Alms, Fasting and Prayer

        The 3 keys to Lenten observance have traditionally been: Almsgiving, Fasting, and Prayer. Let’s take a look at these actions and see why they have always been the hallmark of this time of preparation. Let’s see if our understanding of these is true. Or, have we allowed ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of what we think they are.

        In these days of tight money, almsgiving seems to be put on the back burner. I will get around to it, when I am able. I can’t meet my own bills. I can’t possibly do anything at this time. These are all very understandable, but must almsgiving only be money? Think of people’s needs and ask yourself a question, “Is everything that people need always monetary?” What do people need besides money? People, all people, need friendship, love, and understanding. Their needs may be a car ride, a baby sitter, food shopping, or your companionship. There are many ways to help people, but the key is… to look at them, to understand them, to be empathetic. To see a person’s need, one must first see the person. THIS is where Christianity comes in. THIS is what makes almsgiving, a loving action. It is much easier to whip out a dollar and give it to someone. You could almost do it without even seeing their face, but there is nothing in the action that says, “I really care about you”. Lent is a time of caring, of loving, of joy.

        Fasting is something that we can strive to do, but depending on our circumstances of health, age, and dietary needs we may not be able to pursue this with much vitality. We also may like our food and drink too much and are reluctant to do without it. What is fasting? Our immediate thoughts think of doing without, of deprivation, of limiting our intake of food and drink. Is this really what fasting is all about? Why do we fast? This question hits at the heart of the concept of fasting. In fasting, we are trying to join our lives with Jesus’. He suffered and died for us, we want to show Him in some way that we understand, we appreciate, we try to emulate. But can I fast without food? Doing without our convenience, our special time for us, or our comfort: these can all be examples of fasting, as well. BUT… doing without just for the sake of doing without is meaningless. Why do I allow myself to be inconvenienced? What am I doing now with my special time? What is happening that I allow myself to be put into an uncomfortable position? If the answer to these questions is: “I was helping someone else” then our fasting was truly Christian. Lent is a time of caring, of loving, of joy.

        This leaves us with… Prayer. There are so many ways to pray, so many ways to lift our hearts and minds to God, that it should be an easy task. But it isn’t…why? Prayer always seems like a chore, why is that? I don’t have the time. It seems so repetitive. Same words all the time, it just isn’t me. The excuses go on and on and on. Stop for a moment. Look into your soul. Think of a prayer right now, any prayer, any style, any manner and then look at what you feel, see the emotions that arise within you. What are those feelings? Boredom? Disinterest? Sigh? Tired? Again, already? Maybe we don’t really know how to pray. Maybe we really don’t know what prayer is. Maybe we really don’t know Who it is that we are talking with. Each time we go to church we kneel down and begin to pray. What do we say? The old standbys of Our Father, Hail Mary and the Glory be, the Act of Contrition? We seem to have said them so often that they are almost meaningless to us anymore. Prayer is a conversation with our God: Father, Son, and Spirit.

        To God, our Creator, thank you. Thank you for your love of me. Thank you for hanging in there with me. Thank you for all that you have given me. Thank you for all that you have not given me. You care for me as a loving parent. I hope I can become worthy of your love for me.

        To God, our Redeemer, thank you. I thank you for showing me with your life how I am to live mine. You showed me with your care of others how much you care for me. You are with me every step of the way, even when I forget that you are there. Thank you for your love for me.

        To God, the Spirit of Love, thank you. Thank you for all the times you guided me, even though I just thought it was a coincidence. Thank you for the flame of love you have given me in my heart. May I always be willing to give that flame to others.

