's talking about the beginning, the beginning. He says, the heart of Christian life is to receive and welcome God's tenderness and goodness. The revelation of His merciful love and to let oneself be transformed interiorly by that love. All right, I'll read it again for you. The heart of Christian life is to receive and welcome God's tenderness and goodness the revelation of His merciful love and to let oneself be transformed interiorly by that love. And you see that in the garden before the fall. You see the reception of this goodness, the reception of this tenderness where they walked with God and they wanted for nothing. And we have those echoes. We have those echoes within us. I was giving the example yesterday. It's a story that I often tell that, you know, my mother and I, my mom and I did not get along for a very long time. What you see now, what you see now is somebody who's still on the journey and amen, right? Amen. Actually when I was on the airplane to this event, I've been on the road over a week now and I'm sitting on the airplane to this event and the Holy Spirit in my own, the garden of my soul, was bringing some things to the surface that He wanted to look at. And there were hard, hard things that I knew I needed to look at, just some parts of my story, you know, and some areas of my life that I needed to look at. I'm just sitting there and I'm sitting next to this. I feel sorry for ever sitting next to me on the airplanes because they have all these very little experiences, you know. So, but I'm sitting next to this guy on the airplane and I'm tired already, but just this area where the Holy Spirit was just so tenderly piercing me. And I was crying, right? So, I'm like leaning against the window, like with my Kleenex and ladies, like, do you want pretzels? I'm like, okay, just pretzels. They're like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. Nothing to see here, man. Keep moving. Like, I'm totally fine. You know, I go, just the Lord at work, the Lord's at work, you know. So, what you see here is somebody who's still clearly on the journey and I hope it never ends. Because see us, Lewis, in his book, The Problem of Pain, he says, we are truly, not metaphorically, we are truly a divine masterpiece, something that God is making and something with which he will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. So, you are a masterpiece that God continues because he loves you and as the artist, as the creator, as the one who is the origin of order, knows what the masterpiece needs to look like. So, he continues to work on your soul and on my soul and he continues to speak very deeply to us. Always, he continues to work on this beautiful, divine masterpiece, you know. So, that's what he was doing on the airplane here. And so, what you're seeing now, you see somebody, like I mentioned, I think I've been in religious life 20 years now. So, I had a major conversion. I was a Division I athlete. I jokingly say, when I was in college, I wanted to work for ESPN. I jokingly say that Aaron Andrews stole my job, so I became a nun instead. Okay, so that's what happened and kind of. But what happens was, I had like a lot of competing narratives going on in my life. Okay, so I grew up in a home, we were Catholic, we went to church every Sunday. Like every Sunday, every stinking Sunday. Can I just say that? We'd be camping, we'd be on the mill in nowhere, nowhere, like nowhere. My mother would find us a mess to go to. My brother and I would be like, are you serious? We're really going to mass. Like, I mean, you know, and she's like, we're Catholic. We don't take a vacation from mass and we're like, oh yay, you know. So, I'm sure your teenagers never experienced this ever. So, my brother and I would sit in the back of church and punch each other just to, you know, show my mother how much we loved her. And so, we went to mass every Sunday and we were a good Catholic family. Thank you very much. My mom and dad loved each other very much. We prayed the rosary together as a family. I went to CCD begrudgingly, but I went, you know. And so, we did that thing and everybody looked at our family and they thought we had a wonderful family and we did. But like your family, my family also had some secrets. So, something that I mentioned often in my talks, if you've ever been to a 12-step meeting, you've heard the saying that we're only as sick as our secrets. We're only as sick as our secrets. And my family had a lot of secrets, right? So, which I'll share with you in a little bit. But my mother and I had just some real issues with one another. We hit heads a lot and we just had some real brokenness with one another. She had her story and I had mine. And for a long time, I blamed her for her story and for mine. And what I realize now about my mom, you know, you talk about life and we talk about order and we talk about what it means to have parents and what I realize now, and I just told your teenagers this summer, so at a conference, what I realize now as I'm an adult, I realize that my mom is a person and she has a story. And she has areas of order in her life and areas that are broken in her life like I do and like she does, you know, but she's a woman on the journey and the proper response to her is not one of scorn or resentment or bitterness. The proper response to her is one of love and compassion and mercy. And we've had a huge healing in our relationship, a huge healing in our relationship and part of that had to do, you know, for a long time, my parents didn't know that I was an addict. They had no idea that I was an addict. They had no idea that I was highly promiscuous. They had no idea of the brokenness in my life. They did not know that I was sexually abused. They did not know that I was raped. They did not know that I had all this trauma in my life because it was all a secret and secrets have a very destructive way of just bringing a lot of darkness into somebody's heart and into somebody's life. And it wasn't until one