The Lobby

Just a little over six years ago, a small community formed in Patton Hall. It consisted of a random group of freshmen. They ranged from musicians to businessmen to nurses to scientists. They were from all over the nation, and they all had different stories to tell. From the outside looking in, there did not seem to be really anything they had in common.

Well except for one thing…

They sat in the lobby for 8+ hours every single day.

The “Patton Lobbsters” as they called themselves, were a strange bunch. Folks came and went, but these core members remained in the lobby until all hours of the night. Some of them fell in love with one another. Some of them went off to distant lands, only to find a space in the hearts of each member to return to.

The Patton Lobby was probably the most influential community of my undergraduate career.

Folks often asked me why I would sit in the lobby all day. People seem to find it strange that a group of people would stick together after hours and hours of seemingly meaningless card games, YouTube videos, and conversations.

Then again, folks find it strange when we choose to stay.

Folks don’t like to believe that things last anymore.

There are many answers that one can give for staying in the same spot on the same couch for an entire academic year, but they rarely encapsulate the value of the Patton Lobby and the Lobbsters. It wasn’t until this past weekend at a Lobbster Wedding that I realized why I chose to stay in the Patton Lobby.

I think we stayed in the Patton Lobby because we knew that we would not only be able to love one another, but that we would also grow to love one another even better.

We became better people in the Patton Lobby.

This weekend my closest Lobbsterette married her best friend, a fellow Lobbster. Their relationship is quirky and cute and challenging and faithful and so many other things. As the perpetual third wheel, I watched the two grow to love one another better and better. One would come out of their shell, and the other would learn to keep things in order.

Opposite though their love may be, they complimented one another in order to love one another to the best of their ability.

Not only that, but their love goes outward.

Although there are certainly aspects of their relationship that are kept between them, my lovely friends always welcomed others in to their world, even if only for a little while. This weekend, I witnessed their families welcoming not only one another, but also welcoming each and every community which entered the wedding venue. I was a complete stranger to most of them, and they hugged me like I was their best friend.

Love builds a community that extends outward, but it retains a certain specialness that no one can touch.

Because God put that love there.

As they put so beautifully, “It would be stupid not to”

I think we stayed in the Patton Lobby for a similar reason. It was not romantic love which kept us there, but it was love nonetheless. Given to us by God, each member of the Lobbsters had the opportunity to learn more about the love they could give to the world. I cannot speak for every member, but I know that I grew in confidence, grace, and courage in the Lobby.

All it took was staying in that space and letting each member of the community be themselves.

And when we left the Lobby, we let that love go outwards.

We welcomed souls in to the Patton Lobby. Some would stay for a while and become permanent members of our little community. Others would simply wave with a smile. Still others thought we were insane.

It didn’t matter.

Everyone belonged in the Lobby, even if they didn’t believe it.

Sometimes all it takes is one more minute to change your world perspective. Sometimes it takes one more hour to change your heart. Sometimes it takes one more semester (or three) in a lobby to remember that no matter who comes in to the community that they are worthy of the same love you received.

So maybe the Lobby was a little weird.

But it was perfect.

Felicity: A Team Newton Moment

For the past few months, I have been writing “Felicity Moments” which are moments of grace in my little life.

But the truth is…

Every Felicity Moment really is a “Team Newton Moment.”

There are many times where I am judged for my almost daily phone calls home, the excessive group chat messages, the Snapchat streak with my brother, the advice I get from my parents being what wins over that of my friends. This little comments used to bother me, but now I realize that these jokes, these comments, these jabs are not a reflection of me, but rather they are reflection of the world today.

Having a family, a real family, is not normal anymore.

The idea of a family is no longer associated with a loving community built to raise one another up. Families are now considered a pain, a thanksgiving dinner gone wrong, and a hassle.

Children are a burden or their futures are considered “too risky” in this world.

The world is a scary place. We have wars and civil injustices and hunger and pain and arguments and murders of all kinds. We have diseases and poverty and inequalities. We have so many negatives around us that we want to give up.

