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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith | Why pray?
What does the Annunciation of the Lord mean to you and me? How has it changed our lives? Today we give thanks to God and our Blessed Mother. We thank God that the Word of God took on human flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We give thanks to Mary for her saying “yes” to becoming the Mother of God. Each Monday and Saturday, as we pray the Rosary, we have the chance to reflect upon the Annunciation of the Lord in the first Joyful Mystery. We enter into that incredible exchange with the angel Gabriel greeting Mary with a blessing from God, then reassuring her: to not be afraid.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Why pray?
Today we remember and pray to Saint Cyril of Jerusalem. He was biblical scholar, cleric, and eventually bishop of Jerusalem in the 4th century. Saint Cyril gave this great instruction: “We proclaim the Crucified and devils quake. So don’t be ashamed of the cross of Christ. Openly seal it on your forehead that devils may behold the royal sign and flee trembling away.” For those who feel like you’re up against it with our current political and secular ideology at this time, Saint Cyril had to contend with both political and doctrinal controversies following the Council of Nicaea.
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Learn more about our faith | Seasonal Reflections
We’ve probably all had times when we’ve been trying to tell a story or explain something that it goes off the rails…we might even classify it as babbling. In Jesus teaching the disciples about prayer, He makes several points. The first is don’t pray to God the way that the pagans pray by babbling on…. more words don’t equal better results. Jesus isn’t telling them or us not to pray persistently throughout the day but rather to avoid what the pagans did in praying to their gods, invoking names and formulas…trying to get the attention of the pagan gods; in a sense trying to rouse the attention of those whose attention is elsewhere.
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Learn more about our faith | Seasonal Reflections
A while ago, there was an annoying commercial, for some product I can’t remember that had a woman who no matter the situation always had the same statement: “More!” It didn’t matter whether it was her dentist showing her the post-whitening process of her teeth, the waiter applying grated cheese to her meal, or a boyfriend who arrived with a bouquet … her response was consistent: “more!”
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In today’s gospel, Peter’s statement to Jesus comes right after Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich--to enter the Kingdom of God.” We hear how the disciples were astonished and spoke among themselves asking “Then who can be saved?” Peter and the others have left behind their families, work, boats, and tools and everything else that was part of their lives before meeting Jesus. This is why Peter can tell Jesus that they have left everything to follow Him.
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Learn more about our faith | Love thy Neighbor
The Gospel of Mark highlights that how we see things isn’t always the way God sees them. One way of looking at John’s story of trying to stop a man from performing exorcisms is to see it as a turf issue. As John said, “…he does not follow us.”
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