"I'm Here."

"Mom, why do you go to Mass everyday?"

"Because I love Him."  

"Who?"

"Our Lord."

"Oh."

"You don't understand do you."

"Not really."  

"Well to fall in love, you have to spend time with someone.  I didn't fall in love with your Father just by spending one hour with him once a week.  We talked, shared, spent time in a kind of 'adoration' of each other every day.  It's the same. 

"But you don't have to right?"

"I don't have to do anything, that is what free will is.   But because I do love Him, I want to go, I miss Him if I don't or can't go. "

"Why is so important to go to Mass? Wouldn't your time be better spent if you helped the homeless or something?  Isn't that what Jesus would want?  It seems kind of boring to me."

"My child, you don't know what is happening at the Holy Mass.  Let me try to explain.  First of all charity is always important, but there is nothing in the world that has more benefit for souls than to go to Mass.  In the Mass, heaven itself is opened and God comes down at the words of the Priest and is truly present, in the Eucharist, the communion.  And we who are present have a unique opportunity to plead to God for the souls of those that are lost to Him, purifying their souls in the process."

"Think about it this way, do you think there was any way Jesus' Mother would have gone shopping on the day that he was being tortured and crucified?"  

"No...no way, she had to be there!" 

"Why?  Did Jesus need her to be there?"

"Well, yeah, you want your Mom when things are going bad." 

"If He was God, and He was, He didn't 'need' her because He is God, but that is not to say He didn't want her there, just like He wants all of us."   "Do you think Jesus loved his Mother?"

"Of course." 

"Then if Jesus loved His Mother, and wanted her present at His suffering and death, and knowing Jesus's love for us, how much more does He want us to be present at the Holy Mass when the cross is 're-presented' on the earth?" 

"I never thought of it that way."

"I go to Mass everyday because I love him and I need him.  Unfortunately, in the past as is now bad things are happening in the world, and sometimes I just say to Him in His suffering.... "I'm here."

Encounter With The Virgin

This encounter started sometime back, I will begin there.  

For some time after my husband's death, I had been not living a good life.  I was breaking a commandment pretty regularly.  It wasn't I was mad at God for my husband's death, it was because of the intensity of the pain I was suffering because of grief.   In truth, it hurt worse to go to Church than it did to sin.  

I knew better, I had already had the Vision of the Eucharist, so I knew the truth, and I would say to myself, "What are you doing! You know better!!" 

After three years, when my heart had healed sufficiently, it was time to come home.

Mother calls.  

I'm driving to work and I hear her sweet voice in my ear.  

"Pray me a Rosary."  

I thought, "A whole Rosary?" (There was a time when just one Rosary would have not been enough for me, now it was unthinkable!) 

"Just give me a decade." 

Remembering all that her Son had done for me, I thought, "Ok, I can do that."  

I pray the decade, which led to two decades, which led to the Rosary every day.  

It is true, if you pray the Rosary, you cannot stay in sin, you will either give up the Rosary or the sin.  

I gave up the sin, and I came home.  

I started going to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church.  The first Holy Mass I ran out of, because my sin was very much on me, and the demons did not want me there, and they made sure I was in pain.  But I went to confession, and did my penance, and then starting praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament again.  At first I would go across the river to St. Martin de Tours after Holy Mass on Sunday and pray there, but then one day I asked Father Eric Augentein if I could stay after Mass and pray and he said yes!! (Thank you Father!!) 

I appreciated him letting me stay and pray because I didn't have to cross the bridge, but there was an added benefit, I was alone with HIM!! 

My heart was heavy, because as I was falling back in love with Him, I knew deep in my heart that I could never be what I most wanted.  I could never be a bride of Christ.  Not because it was not possible, but because of my past.  If I could not be faithful in little things, and because of my sin, I didn't think I could ever be faithful to Him in large things.  

My heart was so sad because I loved Him so much, and wanted to be His, but thought I never could be, ever.  

Mother has a way fixing things.  

What I saw was totally unexpected.  I had resolved that I would never have my wish to be a bride of Christ and resolved to go on with my life.  I NEVER TOLD ANYONE OF MY DESIRE.  I kept it in my heart only.  

After about a year of being "home", I was in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church by myself praying the Rosary.  I am adoring the Holy Eucharist in the Tabernacle, when I see in my mind Our Lady of Fatima standing before me.  She was wearing the white with the gold trim and she was smiling at me.  As this was only in my mind, I thought it was my imagination.  (I have a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima) I began to think of something else, a Math equation, to make it go away. (That always works!)   It didn't go away.  I found I had no control over what I was seeing in my mind.  And it was like the Blessed Virgin knew what I was doing to make the vision of her go away, because she smiled at me like any Mother who says, "I know what you are doing."

Then in the vision in my mind, The Blessed Virgin approached me where I was kneeling in my pew and took a white cloth and placed it on my head and with her two small hands smoothed it down on either side of my head. 

Then she was gone.  

I began to cry.  She was letting me know that she accepted me as a potential Bride of Christ.  What I thought was IMPOSSIBLE, she made possible.