A Friend

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face us with the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

~ Henri Nouwen

Guide My Path

The Smarter a man is, the more he needs God to protect him from thinking he know everything. 

~ George Webb, PIMA

A spiritual person needs to be careful. The more confident we are, the more likely our egos will get us into trouble. It's relatively easy to become self-righteous. We start to think we are teachers and others are students. We start to judge others. We start, very subtly at first, to play God. After a while we really get good at it. This is very dangerous. We need to remind ourselves, we are here to do God's will. We need to pray every morning. Each day we need to check in with God to see what He would have us do. At night we need to spend time with God and review our day. By doing these things, we will stay on track.

Lord Jesus, guide my path and show me how to correct my life.

~ Elder's Meditation of the Day

Thomas Merton: God is Everywhere

We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes and we see it maybe frequently. God shows God's self everywhere in everything. In people and in things and in nature and in events - it becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without God. It is impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it.

~ Thomas Merton

An Answer to Prayers

A voyaging ship was wrecked during a storm at sea and only two of the men on it were able to swim to a small, desert like island.

The two survivors, not knowing what else to do, agreed that they had no other recourse but to pray to God.

However, to find out whose prayer was more powerful, they agreed to divide the territory between them and stay on opposite sides of the island.

The first thing they prayed for was food.

The next morning, the first man saw a fruit-bearing tree on his side of the land, and he was able to eat its fruit. The other man's parcel of land remained barren.

After a week, the first man was lonely and he decided to pray for a wife. The next day, another ship was wrecked, and the only survivor was a woman who swam to his side of the land. On the other side of the island, there was nothing.

Soon the first man prayed for a house, clothes, more food. The next day, like magic, all of these were given to him. However, the second man still had nothing.

Finally, the first man prayed for a ship, so that he and his wife could leave the island. In the morning, he found a ship docked at his side of the island. The first man boarded the ship with his wife and decided to leave the second man on the island.

He considered the other man unworthy to receive God's blessings, since none of his prayers had been answered.

As the ship was about to leave, the first man heard a voice from heaven booming, "Why are you leaving your companion on the island?"

"My blessings are mine alone, since I was the one who prayed for them," the first man answered. "His prayers were all unanswered and so he does not deserve anything."

"You are mistaken!" the voice rebuked him. "He had only one prayer, which I answered. If not for that, you would not have received any of my blessings."

"Tell me," the first man asked the voice, "what did he pray for that I should owe him anything?"

"He prayed that all your prayers be answered."

For all we know, our blessings are not the fruits of our prayers alone, but those of another praying for us.

"What you do for others is more important than what you do for yourself."​

Try Again Tomorrow

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is that little voice at the end of the day that says: “I'll try again tomorrow.

~ Anne Hunninghake

A key quality that distinguishes a successful athlete, or a top-notch performer in any field, is the way he responds to his bad days. Everyone has good days and bad days, and the good ones are certainly easier to handle. But do we allow the bad ones to throw us off our course? Are we so shaken by our mistakes or troubles that we lose our focus on our goals?

Adult development is a process; it's never an end goal that we reach and hold. Our healing and recovery includes preparing ourselves to respond well to the bad days. We can do that by keeping our eye on the big picture, knowing that however bad things may seem at the moment, they will change. We learn to reach deep into our spiritual center for the courage to stay focused in the midst of our hardest days. We don't have to do it alone. We have the spiritual support of our Higher Power and the companionship of our friends to keep us on the path.

Today I will stay in touch with my spiritual center to find the courage for another day.

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Servant of God, Dorothy Day, an important 20th Century American Catholic social activist and writer once wrote, “Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.” These two simple sentences sum up the message of today’s Gospel from John 6: 24 – 35. In last week’s Gospel, John 6: 1 – 15, we heard how Jesus and his disciples fed thousands of people with five barley loaves and two fish. And we heard how they wanted to make Jesus King. Today we hear how the crowd followed Jesus back to Capernaum where he confronted them about their motives. They wanted more food and a king. Jesus wanted to give them “the food that endures for eternal life.”

Bread is perishable. Two thousand years ago people only made enough bread for one day because it became inedible quickly. Even today with vast improvements in food technology bread does not stay fresh for very long. So, when Jesus told the people that he wanted to give them food that will last forever, they were incredulous. They understood that manna was “bread from heaven” but manna did not guarantee eternal life. It was simply food.

We understand with thousands of years of hindsight that Jesus wanted to nourish their souls. He wanted to give them spiritual bread. The crowd in Capernaum didn’t get it. He told them that all they had to do was “believe in the one [God] sent.” Their response was, prove it. Jesus’ answer to them and to us was “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Those of us who are here in Holy Trinity Catholic Church today believe that Jesus was the one God sent. We believe that he offers us “food that endues for eternal life.” And we believe that the Eucharist is that food. We are here because we want spiritual nourishment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that “There is no surer pledge or dearer sign of this great hope in the new heavens and new earth "in which righteousness dwells," than the Eucharist. Every time this mystery is celebrated, "the work of our redemption is carried on" and we "break the one bread that provides the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live for ever in Jesus Christ." As we reflect on the significance of the Eucharist in our lives, let’s join with St Catherine of Siena who prayed, “Father, I am hungry; for the love of God give this soul her food, her Lord in the Eucharist,"

Our living God,

we hunger for lasting life and happiness

and the fulfilment of all our hopes.

Satisfy all our hungers

through your Son Jesus Christ,

our bread of life.

And when he has filled us with himself,

may he lead and strengthen us

to bring to a waiting world

the food of reconciliation and joy

which you alone can give to the full.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Humility is Freedom

Humility has nothing to do with depreciating ourselves and our gifts in ways we know to be untrue. Even humble attitudes can be masks for pride.

Humility is that freedom from our self which enables us to be in positions in which we have neither recognition nor importance, neither power nor validity, and even experience deprivation and yet have joy and delight.

It is the freedom of knowing that we are not at the center of our universe, not even in the center of our own private universe.