“It is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost” (Mt 18:14)

The God’s will.

Sometimes when people think about God’s will, they think about doing something special, difficult, and quite often connected with some penance and self-denial. But God’s will is so simple. He is a God who is Pure Love, so His will is – love each other. He came to give us example. Like a good shepherd: “In his arms he gathered the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care” (Is 40:11).

We are in His arms. Specially, during the Holy Mass. We can invite Him to our hearts and take Him to our homes, streets, neighborhood. We can put our loved ones, our difficulties, problems and worries into His arms. 

We are His little ones. Stay close to Him.

Fr. Jay

When St. John of the Cross was a little boy, he was drwoining in a swamp. At that moment He saw a beautiful Lady who held out her hand to save him. He refused, because his hand was dirty.

It was Our Lady. She is the Immaculate Concepcion. And we have no idea how beautiful She is. And Her beauty and immaculacy let Her recognize how much sin is against God and our dignity. We are God’s children, and even when we fall, we are still His children. And She is our Mother. She is among us every day and if she sees our sin, She holds out Her hand to help us.

When we sin, we want to hide from God in our guilt and shame, but the moment we turn to go away, we fall straight into God’s arms. Because when we sin, we need His grace most, and this is where He meets us with His love to lift us up. The same with Mary: She’s there to restore beauty in us when we’re hurt by sin.

Little John didn’t want to make Her dirty, because of Her beauty.  So she sent him someone who helped him. And She also, as a Mother of Church is here to help us through the Church. Of course I am thinking about Liturgy and sacraments, with the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the first place, but also about you. What you can do to imitate Our Lady and Her great concern about other people’s relation with Christ and His Church. 

St. Paul reminds us today: “think in harmony with one another…Welcome one another, then, as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God.” You won’t save anybody by becoming judgemental and taking place of God to judge the others. Espaecially because God doesn’t judge, but welcomes His beloved children with mercy and lifts them up from sin.

Our Lady is so happy when she sees us praying for one another, helping each other and welcoming each other. We can help so many people when we pray for them, when we fast and  share what we have with the others.

Our Lady of Immaculate Concepcion, pray for us sinners and help us be example for others how to be close to You and Your Son. Amen.

Fr. Jay

“Ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest”.

Why? “His heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like a sheep without a shepherd”.

The couples who suffer from infertility or lost a child during pregnancy know how difficult life is – they are troubled and abandoned. And the worst – there is no one who can tell them why.

God, who is the Creator of life, who gave couples “the extremely important mission of transmitting human life” (HV, 1) has never abandoned them. Neither those suffering from infertility, nor those unable to conceive another child. His heart didn’t change when He went to Heaven.

Today He reminds us to ask the master to send out laborers. You are among them. He touched your hearts and invited you to join His harvest. Through your work He wants to show that He takes care of the troubled couples and that He is near their problems.

Today you have finished the first step and you will soon start helping other couples. This is not only your mission. First of all, this is His. He is the Master, He is the Creator of Life, He is the Redeemer and He is the authority (and has the power) to cure every disease and every illness. Connect your knowledge with prayer and proclaim the Good News – “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand”.

He touched their eyes. (Mt 9, 29)

A touch full of faith. “Do you believe I can do this?” “Lord, we do.”

When people have blind eyes they can only see what they have in mind. My vision, my understanding, my conception. So they can see everything only from their own perspective. Like this famous face of a young and old woman at the same moment in optical illusion. What I see is what really is. I know better.

So we can’t the see other people’s perspective because we are so sure that ours is the only one. The way how we see things is so important. Probably every wife has her own vision of her husband. Probably every husband has his own vision of his wife. And in every other area – we know what priests, bosses, children (especially not ours) should be like.
Faith changes our style of how to see things.

When we ask Jesus to touch our eyes, we can start discovering the world from a different perspective. Faith allows me to see every person as created by God with all His love. So when I see another person, he or she is like an invitation from God to recognize in her/him the beauty of God’s creation. It is like an everyday adventure to see the beauty of creation like those two blind.

Could you imagine seeing the world every day after Jesus has touched your eyes?

“Everyone, who listens to these words of mine and acts on them” Mt 7:24 

When Jesus asked people to listen to His words, He didn’t promised them that they would have wonderful life without any harm. No: “The rain fell, the floods came and the wind blew”. In both situations. The only difference was that one collapsed and was completely ruined and the other did not. “It had been sat solidly on rock”.

Not many people are used to listening to His words daily. (The most simple test – finger test –  how important is Bible in your daily life is to put your finger on the top of your Bible and move it from one side to another. If your finger is clean, tha means … it’s not bad with you.)

Maybe it’s because the Bible looks like any other book. It has a cover, many pages, the same paper, print. The only difference is the content. The Bible contains His words. And we remember that HE IS THE WORD: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” J 1:1.

So when you are taking the Bible in your hands, it is like touching Him. You are in His presence. You don’t only look at Him, He also looks at you.

And if you have a really hard time, and you will feel totally alone, abandoned, misunderstood and everything will be difficult for you, just take the Bible in your arms, hug it tight and let Him talk directly to your heart.

He is the rock in your life.

Fr Jay

“Then He took the seven loaves… gave thanks… gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds… They picked up seven baskets full of the broken pieces left over… ” [Mt 15:36 – 37]

Between seven loaves and seven baskets there was one simple action: giving thanks. When He gave the bread to the crowds He used what He received from his disciples. The only difference between what he received and what he gave was – thanks.

This action could change everything. This is a solution for all hunger in our world: hunger for food, for love, for health…

When a husband is thankful to his wife, her heart is moved. And it fosters her ability to love him more and more. Because her gift was respected. And she was respected.

