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Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Faith Reflection | Hope-2025 | Jubilee of Hope | power of prayer
This Lent, I had big goals for re-energizing my relationship with Christ. I signed up to send prayer cards to 40 different people in need through my parish. I had planned on praying every time I wanted to buy something for myself because I wanted to stop relying on material things for happiness. I was going to go to Adoration and Confession more often, and then all would be right during Lent. Forgetting How to Pray Except that, very early on in Lent, I forgot how to pray. I would sit for minutes that felt like hours and just be blank. It was horrible; words wouldn’t come to me. Praise was not on my lips or in my heart. In a time when I was supposed to be focusing on my relationship with Christ, I was barely even present. I began to panic a bit. I have been a Christian my entire life. Yes, I have fallen asleep during prayer before and I have certainly miscounted rosary beads and missed a few Hail Marys, but I have never forgotten how to pray entirely! Where does this leave me? Where do I go, and what can I do to fix this? I was left to stew over all these questions for several days.
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Faith Reflection | Hope-2025 | Jubilee of Hope | power of prayer
It’s one of my first “technicolor” memories. Prior to that moment, my memories are a bit of a black-and-white haze. When I stepped into Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church in Columbus, Ohio, it was like I was Dorothy arriving at the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz. With its strings of lights forming halos above the heads of statues, this church seemed to be a Christmas Wonderland. I was entranced. I followed my mother to a pew and imitated her prayerful posture. In that moment, I felt so close to God — closer than Dorothy ever got to the Wizard. God as Provider Prayer was a constant component of my childhood. It was the lifeline that gave our family hope, especially in the midst of financial struggles. For reasons I did not know at the time, my beloved father was chronically unemployed. As an adult, I have come to the realization that my Daddy was deeply scarred during his time as a combatant in a long-ago war. He suffered from what is now described as post-traumatic stress syndrome. While the prayers of my mother, sister, and me did not always result in a job for my father, I now believe they helped him to cope with the cross that brought him so much emotional pain. My lasting memory of my mother is of her fingering azure rosary beads in her hands. She prayed the Rosary constantly, and she taught the prayers to me, forming the foundation of my early prayer life.
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Sometimes we tend to think of saints as extraordinary human beings and larger-than-life figures who had it all together. Today we celebrate a man who struggled in his faith to the extent that his second name became “The Doubter.” He was a man who, doubted the resurrection of Jesus. As we say within Holy Cross circles, he thought Jesus was “dead, dead, dead!” He demanded proof for him to believe the resurrection: “Unless I see the mark of nails in his hands, unless I put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Well, the Lord appeared to the disciples and said to Thomas, "Come here, put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe."
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Faith Reflection | Hope-2025 | Jubilee of Hope | power of prayer
There are times in life when we all experience difficult trials or are asked to carry particularly heavy crosses. We may have to manage financial burdens, deal with an unexpected diagnosis, grieve the loss of a loved one, or endure countless other difficulties. In these times, we can feel isolated and alone, even forgotten by God, which only adds to our stress or sadness. Sometimes it is difficult to hope. I have found that spending time with the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary brings me back to the hope of heaven during my most difficult times.
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Today's Scriptures speak powerfully to our lives, reminding us that we are never alone, no matter what fears, uncertainties, or even jealousies we might face. God's boundless compassion and care reach into every corner of our existence, stretching far beyond any limits we could imagine.
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Faith Reflection | Hope-2025 | Jubilee of Hope | power of prayer
When Pope Francis declared the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, I read his papal bull, Spes Non Confudit, which means “Hope does not disappoint.” I highly encourage you to read Pope Francis’ writing on this, as well as any letters written by a pope when they declare something special for a particular year. As Pope Francis, our shepherd, cared for his flock, he recognized the need for renewed hope. We read in Scripture that hope does not disappoint (Romans 5:5), but what does that mean for people who feel hopeless, marriages that are hanging on by a thread, people in stage IV cancer, countries torn apart by war, or political parties constantly at each other’s throats? Life seems hopeless at times. Pope Francis was not writing about a hope we already have. He was drawing our attention to the need for renewed hope. Hope is not simply the virtue slipped in between faith and love. It has a particular purpose. The Holy Father wrote that the daughter of hope is “patience” (Spes Non Confundit). In the same way a mother produces sons and daughters, the offspring of a life of hope is growth in the virtue of patience. Yet technology is constantly working toward eliminating our practice of patience.
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