Christ is risen!
He left ninety nine sheep to find me
I was born and brought up in a Catholic family so I went to the church from my childhood, listened to the catechesis courses about Jesus, His life and His activity. Continually I heard Jesus loved us so much and gave His life for everyone. But this knowledge was out of my heart and was only a theory until I personally met God’s merciful love. From this moment my own real conversion began. I heard about Jesus’ love for so many years but I felt myself lonely, withdrawn and wounded. I wasn’t glad to live, to have God the Father, who loved me. My life seemed to be empty. I asked myself what I lived for, why I suffered so much, why no one understood me. Was it true that He created me for misery? I looked for reason to live and didn’t find it. But I asked God to help me and to sort out my feeling. And He answered me and opened the way I must go.
The Lord led me to the Franciscan School of Evangelization, where He showed me His mercy, love and patience. He showed me that I was very important for Him so He was ready to bring the Cross in my sake, to leave ninety nine sheep and look for the lost one. I understood I wasn’t lonesome in the world and had the affectionate Father in the Heaven who never left me.
He is helpful and always near me. I thank God for what He has already done and is doing in my life. Sometimes the process of conversion is invisible. But when I invite the Father to my heart and allow him to work in it, He changes me with His love.
S.Lyuba (Kamianets-Podilskyi)
The Lord is with me, what can anyone do to me?
Indeed I have a plenty of reasons to thank Jesus for what He did to me in my life.
You can say I’m a loser because my marriage is broken; my work has been being at stake for three years; my half-constructed house is destroyed little by little; my lodgments have almost missed so I can’t go in for a lot of my favourite hobbies – to go on excursions, to the seashore, to take parties with my friends. I’ve almost lost all of these.
Humanly it’s a tragedy as I lost all I mostly valued. But now I see how the Lord carefully took all of these chocks away from my life in order I could accept another values – freedom, love to the truth, independence from different mentions and fears. I thank Jesus for His preparing me to ride the storm, for His empowering me of the Holy Spirit to accept all the events with faith.
I live and can laugh.
I’m glad to hear my friend’s voice.
I’m not afraid if someone delivers an ultimate to me or if I don’t know what is tomorrow.
The Lord is with me, what can anyone do to me?
S.Lusya-Veronica (Dnipropetrovsk)
Jesus showed me the truth, opened my heart on my loving God the Father
I was born in a Catholic family and went to church from my childhood. I knew the theory about God very well. At least I thought so. I said God was my Father
and I was His child, But I didn’t feel that with all my heart. I hadn’t the main thing – the perception of God as affectionate Father. My heart was heavy with fears of death, decease, etc. And I took bad situations and things of my life as punishment.
Jesus showed me the truth, bared my heart on loving God the Father, Who loved me in spite of my sins. He began to open my wounds. It hurt me. But I needed it in order to be healthy. I began to realize the value of the cross. I found the true love was always accompanied with misery and pains.
Jesus helped me to understand that due to sufferings we are close to God. I wanted to love my own cross. Though now I can’t say I have already loved it, Jesus helps me to accept it. Most importantly Jesus taught me to love. Love opened to me as humility and patience to neighbors, to those ones who hurt me. I see the most awful thing is a life without Jesus and his love and mercy. Life without Him is a death.
s.Lesya (Korosten)