However, there is something we can do. Families are what will save the world.

If there is one thing that I have learned as Kid Captain of Team Newton, it is that we can all be heroes.

You see, the world is in need of love. That’s what we need in order to overcome the numerous tragedies that we see around us. Sure, we cannot stop hurricanes, but we can start cleaning up the land. Sure, we cannot stop people from having different opinions, but we can start working towards finding the truth as a community. Sure, there will always be difficulties because there are evil people and evil actions out there, but they will not win in the end.

Love wins in the end.

Heroes rarely wear capes. The hero is the one who loves the most.

Sadly, we live in a world that is so selfish that we do not even know how to love others to begin with. We choose ourselves over our families. We choose ourselves over starting a family. We choose ourselves over even the idea of committing to someone we love.

As a result, we lost the idea of a family, a place where love is born.

Our family is where we are loved first. However, in a world that would rather replace children with animals, in a world where children are shuttled from foster home to foster home without a single person to love them, we lack the opportunity to learn how to love in a community. We choose ourselves, and in the end, we reach a plateau in our own lives and everyone feels alone.

We feel alone because we are alone.

I’m not saying that if you do not come from a close family that you cannot love properly.

Because that love is not our own.

The love we have in our hearts comes from Jesus Christ, made perfectly for you. We love imperfectly, but the act of love itself is made perfect in the heart of those we love. Therefore, by learning how to love others in our own unique way, we become the hero that someone needs. We bring Jesus in to the hearts of others in our own unique love, the love that each and every human heart desires.

A family rooted in love raises up heroes.

Not because they are the championship winners, the scholars, nor the performers. Families raise up heroes because they teach us how to love.

Not just love in general, but how you specifically are called to love others.

Without my family, I would never have found my space in this world, nor would I have been able to love others as well as I do now. They raised me to be a hard worker so that I could have any job I wanted. Now I am a scientist, and I love on my students by encouraging them to work hard and believe in themselves. They raised me to be a strong Catholic so that I could know Jesus Christ. Now I am a Confirmed Catholic, and I love on others by reminding them constantly of Jesus’ love for them, Christian or not.

My family made me a loving Catholic woman who brings Jesus to the sciences through hard work and being a bit louder than most folk.

A family can inspire a person to become the strongest person they can be and to believe in themselves, but they also teach us how to love one another through sacrifice, by raising one another up in love.

I learned that the best video game player is the one who intentionally helps the youngest child get 1st place in Mario Kart by riding in 3rd place and beating down all of their enemies.

I learned that the bravest person is the one who steps away from their games to sit with their sister having a panic attack behind the crib.

I learned that the sweetest achievements only matter if you share them with someone else.

We love others by being our best selves and stepping back to allow others to shine for a moment. In a world that rejects the idea of commitment, we often try to do everything on our own and hold others down. Political ads rarely talk about the positives in the candidate, but rather they are negative ads about their opponents. Bullying continues to happen…and that’s just because the bullies are not loved properly.

We tear others down when really we should be raising them up.

You learn that in a family.

Maybe my love is not perfect, but I know that I can love more and more perfectly each day. I know this because my family sees through my crosses and sees the rose planted upon the cross. They see the beauty of my heart, and they inspire me to share that beauty with each person in my life.

They raised me to believe in myself and others.

That’s what a family does. 

It brings hope in to the world through love. Not just a feel-good love, but true love, the love which raises up everyone around us. A love that reminds us of who we are: Children of God.

So yeah, I have many happy little moments…

But they would not be present if my family was not there to help me see them.

My Dear Readers, we are all called to be heroes. We are all called to love one another in our own unique way. We are all members of God’s Family, and therefore we have the ability to love one another in Jesus’s name. There is nothing to fear because it is never a loss to love a little one.

Although I am far from being able to raise a family of my own, I will continue to grow in love.

Because I am your Sister in Christ, and I will be here to walk with you, to help raise you, to be there with you as we walk towards Heaven.

Just as Team Newton taught me.

Thank You. I Love You.

