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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
There's an unusual detail in the life of St. Benedict of Nursia. When he began his monastery in sixth-century Italy, he didn't start by training people to pray better. He started by teaching them how to stay. Stay in the same place. Stay in the same room. Stay with the same people. Stay in the same rhythm. His famous vow wasn't brilliance in prayer, not productivity, not even visible holiness, it was stability. In other words, remain. Remain. That sounds unimpressive until we try it. We stay physically, but mentally we're everywhere else. If you want to test this, try sitting in silence for ten minutes. By minute three, you'll have planned dinner, solved a work problem, replayed an argument from 2007, and possibly composed an imaginary speech you'll never give. Your brain will have traveled across three continents and remembered something embarrassing from ten years ago.
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May 1st, the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Joseph was a carpenter, and Jesus would have learned from Joseph’s hands the trade and tools of the carpenter. The tradition, and what we assume from the Scriptures, is that up to the age of thirty Jesus worked as a carpenter. If you happen to see The Passion of Christ, by Mel Gibson, there are some moving scenes during Jesus’ Passion, as he carries the cross, with flashbacks of Jesus making a table and showing it to Mother Mary. That would have been the way Jesus supported himself. I often reflect on the fact that Mother Mary received a visitation from the angel Gabriel, while Joseph only received a dream. All of us dream every night, but Joseph was able to discern that this was not just an ordinary dream, that God was speaking to him on a deeper level. He was called to trust the words of his wife, that something which had never happened in the history of the world, a virgin conceiving, was true.
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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.
Let me begin with a picture of Australian sheep farming. They have roughly 70 million sheep in this country, more than almost anywhere else on earth. But shepherds? Barely a handful. They have motorbikes, sheepdogs, and helicopters. Somewhere right now, a man in an Akubra hat is mustering a hundred thousand sheep from the air, probably listening to a podcast. This is the world into which Jesus's words land with a somewhat comedic thud today. Because Jesus is not talking about drones or GPS ear tags. He is talking about something far more intimate, There is an old Middle Eastern story that brings it to life. A traveler once spent the night near a sheepfold where several shepherds had brought their flocks into one shared enclosure. By morning, hundreds of sheep were hopelessly tangled together. The traveler assumed it would take hours to sort them out. Instead, one shepherd simply stepped forward and called. Not loudly, just a familiar voice. Slowly, sheep began lifting their heads and moving toward him. Another shepherd called, and a different group peeled away. Within minutes, chaos became order, just by recognition of voice.
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Every family has one, a child who is simply, inexplicably, unreasonably good. Not perfect, but just genuinely, radiantly good. They do their chores without being asked. They share their stuff without being told. They comfort a crying sibling while everyone else is still arguing about whose fault it is. And the baffling thing is, nobody taught them to be this way. They just are. And even the parents look at them sometimes and think: where exactly did you come from? And if the early Church was a family, that child was Stephen.
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There is something special about conversations at night. During the day, everything runs on script. "How are you?" "I'm good." We speak about weather. Meetings happen, decisions are made, calendars are obeyed. Even in families, conversation is often logistics management, who picks up whom, what's for dinner, what's next. Its efficient, and necessary. But night changes things. A couple can spend an entire day discussing bills, groceries, and whose turn it is to call the plumber and to pick up kids, and then at 10:30 pm, lights off, room quiet, one of them says, "Can I ask you something?" You know immediately: this is not about the plumber. The real conversation has finally begun. Something carried all day has found its way out. Or college students, confident in seminars, composed in lectures, lying on a dorm room floor at midnight, staring at the ceiling, suddenly asking, "Do you ever feel like you have absolutely no idea what you're doing?" That question never surfaces at 10 a.m. But at night, it arrives uninvited and entirely welcome.
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I came across a stand-up comedy bit recently. The comedian says, “You ever notice, after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, you never see them hanging out again?” Think about that for a moment. Lazarus had a bad day. Not a flat tire. Not a bad meeting. He died. That’s already a terrible day. Day one: “Okay this is new.” Day two: “I am Still dead. Not improving.” Day three: “Alright, I think this is permanent.” Day four: “You know what? I’ve accepted it. I’ve processed it. I’ve let go. I’ve moved on.” He’s finally at peace. Maybe he’s thinking, “This is actually not bad. No bills, no responsibilities, no family WhatsApp groups.” Everything is calm.
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