A call from the Hospice yesterday redefined priorities and established a schedule.  There are eyes upon me at the Hospice and I like it.  It is good for me in all aspects.  The conclusion of the conversation produced a weekly routine of visiting the Jennings Center on a set day.  Daily Mass is conducted at 9:30 AM, allowing attendance and then commiserating with assigned patients.  I am coordinating schedules with Mary to allow her to accompany.  The Easter gift complication made me realize our friendship is important to her on a level I did not comprehend.  I am committed to assuring she is rewarded through our acquaintance.  I recognize how important working with the elderly is to her.  She is good at it.  The patients adore her.  One patient I have neglected due to her distance I have become focused upon.  The last visit she sported a Rosary around her neck and a crucifix.  I have concluded praying the Rosary with her is a must.  We will sit in the gathering area as many of the patients in the Marian Gardens take interest when there is a visitor. The prayers will be shared with many.  The affirmed structured commitment to the Jennings Center stimulates the desire to pursue becoming a Eucharist Minister.  The retreat at home established a rootedness within my Hospice activities.  There is no doubt it is where God is calling me at this time.  I received serious attention and assistance from many when I struck my bottom in that hotel room in Toledo.  It is time to give back.  All for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Father Gerald Vann in ‘Divine Pity’ details dying to one’s self and the world within Jesus Christ not to be a renouncing and rejecting of the world, rather a deeper immersion into the world through faith, hope, and love.  Father Vann utilizes Catherine of Siena as a loving example.

For it was Catherine who, after this ‘mystical death,’ became one of the most famous and the most powerful women of her century, endlessly active, Popes and princes, traveling, negotiating, issuing orders, determining policies, shaping the life of Christendom.  What had intervened during her lengthy near death religious experience? She had learned the truth expressed in the words of the pseudo-Dionysius: Omnium divinorum divinissimum est cooperare Deo in salute animarum: of all divine things the most divine is to share with God in the saving of souls; she had begged Our Lord in ecstasy to take her back to her eternal home (to allow her to remain in death), and she had been reproached by Him—for her egoism.  She had been taught by Him: “You cannot render me any service, but you can help your neighbor.  The soul in love with My truth gives herself no rest but searches ceaselessly to help others.  You cannot give back to Me Myself the love I demand, but I have put you beside your neighbor so that you may do for him which you cannot do for Me.  What you do for your neighbor, then, I consider as being done for me.”