The stadium was packed. The wind was blowing at 40mph, chilling the rain in to snow. At any other point in the season this would call for empty rows and empty sections.

But not that night.

Something special was about to happen.

Country music legend Garth Brooks rushed out on to the stage. Everyone cheered. Regardless of if they knew the lyrics, the crowd moved to the music, withstanding the wind and the rain to hear this man perform.

Then "Unanswered Prayers" played.

Cell phone lights filled the stadium, and mixed voices filled the air in gratitude to Our God for delivering us to the lives He gave us. Not the lives we predicted or wanted, but the lives made just for us.

The song ended, Garth looked to the sky and whispered in to his microphone

“Fuck.”

No one cared that he swore. Because in that moment, we were all somehow aware of how incredible that moment was for everyone. It was not a show anymore. It was a gift, an opportunity, a once in a lifetime experience that not even this seasoned professional predicted.

The stands remained full for the rest of the show.

We didn’t want to miss a thing.

As I stood in the crowd, listening to songs my parents sang to one another on the way home from Monga and Tata’s, I couldn’t help but thank God over and over in my mind. I thanked Him for my family that raised us to appreciate art, to love one another in all ways, to give glory to Him for everything. I thanked Him for the trials and setbacks which brought me to Notre Dame at the time He brought me. I thanked Him for the friends who stood beside me, behind me, and before me.

And it did not feel as though I changed my Jesus.

Because saying thank You to God does not change Him, nor does it change His everlasting, ever-present, never changing love for us.

Gratitude to Our God helps us hear “I love you” again and again and again.

God gives us gifts every day, regardless of our action. His mercy is always going out to us. All we have to do is be willing to receive it. All we have to do is acknowledge that there is something special here on this Earth, in our lives, and in our hearts.

We thank Him, and we hear “I love you” all over again.

Every smile, every tear, everything is a gift. All is gift.

And He makes sure that the imperfect love which comes our way becomes perfect in our hearts. He knows what we need, what we desire most, and He makes it possible.

But we need to stick around a while.

We need to stand in the storm and the cold of this exile, and when we think we are about to give up, we need to wait for just a minute longer.

Just one more minute with Jesus.

Then...as He reveals Himself...say thank You for every little thing you can think of.

All He’ll say in reply is “I love you”

There is in fact a space just like the stadium where we can encounter a Man even more humble than Garth Brooks. It’s a small space, but it is connected to so many other small spaces throughout the world. It holds billions of other souls in need of love. It holds the greatest love story ever told and the most beautiful love songs on Earth.

Mass.

Imagine if we waited for Jesus to come out on to the altar like we waited for a musician to come on stage.

Imagine if instead of worrying about where we go next we just waited for Jesus to sing in our hearts

Imagine if we looked up to the Heavens and whispered a simple “I love you” to God

All you will ever hear in Mass is “I love you.” It is the one place that we will never be rejected. It is the one place that we will always belong. Because when we have our Jesus in our lives, we will always belong. It doesn’t matter what anyone says or does or thinks; you will always be loved in the divine presence of Our Jesus.

Say thank You to Our Lord today.

He loves you

And so do I

Hugs: Three Felicity Moments

As a scientist, I particularly enjoy tangible things. Although I love to think and contemplate spiritual and emotional matters, there is something beautifully human about physical experiences. Therefore, some of my absolute favorite experiences are those which share spiritual love and physical love in the same space.

Basically, holding hands at Mass and giving hugs at the Sign of Peace.

In these past two weeks, I’ve had three particularly good experiences that I would like to share.

I. Junior Class Mass

The 5:15pm Mass was filled with students I had never seen before. This did not bother me much; the evening Mass is replaced with a celebratory Mass all the time. Building dedications, Feast days, whatever we could celebrate, there was a good chance that would take place at the 5:15pm Mass.

But this was the Junior Class Mass.

I was a third year grad student, dressed in my gym clothes, surrounded by well-dressed juniors in undergrad. If I had ever felt a little uncomfortable in Mass, it was that moment.

We got to the Sign of Peace.

