Exploring the depth of our prayers
Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me — Mark 9:37
Our Blessed Mother Mary received her child, Jesus. And she is the one who helps us to know Him and join our will with His.
The way I originally read Hail Holy Queen is that we ask Mary to do this after our death, after our “exile.” But …
Jesus often healed with the words, “your faith has healed you.”
Which I find fascinating. Didn’t Jesus heal?
Is it just that Jesus was modest? Hardly, not when He repeatedly declared Himself the Son of God and Son of Man.
Today’s readings contain powerful messages of people being healed. By Jesus, by God, by the Apostles.
Because all of us are broken. Whether it’s visible or not.
Our mother Mary is most amazing because of her purity of heart. The image I have is that, for her, saying “yes” to God was not really a hard decision at all.
Because her heart was focused on her Lord.
“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” — Luke 1:38
Our thoughts today are on serving the Lord:
As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” — Joshua 24:15
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” — John 6:67-68
When we confess that we want God’s will to be done, this is exactly what it means. We will serve God, and we will serve others because that’s God’s will.
Today is a powerfully Catholic celebration: The Crowning of Our Queen.
Being raised Protestant, this kind of thing struck me as extremely weird. Also, as an American, we have mixed feelings about using titles of royalty. A king or queen is fine … but not here.
But this concept is more Biblically based than I thought, even though a specific event is never mentioned. Continue reading “The Coronation of Mary”
Today we’re ending the readings called the “bread of life discourse” from the book of John. The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith, and we’ll spend an entire lifetime learning what this means.
God’s only Son, the ever-eternal Christ, came to us as Jesus of Nazareth. He gave His body, His entire life, to have us join with God.
As an analytic engineer type, my natural question is: So how does THAT work? Well, I’ve decided this is the wrong question.
Today we have the wonderful celebration of the Assumption of our Blessed Virgin Mary.
It’s not directly in the Bible, of course, although there amazing images in the book of Revelation which indicates that Mary is present in Heaven, is powerful, and using that power on our behalf.
Battling the Prince of Darkness.
Forgiveness is a tricky thing.
I always had the mindset that forgiveness was something I had to earn from God through doing good works and confessing my sins.
Be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.
— Eph 4:32
How wonderfully appropriate that today’s readings focus on the Living Bread – which is of course our Lord Himself!
When we ask our Father for our daily bread, we could be thinking about bodily sustenance. And surely we do need food and drink to survive.
But Jesus has shown us that there’s something far more important than just survival of the body.