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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Learn more about our faith | Why pray?
A few years ago, a hospice nurse shared a story about a patient named Margaret. Margaret had no family, no accolades, no social media presence. But in her final days, she handed the nurse a worn-out journal. Inside were close to a thousand names—people she had prayed for daily, strangers she had read about in news clippings, neighbors she had silently helped. “I wanted my life to be a quiet, silent song,” she wrote, “not a noisy performance.” When she died, the nurse said the room felt holy, as if “the walls had absorbed decades of whispers to God.” Margaret’s journal is what Ash Wednesday looks like when it bleeds into real life: secret and sacred but surprisingly alive. Today, Jesus warns us not to turn faith into a theater act. “When you pray, go into your room. When you fast, wash your face. When you give, don’t let your left hand know what your right is doing.” In other words—Hide your holiness. Not because God is stingy with His grace but because love grows best in the dark, like seeds in the soil.
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In today’s gospel, Peter’s statement to Jesus comes right after Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich--to enter the Kingdom of God.” We hear how the disciples were astonished and spoke among themselves asking “Then who can be saved?” Peter and the others have left behind their families, work, boats, and tools and everything else that was part of their lives before meeting Jesus. This is why Peter can tell Jesus that they have left everything to follow Him.
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In an old film named Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, we follow the adventurous archaeologist Indiana Jones as he embarks on a quest to find his father, Henry Jones Sr., who has disappeared while searching for the Holy Grail. This journey is fraught with peril, including encounters with Nazis and treacherous traps. Ultimately, Indiana reaches the Grail's chamber, where he faces a critical choice: select the true Grail from a collection of ornate golden cups. Choosing incorrectly means death; choosing wisely grants life. Indiana selects a humble, unadorned wooden cup—the cup of a carpenter—and is rewarded with the true Grail. This cinematic narrative mirrors a profound spiritual truth found in the Gospel of today.
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This Friday we reflect on one of the vocations in our Church – the call to Married Life. Jesus addresses the sensitive matter of divorce. Moses stated in Deuteronomy 24:1 that a man could divorce his wife if he “found some indecency in her.” It is the man who had the call on the matter, and he simply wrote a bill of divorce. This Friday we reflect on one of the vocations in our Church – the call to Married Life. Jesus addresses the sensitive matter of divorce. Moses stated in Deuteronomy 24:1 that a man could divorce his wife if he “found some indecency in her.” It is the man who had the call on the matter, and he simply wrote a bill of divorce.
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Let’s talk about espionage, double agents and spying. In the 2010 movie, Salt, Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent accused of being a Russian double agent. To prove her loyalty, she goes rogue, dodges bullets, and stops a nuclear war; she does all this while questioning which side she is really on. The movie’s tagline is, “Who is Salt?”
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Learn more about our faith | Love thy Neighbor
The Gospel of Mark highlights that how we see things isn’t always the way God sees them. One way of looking at John’s story of trying to stop a man from performing exorcisms is to see it as a turf issue. As John said, “…he does not follow us.”
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