Behold the Wood of the Cross

Born in 1972 in Itajai in the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil, Eduardo Ferreira found an image of Our Lady of Aparecida in the courtyard of the family house on January 6, 1983. On October 12, 1987, four days after his First Communion, Eduardo and his sister Eliete were praying in front of this image when Eduardo saw a blue light emerging from it and illuminating the room. On February 12, 1988, he had his first vision of the Virgin Mary in grotto alongside 54 roses. Before the Virgin’s feet, there was a small stream where a snake appeared and wanted to jump in the water, so Our Lady trampled it with her foot. The snake writhed all over, trying to escape. In this vision that lasted about five minutes, the Virgin Mary introduced herself as the Lady of the Rosary.

Apparitions subsequently occurred almost daily. On October 23, 1995, when Eduardo was working as a nurse at a hospital in Gaspar, Santa Catarina, Jesus appeared to him in His Divine Mercy image, with rays emanating from His wounds. He spoke of his concern for humanity and said that He sends His Holy Mother to earth to alert His children, who are heading for destruction. Jesus said:

Listen carefully, son!

When my Mother came to earth in Fatima to tell you about the punishments that humanity would endure, nobody wanted to hear it. Now she comes to tell you about the punishments that humanity will suffer because they did not listen to the messages that she gave them (…) in 1917.

Pay more attention to the things of heaven and let the voice of the Holy Spirit guide you. Close your ears to earthly and worldly things. All of this and much more you must leave to follow Me. Do you want to come with Me? Then come and follow Me.

Assist the poor and abandoned minors. Where are your works? How can they receive the reward? Come and follow me.

I bless you with all My Love +. 

In this hospital in Gaspar, Our Lady also showed Eduardo how much she suffers when she sees a baby being aborted. On June 27, 1995, she appeared during the night, dictating a message and taught Brother Eduardo a prayer that softens God’s judgment against the crimes of abortion. “Jesus and Mary, grant us divine forgiveness and mercy.”

Starting in February 1997 and still continuing, the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Eduardo Ferreira occur regularly on the 12th of each month, and occasionally on other dates. Eduardo received the stigmata on February 2, 1996, and around that same time, he came into contact with a second visionary, Alceu Martins Paz Junior (born in 1977), whose mystical experiences included an apparition of the Virgin Mary on July 9, 1996. The two boys began evangelizing together but faced considerable opposition, with Eduardo receiving death threats, including from members of his family. After a period during which he was effectively homeless, Eduardo eventually settled in São José dos Pinhais in the state of Paraná in 1997, where he still resides, and where a sanctuary has been built, as can be seen in the videos of the apparitions.

Mary appears in these apparitions as “Rosa Mystica,” a title under which she appeared to nurse Pierina Gilli in Montichiari-Fontanelle (1947), an event to which the Brazilian apparitions to Eduardo and Junior refer repeatedly. The apparitions have been marked by a large number of unexplained phenomena, which resemble those observed in other similar sites: lacrimations of blood from a statue of the Virgin (as in Civitavecchia or Trevignano Romano), the “dance of the sun” (as in Fatima or Medjugorje), the image of Mary inexplicably “printed” in petals (as in Lipa in the Philippines in 1948) … Pictures of these petals can be seen here: https://en.rosamisticarainhadapaz.com/sinais In the messages, we also find references to numerous Marian apparitions of the past. Some of these have been dismissed by the Church (Montichiari, Ghiaie di Bonate, Biding, Kerizinen…), but have nonetheless attracted growing interest on the part of serious researchers concerned with establishing historical truth and rehabilitating mystics who may have been unjustly condemned.

The principal themes of the messages to Eduardo Ferreira (more than 8000 to date) are convergent with the majority of other serious contemporary prophetic sources. They have gained considerable attention in recent months due to a long message received by Eduardo in Heede, Germany in 2015, the site of apparitions to four children just prior to World War II. This message, viewed over 3 million times on YouTube, seems to have predicted the outbreak of Covid-19.

The experiences of Manuela Strack (born in 1967) in Sievernich, Germany (25 km from Cologne in the diocese of Aachen) can be divided into two phases. Manuela, whose alleged mystical experiences began in childhood and intensified from 1996 onwards, first claimed to have received a large number of messages from Our Lady, Jesus, and the saints between 2000 and 2005, including locutions of a surprising theological and poetic density which she attributed to St. Teresa of Avila. Twenty-five “public” Marian apparitions took place between 2000 and 2002: in the first of these, the Mother of God asked Manuela, “Will you become a living Rosary for me? I am Mary, the Immaculate.” She also revealed to her that apparitions had already occurred in Sievernich during the Second World War but were hidden by the Nazis (the parish priest, Fr. Alexander Heinrich Alef, was an opponent of Hitler and died in a concentration camp).

The messages received in this first cycle of apparitions emphasize—in line with many other serious prophetic sources—the importance of the sacraments, the loss of faith in Europe, the dangers of theological modernism (including plans for the abolition of the Eucharist), and the coming of events predicted in Fatima.

The second phase in Sievernich began on November 5, 2018, with the appearance of the Child Jesus as the Infant of Prague (a form He had already taken in 2001). In this second ongoing cycle of apparitions, a central place is accorded to devotion to the Precious Blood of Jesus, the eschatological character of which is emphasized (Rev. 19:13: “He is clothed with a mantle dipped in blood”). Simultaneously Child and King, Jesus promises to rule His faithful with a golden scepter, while for those who do not want to welcome him, He will rule with a scepter of iron.

In the messages, there are references not only to many biblical passages—with a particular emphasis on the Old Testament prophets—but also to the mystics of the Church. The apparitions especially speak about the “Apostles of the Last Times” described by St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716): the Child Jesus appears several times with the “Golden Book,” the Treatise of the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary of the famous Breton preacher whose writings were forgotten for over a century after his death prior to their re-discovery in the mid-19th century. There is also a reference to The Warning prophesied in Garabandal (1961-1965), with the Child Jesus pronouncing the Spanish word “Aviso” when describing the prophecy; the fact that Manuela Strack did not understand this allusion (thinking that the word was Portuguese) strongly suggests that this was indeed a locution heard from “outside” rather than coming from her own imagination.

In certain messages attributed to Jesus and St. Michael the Archangel, we find repeated admonitions concerning the gravity of legislation against God’s law (abortion…), the threat posed by revisionist German theology and abdication of pastoral responsibility on the part of the clergy. The locutions include a striking symbolic interpretation of the burning of Notre Dame in Paris in 2019 as well as warnings about an armed conflict involving the United States, Russia, and Ukraine that could endanger the whole world (message of April 25, 2021). A message given in December 2019 and revealed on May 29, 2020 announced “three difficult years” to come.

A book on the Sievernich apparitions, In Namen des Kostbaren Blutes (In the Name of the Precious Blood), was published in January 2022, with commentary on the messages being provided by the German journalist Michael Hesemann, a specialist in church history.

In 1996, an anonymous woman in Rome, referred to as “Little Mary” (Piccola Maria) began receiving the locutions known as “Drops of Light” (Gocce di Luce), of which the well-known Italian publishers Edizioni Segno issued 10 volumes in book form, the latest dating from 2017, although the messages are ongoing. The only information given about the recipient is that she is a simple housewife and mother who lives in poverty and hiddenness. The locutions, attributed to Jesus, are predominantly catecheses on the Mass readings for the day, but sometimes touch on external events. For those familiar with Catholic mystical literature of the modern era, the tone and highly-structural, Scripturally dense content resemble the lengthy pedagogical discourses of the Lord found in the writings of Luisa Piccarreta or Don Ottavio Michelini.

___________________________

Introduction to Drops of Light (Gocce di Luce) written by “Little Mary,” as ordered by her spiritual director—translated from the Italian. 

