#42. DARK MATTER by Blake Crouch || ★★★★☆

I thought I appreciated every moment, but sitting here in the cold, I know I took it all for granted. And how could I not? Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together. (61%)

This book!  Nothing like what I normally read, but it was fun and a page-turner for sure.

#43. OUR LADY OF KIBEHO: MARY SPEAKS TO THE WORLD FROM THE HEART OF AFRICA by Immaculée Ilibagiza || ★★★★☆

Powerful signs have been given to exiles in the past, fleeing their own land, going back into the country of their people’s bondage.  Angels in dreams, surprise stars, wise men from the east – yet we cannot live on signs, for we would soon become dependent on them.  We live by faith, and if from time to time the veil is parted briefly, it is to encourage us for a specific task or to sustain us through a period we couldn’t otherwise endure.  But it is faith that we stand most in need of.  (p.199)

“The human will is a great mystery.  We choose.  We choose to hate.  We choose to forgive.  We are free to do either.”

I don’t like what he’s saying.  I’m angry.

“Are you telling me we have no right to be upset about injustice?!”

“You have every right to be angry.  What is happening is evil.  But if the evil infects you with evil, then it has won a hundred-fold.”

I feel an anguish so terrible it threatens to tear my chest.

“Your anger is just,” he continues in his kindly voice, “but your hatred is not.” (p.238)

#49. DIVINE MERCY IN MY SOUL: SAINT MARIA FAUSTINA KOWALSKA’S DIARY || ★★★★★
This book is a good example of reading something at just the right time.  I remember first starting it while I was in college; I would sit before the Blessed Sacrament at the Port and pray my way through, jotting down notes in the margins.  I never did finish and I think that was okay – I was so young!  I got so much more out of it now, more than 15 years later.  It was exactly the book I needed for these unprecedented and scary times.  Saint Faustina, pray for us! 

#50. SEARCHING FOR AND MAINTAINING PEACE by Father Jacques Philippe || ★★★★★

As the assaults of evil, thoughts of discouragement and distrust, are incessant, so, in the same manner and in order to resist them, must our prayers be incessant and untiring.  How many times has it happened that I went to make the daily hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament in a state of preoccupation or discouragement and, without anything particular having happened, without saying or feeling anything special, I would leave with a quieted heart.  The external situation was always the same, there were always problems to solve, but the heart had changed and, from then on, I could confront them peacefully.  The Holy Spirit had performed its secret work. (p.34-35)

Let us then be convinced of this and it will be for us a source of immense strength: God may allow me to occasionally lack money, health, abilities and virtues, but He will never leave me in want of Himself, of His assistance and His mercy or of anything that would allow me to grow unceasingly ever closer to Him, to love Him more intensely, to better love my neighbor and to achieve holiness. (p.45)

This is another religious book that has been on my TBR list for years, but a recommendation from a trusted priest pushed it to the top of the list!  At only a little over 100 pages, it’s a small book but really packs in a lot of wisdom.  We all could afford to cultivate a better peace of heart these days.