HE IS RISEN INDEED!!!

I Thirst †M
Holy Mary, Mother of God: enclose us in your heart and pray in us!

Almost nine weeks here in Tijuana as a Candidate to the MC Fathers...it is hard to believe it until I think of how much there is to say and share with all of you. I begin as I will end, by saying that my heart is at peace and I am experiencing a powerful freedom to be joyful and myself every day...almost as if I did not truly know what that was before...which even here some define as...CRAZY Colombian.

Thank God for the gift of adaptation- I have gotten used to most things here, but some days what seems to be so natural becomes extremely challenging. I allow my mind to wander, into memories that trigger sadness or that make me focus on my self-will, and move me to question why I left Honduras or people of my life before my missionary life began almost 2 years ago. But that is part of the daily choice to follow and live in God’s will and to sacrifice as He has so perfectly done for us. All this to say, that I miss you, but I rejoice in that very fact! “Love grows through Love” (SS Benedict XVI).

I have so many wonderful opportunities to be with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament each day and He puts names and faces in my thoughts all the time. I do not think I had spent so much time rejoicing and suffering spiritually as I enter the realities of so many I am blest to know! But it is always a temptation to remember and think, instead of remember and pray. The former leads me to see distance as a negative since I do not get to be “in the front row of your lives as God moves in them,” but the latter shows me the blessing that it is to carry so many hearts and souls, so much lived and shared into a spiritual dimension of union with God, where the only place to advance in this journey is towards the King in eternity! Even if I never see many of you again, I begin to understand how true love is supposed to work...we will know for sure how every relationship was perfected, as we fought to be faithful, in the love of God when we enter and remain in His Eternal, Heavenly Presence... “I can only imagine.”
There is an interior battle every day, and I am learning most things from the Grace that pulls me up and cleans me up every time I fall, every time I find mistakes and realize the destructive pollution in my heart and mind!

“For just as surely as man begins to trust in his own abilities, so surely has he taken the first step on the road to ultimate failure. And the greatest Grace God can give such a man is to send him a trial he cannot bear with his own powers- and then sustain him with His Grace so he may endure to the end and be saved”! –Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J. –“He Leadeth Me”

Daily life is wonderful; weeks are full of every sort of activity and personal time to do...every sort of activity. I pray or laugh most of the day, no matter what we are doing...oh and eat! The food is certainly a daily opportunity for purification...not because it is bad, but because you have to be a saint to have self-control before such exquisite Mexican flavors!!!! Jajaja (hahaha)...rri rri rri. So I eat a lot! :-)

Anyway...I have spent long periods of time meditating on the Will of God ruling over the truly short time we have on earth to know, love and serve Him, to “enter the holes”, glorify the King of Kings and be sanctified. My heart has been shifting from focusing on something truly overwhelming, like the thought of having 10 years of formation ahead, to a more relaxed and simple outlook based on the “day-at-a-time” experience. I am so much freer as I begin to get the point, and understand the saints, and let Love run free through me, instead of trying to be and do anything on my own will and power! Obviously anything St. Therese or Mother Teresa ever said and lived in respect to the “little way” is far beyond me, (I have only began) but I have hope to follow the lead as I begin to settle and realize that I am living God’s will, and it is something concrete, happening right now! To fight His will, or keep waiting for some great event or heroic occurrence, ( which may or may not come) will keep me from entering fully into this life – “iuxta crucem cum Maria” (Next to the Cross with Mary), and will blind me from receiving all the Grace He wills and pours out every second! So I guess, I am simply worrying much less...I am here...to do God’s will, and as hard as it is to be a wretched sinner with a supernatural call, I am choosing to be led and putting all my gifts to use, making sure it is for God first!
I have felt such powerful embrace and comfort from Mother Mary who reminds me of the love of Jesus everyday...I Thirst.
“Deus sitit sitiri” (God thirsts to be thirsted for) –St. Augustine of Hippo

When we let Mary hug us the stains of the soul glow, one might say. So many habits that are formed through the years, good ones and bad ones, become so evident and it is tough to change or eliminate many of them for the sake of poverty, chastity, obedience and charity, but necessary if the goal remains eternal. God is stripping the simple Juan Pablo which He created, from all of the old, complicated garments, which may have even appeared fertile to the outsider, but in reality obscure things and distract him from His Creator and first Love. Cooking from scratch with spoiled ingredients!

“What is required for growth is an attitude of acceptance and openness to the will of God, rather than some planned approach or calculated method. Even ascetical practices such as penances, fasting and mortifications can be hindrances rather than helps if they are self-imposed. Striving instead to eliminate all self-will, to accept God’s will revealed in the circumstances of daily life, is the surest way to achieve growth in conformity to the will of God. It will provide more than enough virtue to be practiced, suffering to be sustained, pain to be borne; more importantly still, it will make us fit instruments to achieve His designs, not only for our own salvation but for others as well. The service of God must take preference over all else.”
-Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J

The MC Family is amazing! There is a very strong brotherhood growing and we are frequently calling one another back to the reason why we came, and to the focus of this life as religious and, God willing, future priests: DEUS CARITAS EST! And HE THIRSTS FOR LOVE! And so many sisters around Tijuana!

I will end by saying that it is quite powerful to see how free and full-hearted service to the poorest of the poor is one and the same with everything else that we do as Missionaries of Charity. Prayer, community, poverty, penance and apostolate become a harmony not just in the sense that it becomes a routine, but rather by the discovery that adoring Jesus, living in fraternal community, living poverty, talking, inviting and praying inside awful city sewer tunnels, serving the Holy Mass, playing with the kids of the slums, leading worship, or preaching to the youth in very poor neighborhoods, is all meant to be a response of the amazing Love received from Jesus on the Cross, in the Blessed Sacrament, the mystery of annihilation and love, the lamb of God in the consecrated bread; it is the response of offering it all back to Him through the tender hands of Mary, our Immaculate Mother!
“Everything in MC is meant to satiate the Thirst of Jesus” –MT
Perhaps I had served the Lord many times before, but it was always so easy to separate prayer from ministry after the “AMEN”. Once things are going I easily start relying on my “own” time and abilities, as if God was not the absolute Provider!
In a sense, not to trust His Fatherhood or to deny it with pride and self-will is an act of blasphemy. So the Sacrament of Confession and Reconciliation has become of primordial importance in my days! PRAISE HIM! MISERICORDIA...¡qué palabrota!

It is purely from my heart to say that I know and feel your prayers, I breathe them. They are quenching me and helping me move on with courage. As I learn to just be, and to be all for Jesus through and deep within the Immaculate Heart of Mary I love you more purely and I am closer to you than ever before my dear friends and family.

Thank God for you and thanks for so many prayers and sacrifices. I beg you to keep them up!
May the words of the elder come to pass in your today:

“...He who sits on the throne will give them shelter.
Never again shall they know hunger or thirst,
Nor shall the sun or its heat beat down on them,
For the Lamb on the throne will shepherd them.
He will lead them to springs of Life-giving waters,
And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
-Revelations 7, 15-17

“Praise and Glory, wisdom and thanksgiving and honor, power and might, to our God forever and ever. AMEN!”
Be all for Jesus, through Mary. Be Holy!
PS- what an amazing blessing and gift from above! My brother Aaron Galvez has arrived and entered candidacy...it has begun! GGGRRRAAAAAAAAUR!

- Juan Pablo RM