Ave Maria!

May 28, 2020

I am writing this letter in obedience to my spiritual father, who has asked me many times to explain the story of “Drops of Light” (Gocce di Luce), i.e. how it all began.

What is the story of “Drops of Light?” The first question to be asked, and which I asked myself, is: “Why me, Lord? How does this spiritual phenomenon come into my heart?”

In the fullness of time, I have come to be able to describe it, how it is possible for me, and how God’s help is present.

It began like this. For many years beforehand, after, you might say, rediscovering faith, following a period of distance in my early youth and then a deeper encounter with the person of Jesus, it had been happening to me that, in prayer, in front of holy images, in churches, beside the tombs of saints, or when prayer had been intense, intimate, particularly while meditating on the mysteries of the Lord’s Passion, the speech of another would enter into my heart. It was also the answer to my questions, and I understood that this had to be coming from something in the realm of the spirit.

However, I tried not to give weight to this phenomenon and to leave it aside, not attaching any importance to it. After the moment had passed, I tried to forget and thought it was an autosuggestion. Later on, however, since it persisted, I began to think about it, and so I went to ask a priest for enlightenment. But after outlining the problem, I was told that I was sick and that I ought to go to a specialist in the field, who told me that I was being harassed by the devil and that I therefore required blessings and exorcisms.

And I followed the advice of various priests, but no evil came out – neither from my psyche, nor from the evil one, and I said again to myself, “Lord, what do You want from me? If all this is not of You, take it away from me.” Enlightened, I think, I then started conversing, talking with Jesus in the Eucharist, and I said, “Here in the Eucharist there is only God, and there is therefore no deception.” And in receiving Him, I would say: “Lord, I don’t hear anything. Let me hear, answer me, make me understand.”

And so, almost without even realizing it, in a very natural way, I readied myself to listen, leaving my heart in silence so that He would have all the space and attention, and I began to listen for short conversations—similar to thoughts that are words suggested in the heart—a thought that speaks: it speaks and I understand whether it is a male or female voice, whether it is Jesus or sometimes Our Lady, or a saint. It is a thought that expresses itself and loves.

Communion after Communion, the talks became longer, and I grew more apt at receiving, like a child who is first taught with little, short words, and who, when their understanding grows, can then move on to more extended and complete dialogues.

During Holy Mass, as I listen to the Holy Word, the poor woman of little faith, worried, says within me, “But what can be said about this word?” Yet at the end of the reading, the Lord already starts His teaching, nonetheless always leaving me free to listen to Him and receive Him (according to my state of mind and whether I wish to listen to the priest’s homily), or not, because it may be impossible for me due to events or people.

This voice never estranges me from what I experience. The Holy Mass ensues. He speaks and I listen, I participate. Only during the consecration is there a silence of adoration. It has happened to me—often, but not always—depending on certain periods, that it would become difficult for me to reach the altar, to receive Jesus, and on seeing others queuing serenely, I sometimes become tormented. I struggle, I am laid low by a kind of combat, and I almost try to run. The finishing line for receiving Communion seems so distant; I try to hide my discomfort as much as possible, red-faced and sweating, like someone who has made a great conquest, and I offer my humiliation to the Lord. Having arrived, receiving Him, I joyfully say to Him, “We did it again this time.” Or, because the distance is so arduous for me—even if it only a matter of a few meters, I say to Him from afar, “Help me, let no one notice.” This is why I love more intimate weekday Masses much more than big celebrations in the midst of crowds.

How many times have I said to myself, “No, not today, I’ll stay seated so I don’t have to face so much discomfort and struggle,” but then someone strong pushes me, I feel like a coward towards my Love and I go. As soon as I take Communion, I offer Him my intentions, and He accepts them and gives His blessing, and then He begins: “My little Mary.” It is like rain, an avalanche pouring down on me, confirming the discourse that had already begun earlier during Holy Mass, deepening it, amplifying it.

He pours a river into me, which I am unable to contain fully. The content written down afterwards is faithful to it: the words heard are those, but not all of them. I am not always able to identify them completely without error as they were spoken to me, and I would not be able to retain them in my heart and memory, were it not for God’s grace to sustain me and to recall them.

Jesus in the Eucharist adapts Himself to our possibilities and cognitive capacities and to the rhythm of the liturgy, although His speech continues in the heart, even during what should be the silence of thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the latter is accompanied by a lot of distraction, a communal murmuring, many human words, and there are also the announcements of the priest that interrupt it. In order to hold on to such a treasure and not disperse it, you have to meditate on it within you all the way home, so as to be able to transcribe it more faithfully, and escape from the church, as after Mass everything—noise, greetings—tends to make you forget it, whereas Jesus is still in your heart, already forgotten.

God reveals Himself in silence, and it is often a torment to meditate and remain closed within His intimacy while all around is distraction and noise, and one must struggle, remaining on the sidelines, when instead good souls often come to disturb you continually, in order to converse with you. How good is the Lord who gives help and graces in all of this for the preservation of His work, which is precisely intended to teach that, even above communal prayer and fellowship, He who is a God in love with His creatures that we all are, seeks intimacy and communion.

I have been writing all of this [these locutions] down for 25 years now, on my way home after Holy Mass on wobbly buses, sitting on the church steps being looked at suspiciously, hiding in the bathroom or running to get home and locking myself in my room, away from the pressing demands of family knocking insistently, seeking my services and dinner.

I have said to myself a thousand times, “But why me, Lord? You know full well that I am not a saint.” When I read the stories of some saints I cringe and say, “What a gulf there is between me and them!” I am neither better nor worse than others, I am just an ordinary person about whom you would not notice anything different if you looked at me. I am not even suited to this. I have not studied anything about such matters apart from the little catechism that I had as a child. I have no [special] means: I only write, I neither use nor have computers; until now, I have not even had a cell phone or anything, you might say, more technological. I read about what was being published, but only as reported to me by my spiritual father.

There are souls who are more beautiful, more sacrificial and who have greater merit—holy souls. I have many faults. I still complain when things do not go as I would like.

Why me? I think that it is precisely because I am a nobody. The world does not see me. I have nothing to present, not even virtues and merits, meaning that only God can pick me out and elevate me. Who could write such things in such quantities? I am only a poor and ignorant person. I have only been a housewife, and I think God wants to say to me and to everyone, “I do not come for those who are already saints, but I come for poor sinners—limited, frail but loved.” He does not come to me and to you because we are deserving, but because we are needy, and to me among many who receive other charisms, he gives one in which He comes to say: “This gift I give to you, in order to say that I would like to do this with each one of you.”

I call this [her locutions] a diary, one beginning in 1996 in the early years of “Drops of Light,” with the Lord initiating a discourse of union and friendship, but one that He wants to offer to everyone. He calls us to an encounter, to establish a relationship, for [Him and] us to know one another in order to communicate through mutual participation, meaning that we into fusion, loving intimacy.

The dialogues are repetitive, just like love that never tires is repetitive and loves to say, “I love you.” It means understanding how He, by entering into one-on-one contact, wants to conquer your heart, and once it is conquered, there is a perpetual wedding. If this encounter does not occur first, if there is no prior listening, then there is no adherence to his teaching. Subsequently, things go from “you” [singular] to “you” [plural], as [more] children are born from a loving relationship, who must experience the same familiarity to participate.

And He continues to teach, probing the Gospel and enriching it, because, as He says, divine wisdom is infinite, as is His knowledge. What Jesus comes to say to me is for everyone: He says it to you as well, and each person is a “little Mary.” If we collect so many and such drops of light, we illuminate our souls with them.

