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Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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Saint Joseph is a great bridge figure between the Old and New Testaments, in the image of the Hebrew patriarchs and the adoptive father of the promised Messiah. When we think in the broadest sense about what the Jewish covenant with the Lord consists of, the two words that come to mind are “the Law and the Prophets.” The Law, or the Torah, guided the Jewish people to live their lives well; it was more than a set of just dry rules, for a more accurate translation of Torah would be “the teachings,” the teachings of Who God is and how we can follow His plan for our lives. And we might best think of the Prophets not so much as predictors of the future, but as the pinnacle figures of Jewish prayer, similar to the great prayer mystics in our Catholic tradition.
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In the era before the Industrial Revolution, it was quite common for a son to learn a trade or a profession directly from his father. In fact, some of the medieval guilds, automatically accepted the son of a member into their ranks. Of course, this kind of dynamic played out explicitly in the life of Jesus. Joseph was a carpenter, and Jesus was known as both “the son of the carpenter” and as a carpenter himself. It’s beautiful to imagine a teenage or young adult Jesus and Joseph going out on jobs together or working with each other on projects at their home in Nazareth.
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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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Anyone who has ever tried to start exercising again after months or years of neglect knows this. The first day you say, “Tomorrow I will start.” Tomorrow comes, and suddenly your body invents fifty reasons why today is not the day. The strange thing is that the longer we stay stuck, the more normal the ‘stuckness’ begins to feel. There is a man lying near the pool in Jerusalem. Thirty-eight years. Just think about that. Some of you here have not been alive that long. Thirty-eight years. That's longer than most marriages. Longer than most careers. Imagine you've been sick for thirty-eight years. Not with a cold. Not with a bad back, not even a fractured hand. And every single day, you drag yourself to a pool and you wait. And wait. And wait some more. Thirty-eight years is long enough for a person’s entire identity to become wrapped around a single sentence: “This is just how my life is.”
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Imagine, for a moment, that you are the royal official in Cana. You aren’t just a character in a story; you are a man whose world is collapsing. Your son is dying. You have likely spent a fortune on the best doctors the Roman world could offer, yet here you are, desperate enough to chase a rumor about a carpenter-turned-healer. The royal official in John’s Gospel was, by any measure, a powerful man. He had rank. He had influence. His name opened doors. Yet none of it could save his son. So he walked. Uphill. In the Galilean heat. From Capernaum to Cana, roughly twenty to twenty-five miles. In our world, that’s a short drive with a good playlist. But in the ancient world, it meant eight or ten hours of dust, heat, and anxious silence.
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Catholic Motherhood | Holy Women's History Month | Holy lives of inspiration | St. Monica
For Holy Women's History Month, Alex Resch shares how her devotion to Saint Monica helps her have hope when family and friends are far from the Church. Saint Monica was the mother of Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine was a Doctor of the Church, and arguably, one of the greatest saints of all time. Much to the dismay and heartache of his holy mother, Augustine lived a less-than-holy life for much of his youth.
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“Come back to me, with all your heart; don’t let fear keep us apart…” These lyrics from the hymn Hosea kept echoing in my mind as I reflected on today’s readings from the prophet Hosea and from Mark’s Gospel. Come back to me. To appreciate Hosea’s words, we must remember that he was married to an unfaithful wife—a living symbol of Israel’s spiritual unfaithfulness. Thus, we hear God’s message to His people at the beginning of the reading from Hosea: return to God. Hosea does not focus on Israel’s past failures; instead, he speaks of hope, healing, and restoration. Come back to God and leave behind the false gods and idols that once drew you away. Return to God Hosea tells us how to begin this return. God asks us to set aside our reliance on false gods and instead “take words with you.” In other words, He teaches us how to confess—how to speak honestly to Him, heart to heart. God desires personal relationship, not ritual sacrifices. He invites us to approach Him as we are, not as we think we must be before we dare to come near. God asks for our whole heart and nothing more. He assures us that He will listen to us, love us freely, and not condemn us for the misdeeds of our past. Hosea uses agricultural images to help us understand what it means to return to God. To return is to become rooted in His love, to give off the fragrance of blossoms, and to bear fruit in our lives. When we repent and seek God’s forgiveness, He not only forgives; He restores, beautifies, strengthens, and blesses. God Is Our Refuge In every age, God has been our refuge, though this truth is not always fully understood or embraced. “Let the one who is wise understand.” Hosea reminds us. “Straight are the paths of the Lord.” The Lord asks only two things of us: love your God and love your neighbor as yourself. The just walk this path confidently, while others still stumble. Yet even to those who stumble, God extends the same gentle invitation: come home, come back to Me, and do not let fear keep us apart.
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