Transcript

Oh, it is such a privilege to be with you today.

Can I ask you to stand one more time and let me say a word?

It felt so good to stand.

I want you to feel that too.

All right, let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for the feast we have already enjoyed, uh, from Lisa.

Thank You for Your work in our hearts and our lives through the various meditations, the Mass, the Holy Hour.

We ask, Lord Jesus, that You would use these final minutes of a talk to, um, spur our hearts on to, uh, consider the great gift You have given us in the communion of saints, and to show us ways forward to imitate them.

And we pray all of this in the precious name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Until January 1989, I thought the communion of saints was what we experience, person-to-person, friend-to-friend in Christ, and in Heaven, the people up there did the same, but there was no connection between them.

The Old Testament clearly condemned contacting the dead as a form of witchcraft, and after all, wouldn't the people in Heaven just be so caught up with Jesus that they're not even paying attention to what's going on on Earth anyway?

And then I discovered that I had a tubal pregnancy.

I'd been hemorrhaging for three days, and following surgery, Scott could only stay so long with me in the room before he needed to get home and be with our three small children.

And I was on the maternity ward.

I just felt broken in body, so sad that I had miscarried.

Obviously in great physical pain because they gave me an entire C-section, not just one way, but both.

So the old cut and a new one just to make sure he got everything.

And as I lay there, and this is highlighting why Lisa mentioned memorizing scripture, you don't know when you won't have access to a Bible, but you still need to hear a word from God.

And I had memorized Hebrews 12:1-2.

God brought that back to my mind, and it says this, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

End quote.

As I meditated on those verses, our Lord spoke to my heart, and He said, Do you see?

This is present tense.

In this room of this hospital, you are surrounded by this cloud of witnesses.

You know, the Olympics is going on right now, and that was the image that came to my heart then too.

That it was like being in an Olympic stadium, and the stands were filled with people who had already medaled in the race I was in.

And they weren't there in judgment.

They weren't there saying, Hmm, I wonder how Kimberly will blow it this time.

It was, How can I encourage Sorry.

How can I encourage her?

How can I pray for her?

I am with her.

And it just broke through, and I just g- I just wept for the preciousness of the reality that the saints are actually there.

I'd begun to know a number of saints in my 30 years as a Catholic, but I had started really pursuing declared saints that are married.

I've found 149 so far.

Believe that?

Now, there are a few that were married, had kids, everybody died except that person, that person went off to the monastery or the abbey, and then they became a saint.

But I'm looking for people in the crucible of marriage and family life, and, and I want to share a few of their stories today.

To become a saint, we need hope.

And I wanna give you an acrostic for that.

H is the Holy Spirit, O is for obedience, P is for prayer, and E is for eternal perspective.

So, the Holy Spirit.

A few weeks ago, we had the privilege of witnessing the baptism of Michael Scott Hahn Jr., and they go by, he goes by Scotty.

And we witnessed then about a week later the, um, baptism of our newest godson, Benedict.

Through baptism, the grace of d- divine sonship that had been lost in Adam was restored to Scotty and to Benedict.

And each received the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of faith, hope, and love.

This put them in a state of grace.

Titus 3:4-8 says this, When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, H- He saved us not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by His grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.

The saying is sure.

This is the mercy of God, the grace of God that comes to us through baptism.

Don't ever let someone tell you Catholics believe in works, but other Christian people believe in grace.

No, we believe in the grace of God, active, especially through the sacraments.By the washing of regeneration, little Scott and little Benedict received the gift of the Spirit, making them children of God and enabling them to live as children of God.

But what follows?

Is that life insurance out of hell?

Is that, is that the great escape, now they can just live any way they want to?

No, that leads us to the O of obedience.

Why do little children obey?

Well, they may obey because they wanna please you, but usually it's just to avoid punishment, right?

But as they get older, you're looking for ways that they initiate doing things because they know it will please you.

That's maturity.