What is presented to me is indeed a God who is risen and victorious, but still crucified here, a God who is mistreated and not loved as He would like to be, especially by His Church, and that is why He particularly addresses Himself to priests, so that they would acquire this intimacy with the Lord and rediscover the experience of Our Lady’s motherhood.

They will become not only saints, but generators of souls, true fathers of countless children in the Spirit, in order to bring new birth to a Church conformed to the divine Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as They desire.

“Drops of Light”—one more great gift of mercy from heaven, from a God who does not tire of speaking to man. Do not waste it and do not simply say: “Oh how beautiful are these words,” leaving them forgotten and not lived. This is His gift, but—forgive my pride—within it, united and infused, is not only the joy of receiving it for the good that it can bring: this is also written with the blood of the sacrifice of my life. I often struggle because I first go into crisis; I become overshadowed and oppressed by the enemy, and sometimes I believe that this is is his deception, and I torment myself, asking the Lord’s forgiveness for having allowed myself to write such things. And if I had no priests to give me light and confirmation, I would not continue. What comforts me is the obedience that frees me; I do it as a service. If I am asked to continue, I will listen and write; if asked to stop, I would stop. I have no motive other than the glory of God and the good of my brothers and sisters.

This gift costs misunderstandings and abandonment on the part of those from whom one expects affection and support, precisely because they are one’s loved ones, whether they share the same faith or not. If you only knew what was unleashed at home, often in conjunction with publications of “Drops of Light.” During every month, over all these years, the price has been a bitter, yet beloved, solitude. If I have [only] been able to stand beside Jesus in this state, to collect these drops of His sweat and blood in Gethsemane, I am worth very little, which causes me regret. Help me to keep Him company.

I always say that each of us has our place in Jesus’s life journey. Some in His holy childhood, some in the work of His youth, some in His preaching, with Him in caring for and curing the sick, some crucified in a bed. My little place is in the garden, next to Him who sustains me, and while I used to become demoralized, especially when reading some narratives of the lives of the saints, which left me amazed but also frightened at such greatness and perfections, now I say, “Not all of us are born to be ships or cruise liners. There are also little boats.” The Heavenly Father also sees them. I am a little boat, and I do not think that I can be anything else, but even little boats sail and float on God’s sea, and they too have to face it, whether it is calm or whether there are raging waves, and make the same crossing; but all boats, whether small or large, are directed to the same port of holiness.

I hope that this brings good to your soul, and I embrace you with much love in Jesus and Mary. I pray for you: pray for me.

Born in El Salvador in 1954 but living in Quebec, Canada, Sulema Gomez has been receiving messages for many years, which she attributes to Jesus and the Virgin Mary. These came to wider attention with the publication of three volumes of locutions received between 2010 and 2013, entitled I Have Come to Prepare You for This Event: the Illumination of Conscience. The title is a reference to the coming “mini-judgment,” also known as The Warning, prophesied by a considerable number of mystics over several decades, foretelling a unique occurrence in the history of humanity when all people on earth (with the exception of small children) will see their spiritual state as God sees it.

One remarkable feature of Sulema’s often lengthy locutions is that she delivers them orally in fluent, literary French—a language which, outside of the ecstasies in which the messages are received, she can only speak to a rudimentary level.

After the publication of the third of these volumes, Sulema has continued to receive messages that are recorded by her husband Sabino (a former atheist who converted after a mystical experience in Medjugorje) but kept private. Since 2021, some locutions have nonetheless been made public on the internet by the specialist Swiss Francophone magazine Stella Maris and by Marcel and Christian Laflamme in Quebec.

The Catholic Church has so far made no formal pronouncement on Sulema’s messages, although she has been accompanied by priests who have prefaced her writings. Readers of contemporary private revelation will find many confirmations of material from other sources, with the overall eschatology being absolutely in line with the “prophetic consensus” of the most serious modern prophetic voices.

A full biography of Sulema and the messages she has received concerning the Illumination of All Consciences, can be found in the Amazon #1 best-seller, The Warning: Testmionies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience.

Fr. Dolindo Ruotolo (“Don” Dolindo in Italian) lived from 1882 to 1970. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 24, 1905 at the young age of 23 and dedicated his long life to prayer, penance, and the service of thousands of faithful who turned to him for guidance. Fr. Dolindo authored a monumental 33-volume commentary on every book of the Bible, called Sacred Scripture: Psychology, Commentary, Meditation, an unabridged autobiography, and left behind an extraordinary number of theological, ascetical and mystical writings, including penned answers to thousands of letters. Most of Fr. Dolindo’s writings have not yet been translated into English, but the work is underway. St. Padre Pio, a contemporary and friend, once said of his inspired writings, “Not a word that came from the pen of Don Dolindo should ever be lost.”

In Fr. Dolindo’s autobiography, he wrote, “I must state that in the course of my studies, I have become painfully aware of the dangerous deviation to which many modern works tend. Regrettably, it is more and more towards a German philosophy and dissident rationalism. I have attempted to counter this sad and wicked trend, not with useless discussion, but rather seeking in unison with the fathers to nurture souls in Scripture. It was not my intention to set up a counter school—to coin a term—and even less to presume the right to condemn or encroach on the studious works of others. In this the Church has jurisdiction, for She alone is the Vigilant Mother Who guides and evaluates. Instead, I have followed another way, the traditional way of the Church fathers, with the hope that this may fill the vacancy that is apparent to all today regarding the critical study of Sacred Scripture.”

Fr. Dolindo Ruotolo shared many of the same mystical gifts that Padre Pio possessed, such as bilocation, reading souls, and mystical visions. The two greatly esteemed and respected each other, considering the other a saint. When a group of pilgrims from Naples came to see Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, he told them, “Why do you come here, when you have Don Dolindo in Naples? Go to him, he’s a saint!” Directly to Don Dolindo, St. Pio once said, “The whole of paradise is in your soul.”

The two priests also shared an exceedingly heavy and humiliating cross: condemnation by the Holy Office, a now-defunct Vatican tribunal that was gravely in need of reform at the time these spiritual greats were investigated. For three decades, beginning in 1907, Fr. Dolindo was falsely accused of heresy, insanity, demonic possession, believing he was Jesus, disrespecting the pope, and more. Because of these ludicrous lies, all of Don Dolindo’s priestly faculties were removed for many years. Even after being declared innocent by the Holy Office in 1921, Church authorities refused to restore his priestly faculties. Only when Pope Pius XI intervened was his priesthood fully reinstated in 1937—thirty years after first being accused.

Don Dolindo had offered himself as victim soul for mankind. Possessing a keen understanding of the human soul, he was able to help people see the light of God, even while enduring unspeakable suffering of every kind. He prayed for everyone and suffered for everyone. He ate very little and his clothes were poor; he withstood cold and hunger and was seen walking barefoot in the snow. In his own family home, he was an undesired and often despised guest because his poverty and simplicity made the family uncomfortable.

During Lent of 1921, Don Dolindo had been brought to the Vatican for a trial, and was staying at Passionist House. Recalling this time, he wrote in his autobiography, “Every page of the volume of accusations against me is chock full of calumnies. I feel as if all the evil that desecrates the Church and obstructs the Kingdom of God has been unloaded on me.” Yet he remained faithful and resigned: “If the Church . . . wishes to immolate me entirely by pronouncing a wrongful judgment on me, I will obey with serenity, confident of doing God’s Will.”. . . “My God, may this suffering be reparation for the many offenses against You, especially from unfaithful priests.” When Don Dolindo saw the signature of one of his spiritual daughters beneath the false charges, he requited her betrayal with an increase in love.

On Holy Saturday of that week of torment, Fr. Dolindo experienced a glimpse of heaven’s light in a surprising way. While eating lunch at the Passionist House in Naples, one of the priests began reading aloud an account of Jesus’ Resurrection. Don Dolindo was deeply moved by what he heard: “Upon hearing the passages read, I felt myself interiorly aflame and wondered within myself what kind of help from God the author must have received, so as to be able to transmit such ardor and zeal to those listening!”

