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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, september twenty seventh, nineteen oh four, volume six. Let us begin in the will and name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Jesus, quiet our hearts before you. Give us the grace to recognize your presence in all that you have placed within our lives. Free us from taking your goodness for granted. May everything we are and everything we have become an offering of love placed freely into your hands. Amen. A reading from the first book of Chronicles chapter twenty nine fourteen. But who am I? And who are my people that we should have the means to contribute so freely? For everything is from you, and what we give is what we have from you. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in Paragraph twenty ninety nine It is right to offer sacrifice to God as a sign of adoration and gratitude, supplication and communion. Every action done so as to cling to God in communion of holiness and thus achieve blessedness is a true sacrifice. Now let us listen with an open heart, attentive to what Jesus may be asking of us today. Louisa writes Continuing in my usual state, I saw my blessed Jesus for just a little, almost in the act of chastising the people, and as I prayed him to placate himself, he told me, My daughter, human ingratitude is horrendous. Not only the sacraments, grace, the enlightenments, the aids which I give to man, but the very natural qualities I have given him are all lights that serve man to set him on the path of good, so that he might find his happiness. But man, converting all this into darkness, seeks his own ruin, and while seeking his ruin, he says he seeks my own good. This is the condition of man. Can there be blindness and ingratitude greater than these? Daughter, the only relief and pleasure that the creature can give me in these times is to sacrifice herself voluntarily for me. In fact, since my sacrifice for them was all voluntary, wherever I find the will to sacrifice for me, I feel as though repaid for what I did for them. Therefore, if you want to relieve me and give me pleasure, sacrifice yourself voluntarily for me. There is something beautiful about a gift freely returned. Think of a child who receives something from his father. The child owns nothing that did not first come through the father's generosity. Yet one day the child takes something precious to him and says Dad, I want you to have this. The father could have purchased it himself. Its material value may be insignificant, but that is not what moves his heart. The child chose to give it. Our relationship with God contains something of this mystery. Everything begins with grace, our existence, our abilities, the people we love, opportunities to serve. Even the next breath entering our lungs all have been received. The first book of Chronicles therefore urges us to offer ourselves to God. This sacrifice is not an attempt to purchase God's love. It is our response to a love that has already given Himself to us. And this changes the meaning of sacrifice. We often hear the word and immediately think of losing something. But sacrifice in the Christian life can become an act of freedom. It can take something genuinely mine, my time, my plans, my comfort, my preferences, my attention, my will, and freely place it before Jesus. Not because he needs anything from me, because I love him. This is especially important when we speak about living in the divine will. God does not erase our human will. Love would lose something essential if our freedom simply disappeared. Instead, we learn to bring our freedom to Jesus again and again and say I want what you want. I choose with you. Then even ordinary moments acquire a new interior meaning. The interruption I did not expect the person who needs patience when I have little left. The task I would rather avoid the quiet surrender of something known only to God. None of these needs to look heroic. Calvary itself reveals that the deepest Christian offering is ultimately a participation in Christ's own self gift to the Father. We don't manufacture that love. Through grace, we enter into His. Perhaps today Jesus isn't asking you to find some extraordinary sacrifice. Perhaps he's simply waiting for your freedom, for that small place within you where you can still say yes. And when your human will freely turns toward his divine will, something very simple and very beautiful happens. The gift God first placed into your hands becomes your gift of love returned to him. Let us pray. Jesus, everything good in me began with you. Today, I do not want merely to receive your gifts. I want to give myself to you. Take my thoughts, my words, my work, my joys, my inconveniences, and the hidden sacrifices no one else will ever see. Above all, Jesus, receive my will. Draw it into harmony with yours, so that my freedom may become an expression of love. In your divine will, unite my little offering to your perfect offering to the Father, and let my life become a quiet response to all you have given me. Jesus, what I have received from you, I freely return to you with love. Amen. Thank you for joining your faith anew today. Until tomorrow, stay in his will, and your faith will be made anew.