Daily Thoughts - 07/11/2014

Daily Thoughts: “For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” There is great comfort in these words from the Gospel today especially for some 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.

This has been an ongoing theme in our scriptures this week. We have been reminded of God’s unrelenting, unconditional love for Israel through the prophet Hosea. 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.” Both Hosea and 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 day everyone and don’t forget to make a joyful noise with your life today!

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: Happy Friday everyone! As we get near noon time 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 a mother waiting to bring life into the world (Sarah and Theresa), I hope it is not a too uncomfortable day and that all is going well. If you are a father waiting to bring life into the world (Dominick and Jason) relax your wife has it under control. 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!

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 - 07/10/2014

Daily Thoughts: I had two thoughts after spending some time with the readings for today. The first was that of God’s unconditional, unrelenting love. In the first reading from Hosea, God knows that the Israelites are not faithful and that they have chosen to buy into the culture around them. However, God is not going to give up on them. God is going to remain faith.

My second thought is that Jesus is also teaching his disciples about God’s unconditional and unrelenting love but in a different way. Jesus sends the disciples out to proclaim the Kingdom of God giving them great powers but also asking them to be dependent. They are not to take what a usual traveler should take. They are to be dependent on the people and place that they go. They are to let God take care of the problems that they may face. Jesus asks his disciple to depend on God in their ministry.

Our two reading remind us that God is in this journey of life for the long haul. God will be with us through the journey and if we are faithful God will take care of the struggles, not always in our time but in God’s time. All we have to do is trust in the presence and love of God. If we do this our presence life will give way to the fullness of a life that will never end!

The Kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe in the Gospel! Have a great afternoon and evening everyone and don’t forget to make a joyful noise with your life today!

Today’sreadings - http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071014.cfm

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: Happy Thursday afternoon everyone! 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.

My time here at Sacred Heart continues to go well. It is nice to spend a little time as a parish priest. It gives me great respect for what they do. I have been to the hospital a few times and it is nice to celebrate Eucharist with the same community of people each morning. I am also able to catch up on some paper work and prepare some things for later this summer.

My prayer of blessing for all of you this afternoon 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 - 07/09/2014

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. At mass this morning I told the people that a verse from John’s Gospel came to mind as I reflected upon the 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 God and in the Gospel today they take their first step 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 gift are we offering the world today? Have a great Wednesday everyone and don’t forget to make a joyful noise with your life today!

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!

Things are going along just fine here in Mount Holly and I am staying out of trouble and this is a good thing. I hope your Hump Day is going well, if not and you are having a few bumps in the road please know of my prayers for you. I have had a lot of practice praying for bumps in the road! 

My prayer of blessing is that your afternoon and evening 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 afternoon and evening everyone – enjoy the rest of the day as best 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 - 07/08/2014

Daily Thoughts: As I prepared for the 7:00 am mass very early this morning I had 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 they 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 and don’t forget to make a joyful noise with your life today!

(Daily Readings http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070814.cfm)

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 blessing to all! I hope your day has gotten off to a good start and that you are prepared to face the heat that seems to be upon us at least here in Mount Holly, NJ.

My week is going well with early mornings, as I have a 7:00 am and 8:30 am mass each day, productive days that are helping me get caught up on paperwork and relaxing evenings with friends. It is a nice mix in which to celebrate these early July days of summer!

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 - 07/07/2014

Daily Thoughts: The verse from the responsorial psalm seems to capture the essence of our readings today, “The Lord is gracious and merciful.” In the Gospel, (Matt. 9:18-26), we witness God’s graciousness and mercy through Jesus. It is a graciousness and mercy that comes about because of the faith of two people, the official and the woman. Both the official and the woman have unconditional faith, unrelenting faith. 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, unrelenting faith. They teach us that when we place our trust in God wonderful things, sometimes even impossible things happen, both encounter God’s graciousness and mercy!

Today we are challenged 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, to know God’s graciousness and mercy. Let us be people of unconditional, unrelenting 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 and don’t forget to make a joyful noise with your life today!

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: Well Happy Monday 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 Ohio and Pennsylvania into New Jersey where I now find myself. The drive was a little over 500 miles and in certain places it was slow going because of traffic. But I arrived safely in early evening just in time to have a nice dinner with a friend. I will be here in Mount Holly, New Jersey at Sacred Heart Parish until next Sunday filling in for the pastor who is taking a little vacation time. I am happy to be here to spend some time with friends and to of help out the parish and to get a little chance to experience the life of a parish priest. I would ask you to keep the faith community of Sacred Heart Parish in your prayers as they put up with me this week and offer a prayer for me so that I can help them throughout the week to experience God’s graciousness and mercy!

My prayer of blessing today is 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