When the meal was finished, Fr. Dolindo raised his eyes and saw that the reading, to his astonishment, was his own book: Life of Jesus Christ! He later wrote in his autobiography, “This simple fact, along with the intense emotions I had felt at hearing the words come alive, made me understand what the words of the Good Jesus are for souls. With deep gratitude, I thanked Him for having given me His words!” Dolindo had forgotten them, but the Divine Author hadn’t.

Despite the horrible treatment he received at the Church’s hands, nothing was dearer to Fr. Dolindo than the Holy Catholic Church. He never allowed anyone in his presence to speak evil of Her, believing that God’s hand used even Her persecutions of the faithful to further His Kingdom in a way that only God could do. He professed that the Church is the Mother of Saints and only through obedience to the Catholic Church can flowers blossom for paradise; he also believed that sainthood is “a goodness bought through the bank of tears.”

While Fr. Dolindo’s writings have gifted the world—or at least, Italians—with sublime and poetic wisdom, Fr. Dolindo has also brought amusement with his self-deprecating and whimsical sense of humor. A worker of many miracles, especially for the poor and the sick, his gave his own “prescriptions,” signed with the name, “Dottor Cretinico Sciosciammocca” (Doctor Dumb Scatterbrain). These he handed to people deprived of medical care, offering out-of-the-ordinary remedies and therapy, which brought miraculous results.

When all the diagnoses and treatments of his own sicknesses failed, Don Dolindo wrote a parody of a prescription for himself and others: “Human remedy—cold kick (push yourself/do not rest too long), syrup. Supreme remedy—divine obedience to the Will of God mixed with daily drops of Hail Marys.

For the last ten years of his life, advanced in age, weakened by many illnesses and suffering from paralysis, he described himself as “the little old man of Mary Most Holy.” Don Dolindo died in Naples on November 19, 1970, in the extreme voluntary poverty he had chosen to live during his life. He told people to knock at his tomb for their needs and he would continue to answer from heaven—and he does. Today, his body rests in the parish church where he served as pastor for many years—Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Joseph of the Aged in Naples.

Content: The following is taken from the book, THE WARNING: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience, pp. 328-331:

Friar and Founder of the Legión de San José and the Co-Founder of Los Siervos Reparadores de Los Sagrados Corazones (COLOMBIA 1967-)

Friar Agustín del Divino Corazón was born in 1967 in Neira, Caldas, Colombia, on August 31, 1967. When he was a young adult, living at home and working as a schoolteacher in Manizales, Agustín says of himself, “I was shipwrecked in sin. There were so many voids in my heart that I felt the desire to seek out God.”

So, one Holy Thursday, when he was praying in his living room before a large image of the Miraculous Medal, he asked the Lord what he could do for Him the following day, Good Friday. As Agustín began meditating upon the Lord’s Passion, a voice penetrated the depths of his heart and inflamed it with love. It was sweet, masculine, unmistakable, and repeated the following words three times, “My son, take a piece of paper and write.” After the third request, Agustín found a notebook and pencil and began to write down what he was hearing. The voice told him to convert, leave his life of sin, meditate on the Lord’s Passion, and to make every Friday a Good Friday. Then suddenly, and without his understanding how, Agustín found himself on a narrow, rocky, ancient road. Jesus was walking toward him, wearing a muddy tunic covered in blood. On His shoulders, He carried a heavy, rustic cross and labored with heavy breaths from the strain. Jesus, with tears falling from His eyes, looked directly at Agustín and asked if he would help Him carry His cross, not as an imposed burden, in the way of Simon of Cyrene, but voluntarily from the heart. Agustín had complete freedom to say yes or no.

When the relics of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the 17^th century mystic who received private revelations of the Sacred Heart, were brought to Manizales, Agustín felt a strong desire to consecrate his entire life to the Lord. He knelt to venerate the saint and asked her, “Just as Jesus gave you a spark of love from His Sacred Heart, would you intercede for me to receive the same gift? Instantly, Agustín was overcome by a spiritual fire, and his soul was lifted into such ecstasy that he thought he might die from love. A few months later, Agustín began to receive locutions from the Lord, nearly every day. “You are going to write a book for me,” Jesus told him, “En las Fuentes de Mi Divino Corazón”—“In the Springs of My Divine Heart.”

But Agustín assumed that such direct communications from heaven happened only in the medieval Church. As more divine requests came, he was seized with doubts and began putting up obstacles before the Lord. It seemed impossible to him that Jesus had set His eyes on him in all his unworthiness, for such a noble and incomprehensible mission. When Agustín’s doubts were strong, he sometimes refused to write, even going so far as to tear up many of the Lord’s dictated messages. One day, Agustín asked why he was called to this work, and Jesus responded, “I have chosen you because, in your heart, I don’t find anything good. I find misery. I find nothing there.” The answer shocked and humbled Agustín, who apologized and asked for strength. The Lord further explained that through Agustín, with his spiritual and moral poverty, the Lord would show the world that He, Himself, was the source and orchestrator of Agustín’s mission, and that the He came as the Divine Physician for the sick, not the healthy.

Agustín’s locutions continued unabated and were sometimes accompanied by visions, prophecies, and words from the Blessed Virgin. From 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. he would receive messages and write them down. To his amazement, after only a year and five months, Agustín had completed eight books. He marveled at the eloquence, depth, and style of the words that flowed with ease onto his empty pages, and the Blessed Virgin said to him with tenderness, “It is because you are not a poet, you are not a dreamer, and you are not a bohemian. All you have to be is a ‘punta roma’ (a pencil tip, blunt from use) in the hands of the Lord.”

Agustín’s family was unaware of what was happening to him; his mother simply thought he had insomnia. “This is going to be a big problem,” he complained to the Lord. “When my siblings and parents find out, they’re going to think I’ve lost it.” Agustín’s books started to be disseminated in various countries, his name was being circulated, and his voice could be heard on Catholic radio stations. Priests, nuns, and laity from around the world were calling him, and he could no longer hide his gift from his family. “Please touch their hearts so that they understand,” he begged Jesus, and the Lord answered by gently showing his family that something very special and of divine origin was occurring.

At times, people would approach Agustín and ask, “How is this happening?” And then and there, Jesus would dictate to him for four or five hours straight, while Agustín would write and write and write, out of obedience. Curious, the inquisitors would wait until he had finished in order to see the resulting work. The Lord used this as proof before skeptics, because writing for more than one hour is exhausting, and writing lofty content with theological precision and poetic nuance with perfect grammar at a fast clip for four to five hours—is impossible. When using his own skills to write a letter about God, which he had done as a teacher, Agustín had to erase, rewrite, review, and repeat the process many times to arrive at one short finished piece.

The Lord said to Agustín, “I need you to let go of everything in order to be completely attached to me and to travel across the world.” Not only did Agustín do as the Lord asked of him, but he helped Jesus carry His heavy cross, voluntarily and from the heart, as the Lord had first asked of him. On June 11, 2010 (the Feast Day of the Sacred Heart), together with Fr. Pablo del Inmaculado Corazón, he founded the congregation of Los Siervos Reparadores de los Sagrados Corazones (the Servants of Reparation to the Sacred Hearts), accredited by the Archdiocese of Manizales in Colombia, which also has communities in Brazil and Peru. In addition, he became the founding brother of the Legión de San José—the Legion of St. Joseph, also dedicated to making reparation to God.

