A New Year : An Urgency Is Felt “In The Air”!

A few years ago I sensed our Lord telling me that the Father wanted to release me to fly all over to heal and teach about His Father­hood because the world did not know Him as a Father. I sense that in this call was there is an “urgency” in God´s ask­ing this of me. I asked Jesus to con­firm this call with five signs . I do not have the space to list the five signs, but all five where given as my spir­i­tual direc­tor had directed me to ask. The last sign, to con­firm what I believed Jesus was ask­ing, was for my bishop to con­firm it. He did. Now, as I travel and give retreats through­out our wounded world, a world that has turned its back on God, I have a “sense” in my soul that I can­not shake. A sense that God will sooner or later (maybe sooner than later) inter­vene and strike in our age. All seems to be going “out of con­trol”. The mighty dol­lar, which was once our secu­rity blan­ket, has also turned its back on us. The econ­omy is weak­ened to a point where the “mighty” world gov­ern­ments do not have a clue what to do to bring a solu­tion the many prob­lems. No one on the world polit­i­cal scene men­tions the need for human­ity to do some soul search­ing and view their lives through the “eyes” of at least the ten com­mand­ments. They can­not see. I humbly believe human­ity has crossed a point of no return. And we are see­ing what it is to live in an age of indif­fer­ence to a lov­ing Father who has done every­thing pos­si­ble to call us back. But as Yah­weh told Israel through the prophet Hosea, “The more I called , the far­ther they went.” I sadly tell you that there are even strong Catholics I whom I have had the bless­ing to meet who are falling away and liv­ing a dou­ble life style. In my trav­els I have sensed two sig­nif­i­cant real­i­ties: The first is that the faith­ful Catholic Chris­t­ian believer is expe­ri­enc­ing graces and spir­i­tual growth at a speed that sur­prises me because I once believed that only the “saints” were given such spir­i­tual growth and recep­tion of the “union gifts”. These souls are not the pro­fes­sional reli­gious experts. They are men and women who have remained united (John 15:1–5) to Jesus and His Church. Such souls have been stripped of much. They have suf­fered. They have grown in spir­i­tual poverty and depen­dence on God ALONE! The sec­ond real­ity I see occur­ring is an increase of indif­fer­ence. Many souls have become luke-warm. In such souls there per­me­ates a “Que sera… sera”—“What will be, will be”. This state of soul is repug­nant to Jesus , for He says in the book of Rev­e­la­tion that of such souls who are “nei­ther hot nor cold” He will spew out (vomit) from His mouth. Strong words! I must ask myself and I ask you this ques­tion: What group will I be in?” The one that gives up and returns, as scrip­ture tells us, like “…a dog returns to its vomit”( old ways of a sin­ful life style) . While the sec­ond option is to allow God to seri­ously (and painfully) purify us and pre­pare us through increased prayer, Eucharis­tic ado­ra­tion, daily rosary, scrip­ture, and fidelity to our duties , Church teach­ing and a seri­ous process of detach­ment from all that is not God, for He alone can be our God and secu­rity! This ver­sion of being like the “beer” Catholic, that is to say, lite, who will not sat­isfy God‘s urgency. We Catholics are often like those who were busy on the Titanic re-arranging the chairs for a bet­ter view while it was sink­ing instead of mak­ing an effort to be saved. We are like zom­bies walk­ing in a “drunken state” or as if we had a ter­ri­ble hang over caused by years of a Chris­tian­ity that is at best mediocre. God is still God!! Fr. Ste­fano Gobbi, who received locu­tions from our Lady for years, has recently died. Before dying, he asked peo­ple to read mes­sage num­ber 83 about these times in his book: Our Lady Speaks to Her Beloved Priests. If you have a copy of this book I highly rec­om­mend you read this sec­tion. God “IS” real­ity and He IS in con­trol! My dear friend, all is “well” from heav­ens´ per­spec­tive and all is mov­ing on accord­ing to plan. God´s plan! Remem­ber the res­ur­rec­tion. Jesus died first. All “seemed” lost and that God´s plan had “gone up in smoke”. The oppo­site was the truth. Then God inter­vened on Easter and our life then, now and for­ever is changed through the Easter event! God ALONE has the last WORD for He is the WORD made flesh! It is always like that with God! The enemy knows his time is short. But we –you and I — are sons and daugh­ters of a most lov­ing Father. The Holy Spirit inspired the human authors (God is the pri­mary author of the Bible) to write 365 times in one way or another, “Fear not.” Remem­ber J.P. II´s con­stant exhor­ta­tion, “Be Not Afraid”. This calm in the midst of storms can only occur if our TOTAL trust is put on Jesus, our VICTORY! Hold on to Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.”

 If you are dis­cern­ing a call to live as a Priest, Brother or Sis­ter and want infor­ma­tion about the com­mu­nity please con­tact Fr. Philip at: padrefelipe@catholic.org