Rosary Meditation of Men’s Cenacle of February 12th, 2026

The Path is the formation of the heart of the mystic. We push through shame by vulnerability/authenticity to uncage Love crucified in us.

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Rosary, men’s cenacle, Feb. 12, 2026

Gentlemen, we can genuinely enjoy being in each other’s company. We talk about the stuff in our lives, work, interesting projects, or tell stories. All of you can be pleasant, some with a great sense of humor. Over the years, I had the honor of participating in almost all the Colombian and US retreats, where I’ve gotten to know you better in person.  I find myself sharing more deeply into your spiritual journeys within Love Crucified, especially in recent years, because the council has seen it helpful that I be available to talk with you if you want, during retreats.

So, based on recent experience in talking with many of you, I asked myself these past few days, what’s been my common experience in sharing with you, men, missionaries of the cross? What do I sense could be beneficial to share with you tonight?

Tonight, I’d like to reflect and pray with you regarding shame and how to deal with it. Generally speaking, I think we men share this heavy burden-common denominator, this emotion, a heartfelt experience of shame. You know the feeling: a knot in your heart or stomach/ heavy shoulders, tight chest, downcast eyes, etc.

         -Many of you, as I do, feel the weight of your concupiscence

-Being immersed in the world, I bet many of you are afflicted by the sexual perversion out there, and maybe you carry lots of shame being sullied from time to time.

Tonight I’d like to look at shame at its deeper root, not just the shame of lust. The feeling of shame comes from a deep awareness that communion is not where it should be, because of my fault or weakness (with God, with wife/family, with your confessor, with your accompaniment, with Lourdes, our foundress, or with the community in general)

-I can easily admit to all of you that I experience a great deal of shame when it comes to Lourdes. The ideals of our charism and mission are very high… and my particular wounds project onto her, where I’m tempted to hide, shying away, from being closer to her.

-Can you relate negative or heavy feelings you experience when you’re before the Blessed Sacrament, by the awareness that your intimacy with Him there isn’t where it should be?

-It’s easy to get stuck in that feeling of shame. We hide, in a million ways (stay busy.)  There looms the question: “Where are you?” “Where am I?”

Adam’s response is ours: “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

The way to push through that paralyzing feeling of shame is vulnerability, just being real, authentic, and honest.

1)    The garden of Getsemani

My beloved, now I desire for you to come to know the desolation of My Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of My Mother. My desolation, the deepest, most profound sorrow in the recesses of My Heart, is known by few souls. It is reserved for the few who have allowed the Spirit to take them through the inner path into the recesses of their own hearts. 11/5/25

I invite you in prayer: go to the inner room and lock the door. Experience being radically alone.

-feel the emptiness, pain, loneliness, longing for more (we cope with it, anesthetize with stuff, activities, entertainment)

-There is a black hole in our hearts: feel it. Remember the quicksand story of Lourdes’ testimony

-Be determined to stay in the empty hole; be convinced that’s your foxhole for the battle.  Call upon Him to join you there, and find yourself there, and learn to BE OK there (be at peace there)

-Do you hear the cry of your heart? More loneliness than one can bear

            -allow yourself to FEEL the full force reality of your aloneness

            -experience of being freaking alone. “I don’t want to be alone.”

                        -Solitary confinement is the worst punishment

                        -silent retreat alone…

-“Rock bottom honesty” self-realization and acceptance is the beginning of prayer

            -Why is rock bottom the place of hope for addicts?

                        -no more escapes, excuses, but to face the harsh reality

-our bullshit “fake piety/devotionals” masks prevent this first step of vulnerability, being real, authentic, and honest with ourselves and God. You may foul others, yourself, but not Him

-Intimacy with our misery is always the takeoff for real prayer.

CCC 2711 (In prayer) We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us, so as to hand ourselves over to him as an offering to be purified and transformed.

-This CCC# confirms the above message: visit the deepest recesses in your heart, and you will see transformation. (That’s a promise.)  That’s because it will lead you to touch the deepest recesses of His.

2)    Scourged at the pillar

My little one, the shedding of your blood is the shedding of the many layers of your self-will. The death of the human will requires more than discipline; it requires extraordinary love for Me, your Beloved. It requires the death of self. Your continuous tears & sorrows of heart for your self-love, seeing your selfishness & preoccupation with your desires and many appetites of your flesh, is the only means of purification. This is how you shed your blood against your many patterns of sin, until you cease to exist & it is I who lives in you and through you. This long and painful process of purification, which I have taught you through the three nails of crucifixion, is the shedding of your blood. Persevere living as one heart with Me, continuously repenting of your many sins, and loving Me continuously through your faithfulness to suffer My sorrows of Heart, & you, along with all My little mustard seed, will be transformed into My saints of these end times. 8/24/25

Formation of the heart (I invite you to my practice of Eucharist time.)

-face the feeling of shame head-on, being real

-make an act of faith: where shall I go? This world can’t fill me. You alone can be the fulfillment of my desires

                        - I want love, communion, infinite is Him alone

-make an act of hope: In this life, my garbage can be purified and transformed, so that my heart can peek beyond the veil and encounter ecstasy. Heaven is possible to begin now. The testing/purgatory is better sooner than later.

