September—the month where the summer’s lush fullness is traded for autumn’s sharp clarity. When restless winds tug at the trees, reminding us that the vibrant colors of the fall are around the corner. School starts and summer’s freedom is replaced by the challenge and excitement of new things to learn, to explore, to become. Vacation months give our spirits a bit of space to breathe more deeply, before we pick up again the weight and concern of burdens of a world that feels turbulent and stretched thin.
We can’t forget how to breathe.
We can’t forget that we’re standing right in the middle of God’s great story.
The apostles—not unlike us—felt nervous and frightened and frustrated, when they weren’t able to see beyond their own strength, their own solutions to problems, their own abilities, and what they had at hand. Whether they were trying to figure out how to feed five thousand people with five loaves of bread, or straining to pull the oars in the midst of a storm that struck terror in their hearts, Jesus helped them gently learn: You cannot do it alone. Without me you can do nothing. I am here. I love you. And I will take care of you. And I will provide for you. And I will protect you.
That’s been sitting with me. The apostles couldn’t fix the hunger of the crowd, and they couldn’t calm the storm at sea. And I realize: I can’t fix my family, our culture, or the world. Neither can you. But we can turn to Jesus, who is Life itself, and who meets us with abundance when we’ve reached our limits.
The saints remind us that the quality of our days isn’t determined by the times we live in, but by the way we live them. Or as Pope Leo recently said, quoting St. Augustine, “Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times.”
I believe this is a moment of awakening—a time to choose joy, to walk in holiness, and to let Christ’s light shine through us. These are hopeful times, because Christ is with us. To be Catholic right now means carrying him into the world, not with our own strength, but with his life flowing through us.
So don’t forget how to breathe as the pace picks up in these weeks.
Jesus was running along the beach, throwing sand up into the air.
I was serious.
Jesus was laughing.
I was facing away from the ocean and the sunshine, busy with my project in the sand, my face in shadow.
Jesus gazed into the horizon, his face lit by the sun, as he sat in awe at the edge of the water.
Retreat always begins with a “before,” and ends with an “after.”
In my inspired imagination, as I prayed on the first day of my 8-day annual retreat this year, Jesus showed me that my “before”—my approach to life as a responsible and serious project-conscious adult—was no longer satisfying me. And he showed me in prayer that what he wanted for me was “delight,” his way of both delighting in the Father’s love for him and knowing that he was the delight of his Father.
In Psalm 131 there is this lovely line in the Jerusalem Bible translation: “Like a little child, so I keep myself.”
As I watched the ocean gently wash away the cares of the very important work of creating my sandcastle, Jesus helped me to feel on every level of my being what I have been created for: to be a child of the Father, as he himself is the Child of the Father. In fact, Jesus’ urging us to lay aside our self-importance to become like little children is rooted in his very way of life. Jesus wanted me to feel what he felt going about his life on this earth, what he felt in prayer on the mountains, connecting with his Father, indeed, what he feels before the Father for all eternity.
Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote in the book Unless You Become Like a Child that as a grown man, Jesus never leaves the “bosom of the Father.” His identity is inseparable from his being a Child in the bosom of the Father. In one place in the book he imagines the child Jesus becoming conscious of the world around him … “When the Mother awakens him, the opening up of the whole horizon of reality is experienced not only as something holy but as the realization that in the depths of this opened fullness of beingthere radiates the personal Face of his Father, personally turned toward him.”
Jesus draws us in prayer to sit beside him as he gazes into the Face of his Father who is “personally turned toward him,” personally turned toward us. This is the one thing necessary, this sitting, this receiving, this allowing oneself to be seen, to be loved. It is this that Mary had discovered and Martha’s heart—and mine—still yearned to know.
There are many things in our lives that frighten us into hiding from love, that paralyze parts of us so that we are hesitant to open up to receive the welcoming smile of God and of others. Retreats are often the long stretch of quiet healing that make it possible for us to accept being loved.
After all, Jesus was showing me, isn’t that what a tiny child longs for, needs, depends on, and trusts in? No matter what has happened in our lives, the eternal Father’s love heals and holds us until we are warmed with the gaze of his Face and are confident in the strength of his tender care for us.
Jesus didn’t ask us to be smart, accomplished, successful, organized. Nowhere in the Gospel do we find him suggesting that anything depends on us alone, especially this very important work that we were invited to share: the salvation of the world. There is only an insistence on spiritual childhood, this transformation of heart and mind made possible through the grace of the Holy Spirit.
“The child has time to take time as it comes, one day at a time, calmly, without advance planning or greedy hoarding of time. Time to play, time to sleep. He knows nothing of appointment books in which every moment has already been sold in advance.” Instead, every moment “we should receive with gratitude the full cup that is handed to us … And only with time of this quality can the Christian find God in all things, just as Christ found the Father in all things.”
