World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Love thy Neighbor | Strengthening family unity
Today we celebrate the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist. He was a writer and physician who labored to portray for us in the Scriptures the gentleness and compassion of the Lord. He wrote several stories about Jesus healing the sick, or Jesus looking out for the poor and other kinds of people on the margins of society. Luke’s background as a physician certainly contributed to his special concern for the poor, the suffering, the outcasts, and women.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael The US Armed Forces have different service branches. These include the Army, Marines, Navy, Airforce, Space Force, and National Guard. Each of the branches has a specific purpose – there is a branch focused on domestic matters like border protection and humanitarian disasters; there is a branch that fights on land, another on water, another in the air, another in cyberspace; and another that has the capacity to operate in all these multiple spaces. Depending on the task available, trust the US Armed Forces to provide someone who is up to the task!
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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.
Holy lives of inspiration | Love thy Neighbor
Today we celebrate the feast day of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows or Maria Dolorosa. It is the most important feast day of The Congregation of Holy Cross. Our founder, Blessed Basil Moreau, placed the Congregation of Holy Cross under the patronage of Our Lady of Sorrows. We are a Congregation that is Marian at its foundation, and we are a Congregation that was called right from its beginning to be deeply attentive to the different sorrows, sufferings, or crosses that the people we serve experience each day.
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Celebrating family life | Holy lives of inspiration
Last week on Monday, the staff at the Father Peyton Center organized and celebrated a small and beautiful surprise birthday party for me. We were all together in the same space. It was a wonderful time—there was cake, donuts, and drinks; everyone was relaxing and laughing. In addition, I got all sorts of messages from around the world. The online East African Catholic community overdid itself with beautiful graphics and messages! In celebrating birthdays, we offer a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the gift of the life of the person whose birthday we celebrate. We are telling God that we don't take the gift of the life of that person lightly. We are telling God that we are grateful for the gift of that life, and we deeply value it.
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Our gospel today focuses on the power and authority of Jesus. He demonstrates that in the way He spoke and in the way He acted. Preaching in the synagogue in the city of Capernaum, the people were amazed at how He spoke with personal authority, unlike other teachers and prophets who came before Him.
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Learn more about our faith | Return to the Church
From the gospel that we have just listened to, Our Lord challenges the Scribes and the Pharisees about how they went about practicing their religion. He employs a powerful comparative metaphor to drive home His point. He tells them that they are the kind that spends so much time, so much careful attention, to strain tiny, almost invisible, flies out of their drinks, but on the other hand, they swallow the dirtiest and biggest camels one could ever find. How can you compare a tiny little fly in your drink to a big and dirty camel?
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