Worries In Our Lives

          When was the last time you didn’t have a care or worry in the world? Think back, when was it? It was a time when you didn’t worry about job, or salary; bills and debts did not exist; responsibilities and should’s and ought to’s were not part of your thought process. The last time I can remember I must have been five or six running down the street in North Philadelphia to see my playmates. How about you?
           It is a shame since many times we put off thinking about God, praying to Him…because we have so many other things on our mind. I will start going back to Mass, soon, but not right now. I have so many things to do, so many thoughts in my head. Aren’t we really saying, “Mass isn’t the most important aspect of my life? God will understand, because He sees how busy I am?” What is more important than being united with our God? If we think this way, that God can take a back seat and wait, then maybe, we don’t really understand how important He is to our life. Period.
           We amass all of these worries and concerns, and then parade them around in our mind as justifying reasons as to why we cannot go to Mass. They become the mechanism why we cannot see good in others, why we should not help those less fortunate. “I am too busy. I don’t feel comfortable around people like that. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.” And on it goes, our excuses build up and soon we actually believe these excuses to be real, to be formidable.  So, when we say, “I will go back to Mass, as soon as these concerns are over…,” realize that the last time we were free of concerns was…when??  
           It is the nature of man, to worry, to fret. It is part of our life. It is almost innate in us. So there must be another way around this issue. Why must our worries be over before we speak to God? Why do all the items in our to-do list have to be checked off, before we can focus on our union with our God? They don’t have to be. It is us! We want order in our lives, so much that we are willing to put off the most important relationship for our lives. But of course, we don’t think of it as so, because … there are so many other things in our life that concern us.
          At the end of chapter 11 of Matthew’s Gospel, verses 28-30 speak directly to this point. Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.” Don’t wait until the trials, and problems and money worries, and sicknesses and everything else that oppress us, end. Don’t wait. Run to Him; Seek Him out. Lay these burdens that are suffocating you, at His feet. “Lord, I can’t bear them any more. I am so troubled by all of this.” THIS IS your prayer. This is how you seek Him out. In two small sentences you present yourself, as you are. A person that is seeking, troubled, weighed down, and confused. There are no pretenses here. This is who I am right now, Lord. Help me. Don’t expect the troubles and problems to magically disappear. Don’t expect magic. Expect peace. Your prayer is for peace, not solutions. Solutions will solve one problem. Peace will be your strength in all of your battles. Christ, who loves you, who hears you, who has told you to do just so, will flood your mind and soul with peace. The problems may still be there, but they are no longer insurmountable. You have peace within. And in that peace, in that calm comes the realization that our life is truly meaningless without Jesus, without God in our lives. And with this realization, we know that all of life’s burdens are not mighty majestic mountains, but merely speed bumps that crop up from time to time.

How Do We Pray?

         Usually, I begin a blog with a theme, or thought in mind. The only thought that comes to my mind, at this time, is the aridity of my soul. The “dark night”, I guess, is what it has been called. I went over to the hospital this morning to bring Communion to any of the patients wishing to receive. There was no jump in my step, no feeling of being alive. I was almost ashamed to be bringing Jesus to these people, in my state of mind. At Mass, prior to going to the hospital, all I could do is ask Jesus to take my lethargy and somehow use it for the benefit of the people I would see today.
         It was in this state of mind, with this feeling of apathy, I entered the doors of the hospital. Now, I truly believe that to pray our personal prayers we must recognize and acknowledge the condition we are in. We must be aware of who we are at that time of prayer. For it is in this aspect of ourselves, in this condition, we make our prayer to our heavenly Father. We cannot dupe God. We cannot pretend to Him that we are something that we are not. He sees us as we are. To meet Him in the middle ground, we have to also see ourselves as we are. To me, my condition was one of sadness, of aloneness. It did not shout out that Jesus, my Lord, was with me. It did not manifest the joy of bringing Jesus to others. I felt truly like a hypocrite.
         I cannot go into any details about this morning’s actions. I can only say that by the time I had arrived at the patients’ floor my demeanor must have changed. I don’t know when or how it happened. I was not even aware that my apathy was gone. I just went about the business of seeing patients. Usually, as I get tired, the end of the morning sees me cutting shorter the visits with the patients. (As you can see, there is a lot of fixing up needed by me.) Today, however, was truly different. I sat and talked about Jesus. I told people about Padre Pio and what a great saint he is. I felt no need to hurry. I felt no tiredness. It was different, somehow.
         What is the purpose of this blog? Why all of this narrative? It is to simply say, “Our prayers do get answered”. It is our openness to God, our recognition and acknowledgement of our current condition, our willingness and desire to be at one with Him, it is all of these that unite us in prayer with God.
         This has nothing to do with me. I am simply recounting that I did not want to be a stumbling block to Jesus. I did not want to negatively affect the people I would see today, because of my state of mind. My prayer was simply a desire NOT to be an obstacle but my willingness to be a conduit, if it were His will. The fact of the matter was that I did not know what or who to pray for.
         We don’t know all the answers. We cannot pray for events to happen, because we don’t know if those events will be the best thing that could happen. Maybe we are to struggle a little more, and unbeknownst to us, that struggle is what will strengthen us, will purify us, and will make us united with Jesus. All we can pray for is trust. Trust in God, will enable us to truly say, “Your will be done.” Without trust, our prayer will sound like, “Your will be done…if I agree with it.”

What is Trust?

