World at Prayer blog

Reflections of Family and Faith

"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton

Father Jim Phalan, C.S.C.

Father James Phalan, C.S.C., is a Catholic priest, member of the Congregation of Holy Cross and the National Director of Family Rosary. He served as a missionary for many years travelling the globe to help people come to Jesus through Mary as part of the Family Rosary team. Now he is happy to be serving back at home in the USA!

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Christ in You and You in Christ - Family Reflection Video

At this time of the Easter Season and until Pentecost, the Church hears the Lord’s Farewell Discourse at Mass: chapters 14-17 of the Gospel of Saint John. I really want to encourage us all to pick up our Bibles! Read and reread it these days, in small pieces as we do at Mass. No words holier, truer, or more mystical have been spoken - and they are for us, all who believe. Yet they may seem hard to get a hold of and very confusing.

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The Message of Our Lady of Fatima - Family Reflection Video

People often ask about the "messages" of Fatima. The message of Fatima is this, that we hear in today’s readings: The Good News that God has fulfilled His promise by raising Jesus from the dead.”… He says: "Trust in Me, I am the Way the Truth and the Life." Our Lady came to Fatima 105 years ago so that we know that this message is FOR US. God is alive and working in our times.

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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.

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Easter season

Fatima, Father Peyton, and the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

In 1917 the world was at war and Europe was the battlefield. On the periphery, far from the centers of power, Our Lady chose to reveal her message of Peace to three young shepherds in the Portuguese countryside. On another part of that periphery, in rural western Ireland, lived another boy about the same age. He too was being schooled in that message in his poor but happy home as they prayed the Holy Rosary every night.

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Finding Meaning - Family Reflection Video

I lost my faith when I was 20. I don’t think I have talked much about that in these homilies. It was the late ‘60s-early ‘70s: the time of the hippies and the Vietnam War. It was a time that gave a big push to the kind of confusion that seems to plague our world now. I was a good kid from a good Catholic family – but, frankly, naïve and impressionable. I got lost in the confusion of the 'blind leading the blind,' as they say.

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Holy Week  |  Learn more about our faith

Heart to Heart with Jesus - Family Reflection Video

We are in Holy Week and about to begin the Holy Triduum: days we relive, in memory: the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord - and Palm Sunday, which was my birthday! So this past weekend I had two reasons to do something that I really recommend we all try to do: find space and time to take a good while to look at your life. Where are you now?

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Seasonal Reflections

How to Celebrate Holy Week: A Living Memory

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” asks the child as his family celebrates the Passover supper, as all observant Jewish families have done each year for 3300 years –since Moses led the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. This is not merely a common remembering; each Jewish person at the supper is to take the event as present, as a personal experience of the liberation. This is a way of remembering is that is woven into the Holy Scriptures: as God’s saving works are remembered, they indeed become present to us. God continues to save His people. In the Old Testament, the ritual of the Passover is the most intense example of this kind of remembrance.

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