“Live just for today,” Catherine continued. “Just for today, accept your pain. Accept it as a gift. Don’t look beyond today. The idea of a lifetime of pain and anxiety seems unlimited. Confine your fear and premonitions to just this one day.

“Each morning, accept the pain and struggle and offer it to God. Say, ‘Today I offer you my strife, pain, and fear. Now, God, give me my daily bread of faith, assurance, courage, and love—above all, love.

“And take it, Dear heart, take it. You see, the only reality we have is today. We can’t live in the past and we don’t have tomorrow. Only today is our reality, and we must live in that reality.

“Each day you have a hunger, a need, to receive from God the manna of his gifts. And God desires to respond to you. Dear one, you are on an Exodus from the Egypt of the past—an Egypt that held you captive in a thousand ways.

“You are in the desert being fed each day by God’s special manna for your soul. He is leading you one day at a time.

“You are crossing barren deserts, seeking the water of his love. Each day you will find a well, a special well that will refresh you and fill you with living waters of healing. Each day you will find the bread of his love and teaching.

“Learn to take and eat this bread and drink this water. But just for today. If you look too far ahead, you will not see the gifts at your feet. Ordinary things—bread and water. But it is in ordinary living and ordinary struggle that we find the mystery of God. Then each day can be a sanctuary of God’s healing and love.

“You are sheltered by the blessing of dawn and the rest of evening, and God comes to you from the door of heaven.

“Dear heart, each day for you is a poustinia! You enter it and find the bread of healing, the water of strength, and God’s word. See this reality, and all your actions become a prayer. Everything you feel and suffer becomes a sacrifice and an invocation. All you have to do is to open your heart to God. You carry your poustinia with you wherever you go—at home, at work, even here.

“Thus you live your ‘Exodus to freedom’ in the ‘poustinia of love.’ You will experience the fire of God’s teaching and the cloud of suffering. Each will lead you on. In the night of discouragement, you will see the fire of God’s love and strength, while in the bright light of success and pleasure, you will have the guidance of the cloud of suffering.

“I’m practical. You know that. I can organize a kitchen, a library, a big organization like Madonna House. Everyone thinks it’s my ability. No. It is this daily living—one day at a time. Doing what has to be done at the moment. Looking at today, so that God can take care of tomorrow.

“There will always be a tomorrow. God gives us tomorrow. But by using each day as a gift, a sanctuary, a poustinia, by taking all that God gives and offering our lives, daily, hourly, minute by minute, as a prayer and sacrifice, we decide what kind of tomorrow it will be. This is the practicality of life.”

Catherine stopped. We went to the altar and stood in silence, listening for the words of God. Suddenly Catherine left me. She was burdened by duties and responsibilities while I was burdened by my cancer. I listened to hear God, but I had already heard him in the words of Catherine. Now, in my heart, I experienced his confirmation of her words.

The End