World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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Today, we are gathered here, my brothers and sisters, to commemorate the faithful departed. The first reading says, all the faithful departed shall abide with the Lord in love. We are here to prayerfully remember our loved ones - friends, family, neighbors, people we knew and some we did not know - who have already gone to the Lord. We celebrate their lives and thank God for the time we spent with them here on earth. We pray that God gives them good rest and peace. We pray that their lives remain an inspiration to us who are still on pilgrimage here on earth.
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Growing up in Uganda, all through high school I was active in scouting. I was a Patrol Leader of one of the best Patrols in the country and in East Africa. We won District Championships, National Championships, and represented Uganda in the East Africa Regional Scout Championships in Nairobi, Kenya. Scouting teaches young people cooperation, integrity, belief, respect, innovation, organization, and care for others. The founders of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides movements, Lord Baden Powell and Lady Olave Baden Powell, are buried in Nyeri, Kenya. It is in Kenya where they settled in the evening of their lives and eventually rested and were buried.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Love thy Neighbor
Almost every major city in the United States has a Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard or Street. It is usually a prominent street in the city, with a big signpost, and sometimes has a statue or a picture to go with it. The US believes Martin Luther King Jr contributed significantly to an important conversation about racial relations in the United States. He stirred the nation's conscience, led to the passing of the Civil Rights Acts, and therefore deserves recognition and honor.
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Today we celebrate the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was a Bishop and a Martyr. He was a writer who was especially concerned with Church unity. His message is important and urgent in our contemporary world and, to an extent, in the Body of Christ, which is divided in many ways and on many levels.
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In today’s gospel, Jesus appears to be in a sort of foul mood. He had preached and performed many miracles in different cities, but these cities did not take his message seriously. He says that if the message he had preached had been preached in some other cities, those cities would have undergone a conversion and reordered how they lived. His tone sounds a little tired, like when a mother has repeated the same warning over and over, and the kid isn’t listening. It is one of those moments when a mother says to the child, “Jimmy, listen to me. Listen to me.”
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
My dear sisters and brothers, today in Luke's Gospel we hear about Herod the Tetrarch. After the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC, the ancient Kingdom was divided into four parts with each part under the rule of a member of the Herodian family. A “Tetrarch” was a “ruler of a quarter” of the kingdom of Israel. Herod Antipas was the ruler of the region of Galilee and Perea during the time of Jesus and is the subject of the story we have just heard in the Gospel. Herod the Tetrarch is the one who beheaded John the Baptist.
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