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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Catholicism | Lenten Reflections | prayer
I remember a stage in my early teenage years when my bedroom frequently looked as if there had been an explosion of some sort, and it drove my mom nuts! One Saturday morning, I “cleaned” my room, and she made it crystal clear that it did not meet her standards. I cleared a straight path from my bed to the door, quoted a version of these very words from The Gospel of John, and showed her how I had clearly made “a straight way for the Lord.” She assured me he was going to need a much wider path. The Perspective of a Wise Mom My mom’s assurance is true today! I realize I don’t always make the path to my heart straight or wide. I need to give God room to come into my heart and do His mighty works of mercy. I have all kinds of things in the way that make His way tricky to maneuver. I make Him wind His way around jealousy and pride and selfishness. The path hooks to the left when I toss in impatience and judgmental thinking. The way really goes sideways when control, bitterness, and gossip get tossed into the mix.
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Celebrations | Family Time | Thanksgiving | prayer
Do you want to trade in the cultural stressed-out, food frenzy and instead experience Thanksgiving (and the surrounding days) as God intended? If so, I invite you to try out the two steps I use to create a simple yet celebratory Thanksgiving! Below, I’ve outlined my own Thanksgiving plan (which includes a three-day stay at my parents' home with my husband and two teenage sons) that you can use to create the kind of holiday you actually look forward to.
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Catholic | family prayer | prayer | praying
It’s something you are never too young for, yet never too old. You could spend all day doing this, yet a few minutes works just as well. You can do this walking or sitting, singing or talking, when you are angry or sad, happy or grateful. You will never, as long as you live, run out of reasons to do this nor will you ever regret the time you dedicated to it. You can be an expert or a novice with the same result. It can be incredibly challenging and entirely easy all at the same time. You can do it in any language and you will always be understood. It is never — and I mean never — a poor use of time. It is appropriate for any and all situations, under any and all circumstances.
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Catholic YouTube | Grief | prayer
As October becomes November, All Hallows' Eve, aka Halloween, followed by the Feast of All Saints and then All Souls' Day, reminds us of those who have gone on before us. It's a solemn time, but as the new series Grace in Grief: Hope After Loss shows, there are ways through the grieving process. Hearing the Stories of the Grieving Premiering Tuesday, Oct. 29, on Family Theater Productions' YouTube channel, the seven-part series follows people dealing with losses of different kinds, whether a sibling, a parent, or even a child. The Grace in Grief episodes will be released weekly and run between 10 and 15 minutes. Visit FamilyTheater.org/GraceInGrief or go straight to the YouTube playlist.
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Gospel Reflection | Sunday Mass | prayer
We live in a world of rules and protocols. Everywhere we look, there are guidelines, laws that must be followed, and traffic cops hiding behind billboards to enforce them. We are comforted, and kept safe, by laws. Yet sometimes laws that seem reasonable in one moment become self-serving in another. In yesterday's Gospel (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23), the Pharisees are back in the game of trying to trap Jesus for His lack of strict adherence to Jewish law, this time as it pertains to the washing of hands and ritual purification before eating. As usual, Jesus doesn't mince His words. He calls the Pharisees hypocrites, citing Isaiah's prophecies as specific to them: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts."
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