I turned to the girl in front of me with my hand held out in front of me. That’s just what one does when they encounter someone they don’t know. However, this girl just looked down at my hand with a confused face, pushed my hand aside, and threw her arms around me in a huge hug.

It was completely unexpected.

This girl did not allow me to accept less than I deserved. She saw a person in need of love, and she was unafraid to share that love with me. There have been so many times where I wanted to just give someone a hug, but I was worried that I would make them uncomfortable. After all, moments like these tend to be a bit uncomfortable.

Sometimes love is uncomfortable, but we should not settle for less out of fear.

Because loving a little one is never a loss.

II. Long Time No See

I was walking in to work early one morning. From the distance I could see a friend of mine walking in to class. He was too far to say hello to, but I paused for a moment. I hadn’t seen this friend since the summer. I wouldn’t say I missed him so much as I remembered how weird it was not seeing him at church.

That afternoon, I sat down to journal before Mass. I opened up my journal, flipped my hair, and looked up.

Walking in was that friend.

“Hey!” I tried not to raise my voice as I ran up to give him a hug. It was a long hug, the sort that starts to feel a little uncomfortable after two seconds. However, there was something in me that said that maybe I should just hold on until my friend let go. It was midterms after all.

Turns out he really needed the hug.

Again, it was awkward, but that hug was exactly what my friend needed that day. He needed a physical reminder that someone was there, that he belonged, that everything was going to be ok. I didn’t need the hug, but he did.

It was such a small act on my part, but it forced me to go outside of myself.

That’s what love is all about: sacrificing oneself for others. That hug forced me to sacrifice my own comfort for the sake of another person. The hug didn’t mean anything more than “I’m here, and you are loved.”

But sometimes that’s all we need.

To know that there are people who are there for us and that we are truly loved.

III. Community

It was a standard Tuesday morning Mass. I managed to get some time out of my schedule to get to church. Without the normal evening mass, the 11:30am was a bit more full. My heart sank a little bit as more and more people started to meet up with their friends, leaving me alone in the pew yet again.

Thankfully I knew my angel would be there with me anyways, so I slid to the center of the pew so I wouldn’t be totally alone in the pew.

I felt a pit in my stomach as a group of young men slid in to the pew behind me, all quietly whispering to one another before the liturgy. I didn’t look to see who they were, but I wanted to be a part of their community.

When we got to the Sign of Peace, I thought that I would have to stand alone for a while before someone remembered to wish me peace.

I turned slowly to see that the group of young men were the Holy Cross Seminarians.

One of them was one of the seminarians teaching RCIA this year, who I have just started talking to after class.

He saw me standing alone, pushed past his friends, and threw his arms around me. After we exchanged “peace be with you’s,” my friend pulled back and smiled at me. He looked in to my eyes, which probably were reflecting the lonesomeness I have felt in the pews for so long, and he added:

“It’s good to see you.”

I think sometimes we are so focused on the people we already love that we forget the people who we have just started to share life with. We think that we cannot take extra time to love people we hardly know because it “might be weird” or “they might not like it.” However, it was that small moment, that moment of being chosen over the established community and welcomed in, that showed me how much I belonged within the Church.

Love is not our’s to give my Dear Readers. It is Christ’s way of speaking in to the hearts of His beloved children.

Yes, we most certainly need to pay special attention to our families, our good friends, and other deep relationships, but we need to remember that each soul we encounter is thirsting for Jesus in their hearts.

And sometimes we need to go outside of ourselves to love a soul in need.

Maybe that’s why so many people are leaving the Church and saying "I don't feel like I belong.”

We’re so focused on our own comfort, on our own spiritual lives, on our own desires, that we do not stop to look at the soul in front of us. We choose to shake their hand when our arms are held out to give a hug. We choose to let go after a second to avoid mixed signals when a soul might really need love. We choose to only embrace those we know well when a soul might not have received a hug in months.

Think about the elderly folks, the widows and widowers who once had a soul to stand beside at church. No one is giving them a hug. Maybe they need it.