And the Lord wants us to go much deeper than just not wanting to have to go to confession for that sin or, even more, not wanting to go to hell.

He wants us to waken in the day and say, How can I please You today?

How can I obey You today, Lord?

We don't earn His love, but we do respond to His love in obedience.

You know as a, a non-Catholic, I had memorized, uh, Ephesians 2:8-9, but I didn't notice verse 10, and I've added that now.

It says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it's the gift of God.

Not because of works, lest any man should boast; for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

It is all grace.

We are saved by grace, we're given good works to walk in by grace, and then He gives us the grace to actually do them.

He's the one bearing the good fruit in us, but the fruit comes if we remain connected to Him in that grace that we received in our baptism.

John 15:1-5 says this.

This is Jesus.

I'm the true vine and my Father's the vine dresser.

Every branch that bears no fruit, He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes that it may bear more fruit.

I'm the vine and you are the branches.

He who abides in me and I in him, he it is who bears much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing.

Notice cutting is going to occur, right?

If it's dead, it's gonna get cut off.

If it's fruitful, it's gonna get pruned.

So, we don't escape from suffering or difficulty simply by being connected, but remember, even Jesus learned obedience though He was perfect.

And how did He learn it?

Yeah, heard someone whisper it.

Through suffering.

Hebrews 5:8-9 says this.

Quote, Though he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.

If Jesus Himself learned obedience through sufferings, how can we imagine that we're going to be exempt?

And that brings us to P, prayer, especially in the midst of suffering.

Romans 5:4-5 says this, and I'm gonna break it down a little more after I read it.

Quote, More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

And hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us.

Notice the plural.

Saint Paul is preparing Christians for sufferings.

Suffering isn't just part of the human condition, it's actually part of the Christian condition.

And if we're not suffering at the moment, it's a lull, okay?

Just have to be honest.

What is our attitude to be?

Dread?

Bracing ourselves for the inevitable?

It is to trust our Heavenly Father.

Jesus transforms our suffering into something meaningful.

The Greek word for rejoice, and I love what, what, um, uh, Mary Healy shared on Friday night, and she shared so much more detail.

I'm only gonna touch on it briefly, but this word Ɔpeishto is to triumph or to glory or to exalt.

It, it does give an idea of an exuberance, actually.

Joy that's infectious.

We might call it the Catholic variant.

Sorry.

That's great.

Okay.

How do Okay.

So, how do we exalt in God in the midst of suffering?

We choose to.

We choose to.

It is easy to say and very hard to do.

I'll give you an example.

When I became a Catholic, one of the things that bothered me was in all the titles of Mary, you know, Queen of Apostles, Queen of Martles- Martyrs, Queen of the Universe, Queen of the Church, I mean, so many glorious titles, there was a title that bothered me.

And it was Our Lady of Sorrows.

It's like, really?

Do we have to just emphasize the negative, okay?

And it, it did.

It just bothered me, until God taught me a lesson.

Scott and I found out that we were expecting.

It was a Friday.

We gathered our children together before we headed out to mass, and we shared the wonderful news.

And then we went off to mass, and of course, it just seemed like it was so easy to praise God.

Our hearts were so full.

This was our seventh pregnancy.

We had four living children at the time.

And then Scott and I went off to give a talk, and when we returned, I had begun to miscarry.And so on Monday morning, we had the sadness of having to tell the children before we left for mass that that little baby was not coming to our home.

And it was amazing how much of mass was talking about praise.

And the phrase, a sacrifice of praise, was one of the, one of the things we read in the Psalms.

And as I sat there, I said, Lord, I choose to praise you.

But I want you to know I will always grieve for these children I did not get to hold in this life.

And He said right back to my heart, And do you think that my mother holding my broken body she gave me is not supposed to be Our Lady of Sorrows?

And I was like, Okay, I get it.

Lesson learned.

The word for suffering is thlipus.

That's a really hard word to say.

Thlipus.

Verse 4 is pressure.

We rejoice in our pressures, resisting the temptation to quit in the midst of tribulation.

