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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 | Seasonal Reflections
We’ve probably all had times when we’ve been trying to tell a story or explain something that it goes off the rails…we might even classify it as babbling. In Jesus teaching the disciples about prayer, He makes several points. The first is don’t pray to God the way that the pagans pray by babbling on…. more words don’t equal better results. Jesus isn’t telling them or us not to pray persistently throughout the day but rather to avoid what the pagans did in praying to their gods, invoking names and formulas…trying to get the attention of the pagan gods; in a sense trying to rouse the attention of those whose attention is elsewhere.
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Learn more about our faith | Seasonal Reflections
A few years ago, a bus driver in Seattle named Marcus made headlines—not for any heroics, but for noticing people. Every day, he would watch passengers board his bus, many were his regular passengers, and most of them eyes glued to phones, avoided an older woman who was also his regular passenger in a frayed coat muttering to herself. One icy morning, Marcus saw this elderly woman shivering and he handed her his own thermos of coffee. She stared at him, then whispered, “You’re the first person who has looked at me in weeks.” Turns out, she wasn’t “crazy”—just a widow grieving her son, quietly unraveling. Marcus didn’t fix her life. He just saw her. And in that moment, he glimpsed eternity. That’s the scandal of today’s Gospel. Jesus says the final exam of faith isn’t theology or piety—it’s whether we recognize Him hiding in plain sight, disguised as the people we have trained ourselves not to see.
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Learn more about our faith | Seasonal Reflections
In Mathew 25 the Lord paints for us a scene of the Last Judgement. The criteria he uses in passing judgement is a simple – “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me.” The Lord does not judge people by how many Bible verses they knew, or whether they knew the Catechism of the Catholic Church by heart or not. While knowing all that is of great benefit to an individual, he reduced it to the basics of love being put into action.
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Learn more about our faith | Seasonal Reflections
A while ago, there was an annoying commercial, for some product I can’t remember that had a woman who no matter the situation always had the same statement: “More!” It didn’t matter whether it was her dentist showing her the post-whitening process of her teeth, the waiter applying grated cheese to her meal, or a boyfriend who arrived with a bouquet … her response was consistent: “more!”
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Seasonal Reflections | Strengthening family unity
In both our First Reading and the Gospel we hear reference to “blindness.” The Prophet Isaiah, speaking of the Messianic time, notes that a time is coming when “out of the gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see.” Many centuries down the road in the gospel we hear Jesus heal two blind men, painting a fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies.
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Seasonal Reflections | Strengthening family unity
If you wanted to sum up the meaning of Advent, this beautiful and reflective season of waiting, you could do it with just one profound question: What are you waiting for? What are we waiting for? We're waiting for Christ, who came as a baby, who will come again in glory, but who is also here now. He's present in the laughter of our children, in the forgiveness we share after an argument, in the quiet moments of prayer as a family.
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