-make an act of love: be naked with and without shame, be real, He loves you. “He sees you, He knows you, He will never turn/reject you.”

                        -insist that Agape(self-giving) and eros (passionate satisfaction) become integrated.

-learning to sit with oneself, to be attentive to the stirrings of one’s heart

            -be in contact with pain and deepest longings, aware of my graspings

            -what’s going on in my relationships: family, work (specifics of yesterday)

            -See in my pain, self-love, attachments, expectations, reacting to loved ones with my feelings (annoyance, anger, harshness)

-Can there ever be dryness, indifference, or mediocrity when in contact with your pain? Of course not.

-Processing your pain should always bring you into contact with underlying pure pain.

            -Guess what: you aren’t a monster. Your pure pain is gold.

            -This is where the magic of SUFFER WITH happens

            -Your pure pain is truly His pain. Now it gets real (HIS)… You can relate… but it’s far more; it’s full communion.

            -This is where real purification and transformation happen

            -You begin having “Los mismos sentimentos de Cristo”, the same sentiments as Christ

“Suffer with” is where the untamed wild bronco in your heart, that’s causing lots of chaos inside you (going against intellect/will), is trained and channeled with its full force into harmony with Intellect and will.

            -Saints experience this inner integration. Full passion harmony. Passionate lovers. Suffer With is what makes you and I saints of these times.   

3)    Crowned with thorns

Therefore, for your heart to become empty means it needs to become pure. It needs to be emptied of self. This is the beautiful Path my Son has been guiding you in; the path that is bringing to life God’s holy saints for these decisive times; my saints that will crush Satan as one with me.

(My Blessed Mother, help me become empty.)

The process of long waiting in Abba’s grief through your union with Jesus’s desolation will make your heart empty of self and radiant in my purity and humility. Your desire will become only to do the Will of God and to love Him with your life, with your all. 12/18/25

What I described in the past two mysteries as the walking through shame with vulnerability, the formation of the heart, is an imperfect summary of the Simple Path to Union.

Use a Crucifix

-If I am real and honest, I can pass by a crucifix on the wall with absolute indifference.  I had lots of catechesis, theology, spiritual formation, but this crucifix can literally remain a piece of plastic resin, which isn’t existentially/experientially meaningful to me.

The Path is the journey into your heart, where you “give and take” to unbury, cleanse, purify LOVE CRUCIFIED. It's the journey of gradually finding in this plastic resin your real self. This corpus becomes alive, real flesh and bones, because you become so identified with Him.

-Feet. (It’s the place of discomfort-shame, the act where I begin vulnerability. I experience the force and reality of my misery through self-knowledge. Place where I feel my sins (repentance). Not abstract knowledge, but felt horror and disgust in the particular.

-Pierced side. You become pierced yourself, which moves to get to the bottom of my sins, and enter your own wounds.

            -once there, Suffer With begins, because your wounds fuse with His

-your tortured heart (acting out) now begins to harmonize with the interior martyrdom of the heart of Christ.

-You are getting thrust into His Sacred Heart

-Now you are tuned and present with your heart

-You begin to persevere through the 3 nails (purgatory)

            -desires, expectations

            -reacting to all emotions

-persecution (because you are no longer acting from your wounds/putting order around you)

Is your heart a piece of dead plastic? Hell no! This (crucifix) is just plastic! The reality of this sacramental is fully present there(eucharist), but He needs/longs to be there in your heart. This drama (LOVE CRUCIFIED) is truly present but caged in your heart and wants to ROAR free.

4)    Jesus carries the cross

My deepest desire, My spouse, is to have your heart totally empty so that I can fill it with everlasting treasures. My desolation is that I have so few souls who allow Me to fill them to overflowing capacity with the life of the Most Holy Trinity. 12/2/25

The goal of the Christian life is to make Agape (self-sacrificing love) completely integrated with Eros (passionate desire for satisfaction with the beloved). The Crucifix is this ecstasy/apex.

Our pilgrimage here on earth towards that goal will result in 3 basic outcomes:

-repressed stoic: He has learnt to persevere in giving by discipline. Often respected by others. They have mastered their concupiscence by subtly shutting down their humanity. These don’t feel much and with no intensity. They’ve numbed the deepest longings of their hearts. All intellect and will, where subconsciously their humanity is treated like a prison for their soul. Many priests and devout Catholics end here. When you interact with one, you sense the repression (deep emptiness), the distortions in their psyche that fight to keep up their identity.

-The indulged hedonist: this one fully engages with his humanity. This one feels and desires deeply, but indiscriminately gives free rein to his concupiscence. The wild bronco of his heart is let free to indulge in the instant gratifications of candy, McDonald’s fries, pinup girls, fame, and fortune. The deepest desires of their hearts are absolutely felt and engaged, but they get hung up on the here and now of this material world. They never get their ultimate fill.

