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If you want your dream to be, build it slow and surely. Small beginning, greater and heartfelt work grows purely.

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Welcome. This is David Russell and Your Faith Anew. Daily Reflections guiding you to live in the divine will. Today's reflection is from the Book of Heaven by the servant of God Louisa Picaretta, April 19th, 1901, volume four. Let us begin in the will and name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, in moments when your presence feels hidden, grant us the grace to remain faithful and trusting. Teach us to offer even our longing and sorrow as acts of love united to your divine will. May every trial become a path of deeper union with you. Amen. Saint Matthew writes in his gospel, chapter twenty seven, verse forty six. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in paragraph six oh three. Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned, but in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In moments of apparent absence, the soul is not abandoned, but drawn into a deeper participation in the mystery of Christ's own suffering and union with the Father. Louisa writes As I continue to pass my days without my adorable Jesus, at the most, he comes like shadow and flashes. My poor heart is extremely embittered. I feel his privation so much that all of my fibers, my nerves, my bones, and even the drops of my blood writhe continuously and say to me, Where is Jesus? How is it you have lost him? What have you done that he is no longer coming? How can we be without him? Who else will console us since we have lost the font of all consolation? Who will fortify us in weakness? Who will correct us and uncover our defects? Since we have been deprived of that light which more than electric filament penetrated into the most intimate hiding places, and with the most ineffable sweetness corrected and healed our wounds. Everything is misery, everything is squalor, everything is gloom without him. How shall we go on? And even though in the depth of my will I feel resigned, and I kept offering his very privation as the greatest sacrifice for love of him, everything else wages a continuous war against me and puts me in a torture. Ah, Lord, how much it costs me to have known you, and at how high a price you make me pay for your past visits. Now, while I was in this state, he made himself seen for short instants, and he told me, Since grace is part of me, as you possess it with reason and by strict necessity, everything that forms your being cannot be without me. This is the reason why everything asks you from me and you are tortured continuously. Since you are soaked with me and filled with part of me, only when they possess me, not only in part, but completely, then do they find peace and remain content. And as I lamented about my hard position, he added, I too experienced extreme abandonment in the course of my passion. Even though my will was always united with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, and I wanted to suffer this in order to divinize the cross completely, so much so that in looking at me and in looking at the cross, you will find the same splendor, the same lessons, and the same mirror in which you can reflect yourself continuously with no difference between the two. This passage draws us into one of the most difficult yet weighty dimensions of the spiritual life, the experience of divine absence. Louisa describes not merely emotional sorrow, but a total immersion of her entire being into longing for Jesus. Every fiber cries out for him, and yet in the depth of her will she remains resigned, choosing love even without consolation. This is the key distinction in the divine will. Not what we feel, but what we choose. Jesus reveals something essential. Because grace has united the soul to him, the entire being now demands God. The suffering itself becomes proof of union, not separation. In the divine will, even deprivation is transformed. Even longing becomes an act. Even silence becomes communion. And then comes the great revelation. Jesus himself experienced abandonment. But his will was never separated from the Father. This is the model for us. You may feel abandoned, you may feel dryness, you may feel distance, but if your will remains united to God, you are not separated. You are standing at the foot of the cross. And here is the deeper mystery. Jesus says he allows this to divinize the cross. This means that suffering, when united to his will, is no longer merely human, it becomes divine in value. The cross becomes a mirror, not something to escape, but something to reflect in.

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In the divine will, even abandonment becomes union. Let us pray.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Jesus, in moments when I feel your absence, when my heart searches and finds only silence, teach me to remain in your will. Let my longing become love. Let my emptiness become offering. Let my suffering become union. You who experienced abandonment on the cross, draw me into that same mystery, not of despair, but of perfect surrender. Even when I cannot feel you, I choose you. Even when I cannot see you, I trust you. Even when everything within me cries out, I remain in your will. Make my life a reflection of your cross.

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Not as burden, but as glory. Amen.

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Thank you for joining your faith anew today. In every trial, especially those that feel like absence. Remember, God is working most deeply where he seems most hidden. Remain in his will, and even your suffering will become a source of grace for yourself and for the world. Until tomorrow, stay in his will, and your faith will be made anew.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

If you want your dream to be, build it slow and surely. Small beginning, greater and heartfelt work grows purely.