World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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Jesus' early disciples were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. He called them to become his followers, promising to make them fishers of people. When Jesus was crucified, and all their hopes in him were dashed, they returned to Galilee and went back to their fishing. Today's Gospel reading suggests that they had lost their touch as fishermen. Perhaps their hearts weren't really in it. It is hard to go back to what we once did when, in the meantime, we have found something much more fulfilling.
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There was a professor in our seminary who was teaching us homiletics. He was trying to impress upon the students the importance of using facial expressions to express feelings when preaching. "When you speak of heaven," he said, "Let your face light with a heavenly glow, when you speak of hell, your everyday face will do." Sometimes, our "everyday face" reflects the hell we are going through. For the two disciples who were walking to Emmaus after hearing their Master's death, the facial expression reflected a "hell" of deep sadness and disappointment they were going through.
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“Denounce! Let us denounce him!” – “Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail and take our vengeance on him.” These are words we hear in the reading of the prophet Jeremiah's report about his friends and close associates. They wanted the prophet destroyed. In the Gospel, we have also heard Jesus faced similar challenges from his own people. They wanted him dead.
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As I read and re-read today’s first reading from Genesis, I couldn’t help but notice that it was a great deal for Abram and his descendants in perpetuity. With just one condition: they had to keep God’s covenant. In Genesis, five sentences describe the incredible life-changing benefits God promised Abram.
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Today, we celebrate the feast of Saint Joseph. My guess is that we all know someone named Joseph, most of whom we call Joe. I’ve been blessed by knowing both good laymen and priests by that name, and each, in their own way, embody the virtue and holiness of Joseph.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Love thy Neighbor
One of the most frustrating experiences in life is when you have to deal with an individual or a group of people who won’t believe your story because it is too good to be true! In the scriptures we see the story of Noah, who warned the world that it had become too corrupt that if people didn’t change something bad would befall them. But no one would listen to Noah’s story of the coming floods except his immediate family. We have the Prophet Jeremiah that no one listened to, the Prophets Amos, Isaiah, and Micah—whose message was not taken seriously.
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