World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Do I dare do what the synagogue official did that day that Paul was in the congregation, ask is there anyone among us who has a word of exhortation for the rest of us to hear? Would anyone like to speak in response to the Scriptures that have been proclaimed for us today?
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If you drive by My Brother’s Keeper in North Easton Massachusetts, you will see a bronze statue of Jesus washing the feet of a disciple, a disciple who most likely had been walking all day in the desert sand with sandals. Then he says, "So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you." (Jn. 13:14)
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How do we do our best to listen to Jesus and to follow Him? Today’s saint, Damien de Veuster, known by many as St. Damien of Molokai, might help us with this question. Saint Damien of Molokai was born in Belgium in 1840, and was sent to the Hawaiian Islands after joining the Congregation of the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Today, most people would consider this an excellent assignment … and it was as he served as a parish priest for nine years. But the course of his life and countless others would forever change when he volunteered to become a chaplain, serving people on the remote island of Molokai, which was home to a leper colony.
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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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Modernity largely ignores the mother who wishes to answer the summons to heroic charity her vocation makes upon her. Instead of offering her saintly examples, our culture presents her with a host of feminine role models whose many achievements are not necessarily bad in themselves, but which are only truly good if they orient women, their husbands, and their children to Heaven.
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Some people listening to Saint Paul’s conversion story might be inclined to think that those things just do not happen anymore. Wrong. They happen every day. Every day people are falling to the ground and like Paul are helpless. They were powerless. Some unfortunately never get up. Like Paul, those who fell to the ground were able to get up with the help of someone else. For many that someone else was God, Jesus.
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