We'll come back, ladies to our final talk in this advent retreat

series, prepare your heart for him.

My name is Karen Doyle, your host and founder of the genius project.

And it has been my great joy and privilege to host this advent series for you

over these past few weeks, I really.

And pray that these torts from our beautiful speakers have been a source of

encouragement, blessing, and really just an invitation for you to go deeper in

your personal relationship with the Lord.

I know personally, I have.

Saved so much richness and wisdom from each of the women who have

shared on this advent series.

And I know today you will not be disappointed with our final speaker

sister, Mary Rachel, in this final talk sister, Mary Rachel is going to.

Deeper into this theme of how we can prepare our hearts

for Christ this Christmas.

But this does not end on Christmas day.

Ladies, Christmas day will come and go it's one day.

But what we're entering into here is cultivating our interior life.

Cultivating.

The space that sacred space within our soul for the Lord to dwell.

And we pray that he would come and refresh us and renew us in a special

way this Christmas, but then my call to go beyond Christmas into the

coming year, holding Christ in our.

In the ways in which he has personally come.

And we have personally encountered him before we get started on this final

talk, given by sister Mary Rachel, I'd love to draw your intention

and extend an invitation to you to join us for the Catholic women's

masterclass that will kick off in January and February of next year.

The Catholic women's masters.

It's a beautiful opportunity to come together with like-minded Catholic women.

We meet once a fortnight on zoom over a four month period.

And we look together at how you can establish these rhythms

of renewal in your life.

So often we can come up with new year's resolutions, but

they are often short-lived.

And often this is because we don't actually have the practical tools and

strategies and the community around us to help move us forward in our.

So ladies, if you are wanting to grow, if you're wanting to go deeper in

relationship with the Lord and other women, if you're wanting to establish

rhythms of rest and be restored, and if you're wanting to discover your

unique gifts and where you can use them, I invite you to take a look at

the Catholic women's master class.

We do have a number of wait lists for the future.

That I will run in January and February of next year.

So make sure you check out that link below.

All right, ladies.

So we are here at our final talk in this advent retreat series and

it is my great joy and privilege to welcome sister Mary Rachel, to share.

Sister, Mary Rachel is a very dear and beloved friend of mine.

I met her when she came to Australia around 2008 to help with the world

youth day here and over the 10 years that she lived in Australia, we became

quite close and she is a beloved friend of the sisterhood Catholic

women's movement here in Australia.

She spoke at, I think all of our conferences over the 10 years,

she was here giving really.

Fire anointed messages so much.

So that one year the roof in the auditorium literally caught fire.

That's how anointed this woman is.

So ladies buckle up, sit back and relax and enjoy this

input from sister Mary Rachel.

Oh, welcome sister, Mary Rachel to our advent retreat at CFS.

Fantastic to have you joining us all the way from Nashville.

So welcome.

Thank you so much.

It is so good to be with you.

What a grace and I miss that.

So it's great to have this time praying for you.

And I look forward to this time together

before I said, I just want to jump through

the camera and give you a hug.

Yes,

exactly.

Being hugs.

I know for those of you, for the listeners who don't know, sister Mary Rachel was

in Australia for a number of years and often came to our sisterhood conferences.

I think you've come to everyone that while you were here,

I started, I think on the very,

very first run that's right.

But you were an integral part of that community.

And so there's a lot of ladies from our sister community who are

participating in this retreat.

So there'll be very happy to, um, to hear from you.

I said, in the introduction you're, you're anointed when you speak so

much, so that the reef caught on fire.

Do you remember that?

It was so funny.

Tell us your memory of that day, that day.

That was funny.

It was the feast of Saint Patrick.

Yes.

And, um, and we were doing Irish dancing and then right after Irish

dancing, I was going to give the talk.

So I got up there and I S I began with a prayer.

And then I mentioned St.

Patrick and the man on the lights change the lights to be green that's.

As I was speaking, I saw something.

Something kind of flash, but I thought it was just the change of the lights

and then somebody yells out fire.

It's like, oh no.

So then we had to, we all had to leave and then one of you posted something like.

She closed down from heaven.

Was it like that the roof is the roof is on fire or

something and you had to say literally,

yeah, literally it was a very eventful day,

but a beautiful, powerful talk.

So, um, we are looking forward to your.

