Hello, I'm Father Joe Roche of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception.

Thank you for joining us as we continue with our year-long journey,

reading the diary of St. Maria Faustina Kavalska, from beginning to end.

Today we take up from where we left off, beginning with diary entry number 531.

November 24th, 1935, Sunday, first day.

I went at once before the Blessed Sacrament and offered myself with Jesus present in the Most Holy Sacrament to the everlasting Father. Then I heard these words in my soul.

Your purpose and that of your companions is to unite yourselves with me as closely as possible.

Through love, you will reconcile earth with heaven, and you will soften the just anger of God, and you will plead

for mercy for the world. I place in your care two pearls very precious to my heart. These are

the souls of priests and religious. You will pray particularly for them. Their power will come from your

diminishment. You will join prayers, fasts, mortifications, labors, and all sufferings to my

prayer, fasting, mortifications, labors, and sufferings, and then they will have power before my father.

After Holy Communion, I saw the Lord Jesus who said these words to me.

Today, penetrate into the spirit of my poverty and arrange everything in such a way that

the most destitute will have no reason to envy you.

I find pleasure not in large buildings and magnificent structures, but in a pure and humble

heart. When I was by myself, I began to reflect on the spirit of poverty.

I clearly saw that Jesus, although He is Lord of all things, possessed nothing.

From a borrowed manger, he went through life doing good to all, but himself having no place to lay his head.

And on the cross I see the summit of his poverty, for he does not even have a garment on himself.

O Jesus, through a solemn vow of poverty I desire to become like you.

Poverty will be my mother.

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