Sunday, September 23, 2001 6:02 PM

I fell in love with God!

The following testimony was written in 1999.

About four years ago, when I was 21 and when leading a very sinful life, I yielded hesitantly to the pressure of my sister to do the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola in Madrid, Spain. While doing the exercises, the nuns there gave me a book called “True Life in God” in Spanish. I started reading and could not believe it. I must have received a grace from Heaven, for after a whole life of ignoring God and being very sceptical about His ways, I immediately believed that the messages were true. I started reading the messages and after a couple of days, could not get enough of them! I simply could not believe that God could talk to us so intimately, so full of Love. I fell in love with God. Thus started my conversion.

In November 1996, while living in Philadelphia, I went to Rockville to hear Vassula speak. What I experienced that night I will never forget. After the talk, I stayed near to Vassula. She was standing and some of us made a circle around her. People started to kneel in front of her. I didn’t kneel and found it almost profane. “Why were people kneeling in front of this person as if she were God or the Virgin Mary?” Then, when Vassula fell down in the spirit and her body was positioned as if she were on the cross, I knelt too, and cried. It was Jesus I was seeing in the form of a person’s body. I felt His presence so strongly, I couldn’t hold my tears. He was suffering so. He was being re-crucified. When later on I saw my picture in the True Life in God newsletter, next to Vassula, I could not believe my eyes at seeing so many people around me. I thought we were only 4 or 5 there that night next to her. I was so taken by Jesus I didn’t even realize other people’s presence.

The next morning, once home, I woke up in spiritual pain, still seeing in my mind Jesus being crucified because of my sins. My only desire from then on was to give my life to God completely without keeping anything for myself, to surrender entirely in reparation for the sins of this world and for those who do not love Him, and decided that from then on I would do nothing except for Love and the Glory of my Heavenly Father. I felt such joy in His presence, and making His Presence known to others, that I could not get enough of Him! I can’t really express with words what I felt after that night with Vassula Ryden and how the graces I received from God changed me. I felt God’s love so real, so alive, I could not conceive of my life apart from Him. I felt so “detached” from everything around me, and yet so full of a Love that couldn’t possibly come from me. It was as if I were in Heaven already, yet walking among men.

God made His presence known so deeply in my daily life, I wanted to give Him my nothingness and my most fervent desire and prayer was for Him to send me His cross so that I could somehow aleviate His pain. My request kind of scared me at first, but I knew that God, in His infinite Mercy, would give me the graces necessary to carry that cross. At the same time, I just could not believe that I, who am the basest creature of this world, who am so proud and offend God so much, pure wretchedness, could pronouce the words: “You and I, we” and say those words to no other than God our Father, the Lord of Lords, who has the whole earth and universe in the palm of His Hands! Simply incredible. How could I resist Him? His Love just made me literally melt. My heart was burning for love of Him, painfully accepting not being with Him and with Our Mother, which I finally accepted as my cross.

My strongest fear was to loose Him. How can I explain His Love for me, who never did anything to deserve it? I never sought it, I never worked for it. I could from then on simply accept it, and rejoice at having been rescued by my Father. I can only give Him my life in return, my freedom and my will. Little as it is, it is the only thing I can give Him, who has given me everything out of pure Mercy and Love, through His chosen messenger, Vassula Ryden.