For this retreat about how we can prepare intentionally for advent

and Christmas and how we can prepare a hearts intentionally for Christ.

But before we jump in, for those who don't know you, which is share a little

bit about yourself and your background.

Yes.

For sure.

For sure.

Thank you.

Um, so I'm originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania here in the United States.

I'm the youngest of six children and I entered the convent in 1996.

So next year, Uh, we, we celebrate our silver Jubilees from our first profession.

So next summer will be my silver Jubilee of profession, which I'm

already getting excited about that.

And, um, I'm, I'm a teacher usually.

So I've been teaching in the United States, uh, and then taught in

Australia for just short of 11 years.

So 10, 10 years and a little bit longer.

And then in that time, well, I just told somebody the other day, I kind of

feel like I've, I grew up in my town.

And Australia it's, um, it was such a profound period of my life and,

um, yeah, so such a special time.

So, um, when I was in Australia, I was teaching it in high school and then

also, um, doing some vocation work.

And then I was working on my PhD and finished that the last

year that I was in Australia.

That was a

little while.

Isn't it?

Pardon?

That was a labor of love.

Yeah,

it was, it was, yes.

I re it was a labor of love.

Yes.

Difficult moments.

But, um, a lot of joyful moments also in my topic was on pilgrimage.

So the, the impact of pilgrimage on the faith of the Catholic educators.

So I might mention something about that in, in this sharing today.

Um, but then in 2018, I came back, I received my assignment to.

To the mother house here in Nashville, Tennessee and the mother

house is, uh, is a place where we begin our life as religious.

So our novitiate is here and then there are about five schools

that run out of the mother house.

And then our infirmary is here as well.

So I'm, um, my current assignment is the local prioress at the mother house.

So the superior of this house.

So, uh, there are 120 sisters in the school year.

In the house.

So it's a lot happening and I will allude to that later on.

I have something to share about that.

So, um, yes, that's just a little bit about

me.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Well, I know we came over, Jonathan did a speaking tour in 2019 and it

was so lovely to come and visit we're in Nashville for a week and came to

the mother house a couple of times.

But one of my distinct memories is being out on the grass in the afternoon

because the kids were all playing.

Tennis with the sisters in the heat.

They just love that.

But all of the cars, all the teachers coming home from school or the sisters

in these white cars, just one after another, it's like a Royal kind of

event them coming home from school

and just getting exactly when preset come, they say,

you know, they've got it in the morning, right after breakfast.

So mass and a very quick breakfast, pre soft and say they have to

get out of the way because it's.

Or like, um, kind of like an anthill, they just go so quickly out to school.

And then it's, it's quiet for the most part.

We that iteration in the morning and the retired sisters and the

sisters who are in the home.

Car and adoration mostly, um, for the needs of the

apostle, that's the intention.

So it's pretty quiet at home.

And then again, what you're describing Karen is the sisters all coming home after

school and, um, before iteration again.

So it is, those are busy times.

You don't want to be walking.

No,

it was fantastic.

We just loved our time there.

I think Stephanie still remembers, remembers that very fondly.

So that

was a beautiful time.

It really

was.

So maybe one day when all these restrictions finally

leave to be able to come back.

Yeah, that'd be great.

That'd be very good.

Oh, well, look, I'd love to throw to you now and just invite you

to share with us, I guess, how we can.

Prepare intentionally.

And we have been walking over the last four weeks with a

number of other speakers.

We've had Laura Roland, joy, Aiden, and Meagan, and we've looked at

lower, started off looking at a little bit of intentionality about

setting a purpose for advent.

So that.

Hurdle along through all the things and the to-do list and drive at Christmas

day exhausted, but then we're actually setting a purpose for our advent

enjoy, has spoken about just the three different characters in the nativity.

And I guess, inviting us into the door, the innkeeper and the mad GY, and just

how we can encounter Christ in, in those.

At Christmas.

And then Megan also has spoken around how we can prepare our relationships,

but we're going to now turn our heart to really diving a little

deeper in terms of how we can prepare in this deeper, spiritual way.

And I really feel in my own personal prayer that the Lord is inviting us

to go deeper, to go deeper with him.

The world feels incredibly unstable.

People are really struggling under the weight.

A whole lot of circumstances and heaviness at the moment, I'm

hearing that from so many women.

And so I think that the invitation really here is to dig in and to

really carve out a deeper faith.