Yi Kwang Han was a pagan aristocrat in Korea when he met a Catholic who shared with him about Christ.

He repented, he was baptized, and he took the name Augustine.

And then he invited his wife and his brother to join him in the faith, which they did.

He became a catechist and their home became a center of the church.

On April 7, 1839, a s- a catechumen gave the police the names of 53 Catholics, and Augustine; his wife, Barbara; their daughter, Agatha; and their two little sons were arrested, and they were all put to death for their faith.

A Christian com- uh, Korean Christian described how the, the community of faith understood the impact when they were pressured to abandon the faith.

We are like nails.

The harder you hit us, the deeper you drive us.

Trust in God is the key.

Is God all-powerful or all-loving?

Yes.

You see, it's our Heavenly Father that holds those two ideas in tension.

When we are in pain, when we are in suffering, when we are challenged, we tend to pit one aspect of God versus the other.

If, if I were God and I could do anything, I would not let me suffer this way.

So God loves me and He really wishes He could do something, but He isn't powerful enough because He's not changing anything.

Or the opposite, that God loves me so much Sorry.

He is all-powerful and He isn't changing things, so He doesn't love me.

And Sorry, I think I said that wrong.

Anyway, you get the idea.

You get the idea, right?

Sorry.

I go off script there.

Um, so by uniting our sufferings to the cross, He actually invites us to participate in redemption.

Colossians 1:24 says this.

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the Church.

He actually allows us to take very real, very difficult circumstances and to unite them to the cross.

And we're so really a part of His body that it is salvific.

This is what's behind the idea of offering it up.

Now, we have to be careful that that doesn't become the Catholic way of saying, Shut up.

Right?

You know, a child's complaining and you're like, Offer it up.

Okay.

I'm sorry, you have to go to the bathroom and we're gonna go 10 more miles before we're stopping, but just offer it up.

Okay?

Unless you have a little boy, then you just pull off on the side of the road and- he's happy, you're happy, it's all good.

One of my sons was really sick with the flu and I, I stood next to his bed.

He was on the upper bunk bed.

And I said, Honey, somewhere, someone really needs prayer.

Do you think you could offer your suffering for that person?

And without missing a beat, he just bowed his head and he said, Jesus, someone somewhere is thinking about an abortion.

Don't let her do it.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus never abandoned hope.

He knew why He faced suffering and death, to restore us to His Father.

When we struggle with fears related to suffering, the gift of the Holy Spirit pours God's love into our hearts so that that suffering will have its full effect, making us hope-filled, being strengthened, being fortified.

The Garden of the Gethsemane is the same place where Jesus relinquished His will to the Father regarding the cup of suffering, and it has been a tremendous place for me to meet our Lord.

The first time we went to the Garden of Gethsemane was just a few weeks after the miscarriage I described earlier.

Inside the church, the windows are ve- are made of very thick alabaster, and so inside the church is always very dark.

Even though lamps are lit, it's, it's dark, and it's fitting, I think.

And there's a great iron grate around the rock that we believe our Lord sweat blood.As I prayed there, I said, Lord, I just don't know how to let go of the pain of this miscarriage.

I'd already had two miscarriages, but this one just seemed a lot more difficult.

And, and I said, I don't want to leave this place till I have met you here.

Please help me.

And the scripture that came to mind was Isaiah 53, that Jesus was, quote, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

And with his stripes, we are healed.

We know that he came to save us from sin, but I forgot that he also came to be Emmanuel, God with us, in our griefs and sorrows.

And as I left the church, I was almost completely healed of that deep, deep sorrow.

What I didn't know was I was already pregnant with our Joe.

And my heart, when I discovered it, was so ready to receive him with joy.

Years later, Joe was six or seven, we were sitting in the kitchen and he said, Mommy, um, h- how did you Let's see.

How soon did you conceive me after you miscarried?

And I said, It had to be weeks.

He said, So, if that baby had lived, I wouldn't be here.