This is my “after,” the gift of my retreat, the first day of the rest of my life. This is the joy Jesus has desired for me to know, the delight that is now mine forever.
Has this ever happened to you? Those times when you feel uncertain, upset, or just a little bit unmoored or lonely as you try to understand what’s happening within you or in your life (or in the lives of those you love)?
When you reach out for something, Someone, who knows what it is all about, who knows the whole picture, who knows YOU?
Someone who was there the day you were born? Who has seen your every joy and every loss? Delighted in every smile and suffered with you in your tears?
And you wondered: how do I connect? How do I know? How do I get to the bottom of my questions or my pain? How do I let go…. How do I love myself?
Life’s questions tend to be profound teachers which lead us beyond what we can understand about ourselves to the very arms of Jesus. In our search for answers, we find a Face and a Love.
Lectio Catolica is all about discovering how Jesus evangelizes our hearts with his Word.
LECTIO CATOLICA includes a Scripture reading, reflections by the Sisters on the theme of the month, guided prayer, small group sharing, and prayer together.
Would you join me and my sisters for our first online prayer gathering LECTIO CATOLICA?
June 16, 2025 8:00-8:45pm Eastern Time
Theme: Holiness in Unexpected Places: The Promises of God Will Hold You Secure
Friends, I am so grateful that you have joined me on the journey here at touchingthesunrise.com. It would be an honor to gather together every now and then online.
Sometimes I get snagged by what I would call, for me, over-following the news, reading different angles, commentaries, opinions…. I like to figure things out. It’s like a puzzle, a divine puzzle: What is God doing and what is going to happen and what does it all mean…. I found this from the Prelate of Opus Dei, Fernando Ocáriz, in a letter issued March 10, 2025. In his latest pastoral letter, the prelate of Opus Dei, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, reflected on how Christians should live joyfully in the context of “difficult times.” This reminded me to live on the level of faith even as I tread with my brothers and sisters through the chaos of these difficult days:
These are difficult times in the world and in the Church. Actually, in one way or another all times have had their lights and shadows. For this reason it is especially necessary to foster a joyful attitude. Always and in every circumstance we can and should be happy, because this is what our Lord wants: “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (Jn 15:11). He said this to the apostles and, in them, to all of us who would come afterwards. Therefore “joy is a condition proper to the life of the children of God.”[1]
This joy in the Lord is the joy of faith in his fatherly love: “Cheerfulness is a necessary consequence of our divine filiation, of knowing that our Father God loves us with a love of predilection, that he welcomes us, helps us and forgives us. Remember this and never forget it: even if it should seem at times that everything is collapsing, nothing is collapsing at all, because God does not lose battles.”[5]
Nevertheless, in the face of difficulties or suffering, our personal weakness can cause this joy to wane, especially because of a possible weakness at those times of our faith in God’s omnipotent love for us. “A child of God, a Christian who lives by faith, can suffer and cry; he or she may have reasons to be sorrowful, but never to be sad.”[6] And therefore in order to foster, or recover, joy, it is good to renew the conviction of our faith in God’s love. This conviction enables us to say with St. John: “We have come to know and believe the love God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16).
Faith tends to express itself, in one way or another (with words or without words), in prayer. And with prayer comes joy, because “when a Christian lives by faith, with a faith that is not merely a word, but a reality expressed in personal prayer, the certainty of divine love is manifested in joy, in interior freedom.”[7]
Today, the Feast of Christ the King of the Universe, my community and I went to the Cathedral of St Thomas More for Mass. Since it was the first time I had been there after a recent renovation I walked around the church, looking at the new statues and stained glass windows…and there were a lot of them!
On the level of soul, of presence, of awareness of what is most real, I had this sense that when we are in a church, when we are immersed in the divine action of the liturgy, we are in a different world, there, surrounded by the saints and angels, offered by Christ to the Father. In the world, yes, this world, but also in the Kingdom of the Father.
So I simply want to share some antiphons from Morning Prayer today in the Liturgy of the Hours, a reflection from various homilies of Pope Benedict, and a few phrases of the hymns we sang. I’m hoping that somehow they will share with you the profound sense of Christ the King by which we can make sense of life and history, a profound sense that we are already in that kingdom won by him that:
he might present to the immensity of [God’s] majesty an eternal and universal kingdom, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. (From the Preface)
A man will come whose Name is the Dayspring; from his throne he will rule over all; he will speak of peace to the nations.
From Pope Benedict:
Jesus of Nazareth is so intrinsically king that the title “King” has actually become His name. By calling ourselves Christians, we label ourselves as followers of the King.
