Daily Thoughts - 11/26/2014

Daily Thought: "Great and wonderful are all your works, Lord, mighty God!" the refrain for the responsorial psalm today. What a wonderful thought to consider as we enter a new day. However if we read on in our Gospel for today Jesus tells us, that persecution, pain, struggle and difficult time are ahead if we believe. He says these struggles and persecutions will come from everywhere they can even come from our family.

This seems a far cry from great and wonderful works! It seems that believing, having faith takes a tremendous amount of trust in God and trust is not always easy. However, if we have that trust then great and wonderful things can happen!

In the midst of our daily struggles, in the midst of everything that makes it hard to have faith, to hope, to love can we are asked to trust in God presence and action in our life and if we do we will encounter the great and wonderful things of our loving God today and always!

Have a great Wednesday everyone!

Daily Prayer: O God, let us have hearts ready to trust in your abundant kindness and mercy that we might always be ready to say great and wonderful are your works, Loving God!

A Runner's Thoughts: “Every day is a fresh start; don't measure yourself by yesterday's troubles.” (Dagny Scott Barrios) So always run with imagination and see as you run God is running towards you!

Daily Blessing: Wednesday greetings to everyone! A special shout out to my niece Sarah who celebrates her birthday today! Happy Birthday, Sarah and many more! Ah, to be young again!

I hope your Wednesday has started out well. I am here in Fairfax, VA and the rain has been coming down for a few hours now. They say it will be turning to snow and that today across the Northeast things are going to be bad weather wise. If you are traveling today especially in the Northeast please travel safe!

My prayer of blessing today is that everyone will have a truly blessed and joyous Thanksgiving. May your gatherings tomorrow be blessed with family, friends, good food, funny stories that will create a joyous feast of love! May God’s great and wonderful love touch your life today, tomorrow and always! May God’s blessings be upon your travel, your gatherings, your meals, your conversation and all who gather with you. Don’t forget to give God thanks in some way! Have a wonderful Wednesday wherever you are and whatever you are doing! Many blessings as you journey through life today. Peace in Christ's Passion...Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 11/25/2014

Daily Thoughts: One might say that reading today’s Gospel (Luke 21: 5-11) is like watching the evening news or tuning into one of the many 24 hour news stations at any point in the day.  Bad things are a happening, for sure!

Yet, Jesus doesn’t say – run, hide, give up. He says don’t be terrified. Don’t follow all the doom and gloom proclaimers.  Why should we not be terrified? Why should we not hang on every word of the gloom and doom proclaimers? Why - because God’s grace is at work. The question is how do we believe that God’s grace is at work?

Jesus has always said that the things of this world, the things we think so important are not important. Even something like the great temple of Jesus’ time will not and did not last. Our focus, our trust, our faith needs to be placed in God. If not then we will be sucked in by the terror, the doom and gloom of the world. As St. Ignatius of Loyola said, God’s grace is enough.

Our challenge today and every day is to look around and find God’s grace at work in the world and in us. It is there  - we just need the eyes of faith to see it!

Have a great Tuesday everyone and if you are traveling today like me, please travel safe!

Daily Prayer:

Take, Lord, receive all our liberty, our memory, understanding, our entire will. Give us only Your love and Your grace, that's enough for us. Your love and Your grace, are enough for us.

Take, Lord, receive all that we have and possess. You have given all to us, now we return it. Give us only Your love and Your grace, that's enough for us. Your love and Your grace, are enough for us.

Take, Lord, receive, all is Yours now.  Dispose of it, wholly according to Your will. Give us only Your love and Your grace, that's enough for us. Your love and Your grace, are enough for use.

(Prayer adapted from prayer by St. Ignatius Loyola and the lyrics of Fr. John Foley’s song)

A Runner’s Thoughts: “I don't think about the miles that are coming down the road, I don't think about the mile I'm on right now, I don't think about the miles I've already covered. I think about what I'm doing right now, just being lost in the moment.” (Ryan Hall) As Jesus tells us today in the Gospel it is the same with faith. We don’t think about the past or what might happen ahead of us. We live in the present moment and find God there!

Daily Blessing: Happy Tuesday everyone! I hope your day and your week are going well and that things are falling into place for your Thanksgiving celebration. I hope if you are traveling and you live here in the northeast you will be able to get away before the storm arrives. If you are traveling please travel safe!

