Heidi's Insights & References

Heidi's Juvenile Fiction Book List 

Heidi's Sketch of the Spiritual Life 

Salvifici Doloris - Encyclical on the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering

Serious Medical Decisions: Walking with Family and Friends, Dr. Gerard S Brungardt MD BeL

Heidi in her own words pdf (typed out below)

7 True Spiritual Laws

1. God loves you & is calling you to become a saint

2. You can't do it on your own. Nothing in creation can behold God face to face without grace

3. Humanity lost that grace through sin.

4. Jesus came to restore that grace to humanity and unite us to God through His death and resurrection. side note: But God did not abandon us. In the fulness of time,

5. He then gave to us the Holy Spirit, The Church, and seven sacraments so that we can continue living this new life of grace

6. He is offering that grace to you right now & invites you to the sacraments to receive it. Esp. to baptism if you have never been baptized, to the sacrament of reconciliation if you have fallen astray through sin, to the Eucharist if you are in a state of grace & desire more of His grace,

7. The more that we receive and accept God's grace, though the sacraments, prayer & a life of love,  the more closely we are united to God, the more God lives in & through us. This is how we become saints here on earth & behold God face to face in heaven.

Suffering

• Satan's goal is for all suffering to be the beginning of hell
  • end-less
  • meaningless, non-transformative
  • completely deserved (but doesn't seem like it because of very narrow perspective)
• but in God's providence, suffering can be/is
  • just
  • a call to conversion, side note: purgation, discipline
  • an opportunity to be united more closely to Jesus in His passion & death
  • and so to transform suffering into a vehicle for grace
  • reparation not just for one's own sins (again, united to Christ's sacrifice), but for the sins of the world
  • suffering is elevated from the natural fate of a human being & humanity itself to being the door to heaven
  • but this transformation is only possible supernaturally - it is utterly outside of man's natural powers
• suffering not joined to Christ, surrendered to God, is only suffering
• every occasion of suffering presents the choice of whether to naturally sink with it toward hell or to surrender to God & rise with grace toward heaven