I said, You're right.

You wouldn't.

And he said, I'm really sorry that baby died, but this way, you get to have us both.

Aww.

Yeah.

The second time we were on our way to the Garden of Gethsemane, I had so much joy.

I had Joseph was now four and I was six months pregnant with our David.

And on the bus, as I was praying over petitions, I remembered a woman I had met at this conference a couple of years earlier.

She carried a sorrow I had never imagined.

And she couldn't talk about it, but she later sent me a newspaper article.

She was estranged from her husband.

They had three children, and she and the children were living in the house.

And one night, while they were asleep, he broke into the house.

And I won't describe how, but she woke to the children's screams as he was killing them.

He had barred the door, she couldn't get in.

She called 911, and before they got there, he had set the room on fire and shot himself.

She did not even have bodies to hold afterwards.

And I have no idea how she breathed.

I don't know how she functioned.

A group of nuns welcomed her in and let her convalesce there.

And she eventually became an artist that made stained glass windows depicting Jesus e- surrounded by three children.

And so as I thought of that woman, I said, Lord, please comfort this woman.

Be with this woman.

And I prayed for her on that trip to the church.

We were having mass, and so we were all kneeling, preparing for mass, and I got this little tap on my shoulder.

And I turned around and it was that woman.

She was not on our tour.

We were in Israel.

She'd heard the Franciscan University was going to have a mass there and so she thought, I know it'll be a great mass.

I wanna go.

And she said to me, I don't know if you remember me.

.

And I said, I not only remember you, Teresa, I prayed for you before we came today.

And throughout the mass, I was reminded that surely if our Lord can help her carry her sorrows and her grief, He can help me with my suffering.

If he can give her the peace that passes understanding, He can give me peace in my trials.

As Lisa quoted Isaiah 55:8-9, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways, says the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Romans says we rejoice in our suffering because suffering produces endurance.

Hupomone, in verse 5, an overcoming spirit.

It isn't passively just letting these trials wash over us.

We are actively embracing the suffering and all that it will produce in our hearts and lives.

Romans 8:36-37 says, quote, For thy sake, we are being killed all the day long.

We're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

That's quoting Psalm 44:22.

And then Paul goes on, Know in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

So, that means we don't have to die?

That means we don't get killed?

No, but what it means is we are conquering in and through it.

I'm gonna give you a few examples.

Some of them may be familiar, some not.

There were two catechumens imprisoned and sentenced to die.

Saint Perpetua, a married woman, 22 years old, still nursing her infant.

She was a catechumen and so was Saint Felicity, a slave who was eight months pregnant.

She had an early delivery as an answer to prayer just before she was martyred.And an eyewitness wrote this about Perpetua, but it does include Felicity too.

Perpetua entered the arena singing a song with unhurried gait, her face radiant, her flashing eyes challenging the gasping onlookers.

They said the milk that she had was dripping from her breasts and they could see that.

Both women were scourged and attacked by a wild heifer that gored them.

And Perpetua said to the crowd, 'Stand fast in the faith, love one another, and do not let our sufferings upset you.' End quote.

And then they were beheaded.

In 135 AD, Saints Exuperius, his wife Zoe, and their adult sons Cyriacus and Theodolus, were Christian slaves in a pagan household, and they functioned all right until the day that their master sent them meat that had been sacrificed to idols, and he demanded that they eat it.

When they refused, the master had the sons tortured in front of the parents, and then all four were thrown into a furnace.

They were heard singing psalms to God before succumbing to the flames.

In the third century, Chrysanthus, a Roman noble's son, converted, and his father was very upset that he converted.

And so, he first put him in a house with prostitutes in the hope that they would get him to do whatever.

And then, when he didn't succumb, then he arranged for a Vestal Virgin, Daria, to come in and entice him into a marriage.

Well, he decided, Chrysanthus decided to witness.

And in their time together, she converted.

And so, they went through a ceremony, but together, they became evangelizers and they reached a lot of their friends and people in their sphere of influence for Christ.