of the most difficult things that ever happened to us as a family that our lives actually began to change on a very real level. I told this story yesterday in the workshop that we were at together, but when I was a novice in Rome, Italy, and I was 24 years old, and one night, in the middle of the night, the phone rang. And I don't know about you, but you know how in the phone rings, in the middle of the night, it's like never good news, right? And the phone rang in the middle of the night, and I remember hearing it downstairs, and I thought to myself, I don't know, I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I just couldn't explain, I can't explain it to you, but I just had a sick feeling in my stomach that had something to do with me. And a few moments passed by and nothing happened. So I thought, well, maybe I'm wrong, but sure enough, a few minutes later, my superior came and she knocked on the door of my room, and she opened up the door, and she looked inside, and I could see her face because it was illumined by the street light, and I could see that she had tears in her eyes. And she said, Sister Miriam, your mom and your dad are on the phone. So I said, okay. So I got up and went downstairs, and my parents are wonderful people. My dad actually retired early from his job, so he could help my religious community. So they had retired early, they were missionaries, my parents, my dad was an electrician, was often the foreman of huge construction projects, and he could make a house out of a paperclip and a gum wrapper. You know, like I was just kind of like how my dad was, and so they were actually literally at one of our missions, helping to rebuild the mission. And so I knew that they were there, and my parents were very healthy. My parents had zero health problems, nothing. So I had no idea what was about to befall me as I picked up the phone. But when I picked up the phone, it was my mom. And my mom said, honey, your dad, your dad's been sick lately. And she's like, today we took him to the doctor. And I said, what happened? And she said, your dad was diagnosed with cancer today. And I said, well, what kind of cancer, like how bad is it? And she got very quiet, and she said, your dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer today. He has pancreatic cancer. And that was the day, that was Fat Tuesday, that was the day before Ash Wednesday. And we buried my dad on Ascension Thursday. So I went home, and I have an older brother, but he has his own story, so it was mostly my mom and I just taking care of my dad. And there's something, if you've ever taken care of somebody who is ill, somebody who's terminally ill, and somebody who's about to leave this earth, to leave Kronos and visit Kairos, to see God face to face, and to live into the eternal now forever, you know that it makes life very clear, very quickly, doesn't it? And it was at that time, throughout the moment when I would have told you, this is the worst thing that could have ever happened to us as a family, that our family secrets began to come out, and our hearts began to open. And my dad had to say some things before he left earth, there's some things he had to say to me and my mom. And there's some things that I had to say to my mother and father, that were very, very important, that they had to be spoken in front of both of them as a married couple before my dad left planet earth. And my mom and I were there the night that he left us and went to God. And we were standing there in his hospital room, I was on one side and my mom was on the other, and we were praying the rosary. And as we finished the Hail Holy Queen, my dad took three more breaths, and he went home to God forever. And that began a huge transformation in the heart of my mom and I, to this day my mom and I are very, you know, we're very close, and we have some hard conversations still, and there were parts of our story that we still have to talk about, and we still have to come together. And I've had to say I'm sorry many times, and so does she. And I have to remind her of who she is, and so she reminds me as well. But I love my mom so much, and I could tell you this transformation of a relationship that I never thought was possible is happening. It's happening now. It's happened then, and it's happening now. And my mom is my favorite person, and so I usually go to visit her for two weeks every year where she lives on the Oregon coast, and we go to the beach for a few days, and if you've never been to the Oregon coast, it is always 55 degrees and raining. Okay, always. So we all were flannel, we're depressed, we drink coffee, that's what we do. So we went to the beach that day, and I tell this story very often, and my mom and I wanted to go for a walk on the beach, but true enough it was at the end of August, and it was 55 degrees and raining. So we couldn't go for a walk on the beach, and so we went upstairs, and in the condo that we had rented, it was right over the ocean, and so the first thing I did was I opened this huge picture window, and as soon as I did that, you could hear the waves of the beach crashing onto the shore, and you know when rain first moves in, you can smell the rain. And so my mom and I were sitting there in front of this huge window with these waves crashing onto the shore and just smelling the rain, and we had these massive cups of coffee, which we all know is the eighth sacrament. So here we are, and so... We're sitting there by the window, and I had at this moment, and I know that you've had it too, and you talk about order, and you talk about beginning, and you talk about the moments that you wish would never end, because that's what I had. And I said to myself, I wish this moment would never end, and you've had them too, where you say to yourself, I wish time would stop right here. I wish this beauty, I wish this intimacy, I wish this joy, I wish this moment would never end. And it is not a theological term, but I call that the appetizers to the main