Daily Thoughts - 06/05/2015

Daily Thoughts: Sometimes when we encounter the daily scriptures they create different emotional responses. Take today’s two readings one from the Book of Tobit and the other from the Gospel of Mark they present us with two different situations that might just product two different emotions within us. In the passage from the Book of Tobit we encounter a charming little story while in the Gospel of Mark we are treated to another moment in the ongoing confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders of his time – a feed good story and a perplexing scene of conflict.

In the selection from Tobit we are reminded of the basic virtues of loyalty and kindliness, a way of living life that is open to everyone. Anyone with an honest attitude and a compassion for others cannot help but tear up at least a little as we hear about the reunion between Tobiah and his parents. It is the story of a good heart, common-sense and the kindly love of others. It is a story about family, friends and the role they play in guiding us through life. It is a story that teaches us about community and about being Church.

As I said above it is a feel good story, the kind of story we need to encounter every once in a while so that hope remains alive. It is not a fairy tale, a happily ever after story. It is a story of everyday life, a story of coming home, of reconnecting and of the power of love.

Too often in our life we are confronted with scenes of conflict like the one in our Gospel.  We are reminded that often religion becomes a business, a profession. In the Gospel, the temple, like perhaps the Church today, has become a place of controversy. The religious leadership of Jesus’ time seem to put more importance on such arcane question as the end of the world and what will happen rather than on the fundamental qualities of life like compassion, love, forgiveness, generosity and prayer.

Jesus refuses to go down the path of the religious leaders. He is not concerned about the “when,” “where,” or “how,” Jesus is concerned about the now! It is the act of living in the now that is most important. Tobit and Anna had hope in the future but their lives of patience and love were firmly grounded in the present and in the end they found new sight and life giving love.

Let’s not look too far ahead. Let’s not make thing too complicated. Let’s be watchful, loving, compassionate, forgiving, generous and prayerful so that we don’t miss those wonderful moments of God’s presence that come to our doorstep!

Have a great Friday everyone!

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 realizations 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 pilgrim’s 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 your day everyone and may it be a day and evening blessed by God’s love! Peace in Christ Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 06/04/2015

Daily Thoughts: I have always liked the story that we find in today’s Gospel (Mark 12: 28-34). I especially like the end when Jesus looks at the scribe and says, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” It is perhaps the only moment in the Gospels when Jesus and the scribes are on the same page. There is a mutual understanding, a mutual respect at this moment in the struggle between Jesus and the religious leaders of his time. It is a nice thing to see. Would that this kind of understand and respect would happen between leaders of all kinds during our time.

The respect and understanding centers around the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbor and we might say there is a third, love of self, because Jesus says we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. As Jesus teaches and the scribe comes to understand, these are the two or three great commandments and everything else flows from them, which might explain why we find ourselves in the struggles that we are in today.

If we just look around at our world, our culture, our society, our church the problems that we find relate to the way we live out or perhaps better said, don’t live out these commandments. Our struggles can be directly related to how we don’t value God and perhaps more importantly how we don’t value others or ourselves. We might even say that our struggles as a culture, society, church and a world can be traced to the lack of love that we have for ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves how can we love others, how can we love God?

Love is not just wanting the best for ourselves, others and God. Love is a respect, a reverence for life, for who we are as individuals, as a culture, as a society, as a church, as a world. Love is finding the good in ourselves, others and God. Love is seeing God in others and in ourselves. Love is seeing, acknowledging, and accepting the differences in ourselves and others but most importantly still being able to find God.

Our challenge today and every day is to put into practice these three great commandments. Our challenge is to wake up each day in love with God, our neighbor and ourselves!

Have a great day everyone!

Daily Prayer: Loving God, strengthen us with the power to love through your Spirit in our inner most being. Fill our hearts with your presence and please do not leave us to face the struggles of life alone. Help us to grasp how wide and long and high and deep your love is for us. And, above all, grace us with the understanding that your love surpasses all knowledge and give us the courage to always share it with others. Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: As we prepare to run today and every day let us imagine that in addition to stretching our muscles we are also stretching our spirit and giving it the flexibility it needs to engage God. Each stretch is a prayer, a conversation with God.