Many people came to faith, until finally, it was uncovered and they were sentenced to be buried alive.

In 286 AD in Egypt, newlyweds of only 20 days, Saint Timothy and Saint Mara, were tortured and then killed simply because of their faith.

And to the end, they encouraged and urged the other to stay the course.

Romans 8:26 says, quote, Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how we are to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.

When we don't know how to pray, the Holy Spirit will interpret those groans, those tears.

And I think of two saints that were not killed quickly when they were sentenced to death.

And there are many that fall in that category, but two that languished in the Tower of London a long time before they were killed.

The first one was Saint Thomas More, the brilliant lawyer.

He'd married, he had four children.

When his wife died, he remarried.

He served the king, he served his country.

He resigned when King Henry VIII declared himself the head of the Church of England, and- and that ended up, uh, costing him greatly in terms of losing his lands and- and having to embrace certain poverty.

But when he would not give a cent to King Henry VIII's divorce, he was condemned to be beheaded.

His last words were, I die the king's servant, but God's first.

The other one up in the Tower of London was Saint Margaret Clitherow.

In 1586, shortly after the time of Saint Thomas More, she converted to the Catholic faith, as did her son.

And her son went to Douai, France to begin studying to become a priest.

In her home, she hid priests and she allowed mass to be said.

Authorities raided her home and they almost left the house, except a little child who was visiting said, yes, they had had mass.

So they began to search.

They found priests' vestments, they prom- found priests' vessels, and they immediately arrested her and sentenced her to death.

Now, she had a long time to wait, but it was to be crushed by an oak door.

And she was pregnant, and it took three days to die.

And she died because she allowed mass in her home and because she was Catholic.

Romans 8:28, quote, We know that in everything, God works for good with those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.

We rest in this hope.

God is at work.

He is working for His good.

Saint Macrina the Elder and her husband, I couldn't find his name.

If any of you know the name, let- let me know.

I'm- I'm really doing a lot of research on this.

But anyways, Saint Macrina the Elder and her husband, to escape from a- a terrible, uh, persecution by both sa- uh, Emperors Maximia- Maximianus and Galerius, went into wild mountains.

And for seven years were foraging on this mountain just to stay alive.

After seven years, they returned to their home in Caesarea and they began their family, and God blessed them with 10 children.

Their son, Basil, married Amelia, whose father had died as a martyr.Four of their children became saints that the Church recognizes.

Macrina the Younger, who was a virgin, Peter of Sebast, which Who became a bishop, and then both Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, who are known as the Capitu- Cappadocian Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

That amazing?

Think of the time up in that mountain thinking, Will we ever have a child?

Will we ever survive this?

And that was part of the fruit of that.

St. Gregory Nazianzen wrote of their home life, describing, um, St. Basil and St. Emelia.

So it's The grandmother was St. Macrina.

This is the parents.

Quote, It was a community of virtue, notable for generosity to the poor, for hospitality, for purity of soul as the result of self-discipline, for the dedication to God of a portion of their property.

However, their greatest claim to distinction is the excellence of their children.

End quote.

St. Francis Borgia is another example of the trust that comes from knowing God brings good out of difficulty.

He served at the court and he did not even convert until he was 29 years old, but it was a true conversion and a deep one.

Soon, he required He retired from the court and devoted his life to prayer, to his wife and their eight children, and to charitable works.

When their youngest child was eight, his wife passed away.

He took three years to settle all of his affairs, make sure that all of his children had adequate, uh, monetary means, and finished, um, all of the charitable works that he had begun, and then he joined the Jesuits at age 40.

He was ordained one year later, as a priest.

And he had so many administrative talents and excellent connections that his superiors continually promoted him till he became head.

He became Superior General.

He did so much work.

I'll just mention a couple things.

He wrote voluminously, um, urging all of his brothers and, and being faithful to all that they have been given.

