Daily Thoughts - 06/21/2014

Daily Thought: There is a verse in St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians that I often ponder. “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:1-10). Over the years I have come to realize just how true this statement is. God’s grace is enough and power is much more powerful when it comes out of weakness.

We spend a good portion of our life seeking some sort of power; the power of love, the power of fame, the power of important, the power of success, the power of accomplishment,, the power of wealth, the power of comfort, the power of self. There are many powers that we seek, yet it is only when we realize that we are powerless that the true power, the power of God is recognized.

It is at the moments of our life when we let go and let God that we are truly powerful people. It is at the moments of our life when we trust in the grace of God that we are truly powerful people.

Now this is not an easy answer to come to, sometimes it takes a life time. Just look at St. Paul’s life. It took an experience of the Risen Christ along the road to Damascus for Paul to begin to understand real power in his life.

Often for us, it is not a profound experience of the Risen Christ but the ordinary struggles, challenges and sorrows of life that can help us come to the source of real power. It is coming to the realization that we cannot serve two masters as Jesus points out in the Gospel (Matthew 6:24-34). It is making the conscious choice to put God at the center of our life. It is trusting in the reality that when we are weak we are strong. It is not worrying about tomorrow but living today!

Have a great day everyone and don't forget to make a joyful noise with your life today!

Daily Prayer: Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will, all I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace. That is enough for me. (A prayer by St. Ignatius Loyola)

A Runner’s Thoughts: Running can be a time for finding out who we really are, it is time on the road, the sidewalk, the trial with no one to measure our distance but ourselves.  Running can be finding out our true character as we run lap after lap. It can be not giving up when exhausted and journeying to the finish. Running can help us to trust in ourselves and know somehow that God’s grace is enough for us.

Daily Blessing: Saturday greetings to all and happy first day of summer! I hope your Saturday has started off well? It is a cloudy day here in Hawthorn Woods as it has been off and on for the last few days. Summer has arrived in all its beauty and all its unpredictable weather.

I was sitting out in my brother’s backyard the other afternoon, just enjoying the day and my thoughts went back to my days in Riverdale. I realized if I were there I might have been sitting on the roof enjoying the beauty of the Great River. It saddened me for a moment but then I was glad to have the memory still alive within me and I was also glad to be with my brother and his family.

Well friends I hope this first day of summer is a good one for you. In a few hours I will be heading north into Wisconsin as I travel to Manitowoc, WI where I will make my home for the next two weeks as I give retreats to the Franciscan Sisters of Charity. I am looking forward to my time there. Please pray for the sisters who will be on retreat and for their preacher.

I pray that God will bless your day today. May you be gifted and blessed with smiles, laughter, family, friends, fun and peace today! And be safe out there if you are traveling!  Have a great day and may you be blessed with God’s joy in whatever you do and wherever you go. May God’s joy be found in the people you meet today and within you! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 06/20/2014

Daily Thoughts: There is a poem by Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, who was the Superior General of the Society of Jesus for almost 20 years, which I like very much.

Nothing is more practical than

finding God, that is, than

falling in love

in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with,

what seizes your imagination,

will affect everything.

It will decide

what will get you out of bed

in the morning,

what you do with your evenings,

how you spend your weekends,

what you read, who you know,

what breaks your heart,

and what amazes you with

joy and gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love,

and it will decide everything.

I thought of it as I read today’s Gospel (Matthew 6:19-23). Where is your treasure? Who or what do you love? Seem to be the questions of the day. Is it God? The words of the Gospel today challenge us to find our treasure in God, but also to move beyond simple academic statements about God and love.  Jesus asks us to allow our living of life to reveal to us we really believe and value. The path we take in life can be a helpful, important, and challenging window in helping us recognize where our hearts are, what and who we are in love with, and where our treasure truly lies.

Have a great Friday everyone and don’t forget to make a joyful noise with your life today!

Daily Prayer: O God, we thank you this day for loving us and we open our hearts and ask you to come in. Please make our hearts your home now and forever. Teach us where our hearts must be and be the true treasure in our life. Help us to always make you the center of our life. Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: If we approach each run as a pilgrimage and believe that the realization of our goals of this running pilgrimage happen with each step taken, then we are truly wandering down a sacred path. Our runs become holy. If we run with a sense of the sacred in our heart we transform the earth beneath our feet into holy ground. If we run with the intention to find God, then we become pilgrims. If we have the pilgrims sacred intention then we change a simple, humble run into “God’s Run!” (Adapted from Roger Joslin – Running the Spiritual Path)

Daily Blessing: Happy Friday everyone and may this be a day of many blessings! We find ourselves on the verge of officially entering summer which will happen tomorrow. I hope summer has come to where you are and that you are getting a chance to enjoy it!

I hope your week has gone well and that you will get a chance to enjoy the weekend that is almost upon us. Have a great Friday everyone and may God bless you as you journey through this day. May today be rich in God’s blessings upon you, your loved ones and upon everyone you meet. May today work be blessed with the richness of God’s presence. May any traveling you might be doing be safe and bring you home this evening to those you love. Enjoy this last day of spring everyone and may it a day and evening blessed by God’s love! Peace in Christ Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 06/19/2014

Daily Thoughts: I remember 28 years ago today very clearly. It was the morning after my ordination day. All of my family had gather in New York and after the ordination spent the night at our Passionist retreat house in Jamaica, NY which is where the ordination took place. At 10 am on that Thursday morning I was going to celebrate my very first mass ever with my family. I would celebrate my official first mass on Saturday evening but this morning would be my actual first mass. I had not looked at the readings because of all the busyness leading up to my ordination day.

