Serving the Lord

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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.

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Bread that came down from heaven

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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.

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The bread of life

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.

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Daily bread

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I’ve been told that the “daily bread” we’re asking for in the Lord’s Prayer, in the original, is actually a word that’s used exactly once in the Bible.

As a result, we may not have the translation right. That the meaning we’ve applied to it is more from tradition than from true knowledge.

So how do we know exactly what we’re asking God for in this prayer?

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Thy will

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These are the most powerful two words in my entire prayer life: Thy will.

It seems that my prayers tend to gravitate toward asking God for favors. Please make my world more comfortable. Please remove that obstacle.

Please fix that thing I screwed up.

But let’s work through this: Continue reading “Thy will”

The Proclamation of the Kingdom of God

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We’re thinking about prophecy and proclamation today, especially in the first reading and the Gospel.

Christian churches seem to have a split personality in this regard. Either we’re reserved and humble, or over-the-top Evangelical. I find that Catholics trend toward the former. Which is in my comfort zone as an introvert.

But there are things that I’m very passionate about, where I’m constantly thinking and talking about it.

Why do I struggle with doing this in my faith?

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