Today, in a little while, I will be making my way south to Fairfax, Virginia to enjoy Thanksgiving with my niece, nephew-in-law, two great nieces and a host of other family members! It has become a little tradition in my life and it is one I look forward to because the journey and time give me great joy!

My thoughts today are with the people of Ferguson, Mo and all people who are seeking justice and peace. I am not sure who is right or wrong in this situation or how you reach justice for all involved. I don't know how you find the truth in this situation. But I do know good people are being hurt by a few knuckle heads. The need for peace and justice is being lost in the destruction of property and acts of violence. My prayer is for peace and to finding a path to justice for all! Please if you are going to demonstrate for justice don’t be a knuckle head and ruin the message!

As Thanksgiving approaches my blessing prayer today for all of you carries the theme of thankfulness. Perhaps it is a prayer you can use when you gather with family and friends on Thanksgiving. Today I pray that you will always find the blessing of thankfulness in your life. – God of all blessings, source of all life, giver of all grace. We thank you for the gift of life: for the breath that sustains life, for the food of this earth that nurtures life, for the love of family and friends without which there would be no life.

We thank you for the mystery of creation: for the beauty that the eye can see, for the joy that the ear may hear, for the unknown that we cannot behold filling the universe with wonder, for the expanse of space that draws us beyond the definitions of our selves.

We thank you for setting us in communities: for families who nurture our becoming, for friends who love us by choice, for companions at work, who share our burdens and daily tasks, for strangers who welcome us into their midst, for people from other lands who call us to grow in understanding, for children who lighten our moments with delight, for the unborn, who offer us hope for the future.

We thank you for this day: for life and one more day to love, for opportunity and one more day to work for justice and peace, for neighbors and one more person to love and by whom be loved, for your grace and one more experience of your presence, for your promise: to be with us, to be our God, and to give salvation.

For these and all blessings, we give you thanks, eternal, loving God, through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. May the blessing of thankfulness be with you as you journey through this day and always!

Have a great Tuesday everyone! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 11/24/2014

Daily Thoughts: It is hard to imagine giving away all that you have. It doesn’t seem practical, perhaps it even seem foolish. Yet in our Gospel today (Luke 21:1-4) that is exactly what happens. A poor widow making her way into the Temple to pray gives up her last two coins. She is not giving out of her surplus, she is giving out of her poverty, she gives her “whole livelihood.”

Why? It is not any easy question to answer because it goes against the way we most often view life. Yet, I think it tells us something about what possessions, wealth and money do to us. They make us dependent, insecure, selfish and untrusting. When you have nothing it is easy to give because we are not attached and we are willing to trust in the next moment. We are willing to give everything we have to make a difference. When we have things there is worry, concern and the desire to have more.

Perhaps this example from the life of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C. will helps us to understand Jesus’ story in the Gospel today –

“I was once walking down the street and a beggar came to me and said, “Mother Teresa, everybody’s giving to you. Today, for the whole day, I got only twenty-nine paise and I want to give it to you”. I thought for a moment: if I take it, he will have nothing to eat tonight; and if I don’t take it, it will hurt him. So I put out my hand and took the money. I have never seen such a joy on anybody’s face as I saw on his —that a beggar, too, could give to Mother Teresa. It was a big sacrifice for that poor man who’d been sitting in the sun all day and had only received twenty-nine paise. It was beautiful: twenty-nine paise is such a small amount and I can get nothing with it, but as he gave it up and I took it, it became like thousands because it was given with so much love.”  (From the book – Mother Teresa. A Simple Path)

Wealth, possessions and property can make us afraid to give. They can hold us back from trusting in God. They can enslave us. They can make it difficult to love. The poor widow in the Gospel today handed over her life to God. She gave out of trust, freedom and love. Perhaps the challenge of the Gospel today is to pause, look at our lives and be reminded that all the wealth, possessions and property that we think are important really are not. What is important is trusting in God’s unconditional love!

Have a great Monday everyone!

Daily Prayer: O God, let us have hearts ready to trust in your abundant kindness and mercy that we might always be ready to say great and wonderful are your works, Loving God!

A Runner's Thoughts: Always run with imagination and see as you run God is running towards you!

Daily Blessing: Happy Monday everyone! I hope your day has started off well! If not just remember it is a short week and in just a few day you will have time to rest, relax and enjoy the gift of family, friends and Thanksgiving, so hang in there today and keep your eyes focused on the prize at the end of the week.

