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!
