How very pleasing to God is the willing desire to suffer for him

Some advice from the Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena, of which we may need to become very familiar in the coming months and years:

Very pleasing to me, dearest daughter, is the willing desire to bear every pain and fatigue, even unto death, for the salvation of souls, for the more the soul endures, the more she shows that she loves Me; loving Me she comes to know more of My Truth, and the more she knows, the more pain and intolerable grief she feels at the offences committed against Me. Thou didst ask Me to sustain thee, and to punish the faults of others in thee, and thou didst not remark that thou wast really asking for love, light, knowledge and truth, since I have already told thee that, by the increase of love, grows grief and pain, wherefore he that grows in love grows in grief.  Therefore, I say to you all, that you should ask, and it will be given you, for I deny nothing to him who asks of Me in truth. Consider that the love of divine charity is so closely joined in the soul with perfect patience, that neither can leave the soul without the other.  For this reason (if the soul elect to love Me) she should elect to endure pains for Me in whatever mode or circumstance I may send them to her. Patience cannot be proved in any other way than by suffering, and patience, is united with love as has been said. Therefore bear yourselves with manly courage, for, unless you do so, you will not prove yourselves to be spouses of My Truth, and faithful children, nor of the company of those who relish the taste of My honor, and the salvation of souls.

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We may have much to be patient for in the coming years!  Pray God to give  you strength, to cooperate with Grace and grow in all the virtues, so that you may be pleasing to Him and be a beacon of light in a dark world.  Live your faith with joy!  If we are faithful, we know how this story ends, how all stories end, with Jesus Christ triumphant and the world prostrate and his foot!  We shall be there with the 12 Apostles, seeing the final judgment of all the nations!  Trust in God!  Follow the Pope!  If you stay close to Christ and His Church you have nothing to fear, no matter what storms rage in the world!  The more the world rages against us, the more we should cling to the Barque of Peter!  The world will howl in mad impotence, but we must remain blissfully indifferent to the world and its ways, caring only for Christ and His Holy Church!

It is a great Grace to live in times of persecution and martyrdom!  Do all you can to aid the Church and practice virtue, rejecting all sin, especially sins of anger and despair, and trust in God!  He Will Provide!  DEO GRATIAS!