entree. Those are the moments where God speaks to us, where he comes to us in the order of who he is, that we came from him, we belong to him, and we are going back to him. And those moments that make our heart ache, because that's what beauty does. That's what beauty does. It makes our heart ache. That's what truth does. It makes our heart ache. And we talk about truth, and we talk about the order of the human person, because truth is very healing. Beauty is very healing. Goodness is very healing. And sometimes we have a profound misunderstanding of the transcendental realities of our life. I think one of the most famous moments in cinematic history features a young Tom Cruise, as a military attorney, and he's screaming at Jack Nicholson on the stand, and he says, I want the truth! To which Jack Nicholson responds, what? Oh, you've seen that before. Okay, so we're all familiar with that. The beautiful thing about us is that truth is not something to be handled. Truth is a person. A person who is captivatingly beautiful. A person who you see in the Gospels, revealing the literal heart of the Father that he sends his son for us. A person in the Gospels who is inserting himself deeply into the lives of people. And when we encounter Christ, you know, that's why people were so... They were so captivated by him, perhaps even in spite of themselves. It's because of who he was, the radiance from within, from in the beginning, because he lived as a son, and he knew who he was. And they couldn't help themselves. You know, the Pharisees, they couldn't help but just engage with him in like the intellectual sparring. They couldn't help it, and many of them succumbed to jealousy. People that were sick and broken, they couldn't help but come and touch him to be brought into their life, into his life, into his healing, into his order. Because order is what heals, it's the proper order of the human person. So what he's doing is he's taking all the disintegrated parts of your life, and all the disintegrated parts of my life, and he's making us whole. Because he is the man fully alive, and that's what he does in our life. He takes all that is shattered, all that after Adam and Eve turned away from God, their lives became disintegrated. When their intellects were dark, and their wills were weak, and their passions were out of order, chaos reigns, they're broken in their relationship here, between God, between each other, between creation. You see that lived out, you've seen it already in your own families, in your own life. And when Jesus comes, he comes as the man fully alive, and he comes as the man fully integrated to make all things new. And he's doing it right now in your life and my life. And would we, as Father Jacques Philippe says, would we allow him into the deepest places of our hearts to be transformed by his love? Because that's what beauty does. You know, Pope Benedict, I love Pope Benedict, and you know, poor guy, I mean, who wants to follow after John Paul II? Nobody, nobody wants to do that, you know? And so he, you know, was even, I remember when he was elected, you know, just sitting, I was sitting on the floor of our convent, watching, you know, the election, and of course, planet Earth stops. As much as the world ridicules the Catholic Church, anytime there's a papal election, planet Earth just stops, because everybody knows that's important. And so remember, sitting on the living room floor, wondering, like, you know, feeling just the deep ache of the loss of John Paul II, and wondering, like, who does God have in store for us now? And I remember, you know, the papal curtains opened, and they announced they had a Holy Father, and he comes out this frail little Pope Benedict, I'm like, I love you, you know? And already then, the news media just started picking on him right away, that he's God's Rottweiler, all this kind of stuff, you know? And if you've never read any of Pope Benedict, any of his work as Cardinal Ressinger, that man is a lover. Can I just say that? Oh, he is a lover. He'll be a doctor at the church one day. Like, that will, that's gonna happen. He is a lover, lover. So he wrote a beautiful letter, and he had a meeting with artists, as John Paul II would often meet with artists. So did Pope Benedict. And can I just read you a little excerpt of when Pope Benedict talks about beauty, because we talk about order, and we talk about your life and my life, and the beauty of the healing power of truth, and the healing power of beauty, and what order does, like, when we encounter proper beauty, authentic beauty, what happens to us? So he talks a bit about what broken beauty is and what authentic beauty is, and here's Pope Benedict, when he talks about our human soul and what happens. He says, too often, the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory. So he's talking about, like, pornography, or just the broken areas that we call it beauty, and it's not beautiful, okay? So whatever that is. Thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker dazed, instead of bringing him out of himself and opening him up to horizons of true freedom as it draws him aloft. Illusory beauty imprisons him within himself and further enslaves him depriving him of hope and joy. So if you've ever had moments in your life where you've delved into areas that seemed beautiful, whatever it was and it wasn't, this is our experience, that it comes into, instead of bringing us out of ourselves, that locks us within ourselves and it creates a lot of fear and a lot of shame and a lot of disorder. So Christ, the beautiful one, comes and this is what happens when we encounter him, and this is Pope Benedict. He says authentic beauty, this is so beautiful. Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know and to love and to go towards the other, to reach for the beyond. If we acknowledge that beauty touches us intimately, that it wounds us, that it opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing, of being able to grasp the profound meaning of our existence. This is what happens in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. This is what happens when we allow him into the deepest places of our life. He doesn't take anything from us. To be in love with Christ, to allow him into the deepest places, to allow him, my dear friends, into every part of our story, every chapter of our story, every sorrowful mystery, every glorious mystery, every joyful mystery, every luminous mystery, to allow him into every part of our life, every single part, even the memory right now that you think of that is most shameful to you. He is already there, he's already waiting, and when we allow him into these parts, what he does is he speaks to the deepest places and he brings us and makes us whole. He makes us whole, he brings us life. He brings us life in the barren places because all life came to be through him and all life is sustained through him and all life even now is being recreated through him. And this isn't something that just happened 2,000 years ago when he walked here, this happens now. That's what grace does. It makes us partakers of the divine nature. It brings us into his own beautiful life. God becomes man, so that man becomes God. We're union, we're united to him in his own beautiful life. And I tell you this, you know, I traveled across the nation, I talked to thousands of people, and because I'm so honest with my own story, I hear people's stories. And like you many times, I hear people's stories that they've never told anybody before. And that is holy ground. Holy ground. And so often, you know what people want? First of all, ultimately, they don't want to meet me, they don't. People want to meet the living Lord Jesus and they want to be heard and they want to be seen and they want to be known and they want to know that they're loved, no matter what. And they want to know that there is an order, that there is a way, that there is life, that there is light, that this is not the end of the story. It's very beautiful. If you're a Tolkien fan, if you're a Lord of the Rings fan, you know, very well, this beautiful story of Frodo and the Ring and the Fellowship and this whole journey, it's really in a way, it just symbolizes our own journey. And it's a very beautiful part in the story, you know, when Frodo takes the Ring and he realizes that, you know, the Ring is not given to men or to elves or to dwarves, they're given to a humble little hobbit with hairy feet, you know. And he's set off on a possible journey. Like you and I feel like we've been set off on a possible journey at times. And Galadriel, one of the Elven Queens, one of the Elven Ringbearers, she posed to Frodo and she knows Frodo's story and she wants to help him. And she's, in many ways, Tolkien writes her, it's almost like a figure of our blessed mother. There's very beautiful aspects of her. She's so beautiful as she, different than Arwen, different than the Bride of Aragorn. But Galadriel is her own person and how she comes and she guides Frodo and she speaks truth to him. And he realizes at the beginning, like he's being, he realizes at the beginning of the cost and he knows he's too little. He knows he's too little to do this. And she looks at him and she says, Frodo, this task, this journey, this was appointed to you. And if you don't find a way, no one will. And he says to her, I know, I know what I must do. I know, but I'm afraid to do it. And then she says, even the smallest person can change the course of history. Even the smallest person can change the course of history. And this what happens is Frodo in this journey through a lot of suffering and a lot of death and a lot of brokenness on his own story and a lot of brokenness of another people. What happens is he destroys the thing that takes life and from that destruction comes life, the redemption of Middle Earth. When the king is crowned, king again, orders restored and life blooms. And so this is what happening in your life and my life and all the places of Mordor, all the places of the Boggs, all the places where you see that journey. This is what Jesus is doing. He's coming into your life and into my life. To bring us life. It's very true. I heard a guy give a beautiful testimony one time just on the struggle of his own addiction and his own healing. And you know, we talk about so much and we talk about addiction. We talk about behavior. You know, really what that's what, another thing Dr. Ryan Anderson was talking about, how society is talking about behavior, like they're looking at the behaviors and they're trying to treat the behaviors. But behaviors, whether it's out there or it's in here or it's among you, behaviors are just indicative of a deeper rule. We believe, our behaviors are indicative of what we believe. So behaviors must be looked at, but really they're driven by something much deeper, something much deeper into the roots and so God is always speaking to us of the roots of our story, of who we are and where we came from and where we're going. And that's the part that he speaks to in our life. So he's bringing us life. That's what he's saying. He's bringing us life. He's bringing it to us in the deepest levels. And this man was giving a story of this, when he finally unveiled his addiction and all the things that had happened to him, he finally told his wife, he had had an affair. It just, it was a mess. A big mess. And when he said to her, he said, you know, if I'm going to be honest with you, I'm going to have to tell you the whole truth. And he said, she naively said, bring it on. And he said, it took him hours to tell her the whole truth of his whole life and all the things he had done and their marriage and everything like that. And he said it nearly destroyed her and it nearly destroyed their marriage. But he said, he went out and he was sitting by himself and he began to think of what was happening and he was afraid that his life was over. He's like, I didn't know one, I didn't know the next step forward. I