Daily Thoughts - 07/10/2015

Daily Thoughts: “For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:20). There is great comfort in these words from the Gospel today especially for someone like me, a preacher. However they are words that are also demanding. They demand dependence not independence. They demand dependence on God, a willingness to let go and let God.

Now before I go any further with my reflection I would just like to say something about this phrase “let go and let God.” I know I use it often and at times people have commented that they don’t quite understand it. When I use the phrase “let go and let God” what I am referring to is the human condition known as being in control. We all like to be in control, to call the shots. We all like to have a sense that we have got things covered, that we know best.

However, if we pay close attention to Jesus in the Gospel we are reminded time and time again that it is about God not about us. Jesus often asks the disciples to trust, to not depend on themselves but the presence of God in their lives. It is not easy and the disciples often fail. It is when they are able to let go of their way and trust in God that they find themselves on the right path.

Letting go and letting God simple means that life is not about “me” it is about God. It is about letting go of the enticements of the world and letting God be present to us as we journey through life.

This theme of trust, of letting go has been an ongoing theme in our scriptures this week. We have been reminded of God’s unrelenting, unconditional love for Israel through the stories from the Book of Genesis. We have been told of the great power that the disciples have been given in order to proclaim the Kingdom of God in the Gospel. And we have been directed in many different ways through the responsorial psalm that our focus in life should always be God.

Thomas Merton wrote, “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” Jesus remind us today of exactly the same thing. It is through the courage of our friendship with God that we will always be able to bring the Kingdom of God to each moment of life.

So as we make our way through this day let us have the courage to let go and let God because we trust in God’s unrelenting love for us, a love that impels us to proclaim the Kingdom of God because the Spirit of God speaks through us!

Have a great Friday everyone!

Daily Prayer: Gracious and holy God, give us wisdom to perceive you, intelligence to understand you, diligence to seek you, patience to wait for you, eyes to behold you, a heart to meditate on you, and a life to proclaim you, through the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen! (St. Benedict)

A Runner’s Thoughts: There is something magical about running; after a certain distance, it transcends the body. Then a bit further, it transcends the mind. A bit further yet, and what you have before you, laid bare, is the soul.  (Kristin Armstrong) – So to in the spiritual life…

Daily Blessing: Friday greetings and blessings to everyone! I hope and pray everyone is having a good day.

If you are traveling today please travel safe. If you are working I hope it is a light and easy day for you. If you are at home I hope you are enjoying a little peace and quiet or the gift of family. If you are on vacation I hope it is a lazy day full of joy, fun and relaxation. If you are worried about others may those worries be held in God’s compassionate hands. If you are struggling with life may you find the strength to keep going. If you are find faith difficult may you know that God loves you. In other words I hope everyone is having a day richly blessed by God!

I would like to send a special prayer out for members of my family and extended family who are or will be traveling to a wedding in Philadelphia this weekend. Please travel safe and I pray the wedding and celebration to follow will truly be blessed with love and the gift of family gathered!

As for me I will be traveling south soon to, not to Philadelphia but to Fairfax, VA to be the designated sitter this weekend for my three grandnieces as their parents go to the wedding mentioned above. I am hoping my grandniece will not mind begin with their great uncle for an overnight and that I do a good job so their parents can enjoy a little time away. I mean how hard can it be a great uncle and three lovely little ladies for an overnight – ok, please offer a prayer that everyone survives especially the three lovely little ladies!

May God bless the gift that you are today wherever you share your gift; with whomever you share your gift. May you be blessed with faith, hope, joy and love throughout this day and always! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 07/09/2015

Daily Thoughts: Perhaps today’s thought or focus might be the response from today’s responsorial psalm, “Remember the marvels the Lord has done.” Certainly the two readings, the continuing story of Joseph and his family and Jesus’ sending of the twelve remind us of some of the marvels that God has done over the centuries.

However, more importantly for us today it might not be a bad idea to pause and just remember of the marvels of God in our own life. We all have experienced wonderful, awesome, and marvelous things in our life, things that if we stop and think about can tell us about God’s presence in our life. Take a few moments sometime today and think about your life, remember the marvelous things God has done for you, children, spouses, friends, experiences, occasions and moments that mean something special to you. Think of the wonderful and awesome places you have been and the people who journeyed there with you.

Yes, God has done marvelous things for us and sometimes it is good to stop, remember and give thanks for them! Have a great day everyone!

Daily Prayer: O God, thank you for your unconditional, your unrelenting love. Thank you for the people in our life. Thank you for those who care about us. Thank you for those we love. Thank you for the angels that touch our lives and help us to realize just how special life is. Thank you for the friends who make life so interesting. Thank you for the many extraordinary, wonderful, awesome and marvelous people, places and experiences that you have given us. Help us never to forget them and always to remember how gifted our life is because of your love for us! Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: Remember it is possible to begin a meditation run simply by stepping onto the pavement and putting one foot in front of the other. In fact, the simplicity of this is one of the great joys of running. No elaborate gear, accessories, or training are required. We can simply step into the run and see what unfold, see how God is present in our life today! (Adapted from Roger Joslin – Running the Spiritual Path)

Daily Blessing: Thursday greetings and blessings to all! I hope your day and your week are going well, if not as always please know of my prayers for each for you. Hopefully they will be of a little help to whatever life is throwing at you these days. Remember if people, a place or an experience gives you trouble just shake their dust from your feet and God will take care of the rest.

I am playing the waiting game these days. No word on the outcome of my car yet, hopefully today I will hear something that will get the ball rolling. It is out of my hand at this moment so all I can do is wait. It looks like a rainy morning here in Pelham. Dark clouds hang overhead and rain is beginning to fall. It feel a little less humid though. I hope wherever you are it is a nice beginning to this new day!

My prayer of blessing for all of you today is that you are able to stay cool, dry and hopefully enjoy your day! May God bless all that you do, everyone you meet, and every place you go. May God bless you with the wisdom and grace to see the gift that you are! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 07/08/2015

Daily Thoughts: “A [person] knows when he [or she] has found his [or her] vocation when he [or she] stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.” (Thomas Merton)  I think this is a good quote for our Gospel reading today. The 12 apostles (Matt. 10:1-7) begin to live today and in doing so they find out what God has in store for them.

Isn’t this true for all of us? In living we uncover, we find, we experience, we become who God calls us to be. A verse from John’s Gospel came to mind as I reflected upon today’s Gospel, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last” (John 15:16). The twelve were chosen by Jesus and in the Gospel today they take their first steps in living out that call, they bring the gift of God to the people that they encounter.

The challenge today for us is – Are we living out our call? And what gifts are we offering the world today? Have a great Wednesday everyone!

Daily Prayer: O God, you have called us to serve you today. You have asked some work of us today that you have not asked of others. We have a mission, a call, a meaning to our life today and we may never know its fruit fully. We are a link in your chain of life, a bond of connection between your people. Help us today to do good, to do your work, to be an angel of peace, a preacher of the Good News in our own way. Grace us with the gift of hope that we can share with whomever we meet. Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: Let’s run in a spirit of gratefulness today. Before we begin our run let’s declare our intention to look upon all we encounter with the freshness of the unexpected. Let us run with a sense of miraculous expectation and allow a feeling of gratitude for the extraordinary and the ordinary to flow through our being. As we run today let us be thankful to God for life! (Adapted from Roger Joslin – Running the Spiritual Path)

Daily Blessing: Guess what day it is? Guess what – day it is? It is Hump Day - Wednesday so Happy Hump Day and Wednesday blessings to all!

It has been a rather strange week to say the least. Much to do today and I am still waiting for word about my car hopefully the adjuster will see it today and some sort of decision will be made. Aside from my car I have a mass at a nursing home this morning and a lot of paperwork and correspondence to catch up on as I will be hitting the road again at the end of the week. It is rather humid here in Pelham this morning and looking a bit like rain. I hope your Wednesday has started off well and that you will encounter a beautiful sunny day were ever you are unless you need the rain!

My prayer of blessing is that your day will be blessed with God’s peaceful presence and that your work, your encounters with others, your travel and your return home will be graced with a true sense of faith, hope, joy and love. Have a great Wednesday everyone – enjoy the day as best as you can and remember you are a gift and you make everyone’s day that you meet better! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 07/07/2015

Daily Thoughts: I have a couple of thoughts about our readings today. First off, I think we have all been where Jesus seems to be today. It might take place within family, friends, the place where we work, the neighborhood or our faith community, but we have been in those situations when we look at people and their struggles and our “hearts go out to them!” We see them overwhelmed by life and we wonder how they will survive, how they will make it. At time we even feel helpless because the struggle, the problem, the issue just seem so overwhelming.

In the midst of Jesus’ ministry, even though he is healing everyone in sight he looks around and it is overwhelming. He sees the struggles of life, of health, of emotions, of faith and he wonders how are these people are going to make it. His heart goes out to them!

However, Jesus also sees a great harvest. He sees possibilities; he sees gifts, talents, abilities. He sees hope and a future but he knows people cannot do it alone the whole community must work at it.  Sometimes we think this passage just refers to vocations. If we just get enough priests everything will be fine. Vocations are only a piece of the challenge that Jesus presents to us today. The challenge is for the whole community to be involved. The whole community needs to work together to bring in the harvest, not just a so called chosen few.

If the community does not work together we see the outcome in our first reading by Hosea, the harvest is lost. The harvest of faith, hope and love is the responsibility of the community. We are in the journey together and we all have something to add, to give so that the full rich harvest of God’s presence can be realized and make present.

Have a great day everyone!

