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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Celebrating family life | Strengthening family unity
This week we’ve been on the road with Moses and the Israelites--and today they’ve hit the three-month mark of their exodus from Egypt. Three months doesn’t sound like a long time, but I have to imagine it felt like it to the Israelites. Just imagine, you’ve left wherever you live…and for the past three months you’ve been following your local pastor--trudging through a hot and seemingly endless desert!
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Faith Reflection | Hope-2025 | Jubilee of Hope | power of prayer
I was listening to the radio when they announced a contest where a caller might win a thousand dollars. These radio contests happen often, and I have never called in in my whole life. As I was thinking about my track record, I realized it was because I had no hope of winning. Looking back at my life, when there were raffles and drawings, I was never a winner (except once when I won a laminator at a homeschool conference, but I’m pretty sure I was the only one who wanted it). Without hope of winning, there is no reason for us to bother. A thousand dollars, a new laptop — those are pretty impressive. But the hope of eternal life is a much higher reward! We turn to God for our needs because we hope in a God who is not only good but trustworthy; a God who wants to give us good things for our happiness. Unfortunately, the Devil’s whole goal in life is to make us doubt God’s goodness and not believe that He is trustworthy. Without hope in these two things, we don’t bother “running the race,” as St. Paul puts it in Philippians 3:14.
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Brief and contemporary inspiration focused on hope and family prayer will be delivered to your inbox! Articles include live video, written word, and links to resources that will lead you and your family deeper into faith.
Celebrating family life | Strengthening family unity
We all understand the profound ache of a parent’s heart when a child strays from faith. Today, Scripture meets us in that painful wilderness where the Israelites, just freed from slavery, quickly doubted God's care (Exodus 16). Their story mirrors our own: When prayers seem unanswered, when Mass pews empty, when our children exchange truth for the world’s fleeting promises—how do we keep believing?
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Faith Reflection | Hope-2025 | Jubilee of Hope | power of prayer
The psalms are deeply emotional. Read the Psalms and you will find joy, gratitude, sorrow, and despair. You will find guilt and regret. You will find resentment and frustration. You will find peace and contentment. The psalms are replete with human cries to God that span the spectrum of emotions. Praying the Liturgy of the Hours Became My Anchor Several years ago, I was reintroduced to the Psalms through praying the Liturgy of the Hours. When I began praying the hours, specifically morning and evening prayer, I was grieving a tragic loss. Routine prayer became the anchor of my days. My emotions were all over the place and were frankly unpredictable. Some days I felt okay, some days I felt numb, and some days I felt unstable and could hardly recognize myself. I would feel profound sadness one moment and then a little while later, a rush of overwhelming gratitude. I would feel cheerful and social, and then suddenly want to run and hide from the whole world.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
Sometimes our good experiences are the expected outcome of what we’ve been working for, the natural unfolding of our usual role. But sometimes they represent a pretty radical shift in our life’s trajectory, a startling revelation to our very self-understanding. A person in college or the working world feels an unexpected call to consider a religious vocation. A young man and a young woman who have been friends for a long time suddenly sense that perhaps there’s something more to their relationship. A newlywed couple, both focused until now on succeeding in their professional careers, discern that, unlike many of their friends and peers, they desire to have children early in their marriage.
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Faith Reflection | Hope-2025 | Jubilee of Hope | power of prayer
Prayer is such a personal experience and different for everyone. We may be saying the same prayers out loud, but the words are being absorbed into our hearts and minds in different ways. Even as individuals, the same prayer or Bible passage can hit us in completely different ways depending on the season of life we are in or whatever situation we are working through. The prayer that brings me hope is the Seven Sorrows of Mary. Mary suffered so much over the course of her life. Because of her experiences, we can be assured that we have a Heavenly Mother who understands our own painful life circumstances and who longs to pour consolation into our hurting hearts. Learning about the Seven Sorrows of Mary was a grace for me when our daughter, Therese, was born with a fatal genetic disorder and passed away at sixteen days old 27 years ago. Mary’s Seven Sorrows gave me a way to connect some of the most sorrowful moments of my life during Therese’s 16-day journey to each of her own sorrows. In the time of some of my deepest grief, Mary’s experiences helped me to feel understood and less alone in my pain.
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