World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Celebrating family life | Holy lives of inspiration
Today's gospel challenges us to go beyond culture wars and politics, to go beyond using the tools of violence and revenge to much more powerful weapons of holiness, silence, and prayer. It challenges us to rise to a much higher level: to recognize that there is a battle being waged about the very nature, dignity and purpose of marriage, an institution from God meant to bring people to God; an institution that God entrusted to us as the highway to salvation, that Saint Paul likens to the marriage between Christ and His Church.
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Healing the family | Learn more about our faith
There is a family that I knew well. Two adult married brothers living in adjoining homes. The entire time I knew them there was a cold silence between them. They never spoke to each other and did not even recognize each other’s physical presence or wave to each other in neighborly greeting. I have no knowledge of the past offense or slight that set this enmity in motion. But it spread its toxic poison to their wives, children and friends.
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Today we are thankful to all the people around the world praying for the canonization of Father Patrick Peyton. Today we also remember three stories that remind us of the ways in which Father Peyton and others, by following the example of Saint Peter, and following the invitation of Jesus, were mindful of tending to the Lord's sheep.
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Saint Luke receives credit for writing both the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of Luke. Among the New Testament writings, these two stand out for their frequent cries of joy. Last week in the Bavarian village where Pope Benedict was born, Marktl am Inn, our guide brought us to his family home, to the room he was born. She exuded immense joy and pride as she described his birth in the very room we were standing in and that four hours later, on Holy Saturday, April 16, 1927, he was baptized in the Church across the way.
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A man was boarding an airplane one day. As he came on board, he happened to notice that the head of the plane’s cockpit flight crew was a woman. That was no problem. Still, it was a new experience for him. As he found his seat, he noticed three persons sitting immediately behind him. One was a young boy about six or seven years of age. Next to him was a man in his early thirties. And next to the man was a woman in her early sixties.
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A female sharpshooter in Unkraine nicknamed "Charcoal" has been called the modern day "Lady Death," a deadly sharpshooter of World War II. Charcoal has recently become a Ukrainian folk hero for defiantly attacking Russian soldiers while remaining undercover. The young Markswoman fought for several years in the eastern Ukraine front against Kremlin-backed separatists, before shifting to the front line of hostilities, as Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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