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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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If you were to ask a bunch of Christians what the oldest heresy faced by the Church is, I’d bet that most would guess Arianism, an early 4th-century heresy that said Jesus wasn’t really divine. In fact, the threat of Arianism led to the great councils and the Nicene Creed. But the first major heresy goes back centuries earlier, almost to the beginning of Christianity itself. That heresy was Gnosticism, which said -- among many things -- that Jesus wasn’t really human, but only appeared so. And, interestingly, if we meditate on today’s Gospel passage, we can see how Gnosticism itself is a kind of wrongheaded, misguided defense of Jesus from criticisms that Our Lord faced in His own lifetime. Is Jesus Too Human Today, we hear Jesus lamenting how His critics simply can’t accept that a true prophet, especially the Messiah, could eat and drink freely and socialize with sinners. This is all too ordinary and human! A figure from God should be more other-worldly, separated, and inaccessible. And the Gnostics, accepting these kinds of premises, said, “You’re right; the Son of God could not actually be so lowly. That’s why all this human stuff was just an act.”
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Father Patrick Peyton | Jim Caviezel | Rosary Priest | rosary rally
There are moments in life we never forget—encounters with people who leave an indelible impression on us. These people are often none other than the saints. When Charles Dickens met Saint Jeanne Jugan, foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor, he remarked: “There is in this woman something so calm, and so holy, that in seeing her I know myself to be in the presence of a superior being. Her words went straight to my heart, so that my eyes, I know not how, filled with tears.”1 My mother’s cousin experienced something similar when he met St. Teresa of Calcutta on a U.S. Army base in Japan during the 1980s. Almost backing out at the last minute, he went anyway and was forever changed. As he shared with me: “Mother Teresa, who is very small, maybe 4’11” on her tiptoes, took my hand with both of her weather-beaten, gnarled fingers. She looked straight into my eyes—and I must admit, into my soul—and said, ‘Colonel, I am so happy that you decided to come tonight.’ It was like being struck by a sledgehammer. At that moment, I felt the Holy Spirit telling me it was God speaking to my heart through Mother Teresa.” Like Padre Pio and so many saints, Mother Teresa had the gift of seeing into souls and touching hearts with God’s presence. Some saints had the gift of prophecy, foretelling future events and missions. Jim Caviezel and Venerable Patrick Peyton
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