World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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Many true stories of sacrificial friendship have emerged from the sad reality of war. One such story tells of two inseparable friends in World War I, which I read from one of the preachings of K.P Yohannan, who was the president and founder of Gospel for Asia. This story is about two young lads. They both enlisted in the army together, completed their training, were shipped overseas, and fought in the trenches. During a battle, one of them sustained critical injuries in a field filled with barbed wire obstacles. He was unable to crawl back to his foxhole, and the entire area was under heavy enemy fire, making it impossible to reach him. Despite the danger, his friend made the brave decision to attempt a rescue. The sergeant yanked him back inside before he could get out of his trench and ordered him not to go. "It's too late. You can't do him any good, and you'll only get yourself killed."
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Yesterday, while grocery shopping with my Dad, I made a new friend. As I stood making a big decision between blueberry and cinnamon pound cake, I heard a voice say, “Hi!” in the enthusiasm of a soon-to-be four-year-old. Looking down, I saw this little guy with a half-eaten cookie in one hand looking up at me with curiosity and his mother, slightly embarrassed, beside him. I returned his greeting and asked him about the cookie and other important things, like how old he was and his name. He proudly told me he was turning four tomorrow, that his name was Teddy Joseph, and that his cookie was good! He told me about these things with the certainty that we adults sometimes lose through life’s challenges and setbacks.
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Saints connect us to God. Saints are people like you and me who’ve transcended ordinary life’s temptations, challenges, and setbacks to live in union with God in heroic virtue and sanctity of life. I often thought of saints as being priests, nuns, brothers, and, of course, popes. It seemed that it was a requirement; that is, until I dug a little deeper into the lives of people like St. Catherine of Siena.
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Our reflection today is taken from the Gospel of John. Today we hear some of the most reassuring words come from the mouth of Jesus. He tells his disciples that do not let your heart be troubled; trust in God, and trust in me too. These words are words that need to become a sort of a mantra for us, a repeated prayer for us. These are words that need to be engraved on our heart so that we can keep returning to them and keep reminding ourselves under different circumstances what the Lord’s take is on what is going on in our life. “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, and believe also in me.”
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Many of us stay informed about current events by tuning in to radio news, catching snippets of TV broadcasts, or reading newspapers. However, a common issue with these news sources is their overwhelming focus on adverse events—illness outbreaks, civil unrest, international conflicts, extreme weather, fires, crimes, corruption, etc. Interestingly, bad news tends to grab our attention more than positive or uplifting stories. Today, however, we celebrate St. Mark, the Evangelist, the bearer of great good news.
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Healing the family | Holy lives of inspiration
In the year 1994 in the month of April, in the country of Rwanda, over a million people were killed in a mass genocide. Tensions between two ethnic groups or economic classes exploded into a mass massacre and mass destruction of property. The country was reduced to an ugly shell of its former self and the survivors of the genocide reduced to zombies, walking around without knowing who they were, where they were, what had happened to them, and why so few people were walking around.
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