Um, he began working on the Jesu, which is a major church in Rome, and he is the one who founded the Gregorian, which is a major, major school, uh, for scripture.

His final act on the deathbed, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, was to give them a blessing.

God alone knows the future.

Okay?

But He does.

He does.

In Proverbs 31, in verse 25, it says that the godly woman, quote, Laughs at the time to come.

Now, maybe she laughs because she's just silly, but I know that's not the case.

She doesn't know the future.

You and I don't know the future, but what do we know?

We know Him who knows the future.

When St. Elizabeth Ann Seton wed William Seton, she never imagined that she would become a young widow with five young children, or that she would convert to the Catholic Church and then be cut off financially, as a widow, from all of their relatives, or that she would become the foundress of Catholic schools in America and the first American order of nuns, the Daughters of the Charity of St. Joseph.

But God knew.

When Saints Joachim and Anne begged God with prayer and fasting for a child, they had no idea that the answer would be conceiving Mary, the mother of the Redeemer, or that they would be grandparents of Jesus, the Savior of the world.

And how about that son-in-law?

But God knew.

God knew.

Saint Alith of Dijon longed to enter the convent.

And you read a lot of these stories that, that different saints had it on their hearts that they wanted to give everything to Jesus.

And Jesus' answer to them was, Good.

Give it all to me, but it'll be in the vocation of marriage.

She longed to enter the convent, but her parents determined she would wed a truly noble Christian knight, Tescilin, and together they had six sons and a daughter.

It was unusual for her time, but she personally nursed and educated all of her children.

When her son Bernard was away at school, she died, and he made frequent reference throughout his life to how her example was always before him.

A few years after his death, her death, sorry, he convinced four of his brothers, two uncles, and 20 other nobles to join him in an as- in a Cistercian monastery, and later his father joined him as well.

He is St. Bernard, Doctor of the Church.

Alith didn't know, but God knew His plan.

Philippians 4:6-7 says, Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

At the same time St. Monica was praying for her son, St. Augustine, to come to faith, another lady, St. Nanna, was praying for the conversion of her husband, Gregory.

St. Nanna, the daughter of Christian parents, entered a mixed marriage with Gregory.

He was a government official and a pagan.

They raised three children in that home.And all three are venerated saints.

Gorgonier was a devout wife and mother.

Caesarius was an eminent physician to the emperor until he stepped away from that and embraced a vow of poverty and turned his medical skills to the poor.

And Okay, before I say that, before the birth of the middle child, Nana prayed for a son and promised to consecrate him to God.

Afterward, when she delivered him, she brought him to church and placed his little hands on the sacred books.

And in time, Gregory became a scholar, contemplative, priest, and bishop.

He's referred Is revered as a doctor of the church.

Now all this time, her husband had not yet converted.

For years, Nana sought to convert her husband through prayer and fasting and argument.

When he was 50, he embraced the faith, and four years later, he was made Bishop of Nazianzus, which is in Turkey.

And he reigned into his 70s.

One brief slide into Arianism brought his son Gregory home to help his father get it straight, and, and he did it gently, and his father received the instruction humbly.

When their daughter Gorgonier died, both Saints Nana and Gregory were still alive, and they attended the eulogy that was delivered by their son Gregory.

And here's some quotes.

Quote, This good shepherd And he's referring to his father.

This good shepherd was the result of his wife's prayers and guidance, and it was her that he learned from her that he learned his ideal of a good shepherd's life, forsaking riches and yet being rich through their noble pursuits.

He's the ornament of men, she of women, and not only the ornament but the pattern of virtue.

End quote.

And then of his sister he said this.

Quote, From them, Gorgonier derived both her existence and her reputation.

They sowed in her the seeds of piety.

She consecrated herself entirely to God, and in so doing, she won over her husband and made of him a good fellow servant.

Her children and her children's children were the fruit of her spirit, dedicating to God not her single soul, but the whole family and household.

End quote.

Meanwhile, St. Monica prayed for many years, with many tears, for her wayward son.

She never gave up.

