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TESTIMONY of Lilian Giraldo February 25, 2021 JESUS VISITS MY HEART VIRTUE OF POVERTY In the fourth week of our 2020 Lenten retreat, I had an enlightenment of sorts. I woke up one morning with great clarity about my wounds, took a notebook, and wrote sheets and sheets of them all. I was able to name each one and write down the lies and tendencies that stemmed from them. One wound, in particular, came to me with its disordered desires included. Before going into it, I would like to comment that the Lord has healed me a lot in this wound because I no longer react from the flesh but in His Love. I react from compassion and charity, knowing that my parents were also wounded and their parents too, and so on. God desires to restore humanity wounded by sin, and through this process, He has not only healed me, but He has also healed them. The Lord is doing wonderful work in my parents, and my soul moves in love and much gratitude to our Lord for it. This is the wound: It is called “I lost my voice.” Description of the wound: I experienced abandonment, neglect, rejection, violence, fear of being unprotected, and insecurity. I grew up as a very quiet child, adolescent, and young woman who could not express my feelings, worries, frustrations, and fears. I learned to live my pains in silence and solitude. The lies that stemmed from this wound are: No one listens to you, you have nothing important to say, no one cares about you, fend for yourself, be strong, don’t complain, don’t cry, you have to be someone in life, so you don’t depend on a man or anyone. Tendencies from the wound: It bothers me that they don’t value what I do, that they ignore me, that they reject me, that they don’t recognize me, that they don’t listen to me, that they ignore my look when I talk to them. Related disordered desires: I desire to be admired, recognized, seen, flattered, noticed, applauded. In that same Lenten retreat in 2020, the Lord let me know that he was crucified for me. It was very painful and revealing. It was a very real and personal experience. The knowledge we have of this was really embodied in me. During one of the retreat talks, Lourdes and Father Jordi spoke to us about Envy and Pride. I remember thinking “pride yes”; in fact, many times I have confessed it, but “envy no!” and when we were taught to all the unpleasant things that came out of it, I thought that I could suffer from it much less.  These are the things we were told that a person feels in whom envy dwells in his heart: ·      Envy is a hidden reservoir of ingratitude and resentment that secretly applauds the downfall and sorrow of others.  ·      The envious person becomes resentful if he perceives that his peers receive preferential treatment. ·      He attacks others through slander or gossip. ·      Brings tension in families or communities. ·      It pits the person against God’s will. So, after hearing this, I said to myself: no, not envious! And here, the Lord was beginning to show me my false identity. The Lord has taught us that we have all made ourselves into someone we are not and that “The Simple Path to Union with God” leads us to find the truth of who we are. I was then receiving the gift of deep self-knowledge in this regard. And here I would like to share the following from pg. 45 of The Simple Path to Union with God - volume I:  “The soul that receives the gift of self-knowledge and sees the hardness of its heart comes to a decisive point: it accepts this gift, or it remains in darkness. Receiving the gift of self-knowledge hurts; it feels like a sting.”  Well, it took me almost a year more to accept this deep self-knowledge. The Lord continued to dig subtly in my heart, and in a recent accompaniment, he enlightened my companion so that we could deepen our understanding