      Today, the Gospel reading was from Luke 1: 57 – 66. This is where people are asking Elizabeth what the name of her son would be. The mother of “the Baptist”, calmly stated, “John”. The townspeople did not seem to want to accept the name, as they protested that no one in the family line was ever named, “John”. Seeking to obtain a more tolerable answer, they sought out Zechariah. He had been struck dumb when he did not believe what he had been told by the angel Gabriel. Gabriel had said that Elizabeth, who had been barren, would give birth to a son, whose name was to be, “John”. When they asked Zechariah the child’s name, he motioned for a writing tablet, and on it wrote that the child’s name would be, “John”. Immediately, Zechariah’s speech returned and he began to praise the Lord. To this chain of events, the people inquired among themselves, “What manner of child will this be?”
      The priest, at today’s Mass, reminded us of the song, “Que Sera, Sera” (What Will Be, Will Be). As the song goes, “…the future’s not ours to see, what will be, will be.” So, like the townspeople wondering what will this child be, what lies in store for him, we too wonder about our own lives. What will happen? Will we be happy? Will so and so recover? Will our children be alright? We want to know the future. At times, we act like we are entitled to know the future. We want the future to happen, just the way we want. It is in times like this, when we worry that the future will not be as we want it, we should realize that we are putting our trust in ourselves, not in our God. If our God is a God of love, if we believe that He cares about us and wants only what is good for us, then why do we not trust Him?
       Two soldiers on a front-line, trust each other so implicitly, that they know their lives are in the other’s hands. Two firemen going into a burning building, each realizes that their partner holds their life, as if he were a puppeteer. Trust must be complete. To hold back and allow a doubt to creep into their heads may be the difference between life and death. How does this trust come about? The first time the two firemen met, they did not have total trust in one another. They didn’t even know each other, let alone trust the other. So how does this trust come about?  We don’t say, “I like how this person looks, therefore I trust him”.  It is absurd to say that we trust someone, who we know is underhanded, who deals with people with varying levels of honesty. We don’t turn over our financial reserves to someone we don’t trust or we know little or nothing about. So, again, how is this trust accomplished?
      To grow in trust with a person, we must strive to build a good relationship with that person. The more we see how a person acts honorably and truthfully, the more that person gains our trust, our confidence. The more we learn and know about this person, the more we feel comfortable to give him our trust. Our relationship with one another grows, and this happens only with communication. We express ourselves, our true selves, and in turn receive the other person’s true self. This is how strong marriage relationships are built, the expressing of both partner’s true self to the other. This happens at the initial stages of dating and continues to the couple’s 50^th and 60^th wedding anniversaries. If the relationship is not built on revealing one’s true self but rather on displaying what the other person may want to see, then the relationship is doomed. (But I can’t do that. What if the person doesn’t like the real me? Then your marriage is doomed to either be a fraud for its duration, or will end in divorce.)
      I have digressed a bit. We were talking about how trust grows. As a relationship grows, the more we can identify who and what a person is; and, how we feel about this “who” and “what”. This relationship develops through open and honest communication. Earlier we asked, “Why do we not trust God?” If we are honest with ourselves, we already know the questions we must answer. Trust is built through open and honest communication. How open are our lines of communication with our God? Do we talk to Him? Do we wait to hear His answer? Do we read His Word? Do we wish to grow in our relationship with Him? Do we really know who Jesus is? When was the last time we just sat and thought about His life on earth? When was the last time we wondered why He died on a cross? Do we see the beauty of Christianity? These are questions that we can easily brush away, as though chasing an annoying fly. These are questions to which we may not really want to face the answers, and what they mean to our current life’s structure. But, to not address them is to ignore the purpose of our creation, is to be content in being blind to the love and mercies of God.

Your Role in the World

Starting the Movement

      In my last blog (Our Lady of…), Mary’s appearance at Akita, Japan was mentioned. In it, it was stated that if you did go to the website and were to read about it, you should read the third message, especially. In retrospect, I thought about it and realized it was too important of an event to not directly address this, in these blogs. Some of the contents of her third and last message, delivered on October 13, 1973 are as follows:

“. . . if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. . . Pray very much the prayers of the Rosary. I alone am able still to save you from the calamities which approach. Those who place their confidence in me will be saved.”-1

      We can pass this off as sensationalism, something we might see in one of those daily tabloids. We might rank it right up there with the headline that jumps off the page at us, of someone having a Martian’s baby. Yes, we can and could, but should we?
      Maybe, it is time to take stock of our lives and its direction. What is the purpose of life? Our life? Is there something more to it than being gratified with every pleasure imaginable? Do we eat to live or live to eat? Is our sole purpose in life to advance in materialistic things? Do we look down on others and treat them accordingly? Do we treat Jesus Christ as a myth, as a child’s story?
      The fire falling from the sky probably describes bombs being delivered by missiles with fire trails, streaming behind them. Destruction being delivered by man, on man. No need for God to bring about earth’s destruction, man can do it, himself. But, if man is at the root of this destruction, then it can be averted. Mankind, all of mankind, must begin to recognize that Jesus’ message of love and the treating of each other with love is the only way we are meant to live. Forget the almighty dollar, listen to our Almighty God.
      To expect the world to suddenly make a 180 degree turn is foolhardy. But it can happen, if we listen to Our Lady. Pray the Rosary, pray for peace in this world. Peace not just the stoppage of war, but peace in people’s lives, in our lives. Don’t just pass this off as much ado about nothing. Each of us has a responsibility in this task. We, all of us, must pray, and work at, making our lives respectable and wholesome in the eyes of God. We, all of us, must, by example, show our families, our neighbors, our co-workers, the people, we meet on the street what it means to love one another. We, all of us, must recognize that we do have a part to play in world peace. The most intricate and elaborate designs, made of Lego blocks, only happen after the first one is tipped over. If all of us start the design in our corner of the world, then all the corners of the world can change.

