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January 15, 2018 Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 1 Sm 15:16-23 Samuel said to Saul:"Stop! Let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night."Saul replied, "Speak!" Samuel then said: "Though little in your own esteem,are you not leader of the tribes of Israel?The LORD anointed you king of Israel and sent you on a mission, saying,'Go and put the sinful Amalekites under a ban of destruction.Fight against them until you have exterminated them.'Why then have you disobeyed the LORD?You have pounced on the spoil, thus displeasing the LORD."Saul answered Samuel: "I...

Sweet Hour of Prayer! Or Not? How do You Experience Prayer? By: Msgr. Charles PopeHow do you think of prayer? Is it another thing you “have to do” among many other things on your list? Or is prayer a time when you refrain from doing? Is prayer a requirement you regret or a rest you relish? What is prayer for you?The danger in answering questions like these is that we may answer them the way we think they “should” be answered rather than in an honest way. Many struggle with prayer and experience it with a lot of negativity: boredom,...

February 18, 2011Friday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1Responsorial PsalmGospel Reading 1Gn 11:1-9The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.While the people were migrating in the east,they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.They said to one another,“Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire.”They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar.Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a cityand a tower with its top in the sky,and so make a name for ourselves;otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.”The LORD came down to...

Washington Hilton Hotel Washington, D.C. RSS Feed White House News 8:43 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all; please be seated. Good morning. Thank you. It's good to be with you. You know how to make a Methodist feel right at home. (Laughter.) I noticed that this year's breakfast was the Friday after Lent -- (laughter) -- you can eat your bacon in good conscience. (Laughter.) And the priests can relax. (Laughter.) "A prayerful nation is a strong nation," said President Bush. "A prayerful nation is a nation, the true strength of which lies in the hearts of the men...

O my God, You who send to my soul the tendrils of peace and joy and love I do not deserve, I have not earned, I am not entitled to, You who wash away my guilt, Forgive my wrongs, Lead me ever down the paths of your righteousness For your reasons, not mine, Who pulls me up the road to Zion Step by hard step, Making the way, though hard at times, Full of joy and light , A blessing Because you are with me, And even when I am in the darkest shadows, Touched with the fear of loss,...

Jesus Christ a King of Glory has come in peace. God became Man, and the Word was made flesh. Christ was born of a Virgin. Christ suffered. Christ was crucified. Christ died. Christ rose from the dead. Christ ascended into Heaven. Christ conquers. Christ reigns. Christ orders. May Christ protect us from all storms and lightning. Christ went through their midst in peace, and the Word was made flesh. Christ is with us with Mary. Flee you enemy spirits because the Lion of the Generation of Juda, the Root David, has won. Holy God! Holy Powerful God! Holy Immortal God!...

It is in the calm of the storm, that pause between the whirling winds that lets me glimpse you, and your touch on my life, like the blue sky buried in the heart of the storm that tells me there is hope, and sun, and calm if I but weather the crisis. O Lord, giver of  that calm that comes when you reach out to me and remind me that you are here, waiting, patient, understanding, and that the rage and chaos that fills life will fade long enough for you to touch my heart, if I would answer yes....

O Lord, there are moments that we don't understand the chaos you present us with, the darkness of the road ahead, the pain and the suffering and grief. In those moments when I want to scream out "Why me?" let me hear your voice say "Why not you?" and teach me  the right questions to ask, how to be salt and light even when the darkness surrounds me, how to say, "Where does it hurt?", and "What can I do?" and the hardest thing of all, "Help!" May I this day, and always, see Christ in those you put before...

Holy Father Benedict, blessed by God in grace and in name. While standing in prayer with your hands raised to Heaven, you most happily yielded your angelic spirit into the hands of your Creator. You promised zealously to defend against the snares of the enemy, in the last struggle of death, those who remind you daily of your glorious departure and your heavenly joys. Protect us this day and everyday by your holy blessing, that we may never be separated from our blessed Lord, from the company of yourself and all the blessed. We ask this through Christ our Lord....

Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Matthew 16:24-25Lamb of God O Lord, here, where the wood of my own cross rubs agains my shoulders, I begin to realize that redemption had a real price, that the blood flowing down your arms was not theater decoration, But you, Lamb of God our pascal offering slain, the blood of atonement, offered drop by drop...