It's like when we get married, we talk about.

The day you say I do is like the most important day.

Yes.

But that's really where it all begins.

And from that point, you need to get about the business of building a love

that will see you through a lifetime.

So I feel like in this season, we feel like we're entering a new season

in history globally, personally, but how can we build a faith?

That's going to see us through this season.

And so that's what I'd love to invite you to share with us today.

So thank you.

Okay, thank you so much for this opportunity to be with you.

And I've been praying for you and praying for your retreat.

I think maybe to start is, is the truth, the real conviction, you know,

in, in the busy-ness of our lives, that anytime we take a retreat, we could,

we could be confident of the father's.

Good pleasure that out of everything we have to do.

In life that we've decided to set the time aside and it's not in a selfish way.

This is my selfish time.

It's it is actually time to be available to God.

So when we set this time aside for retreat, I think that, um, w you can

be confident in the father's good pleasure, because you're choosing him.

You're putting him first.

Well, Karen, whenever you.

Mentioned, um, how do we find out our foundation in this crazy world that

has always been crazy, but is redeemed.

And, um, I think that number one, we know it's in Jesus.

And I think what he's given to us is, is the liturgical life.

Because when we are praying the liturgy.

There are texts in the liturgy that help us to navigate life.

And, you know, sometimes all of us run into times when

we don't know what to pray.

We have, we don't have the words for it, either that the pain is so deep or the joy

is so great that we don't have the words.

And so Jesus has placed into the church, the words that are pleasing to the father.

And so the liturgical seasons.

I like to think of it is that as God's mercy and reminders.

So just when we need times of fasting, we have Fridays.

And then we have that season of lent.

We have the season of advent, and then just when we need to feast and the times

of joy to lift our lift up our spirits, we have Sundays and then Christmas at

Easter, a whole octave of Sundays in the season of advent, the literature.

Greets us with text after text of reminders and really rousing words,

stay awake, uh, be ready, get prepared.

These are words of lovers.

I was thinking I was coming across.

Um, I could just flip all through the office book and, and come up with the.

Beautiful words, reminding us of where our hearts should be.

Zion is our mighty Citadel or saving Lord it's wall in its defense.

Throw open.

The gates for our God is here among us.

Then we have, the Lord will come.

He is true to his word.

If he seems to delay, keep watch for him for, he will surely come all the way.

And then we hear of John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness,

prepare the way of the Lord make straight the path for our God.

All of us have prepared for guests by getting everything

in the house just right.

And right now you, no doubt are filled with to-do lists for these

very events with your family or your in-laws friends who will be.

Sometimes we plan these events and we actually wonder,

why are we even doing this?

We feel a certain obligation to host Christmas this year.

And this one almost feels like three in one for four to make up for lost

Christmases because of COVID restrictions.

So we may feel even an added burden to what should be an event of joy.

Or we are so very excited to finally be able to host everyone and busily go

about every detail of the preparations, what a joy it is to be together with

our loved ones, especially to set or renew those family traditions around

the events of Christmas to do this year.

What was lost in the last.

St.

John Henry Newman reflects on this kind of preparation and the waiting season.

When he writes about thinking and planning for a friend who's coming and he

equate, he equates this experience with the advent season, waiting for Jesus.

As I read this and thought of you all, I was thinking there's a part here that is

pertinent and it'll make sense as I write.

He asks, do you know the feeling of expecting a friend expecting

him to come and he delays?

Do you know what it is to be an anxiety, less something should happen, which

may happen or may not happen, or to be in suspense about some important

event, which makes your heartbeat when you were in our reminder.

And of which you think the first thing in the morning, do you know what it is

to have a friend in a distant country to expect news of him and to wonder from day

to day what he is doing and whether he is well to watch for Christ is a feeling

such as these, he watches for Christ who has a sensitive, eager, apprehensive.

Who is awake alive, quick, sighted, zealous, and seeking, and honoring him

who looks out for him in all that happens.

And who would not be surprised who would not be over agitated or overwhelmed if

he found that he was coming at once?

So that's from John Henry.

Newman's sermon called watching.

And how, if it's true of a friend, how true it is of the preparations

for the closest of friends, for our Lord, Jesus, you had mentioned

carrying the burden of that.

Some people are hearing now.

And I think that's always, um, that's that's in our mind because that's the

very place the Lord Jesus wants to.