Think about the young adults, the kids who had a strong faith community but now are trying to figure out where they belong in the Church without a specific title. Maybe they need to be reminded that they belong.

I love hugs because they ground us to one another. They remind us that we truly belong to that community, that we are special, that we are needed. They give us a chance to show someone that we love them, that we belong to the same family.

Thank you to the souls who hugged me these past few weeks. You have done me a great service.

Time Points

It was a late Friday afternoon. My advisor just landed in Tucson, AZ the day before his big talk which would determine the fate of our funding for the upcoming year. I stayed behind to complete a few more experiments to support our hypothesis. The experiments were based on highly important time points, and if I missed the time points, then I might miss the biological process we were interested in.

Two hours after treatment, I sat down in front of our microscope. My heart was pounding. Sure, these experiments weren’t the most important in the world, but they were the first step from disbelief to opening to change.

I saw a few promising things in the microscope, but it was not quite perfect.

Then the fire alarm sounded. It took forty-five minutes to resolve the issue.

I missed my time point.

Time points are a very common issue in biology. Everything in our bodies is perfectly ordered to work at a certain time in a certain place. This is not just in development, but in every single one of our cells. In fact, many cancers are caused by over activating these processes without stopping. Therefore we have overactive cells dominating an area. Some mental health disorders are caused by overactive neurons that fire when they should be silent.

Everything has a time and a place.

This is not just a scientific truth, but it is also a part of life.

Much like how each cell has their own ordered life, we too have our own development, our own inner workings, that determine where we are in life. I am not saying that we were created without a choice, but rather that who we are is determined by what is going on in our hearts.

Cells can only perform a certain activity when it has all of the components necessary.

We can only move forward in certain aspects of when we have everything in order.

There is something very important that I need to point out. Each and every cell is unique. Liver cells make fats. Neurons send electrical signals. Muscle cells extend and contract. Because each cell has a different purpose, they have different time points for different processes. A skin cell will go through mitosis many times, but a neuron will never go through mitosis again. Therefore, when we look at different processes, we need to recognize that the time points may change for each cell.

When we look at our own lives, we need to recognize that everything will work out, but in the proper time and place for our purpose.

Should we follow the Spirit’s lead, we will find our vocations, and they will come at the right time.

We cannot look at the lives of others and assume that we are any less important because we haven’t found ourselves yet. It does not matter that someone else is making six figures and you are making just enough to make rent as a graduate student. It does not matter that your friends are all engaged and you haven’t gone on a date in months. It does not matter that your friends are buying their first homes and you are living with roommates in an apartment. It does not matter what everyone else is doing.

What matters is that you are following your Vocation, your call to holiness.

Everything else is not a big deal.

Because as you find who you are in Christ, you will find where you belong and what you are meant to do in that space.

I think that sometimes we think that we missed the “time points” of our lives far too often. We say that there is no hope for us because we are not exactly where we expected to be when we wanted to be there. We will blame it on something that happened in our lives which interrupted the trajectory we were on before.

It’s in that low point where we have the choice: Do we keep going or do we throw it all away?

Do we accept God’s gifts as they come to us?

“So I guess we have to turn off the scope then?” my undergrad looked at me. She is meticulous with details, which is extremely helpful for me, a not-so detail-oriented person.

“Ya know what?” I threw my hands up, “Let’s just look anyway!”

We set up a new slide and looked in to the microscope. It was an hour after the desired time point, a point that I once thought to be perfect, and we were not expecting anything special. Of course, it is when we least expect it that something beautiful happens.

“No. Way,” I gasped as I looked in to the microscope.

“What?” my undergrad looked up quickly.

“Look!” I squealed again and pulled up the image on the computer. My undergrad and I started to cheer a little to ourselves as we started pointing to the screen over and over again. At long last, our experiments were starting to prove the model our lab has been working on for over a decade.

We were funded.

The experiment was not perfect at my initial time point. I was impatient, so I looked for the earliest chance of making it work. However, the cell was not ready to create the structures we were looking for. Because there was an interruption in my plan, I was given the opportunity to look at the situation in a new way, with fresh eyes.

