Hello, I'm Father Joe Roche of the Marrient 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 331.

Oh, how great a grace it is to have a spiritual

director. One makes more rapid progress and virtue, sees the will of God more clearly,

fulfills it more faithfully, and follows a road that is sure and free of dangers.

The director knows how to avoid the rocks against which the soul could be shattered.

The Lord gave me this grace rather late to be sure, but I rejoice in it greatly,

seeing how God inclines His will to my director's wishes.

I will mention just one incident out of a thousand that have happened to me.

As I usually do, I ask the Lord Jesus one evening to give me the points for next day's meditation.

I receive the answer, meditate on the prophet Jonah and his

mission. I thanked the Lord, but began to think within myself of how different that subject was

from the others. But with all my soul, I strove to meditate about it, and I recognized myself in the person of the prophet,

in the sense that often I, too, try to make excuses to the Lord, claiming that someone else

would do his will better than I could, and not understanding that God can do all things,

and that his omnipotence will be all the more manifest if the tool is poorer.

God made this clear to me in the following way. That afternoon there was confession for the community.

When I presented to the director of my soul the fear that seized me because of this mission

for which God was using me, clumsy tool that I was, my spiritual father answered that,

willing or not, we must carry out the will of God, and he gave me the prophet Jonah as an example.

...