The Way to Mass is Thru Your Heart III

 

This is Blessed Jean-Joseph Lataste, OP visiting inmates.  He was a fairly new preacher when he was assigned to preach to women prisoners in Cadillac, France, 1864.  He didn't want to do it.  Don't the rookies always get the worst assignments?  He thought he would be wasting his time.  The prisoners wouldn't want to do listen to him; they probably would be rude and disrespectful. He also was afraid of these women.  After all, he was a product of his time, which considered these women not much above low life.   But thinking of how Jesus was treated, he tried to act like Jesus would.

Pere Lataste was in for a surprise.  Not only did he convert the prisoners, but they also converted him! He was the first to be converted.  They did listen to him, intently.  Their confessions brought him to tears. 

He eventually founded a community of former converted women prisoners.  They are called the Dominican Sisters of Bethany.  They not only work with prisoners, but orphans, handicapped, children, and the disadvantaged.  Their cornerstone, like St. Dominic himself founded, was contemplation.  Many of the sisters are contemplative nuns, but there are active branches of apostolic sisters, also.

How Blessed Lataste did this is the same method we are to approach Mass.  We go to Mass in the first place because Jesus modeled obeying the religious rules.  We go to Mass.  But Lataste was open to conversion, and so we approach Mass, not in a bad mood--"Let's get this over with,"  but open to what Jesus is going to show us.  

We won't be judgemental.  We will look for surprises. Pray for all to develop a relationship with God.