didn't know what to do. And many times in our life we're at those precipices where we're just not sure what to do because the next step looks like it's going to clean off into a deep darkness. And he said, you know, I realized that all that I had said, that even in midst of all the barren waste on all the darkness, he said in that place, in the very place in the depths, was a seed that God had planted because it was a seed of truth, finally. And he said, he realized, you know, that wherever there's a seed, that means something can grow. And he said this, he said, there is nothing in your life that is so dead that God can't bring life out of it. There is nothing in your life that is so dead, no relationship, nothing that is so dead that God can't bring life out of it. And it might look differently, right? It might look differently than we want it to, but God is always at work. And we know this very well. We know it's because it's the deepest desires of our hearts, right? And we see that in pop culture. You see that in literature because every fairy tale, every fairy tale and the western world ends with what? And they lived, do you know that's a Christian worldview? That's a Christian worldview. Fairy tales and other parts of the world don't end like that. That is a Christian worldview. And it is a harkening to the deepest desire of the human heart. I really believe, aside from the intellectual proofs for the existence of God, I believe that is a heart proof for the existence of God. Because in our hearts, we know that we want that. We want a love that never ends. We want a love, the moments that never end. We want a love that lasts forever. We want to be seen and to be known and to be loved. We want to know that our suffering matters. That life matters. And we want to know that light will come into our stories even at the darkest places. And that's another thing that Tolkien does so well is when Sofroto is suffering and he thinks he can't make it, Galadriel has already given him something and an anecdote to the darkness. It's a gift that she has given him. It's a gift that our mother, our Blessed Mother gives you and I. She gives us Christ, the light of the world. And what Tolkien does, he has her give this beautiful glass jar. Inside the jar is a sparkling jewel inside. It's the light of their star, their most beloved star. And she knows what Sofroto is about to face. Our mother knows what we're going to face in life. And so she gives us the one thing that changes everything. And in that story, Galadriel takes the glass and she gives it and she says, receive, receive the star, receive the light of our most beloved star, Arundel. And she says, may it be a light for you in the darkest places. May it be a light for you when all other lights go out. Christ, he is our light, the definition of light, something that illumines. That he illumines the dark places of our hearts, the dark places of our soul. And I tell you, you know, I'm speaking to you now and I'm speaking to myself as well. It's the restoration of beauty. It's the reclamation of the soil, right? Where Jesus comes to claim us as the light of the world, the life. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and he is the light. And he brings light to the darkest places. My mom, I was just mentioning to you, my mom, my mother, I love my mom very much. And she, my mom is, you know, she's been a widow many years now and she is, she's a force to be reckoned with. Can I just tell you that? So my mother is 76 years old, all right? She's a daily mass goer. She is a sacristan and she's president of Legion of Mary, okay? She also runs a mini farm. She's got three acres. She has goats and chickens and rabbits, okay? She brings her extra eggs to sell at mass and all the kale you can possibly eat. If you want some kale, come on over. We've got plenty of kale, you know? So, but my mom, if she's that woman, if I'm half the woman she is by the time I'm her age, I'm doing pretty good, you know? But, so this is an example. The day my mother passes away and she joins my father before the face of God, this is what I will tell her eulogy. One week during Holy Week, and please understand, my mom is president, my mom's going to Daily Mass. She's President of Legion of Mary. But my mom calls me Wednesday of Holy Week several years ago and she says to me, she's like, honey, both of my chainsaws broke this week. She said, what do you think, what do you think God's trying to tell me? I was like, what is the last time your 73-year-old mother called you to tell you that not one, but both of her chainsaws broke during Holy Week? I was like, mom, you know, maybe God's telling you, like, you don't have to like chop anything down this week. Like, they could say that for the octave. How about that? Like, we'll just say that until next week, you know? And so, just last month, she actually was butchering one of her chickens and she cut her finger wide open, okay? So, she went to the doctor, the urgent care clinic, because she was sharpening her knives. This is my mother's sharpening her knives. And so, she's the surgeon's working on, you know, putting her hand back together, you know? And so, he's like, Mrs. Hightland, what happened to you? And she's like, oh, I was sharpening my knives after I was butchering my chicken. And he's like, excuse me, what? So, as the physician is like sewing up her fingers, she's giving him tips on the fine art of chicken butchering. All right? That is my mother. And so, my mother, one of the reasons why I'm a sister today, I mentioned to you probably during our opening talk when I was talking about the workshop, one of the reasons why I'm a sister today is two main reasons. Well, three main reasons is because God is amazing, me not so much, but God is wonderful, okay? So, but the second reason is because of the witness, a powerful witness of a Catholic priest who demonstrated such order, such beauty in his life, and he was certainly not perfect by any means, but man, that