She followed him to Rome and to Milan, and she found an ally in Bishop Ambrose, who God used to reach Augustine.

In his confessions, Augustine praised God for the moment that he could tell Monica that he wanted to be baptized.

And some of you are in that place now, praying diligently for a child or a grandchild to come to faith.

Don't give up.

Keep praying.

Keep offering.

And may you see that joy of that child or grandchild running to you to say, I believe.

1 Peter 5:7 says, quote, Cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you.

Now, how do you cast?

Okay.

If you're a fisherman, you cast, right, the line, but then you reel it back in, right?

I often do that in prayer.

Lord, this is the concern that I have, and now I know it all depends on me .

He wants us to cast like we're casting stones.

Let it go.

Let it go.

Give it to Him.

He cares about that man or that woman that you're bringing before Him, that boy, that girl.

Give that person to Him.

When Saints Louis and Zélie Martin wed, they had many opportunities to cast their cares on the Lord.

There were many challenges.

Through openness to life, they conceived nine children that, that were delivered, but they only had five that they raised into adulthood.

Two little boys and two little girls died in childhood, an unimaginable grief.

One daughter said this about them, quote, Different temperaments, but perfectly well matched, each one completing in perfect harmony the deficiencies of the other, always corrected by virtue.

End quote.

We're all in process.

We're all saints in the making, but God uses our spouse to help us, to strengthen us, to balance us, to correct us at times.

Zélie and Martin, uh, Louis Martin made the church rhythms their own by having a life of prayer in their home, by fasting and feasting with the Church, by going to daily mass.

They were generous with the poor and cared for the sick among their acquaintances.

Zélie was Um, she died of breast cancer when Therese was only four and a half, but w- all five of their daughters went into religious life.

And you know their most famous daughter, St. Therese, with the child Jesus, who is also a doctor of the church.

So not only is Therese an acknowledged saint, and now her parents, but at least one of her sisters, um, is in the process, uh, has a cause, uh, for beatification and there is under consideration both the parents of Zélie and the parents of Louis.Psalm 37:3 says, quote, Trust in the Lord and do good.

Take delight, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

Blessed Eurosha Fabris Barban was a teen who devoted hershe- herself to going around and helping the neighbors.

Her parents asked her, and she agreed to marry a much older widower.

He already had two little children and two elderly relatives living in the home.

She embraced marriage, and the two of them added nine of their own children, and adopted three more.

And when her husband, Carlo, struggled to provide, Eurosha would say, quote, God sends us children like treasure.

Trust in Him, for He will not let us lack the necessities of life.

To the end, after she was widowed, she cared for the poor in the neighborhood and walked the neighborhood with a rosary in her hand.

Another saint who had to trust in the Lord heroically was St. Gianna Beretta Molla.

She was from a devout F- Catholic family, large family, and a pediatrician by training when she married Pietro Molla, another devout Catholic.

In a short period of time, they had three children and she was expecting her fourth, but she developed a condition that risked her life and possibly the baby's.

Gianna wanted to save the child, and she took the least invasive approach to see if it would heal her.

Just before the baby was born, she told her husband, quote, If you must decide between me and the child, do not hesitate.

Choose the child.

I insist on it.

She delivered Gianna Emanuela and a few hours later developed severe abdominal pain due to septic peritonitis.

One week later, she died repeating, Jesus, I love you.

Jesus, I love you.

Prayer strengthens us.

Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

The grace that I need is available today.

St. Frances of Rome is one of my absolute favorites.

She wanted to be a nun at 11, but her dad had already promised her to a nobleman, Lorenzo Ponziano.

She pled for help from her spiritual director, who said, quote, Are you crying because you want to do God's will, or because you want God to do your will?

Wow.

I mean, this is a tw- 11-year-old kid.

The next year, she wed.

Lorenzo loved her deeply, but there were many social obligations.

She was part of a very large, wealthy household, and her piety was not understood or appreciated by the extended family, with one exception.