The King is Jesus; in Him God entered humanity and espoused it to Himself. This is the usual form of the divine activity in relation to mankind. God does not have a fixed plan that He must carry out; on the contrary, He has many different ways of finding man and even of turning his wrong ways into right ways.
The feast of Christ the King is therefore not a feast of those who are subjugated, but a feast of those who know that they are in the hands of the one who writes straight on crooked lines.
The Lord will give him power and honor and kingship; all peoples, tribes, and nations will serve him.
In this final Sunday of the liturgical year, the Church invites us to celebrate the Lord Jesus as King of the Universe. She calls us to look to the future, or more properly into the depths, to the ultimate goal of history, which will be the definitive and eternal kingdom of Christ. He was with the Father in the beginning, when the world was created, and he will fully manifest his lordship at the end of time, when he will judge all mankind.
From the hymn Crown Him with Many Crowns: Crown him the Lord of peace, Whose pow’r a scepter sways From pole to pole, that wars may cease, Absorbed by prayer and praise…
The Cross is the “throne” where he manifested his sublime kingship as God Love: by offering himself in expiation for the sin of the world, he defeated the “ruler of this world” (Jn 12: 31) and established the Kingdom of God once and for all. It is a Kingdom that will be fully revealed at the end of time, after the destruction of every enemy and last of all, death (see 1 Cor 15: 25-26). The Son will then deliver the Kingdom to the Father and God will finally be “everything to everyone” (1 Cor 15: 28).
From the hymn: Rejoice the Lord Is King: His Kingdom cannot fail, He rules o’er earth and heav’n. The keys of death and hell Are to our Jesus giv’n.
The way to reach this goal is long and admits of no short cuts: indeed, every person must freely accept the truth of God’s love. He is Love and Truth, and neither Love nor Truth are ever imposed: they come knocking at the doors of the heart and the mind and where they can enter they bring peace and joy. This is how God reigns; this is his project of salvation, a “mystery” in the biblical sense of the word: a plan that is gradually revealed in history.
From the Preface for the Feast of Christ the King:
For you anointed your Only Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, with the oil of gladness as eternal Priest and King of all creation, so that, by offering himself on the altar of the Cross as a spotless sacrifice to bring us peace, he might accomplish the mysteries of human redemption, and, making all created things subject to his rule, he might present to the immensity of your majesty an eternal and universal kingdom, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.
INTERCESSIONS Let us pray to Christ the King. He is the firstborn of all creation; all things exist in him. May your kingdom come, O Lord
Christ, you are our savior and our God, our shepherd and our king. – lead your people to life-giving pastures.
Good Shepherd, you laid down your life for your sheep. – rule over us, and in your care we shall want for nothing.
Christ, our redeemer, you have been made king over all the earth. – restore all creation in yourself.
King of all creation, you came into the world to bear witness to the truth. – may all men and women come to acknowledge your primacy in all things.
Christ, our model and master, you have brought us into your kingdom. – grant that we may be holy and blameless before you this day.
I wanted to share just a bit of my experience of the Eucharistic Congress held in Indianapolis.
It has been two weeks since I have returned with my sisters from the Eucharistic Congress. Since then I have found myself often on my knees before the Tabernacle in our tiny chapel here in Alexandria, VA. I was one of almost 60,000 adorers in the evening Revival Sessions at the Congress. Here I am one of six, as my sisters and I pray before Jesus in the Eucharist, the Master who teaches us, heals us, and transforms us by his life-giving love. I think I’m still contemplating how all the magnificence of the liturgies at the Congress is no more amazing than the liturgy and prayer in our little chapel or nearby parish.
Fr. Boniface Hicks in the evening for Reconciliation and Healing.
One of the speakers asked us to think of a song that speaks to the deepest moment of our relationship with Jesus. I immediately thought of Twila Paris’ “How Beautiful.”
How beautiful the hands that served The wine and the bread and the sons of the earth How beautiful the feet that walked The long dusty roads and the hill to the cross How beautiful, how beautiful, how beautiful Is the body of Christ…
Looked around Lucas Oil Stadium filled with priests, religious, moms and dads, kids, grandparents, teens… all truly falling in love with Jesus again… all worshiping the Lord of Glory and the King of the Universe…
How this revival sessions and liturgies renewed my love for the Bride of Christ. Jesus is beautiful, and his bride the Church is truly beautiful…
The first Revival Evening Session, where all 50,000 of us silently adored Jesus, giving him the first word…
I’m discovering a new appreciation for our Eucharistic spirit. Blessed James Alberione said that our role before the tabernacle is to be:
“living lamps before Jesus in the Eucharist… handmaids of honor of the tabernacle and of its Divine Dweller; angels of the Eucharist who receive and who give; souls who hunger and thirst for the bread of the Eucharist and the water of his grace; hearts that share with their Spouse in the Eucharist his desires, his goals, his self-sacrifice for all; the intimate confidants of Jesus in the Host, listening to every word of life and meditating on it in your heart, as did Mary.”
