Jesus, I have been deeply touched by an event today. A first in history—a Pope speaking directly to a crew at the space station! I have just finished reading the account of Pope Benedict's phone call to the space shuttle crew and the crew of the space station. There was warmth and simplicity which one sometimes misses in Benedict but somehow you know it is there. When Mark Kelly said to the Pope, "We fly over most of the world and you don't see borders, but at the same time we realize that people fight with each other and there's a lot of violence in this world and it's really an unfortunate thing" my heart felt sad, Jesus, as it is almost impossible to imagine a world without borders and yet in that eternal moment of creation our earth had no borders and we called it paradise. It seems an impossible dream now but there is one way that those borders can be removed and that is within our hearts. We have come to the monastery to have our hearts expanded by you, Jesus. Let it be! Each human heart is a fathomless abyss always yearning for more and more love, you know that, Jesus, better than I do, and yet there are times when it seems that hatred and violence seems to dominate. I know it is not true and I know that if each human heart would embrace peace and love the whole world would become a paradise again. May my monastic life be lived always for others so that peace and love may embrace our whole world.

Sister Gabriella