I recently discovered a podcast called Let Love, hosted by the Sisters of Life—“a religious community of women consecrated for the protection of the sacredness of human life.” Its website explains that the podcast “is about giving God permission in your life, letting go, and receiving the love that frees you to live in the truth of who you are.” The sisters want listeners to know that “you are loved, you are made in God’s image, and your life matters.” And the podcast reflects these truths.
Hosted by three incredibly joyful sisters whose infectious voices can’t help but warm your heart, this podcast recently began its nineteenth season. When I first discovered it, however, the season that was somehow first on my podcast listing was all about the importance of leisure in our lives. Throughout the six episodes, the sisters discussed Leisure: The Basis of Culture—a book I had read for my college application essay. It was exactly what I needed to hear. So I couldn’t wait for this newest season entitled “What Do You Think About?”
And while, at the time of this writing, only two episodes have dropped, I think it’s exactly what our society needs to hear. God’s timing is always perfect.
What shapes our thoughts?
This new season examines the choices we make in life and how they affect not only us but those around us. The sisters help listeners realize the impact they can make on not just their families and friends but on the culture in general.
So often, we allow social media or popular culture to shape what we believe and how we think about the sanctity of life, and this can be extremely dangerous. In the first episode, the sisters explain the importance of not becoming victims of our thoughts but “directors of them.” Our thoughts shape our lives.
If we want to change our culture to one that respects life, we must first learn to respect and love ourselves. This comes from a deep and abiding sense that God loves us and that we were put here for a purpose, but sadly, not everyone knows this.
The sisters told a story about their recent trip to Australia and New Zealand, where they hosted a retreat that took its theme from Isaiah: “The Lord delights in you.” Afterward, an 80-year-old woman approached one of the sisters and said, “I never knew that I was delightful.” And they shared that people frequently tell them that no one has ever told them that they matter.
There’s something fundamentally wrong in a society where people don’t know or understand that they matter. And that comes directly from a culture that has fallen away from or rejected God.
If we really believed that God loves us, our actions would reflect that love. We would respect ourselves and our bodies, and we would respect others.
The sisters want everyone to know and to truly understand this truth: “Your life is good. You matter. You’re willed by God. None of us is a mistake.”
How do we not only internalize this but live it? We must change our mindsets. They explain that “how we think matters,” and they ask whom we are allowing to influence us. When we allow God to come into and reside in our hearts, we no longer feel the void of loneliness. We stop feeling like something is missing. And then we can go out into the world and bring Christ to others, just as the sisters do in their ministry with women in crisis pregnancies.
They explain that these women come to them scared, alone, and not sure if they have the capacity to continue with their pregnancy. Many are pressured to abort. But the sisters accompany them during the pregnancy and beyond. They explain:
The power of watching their thoughts transform when they’re accompanied throughout their pregnancy. So going from thoughts of . . . “I’m all alone and I can’t do this” and then seeing when people come alongside them and they receive more of the support they need. They can start to make an act of faith in themselves and in God, that He has a plan for them. And so then their thoughts transform to “I’m not alone . . . I can do this.”
It all comes down to this: “Do I believe my life is a gift?”
The choices we make
Understanding that life is a gift is crucial. And this way of thinking is a choice, which is much different than how society presents the word choice today. Society’s definition of choice revolves around what “I want” rather than what is truly good.
The sisters ask us to reflect on how we think and on whom we allow to influence our thoughts. Is it social media? Politicians? Movie stars? Or is it the God who loves us more than we can fathom?
When we come to an understanding that God has a plan for our lives and that we are good people who are deeply loved and wanted, we can transform not only ourselves but society. They explain, “How we’re treated or how a group is thinking or how an individual thinks . . . has the power to shift a room, shift a school, shift a mentality, and shift a culture. There’s this incredible weight that we have as each individuals to receive the gift of our lives so we can shape our culture.”
It is incumbent on us to transform our culture, and the sisters explain that we don’t have to be in positions of authority to do so. “Small choices make up a culture,” they explain. How we treat our spouses, our children, our friends, the homeless man on the street, the single mom in our church, and the people within our wider communities matters.
When we allow our knowledge that human life is a gift to permeate through all of our interactions with people, we make a difference. That difference is selfless love.
To illustrate this love, the sisters told a story of men in a World War II concentration camp who had pooled all their medical supplies to care for their fellow prisoners. Among these supplies were three morphine tablets. And whenever someone was in pain, the men would vote on who needed it the most. Yet every single time they deemed someone worthy of this precious painkiller, that person refused, saying that someone else might need it more. At the end of three years in the camp, those men still had those three tablets.
The sisters explained, “They survived the worst culture because they chose to live a different culture inside themselves.”
Yes, that’s selfless love. That’s the love of our God who died on a cross for us.
We too can survive today’s culture where life is discarded at will and where humans are often devalued. We simply need to know that, as the sisters remind us, “the culture of life begins in our own hearts” and that “the fastest way to happiness is to stop thinking about ourselves and to think about each other.”
So let us take the advice of these sisters and never forget that life is about choices, but not choices to make my life better, choices to make the lives of others better. That is what Christ calls us to do. And that is the inspiration you will receive in each episode of this podcast, for we are all called to let love: Let love guide our thoughts, let love guide our beliefs, and let love guide our actions.
This article first appeared in LifeSiteNews at lifesitenews.com/blogs/sisters-of-lifes-podcast-calls-on-catholics-to-reject-the-culture-of-death-embrace-gods-love/?utm_source=most_recent&utm_campaign=catholic.
Facebook Comments