Daily Prayer: We give you heartfelt thanks, O Loving God, for the rest of the past night and for the gift of a new day, with all its opportunities of pleasing you. Grant that as we live the hours of this day we will do so with joy, faith, hope and love in service of you. So that when evening comes upon us we will again give thanks to you for your many gifts that enriched us throughout the day. We make this prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen! (Adapted from Daybreak prayer of the Eastern Church)

A Runner’s Thoughts: “Every run is a work of art, a drawing on each day's canvas. Some runs are shouts and some runs are whispers. Some runs are eulogies and others celebrations. When you're angry, a run can be a sharp slap in the face. When happy, a run is your song. And when your running progresses enough to become the chrysalis through which your life is viewed, motivation is almost beside the point. Rather, it's running that motivates you for everything else the day holds.” (From the Runner’s World Daily Kick in the Butt by Dagny Scott Barrios)

And as a friend and brother in the Passion often says – “So to in the spiritual life!”

Daily Blessing: Tuesday greetings and blessings to all! I hope your day has gotten off to a good start. I have a busy day ahead and there is a mugginess to the air here in Pelham this morning. I head to the dentist and then I will probably spend the rest of the day with the insurance people trying to figure out what to do with my car. By the way thanks to all who showed concern last night when I posted the picture of my bruised and batter car. It was only the cars that were hurt no people thank God! But now I have a lot of work I did not anticipate for today!

We are challenged in the Gospel today to help the harvest master to bring in the great harvest so my prayer of blessing for you today is that you will be blessed by God with the energy, enthusiasm, faith, hope and joy to work in the field of life today and bring the gift of God’s presence to all you meet. My you be blessed with the courage and strength to share your gift thus make a joyful noise in life today. Blessing upon all you do, every place you go and upon everyone you meet! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 07/06/2015

Daily Thoughts: Two thoughts come to mind this morning concerning our readings today. The first is that I think all of us have been in Jacob’s (Gen. 28:10-22a) sandals at one time or another. Jacob is on a journey, he is in search of a wife. He stops for the evening to rest and encounters a special place. He encounters a place of connection with God that enables him to know of God’s presence and action in his life. He encounters a bridge with God between heaven and earth.

We have all been to or in a place that after sometime there we feel very connected to God. It is a place where we sense something special. It might be a favorite spot at the beach or a setting in the midst of the mountains. It might be our favorite church or chapel. It might be a room in building or even our own home. It might be some breath taking view that we have encountered. In other words all of us have places in our life that when we are there God seem close, a place where God seems easier to connect with, a place where it seems easier to experience God’s presence, a place like Jacob’s place where we encounter the active presence of God bridging the gap between heaven and earth.

My other thought this morning comes from the Gospel (Matt. 9:18-26). In the first reading Jacob’s response at least at first is conditional. Jacob is willing believe, he is willing to have faith, if God does a number of things for him on his journey. We find a different kind of faith in the Gospel. Both the official and the woman have unconditional faith, no strings attached. Even though his daughter is dead the official still searches out Jesus. He knows that even in death an encounter with Jesus can mean life. The woman who has struggled with health issues for many years just wants to touch Jesus’ clothing that simple action will make all the difference.

These two faith filled people teach us the value, the gift of unconditional faith. They teach us that when we place our trust in God wonderful things, sometimes even impossible things happen!

Today let us not pass up any opportunity to encounter a place, a person, an experience that will help us to know of God’s active presence in our life. Let us be people of unconditional faith so that as we journey through life there is always the possibility for wonderful if not impossible things to happen.

Have a great Monday everyone!

Daily Prayer: Loving God, help us today and always to be open to the gift of your presence in our life. Grant us the strength to be people who can place our trust in you. Help us to see how active your presence is in our life and in the world around us. Give us the willingness to spread the Good News of your love to all we meet. Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: As prayerful runner we always seem to find it inadequate to sit and wait for the Spirit to appear. As prayerful runners, we always want to run towards God but if we are prayerful runner’s what we always find is that God is running toward us at twice the speed! (Adapted from Roger Joslin – Running the Spiritual Path)

Daily Blessing: Monday greetings and blessings to everyone! I hope your Monday and your new work week has started off well. That you feel refreshed and energized after a long enjoyable Fourth of July weekend!

Yesterday I made a long journey through a little section of Ohio, then all of Pennsylvania and across northern New Jersey to finally get home around 3:30 pm in the afternoon. The drive was a little over 400 miles and in certain places it was slow going because of traffic. But I arrived safely and settled back into my humble abode here in Pelham after three plus weeks on the road. It feels good to be home but my stay will be a short one as I will be heading out once again on Friday. But I am going to enjoy these few days at home!

I pray this morning that you day will be one with many blessings, many gifts and many encounters with love. I pray that you will be blessed throughout this day with God’s graciousness, mercy, joy, hope and love! Have a great day, a wonderful week, stay cool and enjoy! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul