Hi Andrea, you gave a talk about God’s love on the first day of our retreat, why you think it’s so important for us to speak about God’s love nowadays?
Well starting with my own family, I think especially in America, you know, there’s this curse of fabulousness and people not knowing who they are because they don’t have that father in there life to tell them. I think it’s really an identity issue. But when we know that God the father is love and we know that we are created in love to be loved and to love and this gift of being created in the image and likeness of love we come to know ourselves in a different way and we come to love ourselves and others in a different way.
So it really comes down to knowing who we are and why we were created. And reuniting with that love for eternity, which is of course, you know, the most important thing in here on earth allowing us to have this grace to, no matter what trials and tribulations come, to know that we have a providential father who loves us and literally will give us everything we ever need not that we won’t suffer and not that it won’t be hard but that will always have what we need and He longs for us to be with him forever.
How do you think we can taste God’s love in the middle of a pandemic and also you can give your own testimony how you are having this experience of God’s love in the middle of this trial?
Well, like in the Shalom Catholic Community, I love to praise and worship. So I think when we praise and worship, we really enter into heaven. I have a friend that he talks about praise that Heaven and Earth meet whenever we praise and worship God. So when we know that God the father is good, that he is all love, that he is all providential we understand that He deserves our worship. He deserves our Glory. So for me, it’s giving him glory and praise through song, through praise, through just saying out loud like: thank you Lord! Thank you for all you’ve done! Thank you for creating me! Thank you for my family! Thank you! I really practiced that. In fact with friends. We always like to play the Gratitude game. And we go back and forth. Just naming things we’re grateful for. He is a good good father. It’s so easy to take things for granted like including the sunrise right? Or just that we can breathe or that our hearts beating today.
So to have that attitude of gratitude, but really directed to our Heavenly Father who loves us so much. So for me, praise and worship, and obviously I just spoke a lot about Sacred Scripture. Reading the Scripture every day is the most, I think intimate way to really contemplate and be with our Lord or other spiritual readings. And also for me I me personally like and I’m a big Rosary fan. The Rosary sincerely helps me meditate on Christ better than I think anything else. It took a lot of time to learn that and to sort of train myself, to be still and meditate each mystery. I always thought it was like a good luck charm and like if you pray 200 rosaries like God would be nice to you. And then I finally learned it’s really about meditating on those mysteries on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and really taking time to put ourselves in there. And as we’re praying those Hail Marys, it’s sort of the backdrop of really entering into the beautiful mysteries wether sorrowful, glorious, joyful or luminous of our Lord and Savior, and for me, the Rosary is just like my most intimate time and union with God. Thank you.