He comes as savior.

He comes as Lord and whatever darkness it is, he comes there to bring his light.

And that is the greatest joy of this, of this season of waiting

and placing our confidence that he in fact can bring light.

And he in fact, brings redemption to whatever's going on.

St.

Bernard, um, has given a sermon.

The three comings of advent and he talks about in the advent season, we're actually

thinking of three different times when the Lord comes, he came at one point in

time as a baby, he came in weakness and that's what we celebrate at Christmas.

And then he comes at each moment when we're ready, trying to be ready for him.

And then he will come again.

Right.

He will come again as judge and merciful judge.

When St.

Burner writes about this, he says that this middle coming

it's like a cool this again.

And then at the last it's the last things that I'm going to quote St.

Bernard says, we know that there are three comings of the Lord.

The third lies between the other two and the first coming he was

seen on earth dwelling among.

He himself testifies that they saw him and hated him.

And the final coming all flesh will see the salvation of our God.

And they will look on him whom they have pierced the intermediate.

It's a hidden one.

It is only the elect who see the Lord within their own

selves and they are saved.

He says, because there's this coming lies between the other two.

It is like a road on which we travel from the first coming to the last.

And the first Christ was our redemption and the last he will appear

as our life in this middle-class.

He is our rest and constellation.

I was thinking about in this middle coming, he is our arrest

and constellation refers to that.

Really?

Those the Lord, the pilgrimage of the Lord, the Lord's pilgrimage.

He came as baby.

He lived his life and then he died for us.

And that was his pilgrimage to lead us back to the father.

And advent is a beautiful time to remind us of our pilgrimage of life.

It started.

And with those texts again in the liturgy of the second coming, but

it's always reminding us that this whole life is a life of pilgrimage.

So in light of the scenarios above of preparing you hear that it's

built for first, so we'll wait.

Perfect.

Okay.

What did the bills signifying

though?

Right now?

We're um, the sisters are gathering, gathering for which

spiritual reading and conflict.

So the bit that's called the five minute warning bells, so that that

bell will ring and then you have five minutes to get to first and then.

Um, then another bell ring.

So we'll see how we go.

It's beautiful.

I remember that being there, joining you for praise.

And so it's such a rich experience and I quite, I enjoyed, I loved

our friendship in terms of that complimentarity of vocation.

I know you often said you were enriched by the vocation of

marriage and we were in breach.

Religious vocation.

And what I took away from that was just the, you know, the different rhythms of,

I guess, your life as a religious and how as lay people that we can actually

incorporate some rhythms into our daily life of prayer as well, because that

helps set out diet anyway, the bills remind me of that, that little lesson.

So yes, I'll let you keep going.

Okay.

So the next though.

Okay.

Okay.

So in light of the scenarios that I mentioned above which we're

preparing the home for guests, how is it possible to both make these

preparations for Jesus's coming?

So we're busy and yet to rest, to be busy and yet to be seated.

I think the answer lies in a song of songs that says I sleep, but my heart is awake.

I think the riddle and a seeming paradox is solved by an intentional awareness

of the grace of the present moment.

There's a Bishop.

His name is Bishop messy.

Kami Saska.

Hopefully I said that.

Okay.

He says, all of our life is the preparation for the present moment.

All of our life is the preparation for the present moment.

The same way someone we love is never far from our thoughts.

We work and do so many things in the course of the day, but our

heart and mind are on the one week.

In fact, this transforms the ordinary events of daily life when done for

Love's sake in a supernatural act.

And in fact, these ordinary events of every day and often a hidden acts

can be efficacious for our salvation and the salvation of the whole world.

This requires deep faith to believe that the moment we are.

Each moment we are living has all of the graces we need, and

that it has been eternally willed to bring us closer to our Lord.

It takes faith to believe that each moment is a moment of Jesus calling out our name,

loving us and providing for us that each moment of each day, Jesus is in fact.

Present to us offering us his rest and his constellation.

And if he is in this present moment, we believe that he will be in each future

present moment, providing the same rest, the same constellation, the same grace.

And doesn't that relieve us.

You might've heard of them, the priests father, Walter Chizek.

He was, he spent time in a concentration camp in second world war and he wrote a

book called he leadeth me this advent.

There is a section of that book that has been a tremendous reminder to me, of God

seeing and knowing, you know, that story.

And, um, just a side note, the story of.

