Prayer for Inner Strength

Dear God,

Please give me the strength

to endure this situation,

and find the blessings

and lessons that it contains.

Please give me the endurance

to continue ahead.

Please guide my thoughts,

words and actions,

so that I walk Your

path of peace and love.

Amen.

Heavenly things revealed to infants

Do you want to know the mind and thoughts of God? Jesus thanks the Father in heaven for revealing to his disciples the wisdom and knowledge of God. What does Jesus' prayer tell us about God and about ourselves? First, it tells us that God is both Father and Lord of earth as well as heaven. He is both Creator and Author of all that he has made, the first origin of everything and transcendent authority, and at the same time he shows loving care and goodness toward all his children. All fatherhood and motherhood is derived from him (Ephesians 3:14-15).

Pride and inordinate love of self 

Jesus' prayer also contains a warning that pride can keep us from the love and knowledge of God. What makes us ignorant and blind to the things of God? Certainly intellectual pride, coldness of heart, and stubbornness of will shut out God and his kingdom of peace, joy, and righteousness. Pride is the root of all vice and the strongest influence propelling us to sin. It first vanquishes the heart, making it cold and indifferent towards God. It also closes the mind to God's truth and wisdom for our lives. What is pride? It is the inordinate love of oneself at the expense of others and the exaggerated estimation of one's own learning and importance.

Simplicity of heart 

Jesus contrasts intellectual pride with child-like simplicity and humility. The simple of heart are like "infants" in the sense that they see purely without pretense and acknowledge their dependence and trust in the one who is greater, wiser, and more trustworthy. They seek one thing - the "summum bonum" or "greatest good," who is God himself. Simplicity of heart is wedded with humility, the queen of virtues, because humility inclines the heart towards grace and truth. Just as pride is the root of every sin and evil, so humility is the only soil in which the grace of God can take root. It alone takes the right attitude before God and allows him, as God, to do all. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34, James 4:6). Only the humble in heart can receive true wisdom and understanding of God and his ways. Do you submit to God's word with simple trust and humility?

Jesus reveals the Father to us 

Jesus makes a claim which no one would have dared to make - he is the perfect revelation of God. One of the greatest truths of the Christian faith is that we can know the living God. Our knowledge of God is not simply limited to knowing something about God, but we can know God personally. The essence of Christianity, and what makes it distinct from Judaism and other religions, is the knowledge of God as our Father. Jesus makes it possible for each of us to personally know God as our Father. To see Jesus is to see what God is like.

In Jesus we see the perfect love of God - a God who cares intensely and who yearns over men and women, loving them to the point of laying down his life for them upon the Cross. Jesus is the perfect revelation of God - a God who loves us completely, unconditionally, and perfectly. Jesus also promises that God the Father will hear our prayers when we pray in his name. That is why Jesus taught his followers to pray with confidence, Our Father who art in heaven ..give us this day our daily bread. Do you pray to your Father in heaven with joy and confidence in his love and care for you?

Lord Jesus, give me the child-like simplicity and purity of faith to gaze upon your face with joy and confidence in your all-merciful love. Remove every doubt, fear, and proud thought which would hinder me from receiving your word with trust and humble submission.

source: From the desk of Don Schwager, 

hosted by Kairos Europe and the Middle East

Love God with all your Heart

"If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, 

and my Father will love him, and we will come to him 

and make our home with him."

John 14:23

Our faith calls us to reflect on and renew our commitments to God. This process of continuous conversion affirms the strength of our faith, as it also challenges us to keep growing in faith.

We are well aware that our daily lives are often filled with many blessings. Our spiritual lives are also filled with blessings—including the promise God makes to us for eternal life with Him, the promise we make to God to live as He asks us, and the promise of hope we receive through our devotion to St. Jude. Every promise requires work to stay true to it, even as our lives require flexibility and openness. In our spiritual life, that work is in part about humbling ourselves to keep Christ’s way embedded in how we approach our challenges as well as our gifts.

One of God’s gifts is our free will, which gives us both profound freedom and profound responsibility. We have choices to make every day about when and how our faith is going to guide our decisions. Our hope is that we will remain strong in our faith, so that our commitments to God are never far from our thoughts and actions.

The more we draw on our faith in God as we make decisions that take into account what He asks of us—the more we feel, and in turn know—the reality of His presence. When we know God is a part of us, we are better able to understand His grace and what that means for our lives day-to-day, as well as on a spiritual level.

source: www.shrineofstjude.org/

Thoughts about the Sabbath in view of Christ death and the day He Gloriously Rose to Life

As Christians, we observe Good Friday as solemn day, a we recall and reflect how God loved us so much that He gave his precious Son, Jesus the perfect Lamb of God to die on the cross at Calvary and Sunday as the Sabbath, a day of obligation to God. Majority of Christians (Catholic and Protestant) believe that the Sabbath observe by the Jews is superseded and instead they honour Sunday as the Day of the Lord, the day of Christ's Resurrection and in some rites, the Christian Sabbath. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

CCC, 2174 Jesus rose from the dead "on the first day of the week." Because it is the "first day," the day of Christ's Resurrection recalls the first creation. Because it is the "eighth day" following the sabbath, it symbolizes the new creation ushered in by Christ's Resurrection. For Christians it has become the first of all days, the first of all feasts, the Lord's Day (he kuriake hemera, dies dominica) Sunday:

• We all gather on the day of the sun, for it is the first day [after the Jewish sabbath, but also the first day] when God, separating matter from darkness, made the world; and on this same day Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead.

CCC, 2175 Sunday is expressly distinguished from the sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the sabbath. In Christ's Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man's eternal rest in God. For worship under the Law prepared for the mystery of Christ, and what was done there prefigured some aspects of Christ:

• Those who lived according to the old order of things have come to a new hope, no longer keeping the sabbath, but the Lord's Day, in which our life is blessed by him and by his death.

CCC, 2176 The celebration of Sunday observes the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship "as a sign of his universal beneficence to all." Sunday worship fulfills the moral command of the Old Covenant, taking up its rhythm and spirit in the weekly celebration of the Creator and Redeemer of his people.

Just a thought from reading the words in the holy scriptures about Christ death and the day He rose to life from His tomb. Based on Mark 15:42-45, Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:9, Luke 24:1, John 20:19, then the Sabbath is Saturday as observed by the Jewish people. Contradictory in Matthew 16: 21 and Luke 9:22 it is written, "Jesus will be raised to life on the third day" where else in Mark 8:31, Jesus says to the disciples, " the Son of Man...after three days will rise again." By these words, if based on Matthew and Luke, the use of the word "on the third day" indicates that Jesus was crucified on a Friday but Mark's gospel uses the word "after three days rise again" which could also mean that the crucifixion of Jesus took place on a Thursday. 

  

Mark 15:42-45

It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God,went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph.

Matthew 16:21

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Luke 9:22

And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Mark 8:31

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.

Matthew 28:1

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

Mark 16:9

When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.

Luke 24:1

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.

John 20:19

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”

Mother Mary, I offer you all the thoughts, words and actions of my life

Mother - I offer you all 

the thoughts, words and actions 

of my life as so many petitions 

that we all may be devoted to you 

and that after this our exile 

you may show us the blessed Fruit of your womb, Jesus, that together with you 

we may praise Him forever. 

Amen.