Between 2007 and 2014, the Lord and the Blessed Mother dictated a total of forty-five books to Agustín, who now bears the religious name that Jesus gave to him: Friar Agustín del Divino Corazón, SRSC. His writings of locutions have passed the scrutiny of many theologians and bishops and received the Imprimatur from the diocese of Lurin in Peru, and his book Apostolado de Reparación has received Imprimaturs and the Nihil Obstat from bishops in Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. His books and messages have spread to over thirty countries and concern the “apostles of the end times”—a term that Agustín initially considered suspicious and linked to the New Age, until the Lord enlightened his understanding. As Agustín, himself, wrote in the preface to his first book, En las Fuentes de Mi Divino Corazón, the Lord’s messages “invite us to a true conversion and an absolute surrender to the Divine Will under the protection of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary—devotion for the final days of the end times.”­[i]

[i] Agustín del Divino Corazón, Preambulo, En las Fuentes de Mi Divino Corazón, Tomo 1: Hallaréis Mensajes de Amor, https://web.archive.org/web/20110418211036/http:/ www.ejercitovictoriosodeloscorazonestriunfantes.com/libros/1_EnlasFuentesdeMiDivinoCorazonI.pdf, accessed March 12, 2022.

Video talks: “Agustín del Divino Corazón – Seminario de Sanación Parte” 1/16, 2/16, 5/16, YouTube.com, posted by AmorSantoyDivino, October 2-5, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yIDaJKqfhU&list=PL1B52BCA9D3A85588, accessed February 2, 2022.

Video interview: “Agustín del Divino Corazón -Entrevista,” gloria.tv, posted October 11, 2014 by Adeste Fideles, https://www.gloria.tv/post/amXcHmT2Jesm4kAKD6RsGsNRp, accessed March 12, 2022.

“Agustín del Divino Corazón (1967-…) Serviteurs de Réparation aux Sacrés-Coeurs,” Prophéties pour Notre Temps, https://www.prophetiespournotretemps.com/les-differentes-propheties-pour-notre-temps/voix-prophetiques-historiques/autres-cas-credibles/agustin-del-divino-corazon-1967-serviteurs-de-reparation-aux-sacres-coeurs/, accessed March 12, 2022.

I was born Lilla Marie Lottinger, into a Catholic family. Baptized as an infant, I grew up a cultural Catholic, but liken my faith for the first two decades to ordering a lobster and being served just the shell. I knew the rules and obligations, but was missing the meat—a personal relationship with the Living God.

As prophesied by Pope Leo XIII, God allowed Satan to have 100 years of greater power, and I lived my youth smack dab in the middle of that time. Tools in in the devil’s box helped pave a broad road of deception. I was drawn in and formed by television, radio, movies, Hollywood, project mockingbird, fake news, and propaganda with a gravely evil agenda, leading me further away from a God-centered life and ever closer to a self-centered life of living out of my human will apart from God’s Divine Will.

Following high school, I attended Louisiana State University (LSU), the party school of the south. No longer attending church, I dove into the party scene even more than I had in high school. When I graduated college, there was an emptiness inside. “What is the purpose in life?” Now with a journalism degree, I began working full time for my father’s newspaper, but about a year in, that empty feeling only grew. I was weighed down and depressed. Nothing was fulfilling me. “I know,” I thought. “I will go to Hollywood in hopes of being a movie director (broadcast journalism class had been my favorite). Maybe then I’ll find purpose and fulfillment.”

Just before leaving for Hollywood, my father asked me to write one last article for the paper by interviewing a couple who had just returned from Medjugorje. Through my writing that article, Our Heavenly Mother stepped in, “tapped me on the shoulder,” and said, “Lilla, this is the purpose in life for which you are searching,” as she “pointed” to her Son.

I still picked up and moved to Hollywood, but the whole way there my heart was changing because learning about Medjugorje inspired me to begin living Mary’s messages: a return to the Church, the Rosary, a personal relationship with God, etc. God plopped me in the center of the movie industry with an out-of-the-blue job at Burbank Studios, the home of Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures. I had far from “made it,” but it was a good foot in the door. I was now surrounded by famous actors and actresses, and the latest popular movies and tv shows were filmed around me.

It is as though God wanted to show me, all the more: “This isn’t where it’s at.” I had begun going to daily Mass, praying daily Rosaries, and attending weekly prayer meetings. At one prayer meeting, I was prayed with and experienced a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit, after which Scripture came so alive. My empty void within began to be filled with the love of God.

I stayed in Hollywood for five months, but I just wanted to know God better; so, while my friends and family members were coming to visit because of excitement about the movie industry, my excitement was now about God. So, I returned from L.A. to LA (Louisiana), to take the next steps to grow in communion with God.

Now in New Orleans, I got involved with faith-filled Catholic prayer groups and learned more about the Holy Spirit and Catholic life. A young adult group was going to Medjugorje and invited me to go. I had a nice time there, though with little spiritual consolation; however, a book jumped out at me in a bookstore there: Pray with the Heart. It became very significant for me, because it taught me to pray more from my heart than just my lips and intellect.

About a week after returning from Medjugorje, I had a most profound experience of God, greater than the one in Hollywood. I experienced God the Father in an overwhelmingly personal way. Filled with His love, I felt a communion with Him as never before. “I can’t believe Who God is,” I thought to myself, “and nobody knows this! (If people knew, they would certainly say something). I wanted to shout from the mountaintops to everyone, “God is alive!!!” I felt a little like St. Paul when he was knocked off his horse, or perhaps like Adam and Eve in the Garden before the fall as they “walked with God.” I experienced a deep communion with Him and a clear knowing of His Will. I didn’t need to eat anything I was so sated with His Love.

After about two weeks, this profound experience began to dwindle, and God was leaving me more and more to myself, with a dryness. I cried out, “God I just want to know you better!” Not long after, a friend called me up and asked if I had ever been to a perpetual adoration chapel. I wasn’t familiar with Jesus in the monstrance; but when he took me to the Chapel and I walked in, I couldn’t believe it. I experienced a grace to know that Jesus was truly present there. I said to the Lord, “Jesus, I can’t believe you are here, and I can come any time to be with you!” I started going to Adoration two to four hours a day just to be with Jesus. It was like looking into a mirror and coming to know my true identity in Christ. Not that I always felt consolation in prayer, because at times it was dry. But I knew I had found the “pearl of great price,” and I wanted to sell everything to have it.

Up to this point in my life (now at 24), I had dated many guys and desired to get married because I longed for intimacy in life. I had a jaded image of sisters and nuns and thought that such a life was more for those who couldn’t find a husband or were just unpopular or boring. The thought of being the Bride of Christ was also very foreign to me: “How can you be the bride of someone you can’t see, hear or feel?” I wondered. But, as I spent quiet time with Jesus, I began to see Him with my spiritual eyes, to hear Him in the silence of my heart, and feel Him in the depth of my soul. I began to say, “Jesus, I really could be your bride!” Not only could I, but I developed a longing to be. I began to realize that no earthly husband could sate this deep crevasse of longing that had been awakened within.

As I bring my story to a close, this sharing would be very lacking if I didn’t include the “golden thread” woven throughout, which is Mary. Early on in my conversion, a couple of Medjugorje messages that I read especially stood out. One of them was “Abandon yourself totally to me, and I will lead you in God’s perfect Will.” I was so clueless in knowing God’s perfect Will for my life, and so I said, “Ok, Mother, I give you my life!” This was my first consecration to Mary’s Immaculate Heart. The saints say that when we consecrate our lives to Mary, we enter life in the fast lane to God; the purpose is to help us live wholeheartedly our baptismal vows, an intimate union with the indwelling presence of our Triune God. And that is exactly what happened.