man was sold out for Jesus Christ, sold out for him. And his life was one of authentic living. Like Jesus says in John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I came that you might have life and have it to the full. And I had never met anybody in my life. I had never met anybody in my life that was so radiantly beautiful. And he was funny, and he was down to earth, and he had been a priest a long time. Oh, man, he knew what was up. And he saw me, and he saw me in the areas of my shame, he saw me in the areas of my addiction, and he saw me in the areas where Christ could see me, and I couldn't, and that man just loved me. And it was that profound experience. This is why I will always speak about forgiveness, healing, and authentic love. I will do that till the day that I die. That profound experience of being authentically, oh, authentically loved changed the course of my destiny. And many times he would look at me, and I could see Christ looking at me. And this is what people want to see today. Your life matters. They want to see Christ alive in you. And it's not a matter of planting a tree of positive thinking or optimism. Yes, we must be renewed in our minds, like St. Paul says we have to, because that's where the battle is waged. And as we allow Christ to renew us here, and renew us here, and renew us in the whole person, what happens is Christ's beautiful love begins to radiate from us, and that's what people want. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have a perfect story. You don't have to have any story, so to speak, but you just show up to life, and you talk about what Christ has done for you, and what he's still doing for you, and who he is. And that people can see that, that our words and our lives are not a cognitive dissonance, but that they actually are on the road, at least to being integrated. That is captivating. And I remember looking at Father, and I was 21 years old. I was already an alcoholic. I began drinking when I was 12. I'm not sure what you were doing when you were 12, but that's what I was doing. And it was a way to try to heal. It was a way to try to cope from a massive, like I mentioned before, a massive areas of sexual abuse. And even before that, in my story, I was actually conceived out of wedlock. My biological parents were high school students. And to this day, I've never seen their faces. And I don't know this for a fact, but I have a deep intuition in all the healing journey that I've done, and all the healing journey. Oh, I would love to see my mother one day. You know, I would love to see her, and I hope I see her in heaven. But I just have a deep intuition that at some point in her life, some point in the time that she was pregnant with me, she thought of aborting me, but she didn't. And I stand here before you today on this stage in Steubenville, Ohio, because a scared 17-year-old girl said yes to life. And I was the child in her womb. And I was in a foster home. I was in a foster home for a few months, and then I was adopted, you know. And I tell this story, and I said this to my mother, so I can tell this to you in public. I talk about it in my book as well, that when I was seven years old, I was looking through our family album one day, and I realized that there were no pictures of my mother pregnant ever. And I said to my mom, mom, I was in the car, the backseat of the car one day, about my dad. Mom and dad were driving, and I just said, and I'm very actually shy and very introverted, so as a little girl especially, I was very quiet. And I could imagine, like, no, I really am, actually. I could imagine that for me to say this to my mother, I must have been just really deep in my heart. And I said to my mom, as a seven-year-old girl on the backseat of the car, I said, mama, how come there's no pictures of you pregnant, like ever? And my mom and dad got really quiet, in the front seat, and my mom turned around and she said, oh, honey, I have an older brother who's also adopted, but I found that out that day too. She said, you're mom and dad were so young, and they were in high school. And they found out that they were pregnant with you, and they loved you very much, but they knew that they were too young to give you the life that they wanted to give you. So they gave you it for adoption. And your dad and I had been praying. Your dad and I had been praying for years to adopt for some reason. We couldn't get pregnant. The doctors could never explain it, but we could never get pregnant, and we wanted a child for so long. We wanted a little girl, after we had your brother, we got your brother, we wanted a little girl, and we prayed that God would give us a little girl, and we got to adopt you. And actually the first picture of me as a part of the family is that I came to the family, I was allowed to be adopted at Christmas time, so mom put me under the Christmas tree, all right? So the first picture of the family was a gift to the family, right? But then my mom said this, and please understand, and I've had many conversations with my mother, and so if you know your parents and you know sometimes parents just pass on things sometimes knowingly and unknowingly, okay? But my mom said this, but you want to be really careful who you tell that to, because we don't want people to look at you differently. And now I know I've had many conversations with her about that statement, but as a little girl at seven years old, I was like, oh my gosh, like, well there must be something wrong with me. There must be something wrong with me, and I can tell you that it was that day, you talk about the foundations in the beginning of your story, it was that day that I began to keep secrets, and I had many, many, many, many secrets, right? And so this healing with my mom, this talking about areas of order of life and of light, this areas with my mom, this profound healing that's come out of that, and who I've seen my mom to be, and the power of making all things now. And we had this, you