Passion of my Lord, strengthen me, so weak and ready to sin, may memory of each drop of blood spilled pour into my heart like a beacon of love to pull me back into the way of my Lord. O Jesus!Bring to mind each labored, pain-filled breath, each step towards Golgotha, each blow, each word of mocking each glance at your loved ones, each moment of darkness, undertaken for love, for hope, for life. In my weakness, bring me here, to the foot of your cross, where I, with the Magdeline, will weep bitter tears, where I, with your Mother,...

Jesus on the Cross How hard the wood rubbed against your bruised and bleeding back, how hard the iron that made your arms throb with excruciating pain, how the thorns dug in when you held your head fully up, a symphony of pain whose depths I can only vaguely imagine, how hard it was to see the Magdalene there, weeping her heart out, your aunt, and especially, your mother, who watched every moment, sharing your pain as you moved into the darkness of death, but could any of these compare to the wall of separation from your Father that our...

How hard that final rise was, Step by step up the hill, how hard you had to cling to life, how hard you had to cling to consciousness, hard hard each breath, each jarring step. Even with Simeon carrying your cross, the ground came swoop up, and you tasted the dust, felt the pavement one last time, falling one last time to panic the centurion into thinking you would die before they could kill you. Only your burning love burning like an eternal flame echoing down the ages stood you up that last time, pushing away the effects of shock,...

The Third Sorrowful Mystery: Jesus is crowned with thorns and mocked The Crowning The dirty soldier's cloak, a proper Roman scarlet is draped over his bleeding raw back, the fabric growing darker wherever it touches the handiwork the soldiers left behind in long red stripes still bloody. A game he has become in their hands. For the soldiers bored, violent children of a violent culture, he is a doll to take their frustrations out against everything they hate about this dusty foreign place filled with strange people. They crown him with their disdain, hate, fear, wrapped amid the thorns. And...

The Second Sorrowful Mystery: Jesus is Scourged The First Blow The whip travels in a descending arc, three thongs carrying weights of lead double headed cargo to increase the impact. The hand that wields is the rough and calloused hand of a soldier doing a duty, unknowing, uncaring of whose back it was in front of him. Perhaps as he swings, he thinks of all the looks of disdain, the women who turn away, the men who spit when he passes and they think he does not see, this strange people with their strange hates and strange language and strange...

Two Gardens In one garden, the lie was chosen over the will of God, and naturegroaned under the curse and the grief and the countless tears of mankind that followed. In one garden, quietly, one full moon nightthe will of God was chosen over the lie and nature knew the promise of healing that would free a woeful mankind of its tears had begun in the unfathomable grief of the one who said yes.

Friday morning in spring, was the weather mild or cool that day as the passover crowds milled through the street, in festive mood? Did the whisper pass from ear to ear that morning about the trial, letting the crowd gather at the courtyard to witness another passover, a spectacle unexpected, perhaps, but which would shout through the centuries. How frail you must have seemed when he presented you to the leaders to the gathering group, beaten, bloody, so far removed from the prophet-king of last Sunday, no hosannas this time, just calls for your blood. Some merely curious, some angry,...

Meditation on Ash Wednesday Do I not here the bells tolling, one for each year of my life, how few the number seems when set against the starry sky, the count of sand even the flow of history, how short this mortal coil, this gift of God this time of trial. If it were not for you, Lord, this brief short span could have no focus, no purpose, nothing but a brief flare dying out in pain and fear. Yet Lord, If we turn to you, if we humble ourselves, and realize who we are, where we are, and what...

Meditation on Christ's Passion When you prayed in the garden, Lord, and the heaviness pressed all around you as the full moon's light peaked through the olive trees, and your apostles snored in the shadows, and you sweated blood in the depths of your grief, how heavy did today weigh on your shoulders, with a war-torn world, mad with bloodlust, despising your peace, hot with hatred and selfish fulfilment sometimes done in the name of God, or done in the name of self, careless with all you have taught? When they tied you to the pillar, Lord, and scourged you...

Amazing how such a small slip of a young woman, glowing with the happiness of being a joyful new mother could contain in her arms God a baby nestled in swaddlings, being presented to his true Father. Amazing gift from she who said yes, giving us over and over the Son of her heart, Asking each of us to do whatever he tells us. And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord,...