It was not perfect at first, but in time and in line with those cells’ biology, the process occurred perfectly in time.

That’s why you should never throw out an experiment before analyzing all of the data.

Whenever I think I am behind in life because my friends are moving in to upper management positions, getting married, and buying houses, I like to think back to a parable Jesus told about a farmer hiring workers for the vineyard. He came back time and time again, and at the end of the day, he saw some people still sitting and waiting to be hired.

He asked them why they were still sitting there, and the men explained that they had nowhere else to go. Moved for them, the man hired the workers, and they received the same pay as everyone else.

If we hold fast to the truth that God loves us and wants the best for us, then we will receive our reward.

If we chase a Vocation of Holiness, then we will be given the perfect life for that calling.

Sometimes it makes the results being a little sub-optimal in the beginning. Sometimes that means thinking that you missed a time point. Sometimes that means sitting and waiting in the same space for years, just living a faithful life. Regardless of what your life of holiness looks like Dear Reader, I know that everything will work out beautifully for you.

Don’t throw away a good experiment just because you didn’t hit the time point you were expecting.

Don’t compare yourself to others.

Just love Jesus, and all will work out just fine.

“May today there be peace within. 

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. 

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. 

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. 

May you be content knowing you are a child of God. 

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. 

It is there for each and every one of us.”

~Saint Teresa of Avila

The Cross

I used to write stories as a young girl. Actually, I wrote a small romance novel as a freshman in high school. However, a new story came in to my mind and heart after I wrote my first novel which eliminated all other desires to write fiction.

It was a story about a little girl walking beside Jesus at the Passion.

I only got to the point where Veronica ran up to Jesus with a washcloth because my heart could barely handle the story.

Nothing else matters when we encounter The Cross.

Nothing.

On The Cross, Jesus did not just take away the sins in some sort of subtraction, some version of a deletion mutation. No. On the Cross, our Jesus picked up every human suffering, every human need, and He took it with Him to Hell and redeemed it in Heaven. The Cross is not just this symbol that we can toss around like a label.

Christians are marked by The Sign of The Cross.

And that means something.

It means that we are called to suffer like Christ.

So many of us take that statement to mean that we are called to suffer because Christ had to suffer. We write off suffering as a piece of the Christian life, something that “just happens.” Dear Reader, The Cross did not “just happen” to Jesus. He chose The Cross. He chose to suffer. He chose to die. Not so that His act could be public, but so that He could give everything He had for us. He chose to love us in the most painful way possible at the time.

Jesus chose The Cross out of love.

And as we draw nearer to Him, we start to feel the weight of The Cross on our hearts.

It’s what we choose to do with our small insignificant share in The Cross that changes our hearts, that has a purpose. Suffering was not a part of God’s plan for His Creation, but because of sin and evil hearts, we are subject to suffering. Sometimes that suffering can be removed from our lives by turning to a life of holiness. Other times our suffering only increases as our faith increases.

Think of the Saints who received the wounds of Jesus Christ. They lived the holiest of lives outside of the Blessed Mother, and yet they felt the great pains of our Lord and Savior.

Think of the Saints like Mother Teresa and Therese, Saints of the greatest love, who felt darkness and could no longer feel God’s presence in their hearts.

Our suffering is not a sign of our wrongdoing in the moment.

The Cross is a gift.

I do not mean to say that we should be filled with joy at the sight of suffering. If anything, I would say that we need to fully experience the suffering that we are given. Feel the sorrow, feel the hurt, feel the loneliness, but then we must make a choice. We must do what our Jesus calls us to do and follow Him.

The only response to The Cross is Love.

Not for ourselves, but for those who are in need of the love of Jesus Christ.

Our suffering, though small, allows us to gain some insight in to what our Jesus saw in our hearts on Good Friday. Our loneliness allows us to feel the loneliness Our Lord carried in to Hell. Our sorrow allows us to feel the sorrow Our Lord felt for His Mother as she recognized His pain. Our emptiness allows us to feel the blood draining out of Christ’s Crown of Thorns.

