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 56.

Oh my God, I understand well that you demand this spiritual childhood of me, because you are constantly asking it of me through your representatives.

At the beginning of my religious life,

suffering and adversities frightened and disheartened me,

so I prayed continuously, asking Jesus to strengthen me

and to grant me the power of His Holy Spirit

that I might carry out His will in all things, because from the beginning I have been aware of my

weakness. I know very well what I am of myself, because for this purpose, Jesus has opened the

eyes of my soul. I am an abyss of misery, and hence I understand that whatever good

there is in my soul consists solely of His holy grace. The knowledge of my own misery allows me,

at the same time, to know the immensity of your mercy. In my own interior life, I am looking with one eye at the abyss of my misery and baseness,

and with the other at the abyss of your mercy, O God.

O my Jesus, you are the life of my life.

You know only too well that I long for nothing but the glory of your name,

and that souls come to know your goodness.

Why do souls avoid you, Jesus?

I don't understand that.

Oh, if I could only cut my heart into tiny pieces and in this way offer it to you,

O Jesus, each piece as a heart, whole and entire, to make up in part for the hearts that do not love you.

...