Today for me will be a busy day trying to clear my desk to I can head south tomorrow for some family time and a Mission that I will begin on Saturday in Tampa, FL. So today is a paperwork day which is my least favorite kind of day, but this to will pass!

My prayer of blessing today comes from something I ran across the other day it is a blessing prayer that seems to be credited to both St. Thérèse of Liseaux and St. Teresa of Ávila. So I thank them both for their words of wisdom that I use today…

Loving God I prayer for family and friends today, for all who ask me to pray for them or to remember a prayer request that they have and I pray for all who are in need of prayer today. What follows Lord, is my prayer for them - so please bless them with your presence however they may need it today. For all in need of prayer today –

“May today there be peace within you.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us. Today - Amen!”

Loving God bless family, friends and all in need today with this prayer! Have a blessed and faith filled Monday everyone! Peace in Christ's Passion...Fr. Paul

Daily Thoughts - 11/23/2014

Daily Thoughts: The Feast of Christ the King has never been one of my favorite feasts. I think it is because kings have never really been a positive image for me during my life time. I have grown up in the age of democracy, kings and kingdoms seem to be part of the past. I have read about kings and kingdoms. I have studies them in school. Over the course of history one can find a lot a positive images, stories and experiences of kings and kingdoms however from a personal perspective they are part of days gone by, not the reality of my life experience. Truth be told, kings and kingdoms for me often symbolize a time when ordinary people meant nothing and there was a great divide between the “haves” and the “have nots!”

So what am I, what are we, to do today, faced with Christ honored, celebrated, as a king. Well, first, we need to look at the reality of Jesus' kingdom; it is a kingdom that is not of this world, meaning it is different kind of kingdom, one we have never seen or experience before. It is a kingdom of truth, and a truth that can set us free. We also know from the life of Jesus that it was not about the “haves” and the “have nots,” it was about community, it was about people. Jesus’ kingdom is a kingdom of caring for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the ill and the imprisoned. In other worlds it is a kingdom where we recognize the king amongst us.

In my homily today I used the image of Pope Francis and an image of Jesus as King. I asked the question, “What most intrigues us about Pope Francis?” Well I think it is the way he has gone about being Pope. He chose not to live by himself, but to live amongst others. He chose not to eat by himself, but to eat with others. He chose not to celebrate Mass by himself, but to celebrate with others. Pope Francis has chosen to be part of the Church not just the head of the Church and I think that makes all the difference.

Jesus chose to be part of us, to be amongst us and that has made all the difference as we celebrate his Kingship today.  Jesus' kingdom is beyond, government, power, authority and institution. It is a body, a living body made up of many members working as one for the good of all, for the salvation of all, for the love of all. Jesus' as king rules to bring out the best in us so that truth, life, holiness, grace, justice, love and peace will be lived. Jesus rules here and now. So may we follow the example of Jesus, the true shepherd, and be the Body of Christ, and be the Kingdom of God, a kingdom that truly honors its people by not walking past the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the ill, the imprisoned, or anyone who becomes Christ for us by challenging us to care.

Let us honor Christ our King today by becoming instruments of his justice, peace and presence in the world today. Bringing love where there is hate, bringing pardon, where people are hurting, bringing faith to moments of doubt, bringing hope to hopeless times, bringing compassion when uncaring is the norm and bringing the light joy to an often joyless world. Let us honor Christ our King, by giving, pardoning and loving so that one day all may be born in to the true Kingdom of eternal life!

Have a blessed and faith filled Sunday everyone and don’t forget to give God a little time today!

Daily Prayer: Loving God, may we look beyond the earthly images of king and find your loving presence in our life this day and always. May it lead us to truth, life, holiness, grace, justice, joy and peace. May it make us true workers in your eternal kingdom of love! Amen!

A Runner's Thoughts: "Happiness is an inexpressibly misleading and temporary thing, decides nothing; the true stations of joy are on the road which lies through simple endurance." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Daily Blessing: Happy Feast of Christ the King! Have a blessed and holy Sunday. May we celebrate this day with joy and peace for this is the Day that the Lord has made so let us rejoice and be glad. May there always be work for us to do.  May our pockets and purses always hold a coin or two. May the sun always shine warm on our windowpanes. May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. May the hand of family, a loved one and a friend always be near and may God fill our hearts with gladness and love that we in turn can share! May the blessing of Christ the Shepherd and Servant King be upon you today and always. Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul