Introduction
A Testimony of Finding Purpose Through God's Grace
“The Prodigal Son only appears in the Gospel of Luke (Chapter 15: verses 11-32)
The Parable of the Prodigal and His Brother
11 Then Jesus[a] said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with[b] the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’[c] 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
Misunderstanding the Death of Jesus
The common Christian belief that God required Jesus’s death as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind is a fundamental misunderstanding. Instead, God does not demand sacrifices. Jesus’ death was not orchestrated by God but was a result of human rejection of Jesus’ teachings. The true nature of God, as presented by the life, death and teachings of Jesus,, is one of unconditional love, forgiveness and mercy. “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7-8)
For the website created by Carlos Acutis, please visit:
Psalm 1: Two Ways of Being
The Bible Project
Suffering
Forgiveness
Trusting God
Bumper Cars: Let Him Drive
December 3, 2024 by Grace Abruzzo Reposted with permission
The original posting can be accessed here.
In each of the last several years, at the beginning of Advent, God has given me a theme for the upcoming year. One year the theme was “receiving”; another was “silence.” Each has been a theme that God developed powerfully in my life, often in surprising ways. So I was excited to get my theme back 2021—until it came, quite clearly and unmistakably: “Docility.”
I will be honest—not even the word docility attracts me. Certainly, the virtue is not one I am known for. I blame the DNA on both sides of my family: I am 25% Irish, 25% German, and 50% Sicilian, which translates to 100% stubborn. I briefly considered the tagline for my blog “Learning about God’s love the hard (headed) way.”
Once, I was driving down the road, and I wanted some assurance of God’s love and presence in my life. So I asked Him for a song to come on the radio that would be just for me. I turned up the volume in expectation, only to hear the booming voice of Garth Brooks, “You’re as stubborn as they come…” I laughed so hard I had to hold tightly to the steering wheel before we met face to face. (True story).
It’s no surprise I had to look up the spiritual meaning of docility, which ultimately comes down to being receptive and obedient to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. This seemed exciting at first—I’ve seen the Holy Spirit do some amazing things, and I felt like God was saying “Buckle up!” as I prepared for a roller coaster ride.
Only to find myself on bumper cars instead.
It seemed that every time I developed an idea or a plan, I bumped into obstacles. I had no sense of momentum, no sense of covering distance. In fact, at times I wondered if I was going backward, or not moving at all.
Once or twice, God steered me in a completely unexpected direction, and I gave myself a pat on the back for saying (docilely) “Okay, God, why not?” But then it seemed like this new road wasn’t better—I still wasn’t getting anywhere or seeing signs of things moving, at least not in the way I expected and wanted and hoped for. Internally, spiritually, I began to feel stuck, in a season of quiet, of nothing happening, of once again waiting.
I will give one example. Just prior to Advent, the stirrings in my heart had solidified into what seemed to be a concrete call to serve in inner healing ministry. I attended a training I had been looking forward to for years, and there my gifts were confirmed, connections were made and plans put in place to finally move forward. I was beyond excited! Ever the overachiever, I had three teams organized with which to practice and prepare, and opportunities were opening (and even multiplying rapidly). For the first time in years, I felt there was a plan in place for my life, a purpose after all of the years of winter and waiting. Finally, it was spring!
Only, like the tease of unseasonable sunny warmth in February, it faded into cold and fog. Doors suddenly closed. My various ministry partners, all for different reasons, found themselves pulled into other projects and could no longer participate. Hot leads went cold, and even a healing ministry closer to home was suddenly put on hold. My engine, revved up and ready to serve, was stalled out on a track that went nowhere, and bumped up again against yet another wall.
God has often used images to communicate with me—sometimes in startling ways. Sometimes when praying for others I will see things that I never could have known without divine illumination. Sometimes God uses images to penetrate my heart more deeply than words could accomplish. Sometimes He gives me an image, but not immediately with an interpretation.