So early this morning 28 years ago, June 19, 1986, I awakened and wandered down the hall to the retreat house chapel to look at the readings and prepared for my first mass. When I got to the Gospel I could not believe what I read. It was today’s Gospel from Matthew about Jesus teaching his disciples to pray, specifically to pray the Our Father. I put the book down and tears welled up in my eyes and I just sat there for about an hour unable to prepare any more.

For you see the Our Father was one of the last prayers I prayed with my father before he died some four years before. It was a December night in 1982, I was in my father’s hospital room late that night and as I was about to leave he asked me to pray with him. I was more than happy to do so and I asked him what prayer he wanted to pray and he said, “The Our Father.” I began to say the words and notice that my dad was not praying so I stopped and asked what was wrong. Dad said, “I don’t remember the words.” His illness had begun to affect his mind. So I said, “No problem” and suggested that I say a few words of the prayer and that he repeat them after me. Do you know how hard it is to say the Our Father when you have to stop and think about what you are saying? Well, we got through the prayer and dad became very peaceful and for the most part remained peaceful over the last few weeks of his life. I have always remembered that moment.

I had wanted my dad to see me ordained but that was not to be but on that Thursday morning 28 years I realized that he was with me and had been with me all along. I have never prayed the Our Father at mass, during the rosary or at any other time and not thought about that moment. What power there is in this simple prayer, what a gift this simple prayer is to all who pray it.

I would invite you at some moment today to pause and slowly, deliberately pray the Our Father. Listen to the words. Realize what God offers you through the words of this simple prayer and what God asks of you.

By the way thanks Dad! Have a great Thursday everyone and don’t forget to make a joyful noise with your life today!

Daily Prayer: Our Father, Who art in heaven hallowed be Thy Name; Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

A Runner’s Thoughts: Let us remember always when we run to search for God in the ordinary. Each run is a pilgrimage, not to Rome, Jerusalem or some other place we consider holy or important, but it is a pilgrimage nonetheless. Our run may be nothing more than a trip around the neighborhood or on our favorite running route but if our intention is to converse with God, then we are a pilgrim. It is the very ordinariness of the run that enables it to become a central part of our life. With each run we embark on a pilgrimage of the ordinary where we will always have the chance to find God! (Adapted from Roger Joslin)

Daily Blessing: Happy Thursday everyone! I arrived in Hawthorn Woods, IL yesterday afternoon and was able to celebrate my brother’s birthday with a nice dinner out. Today will be a bit of a lazy day. I will enjoy the down time before things get busy on starting Sunday and lasting for the next three weeks!

I hope your day has started off well and that you are enjoying the warmth of these days wherever you are. Have a great day and please know that all of you continue to be in my prayers. May God’s blessings today be upon your work, your travel, your encounters with others, your struggling moments, your smiling moments and upon all that you do and all whom you meet…Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 06/18/2014

Daily Thoughts: My thoughts today center around two quotes from Thomas Merton. The first is from his book, New Seeds of Contemplation and the second is from the book, Thoughts in Solitude.

“Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.” (New Seeds of Contemplation)

“Ask me not where I live or what I like to eat . . . Ask me what I am living for and what I think is keeping me from living fully that.” (Thoughts in Solitude)

I picked these two quotes today because it is the 28^th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood and I am hoping that over my life time especially these last 28 years I have worked with God to find my identity and that I am truly living for Jesus even though at times my humanness, my struggles, my faults and failing get in the way of my friendship with God and in my service to others.

As I celebrate this day, I turn to my good friend, St. Paul, for guidance and strength in the hope that I will always live every aspect of my life in faith, discourse, knowledge, all earnestness, and in the love of God as it is found in our Lord Jesus Christ. And that I will always excel in the gracious act of love that God has given to me by making sure my love for God and others is always genuine.

As I celebrate today I pray for all who have touch my life especially during the last 28 years! Thank you all for helping me be the man of faith, the Passionist and priest I am today even in the midst of my faults and failings. May I always serve you out of God’s love.

Daily Prayer: Loving God, help us to be persuaded today and always that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, not height, nor depth, nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen! (Adapted from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 8:38-39)

A Runner’s Thoughts: “Running is real. It’s all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It makes you weary beyond comprehension, but it also makes you free.” (Jesse Owens)

Daily Blessing: Happy Wednesday everyone! I find myself in Maumee, Ohio on my way to the Chicago area. I have a nice restful evening after a long day on the road. I hope your day is going well. If things are not going well today hang in there I pray in hope that they will get better before the end of the day.

A shout out to my brother, Jim, on this his birthday! Happy Birthday, Bro, many blessings today and always. I will be there sometime this afternoon and we will take a little time to celebrate.

I offer my prayers on this anniversary day for everyone. May God’s blessing be upon all of you as you journey through this day, in all that you do and upon all whom you meet. Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul