Daily Thoughts - 03/28/2015

Daily Thoughts: The stage is set today for Holy Week. All the characters are taking their places for the drama that will unfold throughout the coming week. The religious leadership has made its choice. They are afraid of Jesus; their comfortable life has been disturbed. Caiaphas has given the justification for the rest of their actions. He has put their social problems squarely on the shoulders of Jesus. He has put their leadership problems squarely on the shoulders of Jesus. He has put their fear and faithlessness squarely on the shoulders of Jesus.

With today’s Gospel (John 11: 45-56) we have a clear understanding of why all that we are about to reflect upon as we go through Holy Week has taken place. In many ways the ideal kingdom that Ezekiel (Ezekiel 37: 21-28) images in the first reading for today has not come about. There still is not just one God, one land, one people and one everlasting covenant of peace. We humans get in the way. We often fail to recognize God in our midst. We struggle to trust God’s presence in our life. We find it difficult to believe, to stake our lives on the promises of God. We are always looking for someone to blame, someone to sacrifice in the hope that things will get better.

As we prepare to begin this most holy of weeks let us take the time, not to plot against God, but to hear God’s word. Let us take the time to have faith in our relationship with God, to be people of faith on the journey, to be hopeful in the promises of God and to allow the love of God to embrace us and live within us as we journey through life!

Saturday blessing to everyone!

Daily Prayer: Loving God, open our hearts to the hope of your promises. Give us faith filled hearts that recognize your presence in our life today and always. Grace our hearts so that they may be filled with your love and that we will share your love with all we meet. Deepen our faith, hope and love this day and always so that we will never reject you, so that we will always have faith, see with hope filled eyes, live your love and proclaim the joy of the Gospel with our lives! Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: Breath is usually expressed in Greek as pneuma, which can also mean air, wind, or spirit. In Hebrew ruah is translated as breath, but it can also mean creative energy or life-giving force. As we run let us have an awareness of our breath as spirit, as our capacity to bring God into our being as we take in oxygen into our lungs. If we see each breath this way we will begin to allow our runs to become prayer! (Adapted from Running the Spiritual Path by Roger Joslin)

Daily Blessing: Saturday greetings and blessings to all! We enter the most sacred of all weeks in the Christian tradition tomorrow. We call it Holy Week and it brings to a close this long journey of Lent. We begin with Palm Sunday and we make the journey through the week celebrating Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and we end with Easter Sunday.

I hope you will give some time to God during these high holy days. This is a great week. It is a time to slow down a bit and allow the church to help us focus on our relationship with God. Please don’t let this week pass by as if it is just an ordinary week in life. Make it is special week. Get to church for at least one of the Triduum celebrations, Good Friday is the simplest and I think the most powerful of the three services. At the very least make some special time for prayer this coming week!

My prayer of blessing today is that God will be with all of you in a special way throughout this most Holy of Weeks. May God grace you with a special blessing that will enliven your faith, strength your hope, embrace you with love and fill your heart with the joy of the Gospel that you will proclaim by the living of your life each day. I pray that God will bless you with a restful and peaceful Saturday surrounded by friends and family, if not I pray your day will not be too busy. I also ask your prayers for this humble preacher of God’s Joyful Word!

It will be a somewhat of a busy week for me, a good busy and I can use your prayers so that the Good Word which I will proclaim as a friend of God during these most Holy Days will always be a Joyful Word. Be well and safe this weekend and always. Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 03/27/2015

Daily Thoughts: Both Jesus and Jeremiah find themselves in difficult situations today. For Jeremiah it is the reality of being a prophet, the people do not like what God is calling them to and so they are going to take it out on the prophet. For Jesus it is the reality that people just will not accept him. He has done many good things but people focus in on what they see as a problem, they look passed all the good, they only see the negative.

Isn’t that often the case, wonderful things can be happening yet people only focus on the negative. Whether we are talking about faith, church, religion, culture or society there can be many signs of hope, many actions that are good yet for some reason what is wrong, the negative, becomes the focus. We tend to look for what is wrong with a person, an experience or situation rather than what is right and good. At times it seems like we can make every positive story, situation, experience or person negative just give us time.

How can we overcome this? How can we be a positive life giving person today? How can we find the good and the hope in life? Well I think Jeremiah and Jesus give us the answer.

Jeremiah in the midst of his struggle says, “But the Lord is with me….” Yes, life isn’t exactly the best at this moment, things are not going so well, but God is with me! Jeremiah turns a negative into a positive. Jeremiah finds hope in a struggling moment.

Jesus reminds the crowd to look for and believe in good works. In other words find the goodness in the actions and works of yourself and others. Find what is right with the world, not what is wrong!

This is certainly a different way to live life and living this way will be challenged every day. The media and I realize that it is not just the media or all the media’s fault, but with its twenty four hour a day focus, its need to create news, it has helped us to constantly look for the negative. Let’s face it we like negative, we like seeing people’s faults and failings, negative stories that sell. The stories that most often seem to capture the attention of the viewers are those that focus of the negatives of life. We search and hunt for all that is wrong. We seem to take delight in pointing the finger, in bringing a person down rather than finding the good and building up.

Perhaps our challenge today is to look for the good work in ourselves and others and to believe that God is always with us!

Have a blessed Friday everyone!

Daily Prayer: Loving God, we thank you for this holy season of grace. Help us through your grace to see the goodness in ourselves and in others. Give us the strength to believe that you are always with us even when we struggle. Enliven our hearts with the gift of hope, a gift that we through the living of life can bring to the world. May your spirit of life, love, joy and hope always be within our hearts and help us to celebrate each and every day of our lives! Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: If we become meditative runners, prayerful runners, then we will be fortunate enough to find ways that refresh our bodies, our minds and renew our spirits, thus we might say we will be born again with every new run!

Daily Blessing: Friday greetings and blessing to everyone! I hope you have had a good week. I am sure you are ready for the weekend. Yesterday was a busy day for me but a good one. I made my way down from Peterborough, NH and then prepared for the closing talk at the Passionist Mission at St. Francis de Sales Parish in Manhattan last night. I have to say I was a bit nervous because I had not been there the other nights but all went well and it was a wonderful faith filled closing to the mission. Thanks for all your prayers yesterday!

Today is a day of rest more or less. I am going to get caught up on mail, paperwork and emails. It looks to be a rainy day here in Pelham so hopefully I will get a lot done.

I pray today that God will bless all of you in a special way not just today but throughout the coming week of Holy Week. May this time be rich in the presence of God and that you will find time to make today and the coming week holy in your life. May you be blessed today with the joy, faith, hope and peace of our God who so loved the world that he gave us his only Son and if we believe God will give us the gift of eternal life. Blessings upon all today!

Be well everyone, have a great Friday and a restful and peaceful weekend. Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 03/26/2015

Daily Thoughts: Once again in, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis writes, “I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”.

Thanks solely to this encounter – or renewed encounter – with God’s love, which blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption. We become fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being.”

These words from Pope Francis and Pope Benedict today touch on the theme of our scriptures. Who are we? What are we about? Seems to be the question asked in our readings (Genesis 17: 3-9 and John 8: 51-59). Abram is to become the father of a host of nations; his name is even changed from Abram to Abraham. He is redefined as a person because of his personal encounter with God. Abraham is now a friend of God.

Jesus does not make himself out to be just anybody; Jesus is “I AM” and if we believe we have the gift of eternal life. It is a hard pill for the religious leadership to swallow. Jesus is not able to break through their stony heart with this personal encounter, in fact they pick up stones to do away with him. They cannot be liberated from their narrowness or self-absorption.

Perhaps our challenge today is to renew ourselves in light of our personal encounter with Christ, to have faith in the covenant, to believe in Jesus as “I AM,” to trust in our friendship with God. We are challenged today to let God bring us beyond ourselves to attain the fullest truth of who we are so that we can live this day a God’s joy filled friends who share our joy with everyone we meet!

Have a blessed Thursday everyone!

Daily Prayer: Jesus, my faithful companion, as we live in your hope, we commit ourselves today: to live deeply, with purpose, to live freely, with detachment, to live wisely, with humility, to live justly, with compassion, to live lovingly, with fidelity, to live mindfully, with awareness, to live gratefully, with generosity, to live  hopefully, with enthusiasm and joy, to live fully, in your love. Help us to hold this vision and to renew it each day in our hearts, becoming ever more one with you, our truest self.  Amen.

A Runner’s Thoughts: “Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.” (Dean Karnazes)

Daily Blessing: Thursday greetings and blessings to everyone! I hope this finds you well and enjoying the beginning of a new day. If that is too optimistic for you, I hope this finds you well and beginning a new day with the hope of a good day or at least a day that will get better than this moment!

Our mission here at Divine Mercy had a great ending last evening. As the days before our closing was spirit filled and energizing. As I have said earlier the faith community here at Divine Mercy is very spirit filled!

