World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
In our first reading today, we see a well-educated young Pharisee named Saul zealous for keeping the Jewish law. Seeing a conflict between the basic message of Christians that Jesus was the Messiah and the traditions of the fathers of Judaism, he has his sights set on removing Christians and their influence from the synagogues of Damascus.
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Robert Frost began his poem "Mending Wall" with "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall" and ends it with "Good fences make good neighbors." In today’s gospel, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees who criticize His disciples for plucking and eating some heads of grain while walking through a field.
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Return to the Church | Why pray?
How can we grow old gracefully? Maybe Anna from the Bible gives us the answer. First, she never lost hope. Second, she never ceased to worship. Third she never ceased to pray.
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Today we celebrate Saint John of the Cross. He was born in Spain in 1542 and was ordained a Carmelite priest in 1567. After some years in the Carmelite order, he was persuaded by Saint Teresa of Avila in 1567 to initiate a reform. Saint John experienced and witnessed an increase in opposition, misunderstanding, persecution, and imprisonment of their reform efforts.
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In today’s gospel, Jesus compares His generation to children who tried to get their playmates to come out to play, but the playmates didn’t come.
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Friends, we are living in an interim period between the first and second comings of Jesus, God’s only Son. Yesterday, on the First Sunday of Advent, we learned that Advent speaks of God’s promise of both comings and movement through the history of salvation to Jesus the Son of God.
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