I am back home from my adventure to Pittsburg for the Military Writers Society of America banquet and awards dinner. For five days I roomed with an 86-year-old survivor of Iwo Jima. He was on the Island for 12 days and then returned home to live a life of gratitude and struggle. Tom McGraham, USMC, is a true hero. However, when we live together in close proximity for a week, we discover that saints have flaws. What a joy it was to be family to him…and he to me!

The leaves are just beginning to turn color in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. My 13 hour drive up and 13 hour dive back home was a great time to prayer and reflect. Even the silence of God is more tolerable as God continues to shower me with beauty and mystery and love. And yet, I still long for the love of God above everything…including breath and family itself.

Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus celebrated her feast day this past Friday. I would like to share a little snippet of her reading in the Office of Readings.

When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognized myself in none of the members which Saint Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favorably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love…I saw and realized that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.

Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my proper place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.

Please pray for the priests of the Diocese of St. Augustine as we enter our yearly retreat and convocation on this feast of St. Francis. May we truly become instruments of God’s peace and sow and abundance of love joy and peace.

Have a beautiful week in October!

Love, joy, peace,

Father Ron Moses +

www.tearinthedesert.com

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