In a little while I will be on the road heading south making my way back to Pelham however my stay there will be brief as I need to be at St. Francis de Sales Parish in Manhattan by 7 pm this evening to finish the mission our community started there on Monday. I am the closing preacher so I will go from the small town of Peterborough to the big city of Manhattan. I am hoping the mission has gone well these days at St. Francis de Sales and that I will bring a faith filled close to it tonight! If you get a chance please offer a prayer for the faith community at St. Francis de Sales and their wandering preacher tonight!

My prayer of blessing today is that God will bless you with a day rich in faith, alive with hope and one that will embrace you throughout the day with God’s love. May God bless you with safe travels, with life-giving encounters, with an abundance of energy and with the richness of people who love you! Have a blessed Thursday everyone! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 03/25/2015

Daily Thoughts: Today we take a little break from the purple of Lent today to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation. Mary is invited to be the Mother of Christ and she accepts even though it is an overwhelming invitation and will soon become an overwhelming task. Mary utters “yes” to God’s invitation today and her life and the life of the world was never the same. We owe Mary a lot but we can also learn a lot from her still. Her profound trust in God shows us that all things are possible when our friend is God.

In Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis talks about Mary in this way, “Mary was able to turn a stable into a home for Jesus, with poor swaddling clothes and an abundance of love. She is the handmaid of the Father who sings his praises. She is the friend who is ever concerned that wine not be lacking in our lives. She is the woman whose heart was pierced by a sword and who understands all our pain. As mother of all, she is a sign of hope for peoples suffering the birth pangs of justice. She is the missionary who draws near to us and accompanies us throughout life, opening our hearts to faith by her maternal love. As a true mother, she walks at our side, she shares our struggles and she constantly surrounds us with God’s love….Mary is able to recognize the traces of God’s Spirit in events great and small. She constantly contemplates the mystery of God in our world, in human history and in our daily lives. She is the woman of prayer and work in Nazareth, and she is also Our Lady of Help, who sets out from her town “with haste” (Luke 1:39) to be of service to others.”

This reflection by Pope Francis offers us a wonderful insight into the gift of Mary in our lives. He tells us of the many things that we should look for in the life of Mary. Most importantly Pope Francis reminds us that Mary was always able to recognize God’s presence in the important and unimportant moment of life. In other words Mary always remained connected to God.

In remembering Mary today we also remember all mothers, all women who say yes to the gift of life. Because of a mother’s yes, life forever changes for her and the world. Another gift gets the chance to enter the world and we get a chance to share in another part of the image and likeness of God.

So I honor all mothers today, those living and those deceased. I especially pray for all expectation mothers, who carry the gift of life within them because they said yes! I remember in a special way all the mothers who have played a role in my life especially my own mother Rita, I am most grateful for her yes, and also Betty, Bernadette, Alice, Rosemarie, Roseann, Alice, Stephanie, Erica, Alexis, Deb, Ann, Monica and Sarah. Thank you all for your yes and the many ways you have given life to me along the way!

I would also like to mention all those women we say “yes” but are not able for many reasons to bring the gift of life, a child, into the world. I pray that they know that they do bring life perhaps not through a child, but through the unique gifts that they bring to the lives of many. I am thinking of many such women in my life, especially two aunts named, Mary Helen, a couple of friends by the name of Mary, and many others

Have a blessed Wednesday everyone and may Mary be present to you in a special way throughout this day!

Daily Prayer: O God of Eternal Love, through the loving “yes” of Mary, your Word, Jesus, took flesh in her womb. We pray today that we who believe in Christ as our Redeemer may share in the gift of his presence in our life. We ask for the grace to say yes each day and thus bring about the birth of your Eternal Word in the world once again. May the living of our life today be our “yes” to your love.

We also remember this day all mothers and we ask your blessing through the intercession of Mary upon them. We are grateful for their “yes” to life and for the way they have blessed us with their presence and their love! Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: “Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.” (William Barclay, Scottish Theologian)

Daily Blessing: Happy Solemnity of the Annunciation everyone and also Wednesday greetings and blessings! I hope this finds you well and that your Hump Day has gotten off to a good start.

The mission here at Divine Mercy Parish is rolling along. The morning service and the evening one yesterday were both well attended and spirit filled. I am looking forward to today’s closing services! I continue to ask for your prayers for the faith community here at Divine Mercy Parish and for their preacher.

Today’s blessing prayer goes out to you through the intercession of Mary. I pray that God will bless us all with the faith and hope of Mary so that our lives too can be a “yes” to God! I also pray that God will bless all mothers today in gratitude for their “yes”! And a special prayer of blessing for all expecting mothers. Blessings on all women for the life they bring to the world! Have a great day everyone and may God’s blessing be with you! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul