Episode 33 with Richard Carlucci

Have you felt like your cross is too heavy?

Ever think your trials are too much? What did you do to deserve this? Why is God punishing you?

Today I speak with Richard Carlucci, a devout Catholic. His family faced many adversities and tribulations throughout life. Coming from a hardworking family, Richard was surrounded by love and understood what it meant to persevere. As Saint Faustina wrote, “I fixed my gaze upon His sacred wounds and felt happy to suffer with him. I suffered, and yet I did not suffer, because I felt happy to know the depth of His love, and the hour passed like a minute” (Diary of St. Faustina, 252).

One of his sisters was born with cerebral palsy, and she was unable to function as a typical child as she could not eat without assistance, walk, or talk.

As she was noncommunicative, Richard’s parents had to try and figure out why his sister, Rosemary, was crying. She couldn’t talk to her parents so she would always scream in order to be heard and communicate. They persevered and cared for her lovingly until she died at age 46. It was a very difficult challenge for a parent to go through day in and day out for so many years.  

Growing his family 

Richard reached adulthood and prayed a forty-day novena to Our Lady for a holy wife and woman of God, and on the 40th day of the novena he met her.

They married and were blessed with children. One of Richard’s children was born with autism. Some might see it as a burden, but both parents see their son through the eyes of God and see only beauty and innocence.

Richard feels great love for his son as he did for his sister. The suffering and sorrows are used by the family to imitate God’s love.

The power of prayer

Richard clings onto the garment of Jesus and places his trust in God.

He gets much peace and strength from praying the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet. He and his mother both found strength also from a book, With God in Russia, written by Father Walter Ciszek - who was his mother’s spiritual director and was captured by the Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a “Vatican spy." He spent some 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia, and he writes how it was only through total reliance on God's will that he managed to endure. 

Richard started a ministry of music and prayer and has a website at catholicaudioprayers.space. Here viewers can find multiple audio versions of the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the Rosary. It's a great place to pray, meditate, and hear a variety of versions of the prayers.

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