The Cross is a gift.

It is a gift to those who will share in our cross.

Jesus gives us the gift of sharing in His Passion so that we might understand but a piece of His love for us. When we choose to allow that insight in to His suffering to change the way we love others, we allow Christ’s most Sacred Heart to love on the souls who need it most.

My cross is a sense of not belonging, of loving so imperfectly that no one will ever truly love me in return. And yet, it is that very cross which teaches me how to love those who believe that God could never love them.

My Jesus gave me this cross so that others might find hope in Him again.

They will forget me, but they will remember Christ.

The Cross is not just a gift for those of us who suffer, but it is also a gift to those around us. You see, we were never meant to bear the weight on our own. Jesus already carried it all so that we might be one in Him again.

We do not always hear what Jesus prayed for…but we have an account that is beautiful, one that explains just how beautiful our crosses are for the world.

“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.' 

'And I have given them the glory You gave me, so that they may be one, as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that You sent Me, and that You loved them even as You loved Me.'

'Father, they are Your gift to Me. I wish that where I am they also may be with Me, that they may see My glory that You gave Me, because You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”

~John 17: 20-24

We are God the Father’s gift to His Beloved Son.

You are a gift to Jesus on The Cross.

Jesus’ glory is revealed in His passion, death, and resurrection. In His prayer, our Jesus says that He is giving us the same glory that God the Father bestowed upon His beloved Son. He is allowing us to be with Him on The Cross so that we might better understand how much love God has for us, for all of the world.

Jesus chose to allow others to share His Cross.

The Cross is for the world.

My Dear Reader, when you allow others to hold your cross, you are not giving them a burden they do not deserve. The only response to the Cross is love, and therefore causing that person to choose love. By choosing love, however much, they encounter a piece of God in their heart, meant for you. The one who shares The Cross is given a great gift, one they do not deserve but are blessed to have anyways.

No matter how little the love is in their heart, it is a far greater gift they could ever fully comprehend.

For in the heart of the soul loving those suffering under the weight of their cross is the love of Jesus Christ. They find Him, and they share in His love for you….for the whole world.

Suffering was never meant to be there in the first place, but by His blood, our Jesus redeemed our pain for the sake of the world. Where there was darkness, now there is light. Where there was anger, now there is peace. Where there is sorrow, now there is dancing.

It is not a joyful experience to hold a cross, whether your own or that of another.

But through the Cross comes new life…a life completed in love.

I have two little gifts to give now.

These are two little notes: the first to those who aided me in carrying my cross and the second to those whose cross I’ve shared. May these notes serve as a prayer for my Dear Readers, for all of you have in some way helped me carry my cross.

To those who aided me on my journey:

By saying yes to the Cross, I chose love, but I did not know what would happen. I did not choose you; Jesus chose you. My cross does not bring me joy, nor do I wish for others to feel my pain, but the love of others is the greatest gift that I could imagine. Because of your love, I know two things: 1. That Christ loves us all. 2. That the love you receive will go out to the world. Even if you are unaware of the times you held a cross, you will receive graces. I know that your love will go out to others because you loved me. You did not have to love me, and yet you chose love. Thank you. Thank you for revealing Christ in the world.

Always in Him,

Felicity

To those whose crosses I bear:

I love you. These three words are but a small portion of what I feel in response to the graces I have received from praying for you. Although I was unworthy to share the weight of your heart, you entrusted a portion of your cross to me. As I prayed for you, as I performed little acts of love for you, as I loved on you, I saw Christ in you. Your broken heart is not a sign that you do not have love, but rather your heart bursts with love, a love that no human heart can understand. Yet as I love you in your cross, I come to learn more and more of this mysterious love which allows others to see our weakness. It is an enduring love, a love that aches for more, but it never wounds me. Thank you for loving me as Christ loves me in His Cross. I pray that you might always remember His great love for you, a love we do not deserve yet He freely gives.

Always in Him,

The Rose of the Cross