First Thursday Talk July 2015

I have to say, Anne's talk for this month is stunning . . . and so pertinent to every single person alive on this earth. Worth watching her live if you have time. If not, READ THIS!!

God bless,

Bonnie

July 2015 First Thursday Talk for prayer groups and personal reflection. Available in both video and text.

Welcome. We thank God for allowing us to assemble here on our First Thursday prayer group. It is so good for us to be together during our time on earth. And while many might look at our apostolate and see books with words on a page, we, lay apostles, see instead people with companions on a journey, linked in some invisible way that brings us joy and clarity and, yes, direction.

Tonight we are in a celebratory mood because one aspect of our long journey is ending. Years ago, the Lord prompted us to embark on a real estate transaction. Given that we were so young an apostolate, with absolutely no excess money, it did not seem like a humanly great idea. We discerned it to death, understanding that this news would require a rather enormous leap of faith for those of us involved. Well, the instruction did not change and the Lord persisted and so we made the instruction known and we began, as an organization to purchase the property we call the Abbey.

My friends, I think it is safe to say that it is good that the team did not know the suffering that would come to us because of this element of God’s plan. You see, it made no sense to us. Why did we need this property? Frankly, at that time, we did not need the property. But what God knew was that at this time, 2015, when we would take possession of the property, we would have a great need of it. And so in the next month we will begin our process of renovation. And tonight I would like to talk about what it is we will be doing at our new Headquarters.

We might think about our apostolate as a fountain. We, lay apostles, together make up the water in the fountain. We are meant to hydrate the area in which we serve. So the apostolate is not intended to draw anyone away from their duties, but to refresh and renew them in those duties.

Let us say that the bottom and largest part of the fountain is the Volumes. The Volumes, a great gift, provide the foundation for protecting the water, us, in the most broad way and generally, people of faith who read the Volumes find themselves in the pages of the Volumes. Would you agree with that?  Something we read speaks to us and we say, yes, truly I need to transform. And so a new journey begins for the reader. Let us each think back to our beginning days of becoming lay apostles. The Volumes consoled us and then gently instructed us and then by Volume Ten, we were being challenged, sent out in a certain way, conscripted really, and also encouraged. From Volume Ten we read, “Souls will return to Me and then they too will join the Rescue Mission. We will grow in number and in strength. All renewals begin this way and initially rest upon the courage of a few. Difficulties will come. You understand that the work you do for heaven is destined to save many. As such, it will draw resistance. But this mission is divine in origin and none will stand successfully against it.” 

Well heaven was right. The apostolate has drawn resistance from its first day. And to date, none have stood successfully against it. Today we are safely in many countries, in many languages and our Returning King has many, many lay apostles and many prayer groups. We are so often surprised to know of friends in distant places we knew nothing about. We work, always, within the diocesan structure of the Church and with all necessary permissions obtained.

The next tier of our fountain is found in the spiritual concepts of what we call The Big Books: Climbing the Mountain, The Mist of Mercy, Serving in Clarity, Lessons in Love, Whispers from the Cross and Transforming Grace. My goodness, can we remember when we first read about Heaven? That there are no separations and that heaven and earth work together, both in time and out of time? Or the truth that Purgatory is about accepting the sublime Truth about ourselves and the impact we had on others? Some people felt that this meant purgatory was too easy. But my friends, that is only if a person is thinking on the surface of things. Who can describe the pain of legitimate remorse when one is allowed to see the grave impact our negative thoughts, words and actions had on those around us? I can only pray that we will try very hard to do the hard work during our time on earth.

Through the big books we went deeper into the need for unity in the Church and we learned for the unity to occur, everyone must move, if only in his or her thoughts and minds. We learned about how to conduct ourselves as Christians and the bar was raised very high indeed in terms of our participation as lay people in the Catholic Church. One lay apostle said to me recently, that given the writings, she knew that gossipy or negative conversations were unacceptable to God. But she found herself in a situation where there existed a lot of negative and gossipy conversation. And so she went to confession. She left confession and outside of the Church she spotted a person with whom she had the greatest difficulty NOT engaging in these conversations. And she told me this: “I RAN away,” she said. “I literally ran in the opposite direction.” She said, “I must have looked ridiculous. But I was worried that I was not strong enough to resist the temptation and it was either run or face the embarrassment of going back into the Confessional the next day.” “And it would be the same priest,” she said, “and I thought, better to pick up my feet and run.” My friends, we both laughed but in my head I thought, there is a real lay apostle, doing the hard work. She showed self-awareness and conviction. She refused to be part of pulling something down and chose instead to protect another person by refusing to gossip.

And so we ask ourselves the question again now. Am I engaging in activities or conversations that pull down or even destroy? A heavenly work? The reputation of another? Or even the self-esteem of a family member? If we do this work daily we can avoid purgatory.

In Transforming Grace we learned to pray contemplatively, according to a prayer structure that is designed to reclaim our thoughts and minds and stake out a safe pasture for Jesus Christ to communicate with us. In Joseph Peiper’s book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, he noted that every created child of God is entitled to ongoing communication with Him. I was struck by this because obviously I agree. But, given the plagues of our time, constant mental stimulation in the form of noise, violent entertainment and pornography, many of Gods children are tormented by anxiety, intrusive thoughts and looping brain circuitry which literally makes people physically, emotionally and mentally sick. And they fear that they are crazy or permanently damaged.