know, like this huge healing in our relationship, and we talk about these things just very, very often, you know, and I was telling my mom one time, because the other reason why I'm here is not just because a priest loved me, it's where I get my deep love for the priesthood, I love the Catholic priesthood, I just, we talk about one yes that changes the world, you know, and the other reason that I'm here today is because of my mother, and my mom one day was, we were talking about this, and I was saying something about my brother, my brother has his own story, and my mom, I was talking about just our journey, and my mom kind of got a little bit irritated with me, and she's like, you listen up. She's like, let me tell you something, let me tell you something as your mama. She said, you will never know, you will never know what it's like to have a child or to welcome a child, and from the moment they are given to you in your arms, whether that's naturally or, you know, through the adoptions, she's like, you just never know what it will like to look at that child, look at that newborn child, or look at that little child, and to give your life for them, and to do everything you possibly can so that they would have the best life ever. You give them the best food, you provide the best house you possibly can, the best education you possibly can, you teach them about the Lord Jesus, and you try to provide the best spiritual atmosphere you possibly can. And she's like, you will never know, because she's like, I'm talking to you, because my mom prayed and fasted me for me for a long time, she's like, you will never know what it's like to raise a child and do the best you possibly can, and watch them grow up and become an adult, and watch them walk away from everything. And she's like, I will never, I will never stop praying for you and your brother. I will never give up on you. I will never stop fasting and praying for you. I love you, I'm your mother, and I will be your mother forever. You are always mine. And that reality actually took form in my mother literally giving a me a way to our blessed mother. When I was in college, my mother had finally just had enough of me. She just was overwhelmed with my bad behavior and my just addiction, and she just had had enough of me. And she now we're hitting heads, and she had some issues too, and so did I. But it wasn't until after my dad, my sweet father, finally expressed his disappointment in me, which my dad never did. And can I just say something to you, men, as a woman, as a daughter, your daughters need to hear from you. They need to hear that you love them. They need to hear that they're beautiful, and that you're so glad that God gave you this beautiful girl. They need you to affirm them and to speak truth to them and to guide them and to give them wisdom and affirmation and who they are as daughters. They need that. And my dad loved me very much, but he just didn't have the ability just to articulate that, so he just didn't say anything. We need to hear from you. And what happened was, my parents gonna visit me in college, my mom and dad went home, and my dad finally expressed to my mother, he didn't say it to me, but he expressed to my mother how disappointed he was in me. And my mother was beside herself. She had already financially cut me off. She had threatened to disown me, and when she meant it, she meant it. Like she wasn't messing around, you know what I'm saying? Like she said to me, if you do this, you can continue on this path. We will disown you. You will no longer remember the family. She listed all the horrible things that would happen to me, and I was like, don't tell me what to do, because I was so mature. That's what I was doing, you know? So my mother, I think that finally broke her. My sweet daddy finally mentioning how disappointed he was in me. And my mom got out of bed one night, that night, and she went downstairs to the basement of her house, and in our house, we have a statue of our Blessed Mother. And my mom got on her knees that night, and she gave me away, and she was in tears. And she said, Mother, I give you my daughter, because I can't do anything for her anymore. I can't help her. I can't cure her. I can't control her. There's nothing I can do for her anymore. And I give her to you. And I ask that you would be her mother, that you would watch over her, that you would guide and bless and protect her. And I give her to you today. I release her. I surrender her. And I place her in your heart and in your arms. She is your daughter now. And at that moment, I am 800 miles away in college, as an active alcoholic, pretty much living with a guy. My life has been met. That was, I mean, this is a long, long path pattern, right? I had no idea this was happening. My mom began to pray and fast that I'd become a nun. And here I am today, you know? So, right? So, the darkness has not overcome the light. The light of the world, the darkness has not overcome it and it will not overcome it and the darkness cannot comprehend the light. And you and our children of light, so can I tell you this, please don't give up on your children. Don't give up on your grandchildren. Don't give up on the people that have been entrusted to you because your life matters. God has placed people in your life that you are the people that are called to bring the gospel message to them. And if you don't find a way, as Galadriel said, no one will. And yes, God does the heavy lifting and he opens our hearts to us. Where in your life right now, my dear friends, as we go forth, where in your life right now is God bringing you? Where is God ordering your life? Do you have some areas of your life that are in massive disorder, areas of unforgiveness, areas of self-righteousness, areas of hard-heartedness? Do you have areas of your life that are dead that you want God to bring to life? Do you have areas like that guy that where there's just a seed planted and if there's a seed, God can bring life out of it? Do you