The other message that especially struck me was when Mary appeared to one of the visionaries and said, “You see me, so you believe, but I am just as present with anyone who calls upon me, and blessed are those who do not see but believe.” When I heard this, I began holding Mary to it. I would exercise my spiritual senses and become aware of her presence with me throughout the day, whether I was driving in the car, working . . . praying. . . And Mary has remained faithful to this day.

Along with this, someone, early on in my conversion, gave me the Marian Movement of Priests Blue Book, Our Lady Speaks to Her Beloved Priests, by Servant of God Don Stefano Gobbi (which has 21+ Imprimaturs). The messages in this book, spoken from Mary’s Immaculate Heart in locutions to Fr. Gobbi, have played a profound role in my formation through the years. They are a type of commentary on Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and Catholic doctrine, in light of our times.

I first entered the consecrated life in 1990. I spend thirteen years were with the Franciscan Sisters, TOR, out of Steubenville, as well as time in other communities. Then I was led through the encouragement and blessing of superiors, spiritual directors, mentors, and a bishop, to respond to the graces and promptings of God in my life. In 2004, I began Missionaries of the Our Mother of the Eucharist, a non-profit 501c3 religious organization, as an avenue to spread devotion to the Two Pillars of the Eucharist and Mary and respond fully to these two flames that have burned in my heart. For many years now I have been a Canon 603 Hermit, which allows me to flourish in the four key charisms of my spiritual life: Eucharistic, Marian, Contemplative and Receptive (disposed to inner-healing and human/spiritual integration).

All for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls!

Together with Sr. Mary Clare, Sr. Charista Maria is a MOME hermit, a Canon 603 Hermit under her Diocesan Bishop, with an emphasis on spiritual works of mercy; supported by the non-profit religious organization: MISSIONARIES OF OUR MOTHER OF THE EUCHARIST

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My name is Vickie Leigh S. Smith, M.Ed. I am a wife and mother of four, serving as an inspirational Catholic speaker and teacher in the ministry of healing and deliverance. My life is anchored in God’s Providence, which led me onto a path of profound transformation. Initially, I was trained and employed as a behaviorist, but before I could help others move from fear-based living to freedom, I discovered that I first needed healing myself—healing from past traumas, spiritual bondage, and a broken language of living as a victim. Through the sovereign power of Jesus, I experienced firsthand what it means to contend for healing, conversion, and deliverance. The Holy Spirit became my guide, the Blessed Virgin my intercessor, and the Holy Name of Jesus my stronghold. It was through this divine choreography that the Lord positioned me to integrate my education as a behaviorist with my life experience. My journey of transformation would impact the mission to which He was calling me. Little did I know, I would one day be helping others heal, as well.

My healing journey began long before I stepped fully into ministry. I haven’t always been Catholic. I was raised Lutheran, and in my search for healing, I looked for any church or modality that had the word “healing” attached to its name. This, unfortunately, opened doors that I would later need to close through deliverance. Receiving no answers, I cried out to Jesus in the midst of trauma wounds from the past, depression, debilitating migraines, and emotional heaviness. Jesus answered my cry in the most unexpected way—He sent His Mother! I began hearing a woman’s voice speaking within me saying, “Go to the Catholic Church.” Her prompting was persistent. So, I drove to the closest Catholic church, opened the doors, and took a seat. I sensed holiness in this place. Later I would discover that this was because Jesus was with me, in the Tabernacle. I was on holy ground. But what did it mean? Was I to become Catholic?

The woman’s voice continued with urgings that stirred my spirit. Repeatedly, I would drive to Catholic churches trying to understand this interior call. “The Woman,” I later discovered, was the Blessed Virgin Mary. Step by step, she was taking me by the hand to the Divine Physician for my conversion and healing, which came in layers and seasons. Light began to shine in my dark world, and in time, the wounds of my past no longer defined me.

God began to use me, despite the fact that I did not know much about Catholicism, the saints and mystics, nor even about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Jesus would use my desire to heal others, filling in the blanks of my understanding. By this time, I had developed an insatiable appetite to serve Jesus and to love souls. In 1999, while on a tennis court, I heard a woman complaining of great pain. The Lord’s voice in my interior spoke to me and said, “Go to her.” So, I did. I only wanted to help. Jesus guided my movements and my words to help the woman in pain. At first, she objected, saying that nothing had helped her in the past—not doctors, medicine, or physical therapy. But the Lord’s persistent voice within me directed me to place one of my hands on her neck and the other on her back. At the very moment I followed His directions, electricity shot out of my heart, down my hands, and up through the top of my head! Instantaneously, she was healed!

It was then that I began to ask a lot of questions about how that sort of thing can happen. Could I make it happen again? I wondered. I learned very quickly that I could not make anything happen! The door opened for me to receive education and training in the ministry of healing. Jesus brought priests, deacons, and laypeople into my path who had experience in the Healing and Deliverance Ministry. Through years of tutelage from them, I learned about the power of the Sacraments, sacramentals, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

During this time of intense learning, a book fell into my hands called A Man of Hope by Renzo Allegri. The protagonist of the book, the stigmatist Padre Pio, spoke through its pages saying he would “not rest until he escorted all his spiritual children into heaven.” Encouraged, I looked to the heavens and prayed, “Padre Pio, would you be my spiritual father?” Immediately, my room filled with a sweet fragrance, giving me the “yes” I was looking for.

When my family moved to Germany, the Woman’s voice followed me there. Another book came across my path describing the Marian apparitions in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina. In one of her messages, the Blessed Virgin pleaded, “Convert, convert, convert.” I didn’t yet understand what “convert” meant, but every time I read the word, my heart quickened. It was the same quickening that I felt in the first interior call to “Go to the Catholic Church”! I would do it! I would convert if I only knew what it meant!

In 2002, I traveled to Medjugorje seeking healing from debilitating migraines and a clear sign that I was to become Catholic. Outside St. James Church, I prayed with people as the Lord prompted me. One woman wept as I prayed with her, and afterward, she prayed over me. She placed my hands together in prayer, traced the Sign of the Cross three times on the back of my left hand, and said, “Padre Pio, Padre Pio, Padre Pio.” Instantly, tremendous heat flooded my ears. Later I realized that I had been healed of the migraines through the intercession of my spiritual father. I knew I had received my sign. I was in a Marian pilgrimage site, healed through the prayers of a lovely Catholic laywoman who called out to a Catholic saint in heaven. I was being called to convert to Catholicism.

Today, I lead The Upper Room, a ministry dedicated to igniting, equipping, and empowering the Body of Christ. I invite people to “load up their spiritual backpacks” with “spiritual power tools”—the gifts, graces, and spiritual practices given by Heaven. I teach how the Holy Spirit speaks through words of knowledge, confirmations, discernment markers, and “spiritual breadcrumbs”—the clues that the Holy Spirit gives if you are going in the right direction. My life experiences—both professional and spiritual—have helped me assist others in seeking healing, freedom, and conversion. Jesus continues to bear abundant fruit in the lives of the people I serve. And once people are equipped, they become physician assistants to the Divine Physician, praying for and ministering healing others in various areas of life.

Since the year 2000, I have also been receiving interior messages and visions—short life teachings, maxims, course corrections, consolations, and prophecies. I see visions with my spiritual eyes, and the messages appear interiorly as written words, which I then record. My bishop is aware of all my work and the spiritual gifts I have received, and I meet with him regularly for oversight. For twenty-five years, these messages were brief. But beginning in October of 2025, the messages suddenly grew in depth and urgency. They are being given to uplift, to clarify, and to awaken faith—while there is still time. Their insight is profound. Their language is not my own. They teach us how to live life through the lens and language of love.

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God Bless You!

Vickie Leigh S Smith M.Ed, BDV 

Upper Room Ministries

www.inonespirit.com

Mailing address:

Upper Room Ministries

13395 Voyager Parkway

Ste -130 PMB-543

Colorado Springs Colorado 80921

Born in 1961, I grew up in a devout Catholic family where love for the Blessed Virgin Mary was at the heart of daily life. My relationship with Our Lady began early—deepening, especially after my First Holy Communion, when I felt her maternal battles with anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. From my youth, and through the love and peace the Blessed Mother imparted to me, I sensed a call to the priesthood.

Prayer became my refuge, and through a devoted practice of the Catholic Faith, I found the strength to manage my emotional struggles. At the age of fifteen, in 1976, I entered high school seminary, but what I had hoped would be a sacred formation turned into a time of deep spiritual desolation. Wounded by the experience, I walked away from the Church in anger and confusion.

For years afterward, I drifted into a worldly life, chasing money, power, and pleasure. I married and divorced three times and was blessed with four children. In addition to enduring the painful consequences of separation and divorce, I suffered the tragic loss of my first wife and one of my sons. Still, amid every heartbreak and failure, the Blessed Mother never abandoned me. She came to me in my worst moments of anxiety and despair, surrounding me with peace when the world offered none.

Then, on January 2, 2002, when I was forty—exactly one year to the day after my father’s death—I experienced what I have long described as a “St. Paul conversion”: a sudden, life-altering encounter with Divine Mercy that pierced my soul. Years later, through the work of Christine Watkins, I recognized that what had happened to me was in fact an illumination of conscience—a direct grace from God that laid my entire life bare before God’s Love and Truth.

That moment changed everything. Through tears and repentance, I returned home—to the beautiful Bride of Christ: the Catholic Church, to the sacraments, and to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. After a brutally painful annulment process, and many refusals by the Church, I was ordained as a single man to the Permanent Diaconate on February 9, 2009. As a deacon, I served as Director of Mission and Spiritual Care for a Catholic hospital system in Northern Michigan, ministering to the sick and the dying.

In the spring of 2010, while on pilgrimage to Medjugorje, I heard an unmistakable inner locution from the Blessed Mother, who had nurtured, guided, and protected me my entire life. She was calling me to the priesthood.

At first, my call was met with resistance. Several bishops and vocation directors doubted the authenticity of such a calling, given my past poor choices in life. “Who could blame them,” I thought. But Mary’s call was unwavering. Through my perseverance and her constant intercession, her plan unfolded. On September 14, 2017, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, I was ordained a Catholic priest at age fifty-five.

My first assignment led me directly into spiritual warfare: I encountered cultic activity, satanic worship, and witchcraft within my parish boundaries, and I was terrified. I begged my bishop for reassignment, wanting nothing to do with the manifestations of evil that I was experiencing. In a moment of silent Eucharistic Adoration, however, the Blessed Mother spoke to me again through an inner locution, telling me that I had nothing to fear and that she was preparing my priesthood for the ministry of Deliverance and Healing. Her voice brought immediate peace. My fear vanished.

I became a pastor and after several years of training, I was formally mandated by my bishop to become the exorcist for my diocese. Through this ministry, I am simply a vehicle with the privilege to witness souls being freed by the triumph of the Cross and the maternal power of Mary, and the intercession of St. Joseph, Destroyer of Demons.

Today, I continue to shepherd souls as a pastor and exorcist, and in 2025, I celebrated my eighth anniversary as a priest—a testimony not to human strength, but to divine mercy and the faithfulness of the Virgin Mary. Though unworthy, I was called by the Blessed Mother in perfect love—to serve her Son, to defend the Church, and to lead souls to salvation. Fiat!

I was born in 1963 and raised in a Catholic family that attended Church every Sunday and every Holy day of obligation.

When my family began to pray the Rosary daily at my tender and challenging age of 13, a yearning in my heart for God and all that is holy began to stir. A member of my family was making wrong choices in life, which brought both of my parents to their knees and all of us to more prayer.

At the age of 17, my last year in high school, my father decided to invite me to go to 6 a.m. Mass with him before I went to school. I didn’t want to go at first, but he challenged me to go with him just for one month. This changed everything for me. After I went for one month, I patted myself on the back and stopped going to Mass daily. After a week of going to school, I missed going to Mass beforehand. I made the decision to attend on my own, and I have been attending Mass daily since the age of 17.

I veered off a little at the age of 21, and I entered the party scene, going out every weekend. Once, when I was at a club, everything went silent as I watched everyone dancing and drinking in slow motion. I heard a male voice say, “Would you find My Mother here?”

I thought to myself, “Is this Jesus? Is He asking me if Mary would be here?” I said, “If Jesus would come here to save sinners, then I suppose that Mary would be here, too.”

Then I heard Him say, “Do you want to do this for the rest of your life? Do you want to do this in your 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s?” As I looked around, (everyone still moving in slow motion), I continued to see the drunkenness, immodesty, and impure dancing, and I replied, “No! I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.” As the scene came back to normal with loud music and dancing, I turned to my date and asked him to take me home. He was surprised since we had just arrived, and he wondered what happened to me. I couldn’t speak to him about it for fear of sobbing, and when I arrived home, I wept, asking God why He was doing this to me.

This was a turning point in my life that led me to discern the Consecrated Religious life. I ended up joining the Poor Clare Nuns of Perpetual Adoration on August 23, 1985, when I was 21 years old. Mother Angelica was the Abbess at the time, and I cherished the years that I was formed by her and other holy men and women of God.

It is hard to explain how one receives such a call and then is called elsewhere, but ultimately God had another plan for me, a call within a call, one could say. In 2012, I met Sr. Charista Maria, who is now a fellow diocesan hermit with me. Our Mother of the Eucharist drew us together through our similar spiritualities and charisms. Missionaries of Our Mother of the Eucharist—M.O.M.E. (our non-profit religious organization)—is our avenue of reaching out to others within our contemplative way of life. It is a means of drawing others to a deeper union with Jesus through Mary by means of videos, blogs, and the like. I live an eremitical life (the life of a hermit) within a laura (a dwelling of more than one hermit), where we have Eucharistic adoration and pray several Rosaries each day, lead a Marian Prayer Cenacle on our property each Saturday morning, and have deep faith discussions after the Cenacle. We sometimes have priests and consecrated religious come to our retreat house for silence and solitude. We make ourselves available to lead them into a deeper connection with Jesus and Mary in the depths of their hearts, which can bring human and spiritual integration and inner healing.

Praised be to Jesus and Mary!

MOME hermits+ are Canon 603 Hermits under our Diocesan Bishop, with an emphasis on spiritual works of mercy; supported by the non-profit religious organization: MISSIONARIES OF OUR MOTHER OF THE EUCHARIST (We are not a Religious Order)

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I was raised in a family that decided God did not exist, or if He did, one could not prove it, so why waste one’s time wondering about such an esoteric and irrelevant concept? As I child, I often pondered what life meant and was overcome with a sick, foreboding when thoughts of death entered my mind.

“Mom,” I asked her one night, while lying in bed. “What will happen when I die?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, which increased my worry.

“Ok, but what will happen?”

“You will cease to exist.”

“I won’t be anything anymore?” I asked, and thought to myself: “So, therefore, I won’t even know that I ever was because I will no longer be.” A cold chill blew through my heart.

“But your body will be cremated and nourish the earth. It’s the cycle of life. You’ll help a tree to grow.”

“With my luck,” I thought. “My ashes won’t even be next to a tree.”

Atheists cannot console the heart with lies.

As St. Augustine of Hippo said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

My restless heart and the search for meaning continued. I developed a passion for ballet dancing when I was young, and for many years, ballet was my substitute god that filled the God-shaped hole in my heart. But then I suffered from foot injuries. Three foot operations later, my short dancing career ended, and in a desperate search for meaning and comfort, I fell deep into serious sin.