And in another place Alberione helped us grasp the disappointment of Jesus who so often waits for someone to be with him in empty churches: “If Jesus is continually present in the Holy Tabernacle, it means we have the duty to visit him. He awaits us. But our God has to always wait in vain for people who are busy with a thousand things and forget the One who is the Supreme Good, the One who said: ‘I will be with you.’ Jesus waits for us.”
I left renewed, refreshed, and with something very deep that had shifted in the way I now look at the world. Jesus is the Lord of history and nothing that happens really is outside of his love and his mercy.
This is the entrance procession of the final liturgy. It took 40 minutes for 2000 deacons, priests and bishops to process in. I was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the goodness of the Bride of Christ all around me and prayed for each person there.
Some beautiful things:
Our Founder Blessed James Alberione told us that only in heaven would we know the good we had done, since our apostolate mainly is about scattering the seed, broadcasting the Word as far as we can. We really don’t know who is on the other side reading, listening, watching…being touched and transformed by God’s grace.
Our exhibit.
Well, in this one instance he was wrong. People were constantly coming up to our tables in the exhibit hall or approaching us in the hallways to thank us for the way in which their experience of God’s grace through the Pauline mission had made them who they are today. I met a woman who had read My Friend magazine (I had been the managing editor of the magazine for kids many moons ago). Proudly she introduced her kids to us. A sister had known Sr Augustine while she was in Kenya and at that time still an Anglican. She wanted a selfie just to show Sr Augustine where she was now. Another sister had attended our Baby Jesus parties in Culver City, California until she was twelve and now serves the homeless as a religious sister.
Chris Stefanick gave an inspiring presentation on the last day. He reminded us that we pray too small. God created the universe so ask BIG THINGS from the Almighty!
There were epiphanies all throughout the five days of the Encounter, moments when God was opening up something deeper in me. For example, I was struck by Chris Stefanick who said about sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “If God opens a door, you open your mouth, that’s it, you’ll figure it out as you start talking.” They were words I needed to hear, and God gave me an opportunity on the plane heading home to practice by sharing Jesus with a seven-year-old girl. (I’m a writer and not comfortable with thinking and speaking on me feet.) But there were other “epiphanies,” as I call them: how God is changing my prayer and my selfishness. By holding on to these experiences in prayer, the graces of the Congress are being planted deeply within.
Sisters made sure that Jesus was accompanied 24/7 during the entire Congress in the Church across the street from the convention center. All day it was filled with people quietly praying before Jesus.
At the Congress we were immersed in what was most real and most true. As I watched the almost 2000 priests, deacons, and bishops process into the Stadium at the opening of the Concluding Mass, a full 40 minutes, I was deeply moved by goodness and hope, and I prayed for each of them and for the whole church in the US. Sometimes I get weighed down by what is broken and difficult and tragic in our church community, so much so that I can forget what is true, and good, and beautiful. We can hold on to what Bishop Cozzens prayed in the first evening’s Revival Session: “We know that we are broken, and our world is broken, but we know that you have conquered sin and death and have given us yourself as a foretaste of heaven. We know, God, that you are able to accomplish far more than we ask or imagine by the power of the Eucharist.” As you reinsert yourself into “real” life, keep the eyes of your heart on Jesus who “sacrificed himself in order to give us life, who loved us to the end.”
The Revival was meant to be a new Pentecost for the Church in the U.S. We certainly felt that in Indy.
As we were sent out from the Congress in the final liturgy, we were told to GO! GO! GO! “Go” is two-thirds of God’s name. We were sent like the first Christians just to tell our story, and to walk with someone back to Jesus.
There is someone in your life right now whom Jesus longs to call to himself. He wants to spark a relationship with them and bless them with his sacraments. In this Year of Mission, Catholics across the U.S. are saying “yes” to a special form of heart-to-heart accompaniment called the Walk With One initiative. You too can share in this by telling your story to someone who still needs to hear Jesus’ love for them. Take some time to download and understand the simple process for Spirit-led accompaniment.
Here I am wearing the hat of Saint Manuel Gonzalez Garcia, the bishop of the abandoned tabernacle. It is a second-class relic. After praying for the grace to love Jesus as Saint Manuel did, someone was kind enough to take my picture.
These first days and weeks after the Congress are the beginning of the rest of my life and yours as a disciple of Jesus Christ. For all of us, something profound has shifted whether we were there or praying from afar, whether we are aware of the transformation that Jesus is bringing about or waiting to see what will emerge in our life. Now is the time to intentionally listen to how God will now be loving you and sending you to others, for the life of the world.
Touching the Sunrise 