Hello my dear loved ones.

Today I write to you with a heavy heart. The events of this past Friday in a little school in Connecticut has deeply saddened me, as well as the rest of the country. In light of these events, I felt that God wanted me to say a little something. Every time one of these terrible things happen, a school shooting, a movie theatre massacre, or even a bombing like in Oklahoma City, our country stops and asks itself, why? What went wrong?

As per usual, on Friday the fingers started to point. It's our laws, it's not enough protection in the schools, it's the availability of guns in our society, etc. The list goes on and on as to who wants to point the finger where. The father of Rachel Joy Scott, a victim of the Columbine shooting of 1999 stood before a judicial congress about 2 years ago and finally pointed the finger at exactly the right place. The human heart.

Something inherently evil has entered our country. A relativistic, individualistic, and a "do whatever feels good" culture. We have kicked God and faith out of every area we could, and unfortunately we have begun to see the effects.

Now many people think God or one certain faith (mainly Christian/Catholic) shouldn't be forced on others who don't believe. But the problem with kicking God (or any sense of God) out of our country means that our respect for human life, the dignity of the human person, and a sense of absolute goodness goes right out the window with God. When we start to tell ourselves that we have all these rights to do whatever we want, whatever feels good, no one can tell us what to do, we invite into our lives and most importantly into our HEARTS a message that says "whatever I feel or decide to be good is right". But as we see by the horrible tragedies that have happened, that reasoning can go very, very wrong, and our own feelings and desires cannot always be held as the greatest moral compass to rule our country or our lives. Proverbs 21:2 speaks so clearly into this as it says "All your ways may be straight in your own eyes, but it is the Lord who weighs hearts."

So as we can see, it's all whittled down to the human heart. That is where evil resides. Evil doesn't reside in a gun. As Mr. Scott so eloquently said, "it wasn't the club that killed Abel, it was his brother Cain", out of the hatred and evil in his own heart.
Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians "not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ". Human goodness, love, respect, dignity, and purity is rooted in Christ, in the love of the Father, the Sacrifice of the Son, and the movement of love in the Holy Spirit. If this has been removed from our very hearts, if we have shunned any sort of responsibility or consequence so we can "do what feels good", we find evil seep into our hearts. This in turn seeps into our families, which leads to destruction of our schools, governments, and work places, which inevitably leads to the destruction of our society. We have thrown our very gift of self to the dogs and allowed ourselves to be swallowed by the evil that rages in our hearts without the faith given to us by God. If we have no concept of basic human goodness and dignity of life and person, any law made will make no difference because humans will not be so inclined to follow the law. Why? Well, it simply doesn't "feel good" to them.

Paul writes so beautifully to the Philippians again, inviting them to a fuller life full of love and self-gift. He says, "Do nothing out of selfishness or vainglory; rather humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also everyone for those of others." Now, I ask you, what seems so restrictive and authoritative about that? Doesn't this sound like such a beautiful, free way to live and love?
God is not calling us to live a restrictive and horrible life. He invites us rather into a freedom of living, a freedom from sin and selfish desire which comes through a life of virtue and obedience to a loving Father. When we kick him out, when we take over our own hearts and teach our children that things like abortion are okay, because it benefits you, we destroy the dignity of human life and the human person in our society.

Why are you surprised, America? Why are you crying, Obama? We've done this to ourselves. Only prayerful faith and conversion of hearts will change this. No gun laws will change a human heart. If someone wants to kill, they will. Start with the heart, because that is where good and evil reside.

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary....

God help and save us all