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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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In 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts became the first humans to orbit the moon. As they swung around the far side, completely cut off from all radio contact with Earth, alone in the cosmic dark, astronaut Jim Lovell looked out into the void and said something unexpected: “I feel like there were more than three of us up there.” He couldn’t explain it. No religious vision, no sudden apparition, just an unmistakable sense of presence. Years later, he still maintained: “We were not alone.” Today, on the feast of the Guardian Angels, we hear a curious reading from Nehemiah. The people of Israel gathered to hear words they had forgotten, and when they remembered, they wept. But Ezra told them to stop crying and start celebrating. Because they discovered again what it means to be accompanied, what it means to not be forgotten.
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As we begin October, the month of the Holy Rosary, we celebrate St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus—a saint who reminds us that holiness is not found in great deeds, but in doing ordinary things with extraordinary love. This is a message families deeply need today. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says simply: “Follow me.” Not "Follow me when the kids are older," or "Follow me after you finish your degree," or "Follow me when life settles down." Just follow me—now, in the midst of everything.
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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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One of the most fascinating things when you visit the Mediterranean lands such as Greece, Italy, Egypt, and Turkey are the historical sites of castles, temples, and cities that now lie in ruins. Each of those sites tell a story of a “golden age” when these places were sites of glamor, wealth, and influence. In their current state, they tell of a past, an end, and a death. In our first reading today from the book of the Prophet Haggai, we continue reflecting on the return of the Israelites from exile in Babylon. They found their influential city and magnificent temple in Jerusalem all in ruins. Everything had fallen apart while they were in exile. Before them stood a depressing state of hopelessness when they looked at what had happened to the city and especially the temple that King Solomon had spent so much on building.
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Have you ever had a day, or maybe a week, where you work so hard, you run from one thing to the next, and at the end of it all, you still feel… empty? Unfulfilled? If you have, then the Word of God today is speaking directly to you. Through the prophet Haggai, God says to His people, “You have sown much, but have brought in little; you have eaten, but have not been satisfied.” They were busy building their own homes, managing their lives, but they were deeply restless. Why? Because they had neglected the one thing that gives meaning to everything else: their relationship with God.
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These readings from Ezra recount how the Jews returned to Judah and built a new Temple after the Persians freed them from their Babylonian conquerors. The destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the exile of the king and much of the population was undoubtedly the greatest trauma God’s people had suffered up to that point. And yet, somehow, mysteriously, this experience of defeat and exile yielded a Jewish people of far greater faith and spiritual depth. Their writings and their practices of covenant faithfulness both reveal a richer understanding of God’s nature and their relationship to Him than they ever had attained in the glory days of David and Solomon.
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Jerusalem lay in ruins. For seventy years the songs of worship had fallen silent, the temple reduced to rubble. And then, of all people, a Persian king, the ruler of their former captors, signed the checks to rebuild the house of God. There’s something deliciously ironic about King Darius funding the rebuilding of a temple to a God he didn’t even worship. Yet this is precisely what unfolds in our reading today. The Persian emperor, and his successors, rulers of the known world, becomes heaven’s unlikely contractors. The temple project wasn’t just approved, it came with a blank check and royal protection.
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