The Future: What Happens Next?

Volume XXVII, Number 13
June 9th, 2023

Hello Friends of Our Lady,

When you, me, and the Cyrenes finished the "impossible" True Cross Pilgrimage almost three weeks ago, I was depleted physically and spiritually. In fact, I was numb.

I did not think you would begrudge me taking a couple of weeks to recover while digging into the mountain of personal and professional things I had to put off since last year.

I'm okay now, but first, before I share my reflections...

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Past, Present, Future

I'm not as tough as I thought I was. My knee, my foot, my shoulder—everything is still injured, if not a bit worse. The answer to your prayers was that I never missed a day of walking. That was the real miracle.

Now that I've recovered, my promised photo-diary of the dramatic final few days will have to wait a little bit longer until I finish "digging out."

Including Aerial Shots!

The good news is that the talented videographer Ginny Thomas, wife of Operation True Cross super-sub, Steve Thomas, filmed our last day, interviewed Cyrenes, and is now putting the final touches on a rough documentary. She even used a drone camera!

When it's ready, you will witness what happened with your own eyes.

Waiting for Mary's Orders

The important question now is What Happens Next?

The answer is, I know and I don't know. I believe that Operation True Cross is just beginning.

Our Lady will place before me, you, and Father John Anthony Boughton another specific mission. We await her orders.

There will be another target, and we will go after it.

Group Walking Pilgrimage Coming?

Along with my team here, I am discerning organizing a week-long walking pilgrimage to Washington DC next year—featuring, of course, carrying the Relic of the True Cross. Hundreds (or even thousands) of you could join us in person, free-of-charge, regardless of age or health.

Countless others would join us spiritually. Prayer. Penance.

You Will Never Be Alone

In the meantime, the spiritual warfare campaign to distribute the Daily Prayers to Save America continues. Keep praying Father Ripperger's exorcism prayers for the laity, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and the Mantle of Mary Prayer for divine intervention every day.

I'm still fasting virtually every day in 2023 and 2024 so that you will never be alone in your own self-denials to help God save America.

Keep bringing our beautiful little $1 prayer book to your family, friends, groups, and parishes. Order Now

A Switch Flipped in Heaven

I do not know how God's answer to our living crucifix of reparation will play out on earth. Perhaps the evil one's plans for nuclear war will be foiled. Perhaps economic collapse, war, or natural disasters will alter the course of human events in ways that will better serve God's divine plans for salvation history. Events might build to a crescendo in the coming months, or, take a few more years to manifest.

I am spiritually certain that a switch was flipped in heaven. Things are going to change—perhaps darkly in the short run. An unmistakably divine intervention is coming. I believe God will save America—or what is left of it.

Every Minute Was an Honor

Oh, my friends, I personally walked the equivalent of Honolulu to Boston from sunrise to sunset, seven days a week, for months on end, while leading a national spiritual warfare project to impact human history involving tens of thousands of people.

You walked with me. We got it done. Angels protected us. Our Lady's Mantle kept us hidden. We delivered a "kill shot" that will change history.

The fact is, I undertook eight months of extraordinary physical penance and constant reparation. Every minute was an honor.

Now, when I walk anywhere without the fragment of the True Cross weighing down on me, I miss it. I miss helping Christ Crucified. I miss that freezing van and that cramped bunk. I miss 24/7 atonement.

I want to go back. I doubt Our Lady wants us to do it again, but I would, with great cheer and with a face set like flint.

I miss praying the Sorrowful Mysteries exclusively, over and over, hundreds of times. I still don't understand His suffering—only that anyone who climbs up onto the wood with Him is his friend.

One Particular Tree

Lately, after I returned, I've been thinking about the particular tree from which was fashioned the actual wood of the cross. That it once was a seed. That the Father knew exactly which seed it was when it first sprouted from beneath the soil. That all the angels at their creation knew about that one seed.

It was a natural part of the world. "And God so loved the world..."

At what moment did it fall to the ground, in Israel, surely decades before the crucifixion, perhaps not long before or after Jesus became incarnate by the Holy Spirit?

Can you imagine it?

That seed.

That fragment we carried over all those miles was the size of a seed.

I Know What My Problem Is

You are like that seed. If you grow into a saint. I am, finally, sixty years after I was conceived in my own mother's womb, denying myself.

You joined me. The only reason anyone would follow a sinner like me to traverse such distances is because I was following someone else. Jesus. We joined Jesus. As in the Anima Christi prayer, we were "hidden within" His wounds.

Operation True Cross constantly revealed my own mediocre sins to me. In my daily thoughts as I walked, hour after hour as I tried (and sometimes failed) to act towards the men who walked with me with the dignity and charity they deserved, this uncanny quality of perceiving my many sinful habits and weaknesses was not surprising.

It was never pleasant to learn how far I am from holiness. Reparation is a mirror. To not address my sins would have guaranteed failure. I had no other choice. I try to never mistake my boyhood gift of faith or my belief and knowledge of Catholic teaching for holiness. Intriguingly, my faith grew stronger as my sins were revealed.

From another perspective, in the realm of truth (in my soul), accepting the reality of my decades of habitual failure was the most exciting, hopeful, peaceful, and extraordinary gift ever given to me.

I know what my problem is. Me.

Bright Shining as the Sun

So how do you become holy? Aw, my friends, you already know how. You know every morning, in the first moments, when you open your eyes with the light streaming through your window. God's will is right there: take care of your family. Do your duty. Pray. Deny yourself. Root out mortal and venial sin through the sacramental life (confess, receive). Reach out to others for help. Help others.

Get out of bed. Take the first step to do God's will, and don't stop, not today or the next day, until that glorious day in the fullness of time, when we rejoice together in heaven.

In that place, the glory of Operation True Cross will no longer be hidden, and it shall be celebrated forever in the Court of Heaven, with Mary smiling upon all of us, as we enjoy the countless hundreds of millions of souls who are there because...

...we took the next step, day upon day until there were hundreds of days, then thousands of days, until darkness came each day. Always serene, always hopeful for the bright shining sun to rise again.

One Jesus Quote

"For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." - Matthew 17:20

Join Thousands in Prayer

Please pray with me and your fellow Cyrenes and Veronicas around the world, beginning, as always, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.

O Divine Physician, please heal
or place on the sure path to healing
all those suffering from mental illness
among our loved ones,
even if a miracle is required.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.
Sacred Heart of Jesus, pray of us.
Amen.

Thanks for being a part of it all. Don't forget those Purple Scapulars and our many other effective tools for evangelization.

You guys are the best! Enjoy the Feast of Corpus Christi this weekend!

With Saint Joseph,

Bud Macfarlane
Founder

Corrections

My friend, Father Christopher Gaffrey, wanted me to let you know that as a baptized Catholic, I am, in fact, a mystic (and so are you). My hyperbole in a prior message that I am not one was inadvertently muddy theology. I apologize. Obviously, although I have not received any apparitions, God (and even the saints) can speak to all of us. We can hear His voice.

Also, we mis-labeled a photo as Donna and Glen Buckner in my Florida Beam Departure message. You can see the happy couple here.

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