She had a sister-in-law who had the same love and passion for our Lord, and so they would work hard to get all of their household duties taken care of, and then they would go out and care for the poor.

And they gave so much food away that they began to deplete the stores of the house, and her father-in-law upbraided her and forbid her to continue doing it.

So, she went out and sold something that some clothing that she had, and when he heard that, he said, Well, go ahead.

And miraculously, it seems that the stores of the family kept, kept being restored.

At 16, the w- the, um Her mother-in-law died, and so she became the mistress of this household, and she already had four children.

S- she And this is her comment, and, you know, she was very, very prayerful, but she said, quote, Sometimes a wife must leave God at the altar to find Him in her household management.

After the war, Lorenzo returned home.

Now, there had been Sorry.

Uh, there had been, uh, civil war.

There had been a major plague, and in that process, he was not in town and she turned their home into a hospital.

So wa- after the war, he returned home and he said he would even release her from her marriage vows as long as she would let him live there.

And they ended up having a marriage for 40 years before he passed away.

In that time, she founded the O- Oblates of Mary, and at his death, she joined them and became their superior.

Okay, the final thing.

So, we've got the Holy Spirit, obedience, prayer, and eternal perspective.

This is our time to become saints.

What will it cost?

We don't know.

Thank God we don't know.

If you look back on your life, aren't you grateful that God did not tell you what would happen to get you to where you are?

I'm really serious.

There's a mercy in that.

This spring, we were nearing the ordination of our son, Jeremiah.

I had growing concerns, and I still have great concerns for the safety and wellbeing of our priests.

I think a lot of people were f- caught flat-footed in different countries when the authorities, the political authorities began going after priests, and I kept finding myself in prayer, trying to think, Where can I build a bunker?

Where am I going to Not just for my sons, but for other priests.

Because we all need priests.

We all need priests.

And, and I k- I kept thinking, you know, No, this is too close to friend.

If they come after us, they would come after them.

And I, I was trying to think, Okay, do I have a pagan somewhere by a plot of land?

I mean, I w- My mind was just going.

And I kept being distracted in prayer, even in mass with it.

I was like, Lord, I have to trust You.

I have to trust You.

Help me not do this.

But in my mind, I was constructing a shelter.

I probably had been reading some of these saint stories, too.

And during communion-I was sitting in the back of this room, and there We must've been singing a song about relinquishment, you know?

And- and dying for Christ or giving it all.

In my mind's eye, God showed me my son, Jeremiah, hanging on a cross, dying naked, emaciated, and I looked to his left and I saw Joe, who was our other son, and my heart just went, Mary, you have to pray that this doesn't happen.

And she said to my heart, You're asking me?

I will not pray that, but what I will promise you is I will stand at the foot of the cross with them.

We don't know what we face.

We have to have the holy boldness to tell our children, Give Christ everything.

All of your heart, all of your mind, all of your strength.

Give Him everything and then you- you choose the vocation that's on your heart.

The only vocation is in priesthood and religious life, but if you don't even find that attractive, you have not understood it.

As my husband says, We are here to get out of here.

This is a breath.

This is so short.

How do we become saints?

We love God with everything and we entrust our lives to Him.

If He's the center of our life, He'll be the center of our marriage.

He'll be the center of our family.

This is the in-between time.

This is a great time to be a Catholic.

By the grace of God, He will give wus- give us what we have to have.

And it's not about, Am I strong enough to be a saint right now?

I love that scripture that Lisa quoted from 2 Corinthians 12:10.

I've got it in here.

Where did I put it?

Yep.

My grace is sufficient for you.

For my power is made perfect in weakness.

I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses for the power of Christ may rest f- on me.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Jesus, I am too weak to be the grandmother for 20 children, to be the mother of two priests, to be Scott's wife, but I don't have to be.

You are sufficient.

You can do this in me and through me.

I am Yours.

That's what He's asking you.

Will you just give it all to Him and trust Him?

Let's close in prayer.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.