My sins drove me to the brink of death—a death due to cervical cancer. But when I had very little time left to live, Mary came. She asked Jesus to save me, and suddenly, the cancer was gone. I was given my life and my soul back, in one brief moment of divine mercy. My heart and mind soaked in the realization that life was not at all what I had been told it was—a meaningless journey with a terrifying, nihilistic end. Life was, in fact, a miraculous gift from a loving Creator, with meaning imbued in every second, and paradise its goal.

Jesus communicated to me that He wanted me to join His Church. I didn’t know what “His Church” meant, nor anything about different Christian denominations. He was asking me, I quickly learned, to join the Catholic Church, and I have never looked back. [Mrs. Watkins’ full story can be found in the book, Full of Grace: Miraculous Stories of Healing and Conversion through Mary’s Intercession].

As a Catholic, I began exploring the Faith with a three-year master’s degree in Theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Then desiring to be of service to the world in a concrete way, I pursued a two-year master’s degree in Social Welfare from the University of California at Berkeley. Upon graduation, I spent nearly ten years working in hospice, and another ten-or-so as a post-abortion healing director, along with travels around the United States giving parish missions and speaking at retreats and conferences.

Though Mary was key to my conversion, it wasn’t until a pilgrimage to Medjugorje and reading her messages that I better understood the importance of her role, and that of the Eucharist, fasting, the Rosary, and the high value God places on the priesthood. Medjugorje also opened my eyes to the world of Marian apparitions and the ways that God is reach out to the world through His Mother and other chosen souls to correct the wayward course of humanity through authentic private revelations, of which the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.” (CCC §67)

It was also in Medjugorje that I received a calling from the Blessed Mother to write down my story for a book, which became Full of Grace. Little did I know that many books would follow and that a new chapter had begun in my life. In time, I founded QueenofPeaceMedia.com with a YouTube channel of the same name. All of these endeavors were born from my desire to evangelize, to convert hearts, to help Jesus save as many souls as possible, to prevent them from traveling down a dark path, as I did, causing unnecessary pain and risking the loss of the light of God forever.

My life isn’t mine anymore. Actually, it never was. It is God’s. And being a Catholic means everything to me. It means the difference between life and death.

Christine Watkins is the founder of Queen of Peace Media and the author of several Amazon #1 best-sellers. Click below to learn more.

My name is Amanda Dcosta, but most people around me call me Mandy. Hearing “AMANDA!” used to give me the fleeting impression I was in trouble—reminiscent of childhood mischief or grades being handed out in school—a feeling that amusingly lingered even into young adulthood. Don’t get me wrong, I embrace both names. Amanda means “beloved,” and I’ve always felt deeply loved by my family, by friends, and most of all, by God. Even during moments of doubt, I hold fast to the truth that I am loved. Knowing that God loves me gives me joy, the kind of joy that is my strength, the kind that is a gift and a choice, even in the absence of happiness.

Growing up, I was never afraid of adventure or a little mischief. Fear was never an option for my siblings and me. If a competition was announced, we would be the first to raise our hands, even to give speeches in languages we weren’t fluent in (after learning the speeches by heart).

Jesus has always been my anchor, support, strength, and fulcrum upon which many of my life’s decisions balanced, though I’ve made mistakes and had to find my way back to Him. Nevertheless, prayer remained the heartbeat of my life. I remember Fr. Marcelino, an Italian priest who brought the charismatic movement to our parish in 1979. He told me not to be afraid to soar high like an eagle. Intertwining my thumbs together, he turned my hands inside out to make them look like a bird with outspread wings. This was when I was four.

From those early years, it became a habit for my family to pray with our hands stretched out, and to praise and thank God aloud. Singing and recognizing the gifts of the Holy Spirit were big parts of who we were growing up. From daily Bible readings after the recitation of the Rosary to my first locution at seven, these moments shaped my spiritual foundation. The gift of prophecy became my help later in life when I encountered situations involving witchcraft or the occult around me, and continues to be one of my tools of discernment and direction.

My life has been a tapestry of adventures—physical, spiritual, and emotional. I’ve learned the value of fortitude and the beauty of being adventurous in prayer. As Jesus told St. Faustina Kowalska, we do not receive much because we do not ask for much. I am learning to ask boldly, trusting that with God, nothing is impossible. Since embracing the Divine Will way of life, I have seen prayers answered in ways that remind me of a little girl who has her Father wrapped around her little finger. In faith, I ask for anything in Jesus’ name and claim it, knowing that the Father delights in answering His children.

Three years ago, inspired and encouraged by my spiritual director, Fr. Toni Jacob, I stepped into pastoral counseling. With certification and guidance, I now counsel people both in person and online. Alongside counseling, my love for writing and reading, especially the Word of God, continues to grow. I may have been terrible at outdoor sports—I could never run to save my life—but I run the race of faith with all my heart. My goal and ardent prayer is to be a saint in the way God intends, and I wish to help as many people as possible come to know and love God, too.

If you would like to set up phone or video appointments for pastoral counseling and/or wellness counseling, Amanda (Mandy) can be reached at mandy12oct@gmail.com.

Amanda Dcosta was born to a Catholic family in Virapandianpatnam (please don’t try to pronounce that) in India; today, she shuttles between India and Oman, a nation on the southeast tip of Saudi Arabia. Her native tongue is English. Naturally gifted as a life coach, and as a pastoral and wellness counselor, she supplemented her gifts with a Certificate Course in Counseling through Osmania University, India, in April 2024, and an intensive Life Coach training. Amanda has also received two years of supervision at the Pastoral Orientation Center in Ernakulam, Kerala, India, under Fr. Toni Jacob, the head of the POC Theological Institute, who refers clients to her for pastoral counseling.

Amanda uses her broad education to help the body heal, as well as the soul. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in botany from Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala, a Master’s Diploma in Hospital Management from the Indian Institute of Management Studies, and a Master’s Certification in Project Management at the Indira Gandhi National Open University—all in India. For over a decade, Mrs. Dcosta worked as an online botany journalist and served as Botany Editor for an online academic writing company. She co-authored the book, Encyclopedia of Cultivated Plants, 2013, and is a graduate of the Australian School of Herbal Medicine program.

I was born in Marysville, in the Sacramento Valley, to a large and faith-filled Catholic family. I was named for my priest uncle, and as a little boy wanted to be a priest. I outgrew that ambition and by the time I was headed for my freshman year at the University of California at Berkeley was planning on a career in law.

But while at Cal, I found that my greatest passion was writing, and upon my graduation, I pursued a career as a writer. I took a job on the campus at Cal to support myself while writing novels and working with agents in New York, and it is a good thing that I had that job because success as a writer was a long time coming.

In my mid-thirties, I heard the call to priesthood and began my studies at the Dominican School at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union. It was at this time, as well, that I began my work with youth, as a Confirmation teacher and later as a youth minister in the Marysville parish. I earned a master’s degree in philosophy with the Dominicans and transferred to St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California, where I earned two more masters’ degrees, in theology and divinity.

I was ordained for the Diocese of Oakland in 2006 and have served as an associate in parishes in Pleasanton, Fremont and Brentwood. In each parish, the pastor asked me to coordinate youth ministry and teen catechesis efforts. In 2015, based on my long experience with teens, I was assigned to Bishop O’Dowd High School as chaplain. I am now in my tenth year at the high school, and my parish is St. Clement in Hayward.

Fr. Sullivan is a popular speaker, having given parish talks and retreats throughout northern California, and Lenten missions across the country. He is the author of several books, including a trilogy on the Rosary and Scripture which he co-wrote with his mother Sara. Fr. Sullivan is a co-founder of San Gabriel Media, a multi-media apostolate focused on evangelization and catechesis.