During this new quiet season, I found even my images starting to dry up. Whereas before they came easily, they were now few and far between, and I often doubted that the ones I did get were from God. Ironically, I had just started taking classes that focused on hearing the voice of God, and expecting the supernatural—but I myself was going backward, into the quiet. What was God doing, or not doing? What did God want me to do? To change? To obey? I found myself back in old habits of trying too hard, striving, trying to figure out how to make change happen, make things better.
Then one day I saw an image of a wood forest—in late autumn, no leaves on the trees. Then suddenly the forest began to fill with water. The waters rose steadily until the trees were 85% submerged. I prayed for an interpretation but heard nothing.
A few weeks later (while praying for someone else) I saw an image of cranberries. Just cranberries—a lot of them. Unable to sense any interpretation, I turned to Google and found a bible video “Think like cranberries!” which captured my attention. It explained that cranberries grow in bogs, and they are harvested by flooding. The bog is filled with water, until the fruit floats to the top. No other harvesting effort is required.
In that moment, I realized that God was asking me to trust that He would flood my soul with His grace, and the efforts are not up to me. Nor even are the fruits.
Then He showed me in prayer an image of our magnolia tree. I love our magnolia—when in full bloom, it is wonderfully fragrant and beautiful. But we joke that ours in particular is rather stupid. It never knows when it is the season for blooming, so in its over-eagerness it starts and stops at random times throughout the year. A warm day in February will set it blooming, only to freeze in the snow days later. It can stop and start a dozen or so times a year, often missing the real blooming season.
And again I heard God, at this time inaudible, yet still in the booming voice of Garth Brooks: “Let me determine the seasons of your life.”
I’m still on the road in my bumper car. I would love to say I’ve mastered the curves and the stops and starts, or found a meaning and purpose in each of them. I would love to wrap these experiences all up with a lovely “lesson learned” ribbon. But I (and we) follow a Person, not a plan. And sometimes the lesson is simply that we don’t always know the lesson. We aren’t always to recognize the detours versus the dead ends, or even the coming destination. Our trust is not in the map, but in the Maker of all things—who is making of me—and you—something more than we could ever imagine. Our job is to trust and let Him drive.
Fr. Mike Schmitz created the Bible in Ten Minutes which has became his most viral video yet, garnering over 358,000 views in its first 24 hours. Fr. Mike begins the video by saying,
“The Bible is amazing, but sometimes confusing and hard to read. This is because it’s not just one book, but a collection of books written over thousands of years in lots of different styles, all inspired by God “ . . . Schmitz speaks of the “narrative throughout the Bible that tells a single story: the story of God’s plan for our salvation. Once we understand that story, we can understand the context of every book in the Bible.”
Fr. Mike also produced “The Bible in a Year ” which consists of daily podcast episodes in which Fr. Mike guides viewers through the entire Bible in 365 days. Each episode includes a Bible reading, reflection, and prayer, offering listeners a structured and insightful journey through the Scriptures. Fr. Mike, known for his engaging and relatable teaching style, helps deepen understanding and connection to the Bible, making it accessible and meaningful for modern audiences. This series is ideal for anyone seeking to grow in faith and knowledge of God’s Word.
For more details, please visit the playlist here.
Soul Sisters: The Nuns and the Women on Texas’ Death Row
Photo provided by the Sisters.
Ronnie Lastovica was a retired cattleman, now Catholic deacon, who ministered to women on death row in Gatesville, Texas. He wasn’t their attorney, rather “his assignment” was to help them live until they were sentenced to die. As he ministered to a group of women at the prison, he noticed “they didn’t know how to get along. “They were like feral cats.” Deacon Ronnie proposed to a contemplative community of young nuns, Sisters of Mary Morning Star, whose convent was not far from Gatesville, that they visit the women. As Lawrence Wright recounts in the February 10, 2025 article in the New Yorker entitled “The Nuns Trying to Save the Women on Texas’s Death Row:”:
Sister Lydia Maria’s eyes “got really big,” Ronnie told me. “We don’t go to prisons,” she said firmly, although she offered to pray for the women, and kindly asked for their names. Prayer was what the order was created to do. Ronnie stayed in his seat, expounding on how great his idea was. The condemned women were struggling spiritually, and there was a limit to how much guidance a man could offer them. He pointed out that the nuns lived very similar lives—by choice. What could be more perfect?
Sister Lydia Maria said that she’d have to ask permission of the order’s leadership, who’d likely not allow contemplative nuns to traipse off to death row.
“But would you pray on it?” Ronnie asked as he was escorted to the door.
The nuns prayed, and then they deliberated as a group, which was unusual in a vocation where silence is the rule…The vicar believed in “providential encounters,” such as the serendipitous knock on the door from Deacon Ronnie. “I’m very edified by him,” Sister Mary Thomas told me later. “He’s a holy man. He makes the walls fall to serve these women.” She and the sisters in the convent were all unnerved by the prospect of visiting death row, but they also felt compelled to answer Ronnie’s plea. Sister Lydia Maria told him, “We will meet these ladies and discuss our way of life. If it helps them, that’s wonderful. But that’s all this will be, nothing else.” Despite there being only six women on death row when the nuns first visited (a seventh, Taylor Parker, arrived in 2022), Ronnie observed that there were cliques and hard feelings among them, which made prison life even more miserable than it had to be. He’d noticed on other wards that female prisoners needed community in a way that men typically didn’t, and they often formed family-like units. Yet, because the condemned women inhabited a place of spiritual darkness, they could fall into spats and backbiting. If they were a family, they were a broken one.
Four nuns arrived at the O’Daniel Unit on December 2, 2021, two months after Deacon Ronnie visited their convent. He met them in the parking lot. “They were so nervous, they were just shaking,” he recalled. “They looked like little ducks walking.” The nuns were escorted through a barred double gate and into a security office. They presented their driver’s licenses, which bore their secular birth names, not the names they’d been given by the order. Having taken a vow of poverty, they owned virtually nothing, so there was little to scan except the beaded rosaries that looped around their belts and dangled to their knees. They passed through another gate and arrived in the common room, where the condemned women awaited them.“We didn’t know what to expect,” Sister Lydia Maria recalled of the initial prison visit. The nuns, in their gray habits, found the women dressed all in white. Deacon Ronnie said words of introduction. “Then something supernatural happened,” Brittany recalled. “It was just instant. There wasn’t a moment of discomfort. There wasn’t a moment of unease. We opened our arms and they opened their arms, and we embraced one another. Both groups were surprised that they had so much in common. The condemned women were astonished that the nuns had chosen to live a life nearly as confined as their own, in rooms that they, too, called “cells.” Brittany said, “We talked about having a corner. I have a corner in my cell where I pray and spend time with God. And they explained that they have their own sanctuaries in their cells.” Sister Lydia Maria privately noted another connection: “We are not what the world would call beautiful women. We always wear the same clothes. The prisoners cannot be afraid of us. They cannot feel lower than us. There’s nothing in our appearance to make them feel not beautiful or not elegant.” That initial visit lead to many more as a deep friendship blossomed between the inmates and the nuns.
To read more, please see the full article here
When the Pharisees heard that he [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” [At the time of Jesus, the Torah contained 613 commandments.] He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
(Matthew 22:34-40)
Chiara Lubich, Founder of the Focolare Movement
Word of Life December 1986
“The Gospel tells us that we can give no greater glory to God than when we make the effort to accept our neighbor, because by doing so we are laying the foundation for fraternal communion. Nothing gives God greater glory than true unity among people. Unity attracts the presence of Jesus among us and his presence transforms everything. Therefore, let us approach every neighbor with the desire of welcoming them with all our heart and of establishing mutual love with them as soon as possible.”
Rosary in a Year Podcast
Ascension Press is doing a series on the rosary, called ‘Rosary in a Year’ which consists of a daily podcast.
You can access it here.