I have never said this before on a post. But, if you believe in what is being said, why not send it to a friend or loved one, (you can use the send to someone button below), or point them to this particular blog http://thesteppingstones.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/your-role-in-the-world/.

-1 http://www.theworkofgod.org/Aparitns/Akita.htm

Our Lady of…

Apparitions of Our Lady

      We place great admiration and reverence in the Blessed Mother of Jesus.  If through our baptism we are born again in Christ, then she, indeed, is the Mother of us all. Mary has always been a mediator for us and has appeared a number of times on earth. These apparitions have been to warn, console, strongly criticize, exhort and encourage us to change our ways of living. As our own mothers would help us, Mary helps the world in times of need and shows us what must be done. Her guidance, her urging us to pray the rosary, her encouragement, should not be taken lightly.
      The following is a list of some of the better known apparitions of the Blessed Mother. Those that are listed are shown from the oldest to the most recent. I think it noteworthy to mention that the last three have taken place in the 1900’s. Without trying to be an alarmist, I do feel that Mary is telling us something extremely urgent. Her messages are becoming more frequent and more specific in content. To learn a little bit more about each of these apparitions, visit the Work of God Website^-1. (If you do go, make sure you read the three messages of Our Lady in the Akita apparition, especially the last message.)

Guadalupe… Mexico in 1531 to an Indian, Juan Diego.
LaSalette…France in 1846 to Melanie Mathieu and Maximin Giraud
Lourdes…. France in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous (age 14)
Fatima… Portugal  in 1917 to Lucia (9), Francisco (8) and Jacinta (6)
Zeitoun…Egypt in 1968 to Muslim Farouk Mohammed Atwa
Akita…Japan in 1973 to Sr. Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa

      There are many other times that Mary has come to tell mankind something. The important fact to remember in all of these is that Mary is mother to us all. The fact that she gives the message to someone in France, or Portugal, in Egypt or Mexico reasserts her motherhood of all peoples. The fact, to which country she chose to deliver it, is totally unimportant. To let the country be a distraction to you, so much so that you ignore the message, not only is foolhardy, but does a disservice to Our Lady.

-1  http://www.theworkofgod.org/Aparitns/Aparitns.htm

A Private Chat

Christ's Tenderness with John

     The fervent prayer in Sunday’s Mass was that we remain ever vigilant and faithful to Jesus’ message of love. We heard in a passage from the Gospel:
          “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes”-1
      The Gospel goes on to remind us that we don’t know when the thief, nor death, will come to our door. Our fervor must not be allowed to wane. But, it is impossible to consistently remain true to the message of Christ, if this all-important task is left solely to our own devices. Our human response will always have its high and low points. Because of our frailty, it is so very important for us to trust Christ, to ask Jesus to come to us, to ask Him to surround and protect us with His love.
     We hear in His words, His disdain for the lukewarm soul:
          “But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.”-2
And,
          “I come into your heart so that through your fervor you may atone for the offenses which I have received from lukewarm and slothful hearts that dishonor me in the Blessed Sacrament”-3
And again,
          “…the souls …who have become lukewarm wound My Heart most painfully.”-4
     In today’s fast-paced world, where energies are spent on the workplace, shopping, taking the kids to sports and social events, and a myriad of other attention and time-consuming activities, when do we talk to God? It can be so easy to push Him farther and farther back. We have received so much in our lives, and a thank you takes so little time. We have no excuse for ignoring Jesus. Our tepid, lukewarm fervor is either out of ignorance on our part, or worse, a matter of indifference. Both of which are an insult to our Savior and Redeemer.
     Please, for your own good read the following and afterwards, close your eyes and do it. It only takes a moment:
              Shut out all external thoughts from your mind. No worries or cares are allowed to enter for the moment. When quiet, inside, close your eyes and picture yourself next to Jesus. By the look on His face, you know He loves you. Put your arm around His waist and rest your head on His chest. Tell Him of your sorrow for your life’s actions. Tell Him of your love for Him and desire to be better. Then remain calm and listen to your heart. Allow His thoughts to well up inside you.

     It only takes a moment, but you have allowed Christ to come into your life. Try to do this on a regular basis. This is not an action of the lukewarm.

-1– Luke 12: 37
-2—Revelations 3:16
-3– Third apparition of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
-4– Apparition of Jesus to St. Faustina