have areas of darkness? Because you know what, darkness, when light comes in, light also brings heat and light brings healing. So where in your life right now, because you know what, you can come to this conference, and I say this all the time, you can come to this conference and we can go from here and you can come back next year, and I hope you do because that'd be really wonderful, but you can come back next year and if we leave here saying that was a wonderful conference, heard some great speakers, wonderful workshops, Dr. Scott Hahn, amazing as usual. You know, if we do that, that's fine, but you can come back here at largely the same person as you are today, but I think that God wants something far more, okay? So let me close with this. I love this when Fr. Jacques Philippe talks about the conversion of Therese and you know very well that she too had some dark parts of her story. And you know, as a psychologist now I would probably say that she suffered from anxious attachment, her mother died when she was four years old so she was very clingy and very needy and very childish, very spoiled. And on Christmas Day, right, as her dad kind of mentions like, oh, here we go again, you know, we have to everywhere as a pacified Therese, you know, she hears that comment which happens to us all the time, like we hear these comments and then it pierces us and she starts to cry, but then in that moment in a very overwhelming, beautiful, unexpected moment of grace which is what it often is, she makes a decision. And in that decision, Jesus comes to meet her there and he changes her life. Where instead of reacting like she always did where maybe she was saying, I can never change, there's nothing I can do about this instead of being a brat that spoiled all the Christmas for the family, she received a deep ray of grace, a deep ray of light that she cooperated with. And that set forth a trajectory of maturity and change that changed the course of the world. This is what Father Jacques Philippe says about this and I offer this to you just to ponder in your own heart as we talk about areas of order, life, and light. And this is for you. He says sometimes we are called by God to come out of ourselves to take several steps forward and to become more adult and free. We turn around and round inside of ourselves and close in our immaturity, our complaints, our lamentations, our dependencies until suddenly a day of grace arrives, a gift from God who nevertheless also calls upon our freedom. And we have a choice to make for it is at the same time a cure and a conversion. Our freedom has to opt for an act of courage. He says to be a Christian in this day and age is not easy, right? To allow the transformation of our hearts because this is the only way forward for the church, my dear friends. What's happening in the church right now, the secrets of the church are coming out and they must because the bride is sick and she's very sick and any man who loves his wife will spare no expense to make her well. And this church is the bride of Jesus Christ and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her that is an offensive not a defensive position. And Jesus is healing his bride and he has to. And in that he's healing you and I. So see all of our secrets must come out. The only way forward for the church is through the paschal mystery the suffering death the life death and resurrection of Christ. There is no other way there is no parish based program no safe environment program I'm a big proponent of all of it but there's no other way forward for the church other than the utter transformation in the sacred heart of Jesus of your heart and my heart and our lives completely transformed in him. And if you're a room full of bishops I tell you the same thing there is no other way forward for the church and I'm saying it as much to myself as I am to you my dear friends we must allow him to come transform every single one of us and he delights to do so. So here we go. He says Father Jacques Philippe to be a Christian in this day and age is not easy. We will receive the courage and strength that requires if we can say yes to what God asks of us so let's put this question to God okay. What is the yes that you are asking of me today Lord? What is the little act of courage and trust that you're calling me to make today? And what is the little conversion the door that opens to let in the Holy Spirit for if we make that act of courage if we open the door God's grace will visit us and touch us in the depths of our being. So what is the yes today my dear friends? What is the area of order of life or light that Jesus wants to speak into? So can I just let me just can I just pray for you for just a minute? Let me just pray for you okay. And let's just right now because God is alive and well and his word is alive and it's living and effective. So I just ask you Lord Jesus that right now for every single one of us that you would speak to us what is the area you were calling us to say yes to today? And you just bring to mind whatever you want Lord what is just the one area that you were calling us to say yes to and act of courage today? Maybe it's forgiving somebody maybe it's reconciling a friendship maybe it's speaking the truth and love maybe it's a healing of our own hearts. What is that Lord? Come Holy Spirit and I pray Lord Jesus that we could open our hearts to that place and lay that on the altar at mass today that our hearts would be open as an altar Lord that you would receive all of our offering and transform it and give us back yourself Lord I pray for the courage for us to be transformed I pray that all of our hearts would be open that you would protect us that your precious blood would wash upon us that we would know how deeply we are loved that our lives matter Lord and that you make all things new all things and we thank you and we praise you and in Jesus name we pray Amen In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit you are loved God bless you