World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
In my many years doing marriage counseling, I have run into couples who have been together for twenty and plus years, now mentioning how complicated relationships are. Partners discover stuff about the other that make them conclude that they have been fooled all these years. Comments like; “this is not the person I married twenty some years back, I have been living with a stranger, a monster or a beast!” come up after betrayal, domestic violence, and dysfunctional behaviors that crushes marriage relationships. This goes on to tell us how limited our capacity to understand all there is about the other person's details of life. As human beings, we are constantly in the process of becoming aware, growing in understanding of situations in our lives.
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Mind the Gap. When you go to London, particularly on the London underground trains, there is a warning that comes on over the microphone, Mind the Gap. Here, train passengers are warned to be careful while stepping over the gap between the train and station platform. I want to relate that to our life as Christians or followers of Jesus. Mind the gap can also be an invitation for us to pay attention to the space between where we are standing and where we want to go. That means making choices that are aligned with our values as Christians, so that we are not disconnected or disengaged from where we are, who we are and what we want to become as true Christians.
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God implanted in our human nature a desire to love and to be loved. When we are accepted by others, we have the assurance that we are lovable. The desire for acceptance is so great that any sort of rejection causes us much pain.
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We have a beautiful quotation from Mother Teresa about “the bread of life” she says “Jesus has made himself the Bread of life to give us life. Night and day, He is there. If you really want to grow in love, come back to the Eucharist, come back to that Adoration.” In the Gospel reading, Jesus declares himself as the “Bread of life” This bread of life he offers, is none else than the very life of God. This bread of life gives spiritual nourishment and eternal satisfaction to all who believe in Him.
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In today’s gospel we have John the Baptist recognizing and declaring that Jesus comes from above, one who stands beyond all others. Just before this passage, John the Baptist declares that “He must increase, but I must decrease.” He highlights that Jesus is the Son of God and calls on us to believe in Jesus if we are to receive eternal life.” None of this John knows, can be said of himself.
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William Barry and William Connolly write in their book “The Practice of Spiritual Direction” That “there is something in us that resists change and development, that wants wives or husbands, friends, companions to be the same tomorrow as they are today. At the same time, there is something in us that wants to know more about the other and is bored by sameness.”
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