Daily Blessing: Thursday greetings and blessings to everyone! I hope your day has started off well and that your week is going smoothly. If not be assured that you are in my prayers with the hope that things will get better!

I celebrated National Running Day yesterday with a 6.2 mile run it was also my tenth day of running. I am participating in the Summer Runner’s World Streak Run which means I have to run at least 1 mile every day between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, 41 days. So yesterday was the 10^th day in a row. The short I have run has been 4.2 mile and the longest has been 6.5 miles. So 10 days and down and only 31 more to go! It was a gorgeous day for a run yesterday and there seemed to be more people out running than usual. If you are a runner I hope you had a chance to celebrate yesterday with a run.

Well friends, have a great day. May whatever this day brings to your life be life giving. May whoever you meet bring a positive spirit to your day. May God’s love be with you and all those you love today and always! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 06/02/2015

Daily Thoughts: In our Gospel today Jesus finds himself once again challenged, harassed, or questioned by the religious leadership. The Pharisees and Herodians seem to be at least civil this time, yet they are still trying to entrap Jesus. Their tactic this time is to ask about paying taxes.

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about religious freedom, about the government infringing on the rights of churches, religions. Perhaps our Gospel story today can be cast in the light of religious freedom after all Rome was asking for tax money so that they could continue their conquering ways. Just think of all the barbaric acts that these taxes would be paying for. Just think of the Roman occupation that these taxes would be helping to fund. It would seem only right for Jesus to say that withholding the Roman tax would be the right thing to do.

However, Jesus simply says, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  In other words culture and society are not always going to line up with our faith values yet we are still part of culture and society. We will need to give what they require but we will also need to live out our faith, our relationship with God. At times these two relationships are in tension even conflict and we have to make a choice. The choice is not always easy and often has consequences. The challenge is that we live in the world but we are friends of God.

Have a great day everyone!

Daily Prayer: Loving God, renew in us the courage to live life as Jesus would. Help us especially to stand for the values that Jesus taught, and give us the wisdom to discern how best to do this. When opposition comes our way may we not give way to fear and tentativeness. Grace us always with the gifts of wisdom, right judgment, courage and reverence. Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: Running meditation is not about the peak experience, that rare moment of personal triumph occasionally achieved by athletes.  It is about a consistent relationship with God through the gift of running. The meditative runner simply moves, swiftly or ploddingly, towards union, towards friendship with God. The meditative runner achieves her/his goal every day. There are no good runs. There are no bad runs. There is always victory – a steady movement toward a relationship with God.

Daily Blessing: Tuesday greetings and blessings to all! It looks like another cool and rainy day here it Pelham. I hope your Tuesday has started off well. I hope the sun is shining wherever you are and that you are moving about today with a lively step and a hopeful purpose. If not I pray that your day will get better!

Blessings today upon you, your work, your ministry, those whom you meet, those whom you love! Remember, “Seek God and you will find God and every good thing as well!” (Meister Eckhart) Have a great day! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 06/01/2015

Daily Thoughts: I think we have all had one of those moments when listening to a reading from Scripture we think, “O my God that is directed at me!” There is something in the message, the story that hits home that makes us pause and think about our faith, our relationship with God, our life.

I get the sense that today’s Gospel story (Mark 12: 1-12) was one of those moments for the religious leadership of Jesus’ day. Jesus’ story was directed right at them and they knew it. However rather than taking it to heart, rather than giving it some thought, rather than discerning how to change their lives they chose to consider ways of getting rid of Jesus. The uncomfortableness of the truth did not set them free it just made them blinder to the presence of God in their life.

I ran across a quote the other day that I have always liked and you might have seen it on my Facebook page or in one of my tweets. The quote goes something like this, “Someone described a biblical prophet as one who comforted the disturbed and disturbed the comfortable.”  That was certainly true of Jesus especially in our story today.

Yet our reaction to today’s Gospel might be to sit back and relax think that Jesus is speaking to leadership and not to us and that would be a mistake. Jesus’ words should also make us uncomfortable today. How often has God sent people into our lives with a message, with the presence of God and we have rejected them. Thinking they don’t fit in, thinking they don’t have the truth, thinking they don’t belong?