Abraham the covenant of Abraham.

And, um, when the, when the Ram is caught in the thicket and then the

Mount that is called y'all way your'e so the Lord provides, one of the sisters

was telling me the other day, she was saying, you know, the word provide

and see is it can be interchangeable.

And then she said, if the Lord sees he provides it, if he provides, he

sees and that's really comforting.

Just the fact that we know we are always under his loving gaze.

He's always see.

And seeing us with the eyes of love, then we know that he is providing for us.

So father,

we're sharing with you one in spirit.

That's right.

Okay.

I think we're ready now.

Okay.

That's actually going to happen again in 15 minutes, so we're okay.

That's okay.

So father, father Chizik writes, nothing can touch us.

That does not come from his hand.

Nothing can trouble us because all things come from his hand is this too simple

and every detail of our lives to yield ourselves up to it in total commitment.

Now we know that it's.

Simple how difficult a task it is, but to trust and believe that

that the Lord provides the grace.

I think that it is a, um, an enormous mental discipline to live

in the present moment, our minds.

So often go backwards to what maybe we're worried about, um,

what we're thinking about, what we might be distracted about and.

They race ahead of in our plans, but I think even this advent to, to

strive, I know it's now, um, it's very common to talk about mindfulness

and to talk about the present moment, but it's a long standing tradition

in the, in the church to, and within Christianity to practice the presence

of God and to rely on his presence.

I think that we are.

Presented many times a day with a choice.

And we teach our children this all the time.

We teach young people that all the time and the choice is

how will we respond to grace?

How will we respond to the grace of the present moment?

And sometimes the most rigorous and demanding penance of living the Christian

life is to battle with ourselves to battle our own selfishness or our own willful.

Or simply to move forward in what I know charity demands,

even though I don't feel like it.

And then the extra heroic step, the invitation to be joyful in doing what

is required of us in Christian virtue.

This idea has struck me in recent months, I think with great clarity.

And it's probably the where the Lord is.

Providing and where he's stretching.

And so then calling me on just recently, I was on my way to

the chapel in the morning.

And the night before I had something to do, there was a choice that I was given.

And it was interesting because.

I knew that what I had to do was go, was going to have consequences for the next

day that this act of charity was going to mean that the next day I would be tired.

I'd be who else knows what else?

Who else knows?

Okay.

But by God's grace, as I was just walking, it was just, it was a quick thought.

I really, I realized I didn't have to do anything.

I chose to do something.

And by choosing it out of love, then I chose the consequences in

this situation of being tired, which isn't really a big deal.

People are tired a lot of times, but I'm not forced or

coerced coerced to do the good.

I am invited to choose the good act and to choose out of love the consequences

of that good act, the tiredness, the inconvenience, the surrendering, my.

For something better.

I had a similar situation at grace.

I think I received earlier in the year, just this past summer.

So I explained, um, what this house is like.

There's 120 sisters in the school year, but this past summer, we were

really blessed for the first time to, to welcome the sisters home.

We had been closed down as so many.

Uh, so many people were.

And so that meant preparing for about 270.

I think it was about 270 sisters who would be home.

What an enormous blessing.

We missed those of you who were not present of the sisters.

We missed the sisters who were not present, but we

were so aware that this time.

Um, was the time of grace.

So my role as the local Pryor says to prepare for the sisters to come.

And that just means really practical, very, very practical things.

Make sure everybody has a bed, make sure everybody has somewhere to a

place to sit at the table, make sure everybody has a place in the chapel.

So it's all of those really, really practical things.

Now, when you're dealing with 270 or 280 people.

Those details are kind of important because I also want

my sisters to feel welcome home after not being home for a while.

So anything can kind of, not anything, but sometimes things

shift and create like marbles.

So we had a beautiful community days and then not very last day, it was this

stupid COVID stupid COVID next stream.

And so all of us.

I was having to figure out where am I?

It was one sister after the next kind of reporting that of testing

positive and, and trying to keep our sisters in the infirmary safe and the

sisters who were vulnerable, safe.

So just troubleshooting.

Okay.

So I'm trying to move the sisters into other.

We call them cells where we sleep cells.

It's a monastic.

But trying to, to move those sisters into the quarantined area and all of this.

Okay.

So it's, if you think of like a hotel situation, when you go to a place and

then people are that the person is shifting all the different, um, people

to get new in a new place and all that.

So it was a little bit chaotic and I had come into my office

working with all of that.

And I'm, I go to answer the phone.

I'm holding one phone in one phone here at one point, and then it closed the

door and I turned to my computer and I'm going to post it notes everywhere,

disorganized, and then a quiet.

Almost in perceivably, small thought popped into my mind.

And you know, these are really gentle prompting of the holy spirit.

So quiet, so gentle that I nearly missed it and was given a grace in

that moment to flip the situation.

To just flip it.

I was anxious.

I was a little bit spastic.

I was busy.

I was all of those things falling a little bit into self-pity

overwhelmed by the details.

Yes.

Some agitation, not even thinking about the sisters, right me.

It was just me.

And in that moment, the Lord wanted me to flip it from busy.

To full.

This moment is full, really full of grace.

This moment is full and this moment is fruitful.

And I think the question became, do I want it any other way?

No, no, I don't.

So the fruitfulness of this situation, I wouldn't want it any other way.

Really how true.

I hadn't thought about it that way before how sad to not, it would be

so sad to not have those sisters come home to not be able to serve

to not whatever dot, dot.it is.

So a moment when the holy spirit whispered so quietly and a fruitfulness

of his grace could then be.

What flipped also was just going through the motions, frantically planning,

frantically preparing, working, but then the invitation to now do it intentionally

to do it with love, to do it with gratitude where joy and peace and humor.

Now exteriorly the law, the, I might still be moving pretty fast and

the exterior act may look the same.

That's the importance of, we can never judge because the exterior act looks

the same, but the interior disposition is now vitally different vitally.

I use that on purpose because now it's bringing light.

Where I don't know where it was happening before I dare say, this

is what you are all up to right now.

And maybe it's an invitation.

You are very busy, busy preparing for Christmas, which is by

the way, like coming of Jesus.

Sometimes I know in that moment, um, when.

I had to think about that word differently busy.

Sometimes when we remind ourselves and others of how

busy we are, how busy we are.

I think we zapped the moment of grace and beauty and joy.

We either try to falsely convince ourselves or others of our own

importance by saying we're so busy.

Or we neglect the gratitude of recognizing the fruitfulness.

He is calling us to the beauty of these loved ones.

We are prepared and to see even if, I mean, not my sisters necessarily, but even

if they do drive you crazy on occasion.

Okay.

Maybe, and we lose sight sometimes of the reason why we are gathering to.

Of who gathers us together because love himself has chosen

to make his home in our heart.

Jesus doesn't mind too much about the many done events unwrapped

or even on bought presence.

Instead, he wants to find our hearts so full of anticipation, so full of law.

So full of confidence that he is savior.

Yes.

So full of awareness of need.

Yes, Jesus.

You are the only one who can do this.

So full of desire and so full of love for him.

So that truly on Christmas day, we can awaken to the sound of his voice

and the very sound of his voice makes our whole bodies thrill with.

Well, we sing that at the Christmas time, the thrill of hope, this weary

world rejoices when yonder breaks a new and glorious morn, let us fall on

our knees and hear the angels voices.

Oh, holy night, when Christ was born.

So let us, dear sister, my sisters in Christ near and far prepare to meet

him with many intentional acts of.

Aware of his presence at each moment.

God bless you know of my prayers for you and my deep love.

And I miss you and hope to see you again.

Thank you.

Thank you, sister, Mary Rachel.

That was beautiful.

Beautiful way to close our retreat and just to really center us on this next

week as we come into Christmas and what Christ is really calling us to.

I really, I love when you spoke about those thoughts and that being

this pivotal moment or flipping it, I like your expression flipping it.

We might have.

Coined that term, because it's a great term because it's, it describes this

flip moment in a second, how we can go from self pity and pulling into

this temptation of self-reliance and self-pity and selfishness and lack

of virtue to the complete opposite of God's grace being present.

Like you said, you nearly missed that thought.

Yes in the busy-ness.

And so Christ's coming to us in, in this season of advent is very much

about, we also have to participate.

We've mentioned this in another section that we have to be active participants

in this journey and Christ coming that we actually have to carve out and make space

and room for him so that we can listen and, and just slowing down a little bit.

So, yeah.

Thank you so much.

So beautiful.

You know, it's, it's so much.

I kept thinking, as I was preparing this, then I didn't say it.

