“If you build it, they will come.”  These words echoed through my mind as I looked out one of our windows this past Saturday morning and watched car after car turn into our driveway and make their way to our motherhouse. 

Yes, these words are from the movie Field of Dreams but they are also words that God has spoken to us throughout the short history of our community.  From very early on, the Lord began to show us He desired a place where His children could come and find healing and His love; and as our chapel and motherhouse were being built in 2010 God continued to speak these words with more intensity and frequency.  If we build Father of Mercy Chapel, His children will come!

And come they did!  On March 21st, we hosted our first day retreat at Father of Mercy Chapel.  The theme was “Joyful Surrender to Christ Crucified” and around 90 retreatants gathered for a day of talks, testimonies, small group sharing, Mass, and more!

With talk titles “Joyful Surrender” and “Suffering as a Means of Intimacy with Christ” and testimonies to accompany them the sisters provided retreatants with numerous things to think about and take to prayer. 

I shared a story of surrender about a little girl and her pearls (Read the whole story here: http://www.godswork.org/emailmessage21.htm ) and invited everyone to an encounter with Christ, and through Him the Father.  After all, when we know God wants the best for us we can more readily hand over what we are clinging on to. 


Sr. Carrie Ann helped us all to have a better understanding
of suffering and how to concretely “offer up” our sufferings with Christ on the cross. 

At the end of the day all of the retreatants were able to spend an hour before the Lord in Eucharistic Adoration and through times of silence and a few songs, they were invited encounter the Living God and offer Him what was on their hearts.

While the entire day was filled with countless graces, many were particularly blessed by a time of being prayed with individually.  It was such a sacred time for each retreatant to hear God speaking words of encouragement just for them. 

Healing tears were shed, hearts were lifted, and lives were changed.


What was so beautiful for me (and I think I can speak for all of the sisters in this) was to have the opportunity to open our home and share our place of prayer and see before our very eyes God’s faithfulness to His words “If you build it, they will come” .  We pray that many more will come and encounter God’s merciful love!
-Sr. Sophia Grace Huschka 
All of the talks were recorded!
Click here to listen
This afternoon I was walking along our driveway with Sr. Sarah Marie, enjoying the beautiful sunshine. At one point, we saw a sister walking toward us, fixing all her attention on the precious object in her hands. As she approached, we realized she held a ciborium in her left hand and a tall tabernacle candle in her right.

She was processing with our Eucharistic Lord from our main chapel to a hermitage chapel down the road. Sr. Sarah Marie and I knelt and silently adored as He passed.

It was only later that I realized - today is Palm Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a colt. "Many people," according to Mark's Gospel, "spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. Those preceding him as well as those following kept crying out: 'Hosanna!'"

We were part of this procession! Jesus, the King of kings, is worthy of a royal welcome. But He chooses to come to us humbly, just as He did in Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago. He comes silently, hidden and small. He lets us carry Him in our human hands and even consume Him as food.



At the name of Jesus, at the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, may every knee bend. May we be especially grateful this week for Jesus' astounding humility as we commemorate the first Eucharist. "We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that we spread before him," the second reading from Matins says today. Let us lay down our very lives in worship of this humble God.

-Sr. Mary Gemma, T.O.R.
”The old traditional fairy story is the story of God and the world: the King’s son who comes dressed as a beggar to win a poor girl for His bride, putting off his crown and His royal robes and coming empty-handed, in order that she may receive Him without fear and may love Him for Himself alone”. – Caryll Houselander
Today the greatest wedding that has ever taken place and that ever will take place happened in the womb of Our Lady. Divinity emptied Himself into the bridal chamber of her womb and she welcomed this humble seed with a receptivity like no other in the name of humanity.

Humanity and divinity are ETERNALLY wedded and entwined today and will FOREVER be inseparable in the tiny embryo of Jesus Christ!

Do we really know what this means? HE HAS MARRIED US!

I can never stop marveling at this great mystery. It is why I became a sister- to witness that He is in love with us as a bridegroom with His bride!

Do we really know the depths to which our God lowered Himself? I don't think we will fully understand until heaven.

I LOVE how Caryll Houselander describes this:

Christ asked Mary of Nazareth for her human nature. For her littleness, her limitations, flesh and blood and bone, five senses, hands and feet, a human heart.

 He who was invulnerable, asked to be able to feel cold and heat, hunger and thirst, weariness and pain. He who had all things and had made all things, asked to be able to be poor and to labour with His hands and look with wonder at the wild flowers. He who was wholly sufficient to Himself asked Mary to give Him a heart that might be broken.

 Mary answered "yes". To make His body she gave her body, for His humanity, her humanity. Our Lady answered "yes" to Christ; she answered for us all; she was quite human. Had He asked her for anything other than her littleness she could not have given it, because she had nothing else. 

I cannot read this enough ... it never gets old to me. Her littleness and limitations provided a home for the King of the universe. This is also true of ME (and you)! My littleness and limitations can be wedded to the divine-such a beautiful mystery! He MUST be in love!

May we welcome Him into our littleness and limitations today, opening our hearts wide so that new life may be conceived within us... allowing heaven to enter earth and transform our reality!

Stay tuned for the rest of this romance which will unfold next week beginning on Holy Thursday...

 -Sr. Thérèse Marie Iglesias

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