And so we have the third tier of our fountain which is the Curriculum, the teaching programs. God sends us the instruction to offer teaching which can protect and recover our minds in the form of the truth about our brain’s functioning and neuroplasticity, that is, the brain’s ability to change and recover throughout life. People attending our weekends were ‘healed’ from anxiety, depression and ruminating and catastrophic thinking. And so their ability to communicate with God was increased and in some cases restored to them.

In Transforming Grace we read about trauma and our Curriculum teaches about this phenomena. Why? Because it is part of the Human experience and God’s children are entitled to know the truth about themselves.  If an event traumatizes us we might feel that it is difficult to forgive, maybe even impossible. Let’s talk about trauma for a moment. Trauma occurs when a person feels a sense of shock, terror, horror, betrayal, humiliation or shame, when a person feels powerless or out of control, when a person feels unprepared or without adequate resources to handle a situation, when a person feels they will never be the same after the event or that they are scarred and damaged, and when a person feels trapped and possibly isolated with this experience. That is taken from a book called Ireland, Healing the Soul Woundby Margaret McGahon, who is creating the Human Development component of our Curriculum.

Why do I reference trauma when we are an assembly of people called to work spiritually in the world? Because unhealed trauma impacts us. And in those cases the process of forgiveness might not be as straightforward as choosing to forgive. And we need to know that because if inside we feel that we cannot forgive, we might be afraid that we are a fake, a Pharisee, pretender. And that is probably not true. Most likely, one fears, humanly, that to forgive means to make one’s self vulnerable again. Unchecked, this can result in a sad split where a person externally prays and practices their faith, but harbors secret bitterness in their heart. In today’s gospel we read, “knowing what was in their minds, Jesus said: ‘Why do you have such wicked thoughts in your hearts?’” My friends, on any given day, that could be us. We are all tempted to have wicked thoughts in our hearts at times. This is the truth about us. But as lay apostles we go after these thoughts. We ask Why? Why am I angry? Why am I hurt? Disappointed? Fearful? This is the way of honesty and integrity and courage. A holy lay apostle spends most time engaged with his own imperfection. Not in a narcissistic way but in a compassionate and interested way, in union with Jesus Christ, seeking to protect God’s plan for love through self-awareness and sincere effort. We are all impoverished next to God’s perfection. The poverty of our being should not dissuade us though, or discourage us one little bit. Because we can do all things in God who is our strength. And God has given us holy science and knowledge to heal our brains and get them working in new, creative and holy ways. And if we are doing this hard work of becoming self-aware and understanding what we are capable of, both good AND bad, we are an asset to the kingdom and God can get through us to others.

I’ll tell you a story. There was once a person who felt bemused at the burdensome nature of his humanity. The person wished earnestly to be freed from his humanity so that he did not have to deal with temptations, anger and hurt at the betrayals of others, and also harassment and slander. Because you see he had a human reaction to these things and he felt like it was a terrible distraction from all things holy. And so he prayed to his guardian angel asking to be freed from this terrible burden of humanity. The angel asked him, “Would you like to be freed now?” At that moment the man saw two of his daughters coming around a bend, and he said, “Not just now. I have to talk to my daughters.” When they arrived home, later, the angel asked again, “Is this the time? Would you like to be freed now?” The man thought about it and said, “No. This is not the time because I have to cut the grass and clean the windows.” Later, the man was in deep prayer and the guardian angel interrupted him abruptly, and said, “Is this time now, to free you? Would you like to be rid of your burdensome humanity now?” At that very moment the man heard his son call out, “DAD.” And so he understood that at this time his humanity was needed on earth, despite the distractions and the upsets. The things that he felt weighed his soul down were actually serving to convict him in his service and grow strong spiritual muscles. And he was so moved by this that he decided to take the motto of the United States Marines, “Semper Fidelis”, and remain always faithful to his duty, because he knew that if God was worth dying for then God was most certainly worth living for, not just getting by, but serving with all of his life, his work and his heart.

 The contemplative prayer structure is important. Prayer is, I feel, our response to love. Does anyone remember the Hoover Dam teaching? The Hoover Dam enabled life giving water to be piped out from a very far distance indeed. In the same way, because of the truth about the indwelling trinity, each of us can access heaven through prayer, and draw beautiful healing plans and instructions into the world from our prayer lives. But in order for these plans to make it all the way from prayer into the world, the plans must traverse a perilous territory through our humanity, and all of our ‘stuff’, safely out from us to the next person. And so we keep the pipeline clear and unrestricted by honestly facing the truth about ourselves and trying to heal. That lay apostle in front of the Church was right to literally run from the occasion of sin. She knew what she was capable of, both good and bad. And she chose to build up, or at least on that day, not tear down the reputation of another.

And so we will advance into God’s plan for us as an apostolate. We will continue to create a Curriculum which, modeled on Pastores Dabo Vobis, includes formation in Human, Academic, Spiritual and Pastoral formation for lay people. This Curriculum will include the very best in psychology and neuroscience, it will include our beautiful spirituality, and it will be buttressed and validated through the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Holy Scripture. And this work will be based at the abbey. My friends, you have our most sincere gratitude for making any part of this journey with us. As people, we certainly needed your support and we were not disappointed. God bless you and may God protect our work. 

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Direction for Our Times (DFOT) is a 501(C)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to spreading God's messages as revealed in the Volumes.