-The integrated mystic: He has learnt to feel, sense, and experience everything in his humanity, and by way of giving his heart to purification, has entered into integration where his human experience springboards him into heavenly realities. The slightest or greatest delights and disgusts of his humanity project him into the mystery of GOD. The mystic feels, senses, and experiences GOD in all his humanity. The integrated mystic is truly free, where his agape (giving) is propelled by eros (passionate satisfaction)

Too many Catholics chase spirituality and devotions to flee their concupiscence in a way that disconnects them from their humanity. The Love Crucified spirituality that Lourdes shares with us is very lofty, sublime, and mystical (entering the life of the most holy Trinity), but to get there, it’s impossible without plunging deep into the recesses of the heart. The formation of the heart, The Path, is the road map to becoming an integrated Mystic.

Look at this Icon, icono del esposo, 12^th  century

            -hundreds of ways to read an icon

            -Look at it with some of the insights I’ve been talking about.

            -You, in the deepest recesses of your heart, are this Christ.

                        -see him in the tomb- that’s you in the foxhole of your heart

There’s a crucifying work, a dying to self that must occur in the bowels of your heart.

Back in 2013-16. I was completely there. I was burnt out being the stoic. The depths of my soul were screaming, “Listen to your heart.” By the pure mercy of God, I chose to remain in the foxhole of my heart… (I did not do it in a pretty way). I was given the grace of exposure to Love Crucified spirituality and, most importantly, to living icons of it (Lourdes and Maria). My sixth sense could pick up the integrated mysticism in them, which gave weight to their spirituality.

I was in my late twenties and never had a deep friend before. (family/Legion). God blessed me with Maria’s friendship while I was in my foxhole. To have one or two companions in the depths of our hearts who aid in the formation of the heart, integrated mysticism, is a rare gift in this life. I thank God and praise Him that Maria was this embodiment of the blessed Mother in this place of my foxhole. She still is today. I’m radically different today in 2026… in many ways, the formation of the heart has brought me to a place where the Eucharist is a real consoling spouse in my continued foxhole journey. I wasn’t there before.

I pray you all lean on your wholesome heart companions, who have done this work of the heart. They are a crucial element to your perseverance. A lot of talented priests haven’t fully gone there. Mothers of the cross have.

5)    Jesus is Crucified

On earth, few spouses enter intimacy because they are incapable of sharing their deepest sorrows of the heart with each other, and of participating in the love of suffering with each other as one heart. 10/15/25

I want to offer you another homework for Lent. Try to remember and dig out a few movies and songs that most inspired and moved you as a kid and young man. Maybe re-live them again and pray about it, bring it to accompaniment. Why did it move you so much? What moved you? That’s the language of your heart, that God first used to stir you.

In doing that homework, for me, it’s a hands-down no-brainer, instant response. 1991 (7 years old) Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Kevin Costner). A hero’s tale that moved me to the core. Over the following years, I literally wore out the VHS tape by watching it so much… especially after the credits, the music video of Bryan Adams ‘Everything I Do, I Do It for You.’ I have vivid memories of being transported, like tunnel vision, into an experience-encounter with that song. Can you remember being scared by a song because it moved you so much? That song today still holds the record for the longest run in the #1 spot on the charts in certain countries. (This isolated Canadian farm kid didn’t have bad taste!)

This week, I blasted that song while I was before Him in this chapel, and I welled up with tears of gratitude… That little kid, in me, back then, could never articulate what I could today. That song was explosive in my bones… even as a kid, I knew intuitively it went far beyond conquering Maid Marian. I know now that my soul in that kid yearned for the man on the crucifix, to be completely one and identified with Him. Yes, my kid’s heart had a mystical experience with that movie/song of the Crucified.

Look at this frame of the Crucified on the wall and listen to these lyrics:

Look into my eyes - and you will see,

what you mean to me

Search your heart - search your soul

And when you find me there, you'll search no more

Don't tell me it's not worth trying for

You can't tell me it's not worth dying for

You know it's true

Everything I do - I do it for you

Look into your heart - and you will FIND

There's nothing there to hide

Just take me as I am - take my life

I would give it ALL, I would sacrifice

Don't tell me it's not worth fighting for

I can't help it, there's nothing I want more

You know it's true

Everything I do - I do it for you

There's no love - like your love

And no other - could give more love

There's nowhere - unless you're there

All the time - all the way

Holy Jesus! That’s 100% real mysticism for Daniel Blanchette! That’s John of the Cross stuff in my bones! We need to learn to feel, sense, and experience everything human as a springboard to heavenly realities.

There’s fruitful prayer material in just remembering those memories and working my wounds that surrounded those powerful experiences. I came from a tough settler, ranching family, “Where men don’t cry, was almost, men don’t feel.” This movie/song gave me an escape from the stoicism of my family life. I also made a real connection in my memories; The priests of my childhood/adolescence were mediocre to say the least. I remember being mesmerized by JPII in my late teens, and the experience was precisely seeing him as the embodiment of that song experience I had. JPII lived and felt Love Crucified.