Um, it's so much about just filling whatever we're doing.

It's it's like saturating it in love or in a sense it's like allowing

just, just against that intentionally inviting love to be in that moment.

So sometimes we think, oh, I need to do this.

I need to do that.

I need to change this.

Need to change that.

Often it's not, it's, it's, uh, um, doing the things we're doing, but just,

um, that's why just inviting love the holy spirit to come and to come into it.

And, and those things you're doing those presence you're having for your

children so that when they open them, you know, You know that it's a gift of

love that they're opening, you know?

So it's like a supernatural force salsa that comes at them when

they're, because it was done with yes,

absolutely.

When you're talking about all the sisters coming home, I was

thinking about you with 270.

I'm like, it's kind of similar to just putting my three kids to be 70 sisters.

Very true.

But it is.

Cause the thought in my head every night is I'm so busy.

I've got so much to do.

I'm so busy.

And I'm actually saying that to myself over and over again.

Yes.

There's beautiful bells to get, but you know, like to

flip that is to say this time.

We'll be there, these children like, and too, I love your expression.

Invite love in like inviting love into each moment, each interaction, even around

the Christmas table with that family member or those people who are really

challenging to love, inviting, loving, and asking Christ to come into that

moment, to transform that moment with his.

So good to talk to you.

I'm like, let's just sit here all day,

so good.

It's very,

very good to see you.

It's good to see you too.

What can I ask you please?

Because this is the final talk for our series.

Would you please pray a blessing over our ladies?

Just I guess, to seal them in protection, seal them in love

as they head into Christmas.

For sure.

That's a great, yeah, that'd be it.

A gift and the father and of the son of the holy spirit.

Amen.

Heavenly father.

We praise you.

And we thank you for this time together.

We thank you father for the gift of your son.

Jesus, Jesus, wherever we are, we acknowledge your

presence in the Eucharist.

Loving us.

We adore your presence and the closest chapel or church, the closest one to us.

We adore you and we praise you.

We thank you.

Jesus.

We ask that you would send your holy spirit upon us upon Karen

and the organizers of this race.

Upon every woman who is attending this retreat upon the speakers, we invite

you holy spirit to come into our hearts.

I knew into the lives of our families and all of our loved ones.

We ask holy spirit that you would set our hearts on fire with.

We ask holy spirit for the particular graces.

We need to be love for those you place in our lives, that we would even be surprised

that you are acting in and through us.

Holy spirit, we give you permission to work in.

We ask holy spirit for a new awareness and a deep gratitude for Jesus as our

savior and savior of the entire world,

mother Mary.

As you prepare for the birth of your son, we ask Mary that you would pray

for us, that our hearts would be like your heart and would be ready to receive

Jesus at each moment at Christmas time.

And when he comes.

Uh, and all of this prayer we place and all of us, ourselves,

we place under Mary's mantle of love and protection as we can.

Hail Mary full of grace.

The Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women, and

blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

Jesus, holy Mary mother of God.

Pray for us now.

And at the hour of our death.

Amen.

Mary help of Christians pray for us.

Saint Joseph preference and the name of the father, not

the son of the holy spirit.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's

just sit here all day.

Beautiful.

So beautiful.

So much.

So ladies, I hope and pray that you've had a chance this advent to carve out

some time and space to make space in your heart to receive the Lord this Christmas.

If you haven't been able to do that, don't feel any pressure.

These talks will be available for another month for you.

So you can go back at your own.

And watch them pray about them and ask the Lord the areas in which his wanting

to bring about change in your life.

Ladies, if you would like to go further with all of these, if you'd like to walk

with me and a number of other Catholic women, then I'd like to invite you to join

us in the Catholic women's masterclass, you can check out the link below this

page for more information, if you are.

Or you have any questions, please feel free to send me an

email@karenatgeniusproject.co.

If you're interested in any of the other resources or live virtual

events that we have on offer here at the genius project, you can check

those out@wwwdotgeniusproject.co.

You can follow us on Instagram genius, underscore project

underscore daily or on Facebook.

I also invite you to subscribe to our YouTube channel, the genius

project on that channel, you will be able to access a number of torts,

beautiful inputs by so many incredible Catholic women from around the world.

Ladies have a really blessed holy and beautiful Christmas.

And I look forward to journeying with you and supporting you in 2022.

God bless you.