In the Holy Communion we will receive the Bread of Life. How fruitful this Bread will be in my life depends on thanksgiving. How fruitful will be my marriage – depends also on giving thanks. 

With grateful prayer,

Padre J.

We’re beginning a New Year.

Advent is the time of waiting.

This is the time of Our Lady. She accepted Jesus first in her heart and then in her womb. Looking at Her we can see how we should change when we invite Lord Jesus into our hearts. To czas Matki Bożej.

When a new life begins in a woman, everything slowly changes in her. She walks, wakes up and lays down differently. She is aware of a new life that other may not yet see. But this new life shapes her and turns her into a Mum.

Likewise, we during the Advent invite Jesus into our hearts so that He can change them and all our ways completely, so that we are full of His presence.

I pray for this for us all in this first day of the Advent and on the third day of our novena before the celebration of the Immaculate Conception. Let she ask for the grace for us so that we are full of Jesus’presence in our lives.

With my prayer

Padre J.+

Viva!!!

The sermons in the Basilica can sometimes end with the call “!Viva Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe!: And the whole church shouts thunderously: “!Viva!” Right after that someone shouts  “!Viva Christo Rey!” and the response is also deafening. Those who were at the St. Peter’s  Square in Rome know what I mean – Latin America is not afraid to voice their feelings. I heard those shouts every time I went to the Basilica, so I understand that that’s the way things are there. Where Our Lady is so much loved, there’s also so much love to Her Son – contrary to the fears of many people that worshipping Mary may obscure the concentration on the Christ in the church.

Whenever I think about this dialogue of the two crucified people: the good thief and Jesus, I think about the incredible “today you will be with me in paradise”. TODAY. Not something like “you know well, that in your situation the best I can do is to send you to the ourgatory, where you’ll spend some time, because, you know, you haven’t been living well”… We would send so many people to the purgatory for a looong stay, and full of self-admiration because it’s clear those people merit in fact something else.

And HE said: TODAY, Of course the good thief fulfilled all the conditions to make amends with God, but…

God’s mercy, God’s perspective, Christ the King. Today in the Basilica Christ was crowned as the king of Mexico, and Gos’s presence was so palpable. Where the Mother is loved so much, there’s also great love to Her Son.

Remembering you on this special day

Padre J.

This is above all the panel of the leaders of the conference of bishops of the US, Canada, Latin America and Brazil. Also the bishop from the Philippines and Caribbean was included but because of the tragedy he didn’t come, which is understandable.

I will need some more time to put these matters in order but I can see already how important his meetings was and even though it concerned America, many things can be related to our situation.

What was did the speakers stress most? That evangelisation is not only our thing but it is also the great concern of God for all the children to come back to Him.

There is no evangelisation that does not stream from an individual encounter with God so at the first place there is prayer and the personal relationship with Jesus. The church and all of us are missionaries – this is not a post or a title but the identity of each of us. When we encounter the living Jesus, we want to share this experience with everyone.

The Holy Spirit, promised to us, will lead in us in every situation. This requires openness and internal freedom. We must also constantly reflect on things and react to changing reality. The social structure of many countries is changing from rural to urban societies. What was good before is no longer sufficient. For example, in Toronto 50% inhabitants were not born in Canada. This shows that we are in a very happy situation, although in our country we can also see the trend from rural to urban.

A parish is a community of communities, we repeat it often and we must come back to it again and again. Each of us needs a smaller community that gives a sense of closeness and understanding. But our mission is not to serve our community or even our parish but… the world. We need to conquer the world for Jesus. We discussed the need to change our mentality to become missionaries. We need to change our parishes in mission territories. For example: bring every year two new married couples to our meetings – what would happen in 5 years’ time?

Every day we started and ended with a prayer. I was happy that there was ample time for prayer, so it was not theoretical speaking of the need to pray but putting in practice what was said.

Remembering you all

Padre J.

It is an extraordinary place. Every time I come here I am deeply impressed. It is so much alike our Jasna Gora but is also very unique. Maybe this is because it is so diversified and full of Indians coming from various tribes and wearing their tribal clothes.

There are 12 million pilgrims coming here every year, three times as many as to Czestochowa. People come here all the time. When a baby is born, it is brought here to be presented to Our Lady and flowers are brought to her in big heaps.

Candles and water is brought to be consecrated and people come to dance before Our Lady.

Today I didn’t take lunch (partly because I was not entitled to a common lunch and I didn’t want to lose… time on individual lunch) and I went to visit Our Lady. I didn’t quite succeed because here when a priest is around, people approach him to ask for a blessing for a child or wife or mother. When I sat in a bench, one family came for a blessing and then a whole queue was formed, so I had to leave – not because I didn’t want to bless but because The Holy Mass began.

But I wish all priests could have such experiences – a queue of people asking to be prayed for and blessed. I had do refuse when asked for confession in Spanish. It is so sad but I need some more time, this is what I say to myself but so far I have had too little time to do it and there are people around who speak English. I keep promising myself that this will change and will probably change soon because Bishop Carlos is planning for me a new place to stay in a parish where no-one speaks English.

And coming back to the Congress: it’s been very interesting and today we’re having a presentation of all group work. I keep learning new things. The most interesting thing today was a comment of one of the participants: Jesus said: GO! and we say COME! Perhaps we should go back to the roots? maybe that’s why Pope Francis says we must be on the way and if we’re not on the way, it is not good.

In the evening we had a beautiful celebration for Our Lady when a rose offered by Pope Francis was presented. Just like Our Lady asked Juan Diego to offer her roses, She is offered roses today. It’s difficult to hold back tears.

Greetings on the way to the last day of the Congress

Padre J.