The point is that we never know when God will come a calling, sending a servant, a son, to collect the fruits of our labor. Will we recognize that it is God and embrace his presence or will we reject the visitor because we think we know best?

Have a great day everyone!

Daily Prayer: O God, search us and know our hearts; test us and know our concerns. See if there is any crooked way in us, and lead us in the everlasting way. For we truly do believe so our prayer to you is help our unbelief. Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: Remember if we have the desire to run with God, then the specifics of the techniques used do not matter very much just keep hold of the desire and God will be with you!

Daily Blessing: Monday greetings and blessings to all! I would also like to extend June blessings to everyone. I hope your day has started off well though if you are in the east like me it is quite rainy this morning. I hope you had a great weekend and feel refreshed and ready for a new week! If not I will offer a prayer for you this morning that you will find the energy today that will take you through this week and make a it a good one.

I pray that your day, your week, will be blessed with many wonderful and life giving experiences. I pray that you will take sometime today to smell the flowers, to enjoy the colors of creation and to let yourself be loved! May the blessing of God’s love be with you today and always. Have a great day everyone and continue to know that wherever you are and wherever your life brings you today you are in my prayers! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 05/31/2015

Daily Thoughts: A few years ago I read a book entitled Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor. She is one of my favorite authors, I love the way she writes and how she tells a story. In the book Barbara tells a little anecdote about life as pastor/rector of her first parish in northern Georgia. After services one Trinity Sunday she found a miniature Three Musketeer Bar and a note on her car. They were from an eccentric woman who lived across the street from the church. The note read, “One for all and all for one, Happy Trinity Sunday.”

I could not help but laugh as I read the story again last night, it has stuck with me over the past year and I keep coming back to it. Taylor writes the story as she is talking about settling into her first parish as a pastor/rector. It wasn’t easy, there were challenges and struggles, but this story seemed to reflect an acceptance, a fitting in for her.

Perhaps that is what this feast of the Holy Trinity is all about. We celebrate the mystery of God as Trinity, three persons but one God. Just saying it seems odd. How can we have three persons but just one God? How can we talk about three individuals yet still only be talking about one God? In human language it is impossible yet that is what we believe. We celebrate the gift of three person so connect, so intimate, so focused that they are one. Believing means that we are part of that one, members of the relationship, accepted.

We believe in, we celebrate our God today who is all for one and one for all. Happy Trinity Sunday everyone!

Daily Prayer: Eternal God! A Trinity of persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, yet one in being, whose presence in our life we honor today. You are the beginning and end of all things and it is in and through you that we live and move and have the very breath of life. So today we come before you in body, mind and spirit to honor and thank you for the gift of your presence in our lives. What can we offer you, O God, that will reflect and give thanks for all that you have done for us? All we can do today is give thanks for your Trinity of Love, and serve you all the days of our lives. So let each of us bless the Lord, with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our being and let all that is within us give God thanks this day and always. Amen!

A Runner’s Thoughts: Remember running in a different place every once in a while can bring with it a different set of experiences. Each new setting can provide an opportunity to practice our spiritual running by helping us to be aware of not only new things around us but also new things within us. Running in a new place stretches our ability to find God in our runs, in life and in ourselves!

Daily Blessing: Sunday greetings and blessings to all on this feast of the Most Holy Trinity! I hope this finds you in the midst of a blessed and relaxing Sunday. The sun is out here in Pelham for the moment but they say showers and perhaps even thunder storms are on the way. I will be leaving in a little while for Chappaqua, NY to celebrate the 12 noon mass at the parish of St. Mary and St. John. I was in Manhattan last night to celebrate the 5 pm mass at St. Francis de Sales. So it is a busy weekend for me.

I pray for God’s blessings upon all of you today and always. I hope you will be blessed day rich in family, friends, warmth, peace and rest. May God truly be with you and those you love, keeping you safe as you enjoy the many gifts of God’s creation this day. Remember to spend a little time with God today because after all, “One for all and all for one!” Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul