Prayer for the Election of a New Pope

Prayer/Prayer Requests
papal flag close

Lord Jesus Christ,
You are the Good Shepherd,
And you never leave your flock untended.

You gave your life that we may live,
And you appoint shepherds after your own heart
To lead your people by word and example
To likewise give themselves away in love.

We thank you for the ministry of Pope Benedict XVI,
And for his service to the Church and the world.
We ask that you now give him a fruitful period
Of rest and prayer, of gratitude and praise.

We ask you, Lord Jesus, with the Father,
To send the Holy Spirit on the Church once again.

In particular, guide the Cardinals who will shortly exercise
The obligation and privilege of electing a new Pope.
Guide their deliberations and decisions
With divine wisdom and insight.

Even now, Lord Jesus, give to the new Pope,
Whom you have already chosen,
An abundance of holiness and strength,
To carry out the mission you have entrusted to him.

May your Word reign supreme in his life,
And may his every word and action point the Church to You,
The supreme and eternal Shepherd,
And the only mediator between God and humanity,
For you live and reign forever and ever. Amen.

[From OLGC Parish Bulletin 2/24/13]

Whose Side Are You On?

Daily Mass Readings
Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament

Okay, new fun activity…. To reflect on the daily readings! 🙂 In the parish bulletin, they have a page where they list not only the daily readings for Mass, but also include a little blurb about them. I thought that I’d provide the link to “Take Five for Faith” for the daily reflection for your reading pleasure, as well as my [amazing, insightful, colorful] commentary and personal thoughts on the readings.

I was originally going to provide the text of the reflections in my post, but I don’t want to step on anyone’s copyright privileges, so if you are reading this post on the day I posted it, you can click on the link to read it there. If you are reading the post on a different day, you can access the parish bulletin and read them there. This week’s reflections are found on page 9 of the bulletin.

Are you ready?! Let’s go! 🙂

Today’s readings:
2 Kings 5:1-15b
Luke 4:24-30

The reflection written notes how we tend to create divisions between people: it is “us” and “them,” but that this is contrary to how we are to live as the Body of Christ. These divisions are due to a lack of charity, many times. Even so far as to have the townspeople drive Jesus out of town in the Gospel of Luke! We should work to break down some of the divisions which have been created between us and reach out to those on the other “side.”

The other thing that struck me about these readings came from 2 Kings, and how Naaman reacted when he was told to wash himself in the Jordan. He was angry.

Why?

Because he had expectations of how God would intervene in his life.

It wasn’t that he didn’t think that God *would* do something; it was that he had a different idea of *how* God should fix the problem. And don’t we do this ALL. THE. TIME??? And then we have the audacity to be angry with God because He didn’t do things the way that we wanted or expected them to be done? Instead of being grateful that He intervened at all?

Amazing, really, that God loves us so much that He heals us, protects us, guides us, and forgives us — despite the incredible ingratitude that we often show Him every day.

For me, I know that I’m going to spend a few extra minutes in prayer today, just thanking Him and praising Him, instead of asking for Him to do yet one more thing.

Thank You, Jesus, for Your unending love and mercy!

Uniting Your Suffering to the Cross

Tales of My Amazing Priests

This is perhaps a timely message for me, and for many others. Especially during this time of Lent when many of us are inflicting “mini-sufferings” upon ourselves, it is good to know that God can use all of this. The things that we take on upon ourselves for reasons of self-discipline and love of God, and those sufferings which God permits. These are never good, to be sure, and we should not be seeking them out, but our prayer in the time of suffering is particularly efficacious.

Fr. John was interviewed by Dr. Ralph Martin of Renewal Ministries on this topic. The video is just under a half hour long and is well worth watching.

They Always Make Me Cry

Exciting Adventures of the Everyday, Sacraments, , ,

I love going to Confession at St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit. But, they always make me cry. I guess I tend to feel God’s love and mercy a little more when I am there, for some odd reason. I don’t go there very often, but save it, so that when I do go, it feels “special”.

That and I usually buy something from their gift shop. LOL! 🙂

Today, they had something new in the gift shop, a candle that burns in a spiral, filling the bottom portion with wax as it burns. Once the spiral burns out, the “new” candle burns for hours. 🙂 Here’s a little video showing it:

I also picked up some honey that they make, to make my honey dijon chicken for dinner, and a couple other small things.

It was bright and sunny as I exited, and I feel truly blessed. 🙂

Sede Vacante

Sede Vacante
Sede Vacante

I have been wondering lately how the Prayers of the Faithful are going to change during Mass in this time of sede vacante.

You know…

The part where the priest says to pray for “our Pope Benedict, our bishop X, and all the clergy”….

I did a quick search and found this link, giving instructions to the clergy of Raleigh during this period. Kind of an interesting read. 🙂

This is certainly a time in which we should intensify our prayer life. Even more than what we would normally do during Lent. Trust in God, in whose hands we have always been held. Veni Sancte Spiritus and guide the College of Cardinals in these days!

Courage
[Photo Credit to Fr. Barron of Word on Fire]

Thank you Papa

Lent: The Third Day In

Lent
Lenten Cross

Year after year, Lent happens the same way: I make some crazy grandiose plans and thoroughly expect them to be carried out to the letter. And it.never.happens! 😦

Not only that, but then I feel upset and frustrated and just want to throw in the towel because I slipped on my commitments. I feel like I have let God down.

But, this year, I have started a new “cleaning” program that encourages you to *not* beat yourself if you miss a task (or a day…), but to just pick yourself up and continue on (NOT attempting to “catch up” — that will just frustrate things). So, I started off making this fantastic, elaborate plan for Lent, scheduling things into my calendar…. And then immediately started “screwing up”. It’s only FRIDAY, for Pete’s sake, and still I haven’t been able to do my daily Lectio Divina or blog posting, or ….

But I’m not going to obsess about that. I’ll just continue with the plan for Friday as if I did everything I planned on doing on Thursday and be content with that. I give my frustration over having my perfect plans messed up to God. My failure becomes part of my penance — I give up the satisfaction of knowing my perfect little list has been perfectly completed.

And what did I do on Wednesday and Thursday that derailed my Lenten penance plans? I helped a priest finalize his STL thesis. So, I gotta get points for that, right? 🙂

God Bless and have a peaceful Lent!

What Am I Doing for Lent?!!?

Lent
Day 53- Ash Wednesday preparations!

Ash Wednesday is HERE!

So, I guess this means that I finally have to nail down what I will be doing this Lent, right? Nothing like the nth hour, eh? 🙂

After much consideration and after looking at different links and suggestions, I have come up with the things that I am going to give up/take on during these 40 days in which I am attempting to adequately prepare myself for the celebration of Easter and grow in conformity to Christ.

Posting them up here is an attempt to secure the encouragement and accountablility of *you*: the 1 or 2 people who may read my blog. 🙂

In no particular order:

  • Read only spiritual/classic literature  (Good thing I finished reading Twilight last night!  And this will be a little difficult, because I *just* bought 2 YA novels and am about 1/4 of the way through one of them.)
  • Exercise at least 15 minutes, 3 days a week
  • Spend at least 15 minutes each day decluttering my house, and have at least one “package” of donations make it to a charity before Easter
  • Lectio Divina, daily
  • Liturgy of the Hours, daily
  • Examination of Conscience, daily
  • Adoration, weekly
  • Confession, weekly
  • Prayer journal, daily
  • 15 minutes of silence/listening to God, daily
  • Listen to only classical music/spiritual podcasts
  • Post something spiritual/share the faith on the blog at least once a week
  • Leave an encouraging or positive comment on someone else’s blog post, daily (instead of my usual habit of reading them and not commenting)
  • Give up fast food
  • Study the life of a different saint per week
  • Get caught up on my to-do list by Easter (this list is *almost* 2 years behind, and is only going to grow with all these items which I am about to add to it!)

That’s it!  That’s my Lent!  I do these things, not so that I “look good,” but in an honest attempt to provide more structure to my life and grow in holiness and self-mastery.

I’m interested to hear what your plans are for Lent, too!  I think that, as a Body of Christ, it helps so much to know that others have your back.  🙂

God Bless!

Prayer for Forgiveness

Prayer/Prayer Requests
Jesus Over the Earth

My Savior, by Your painful death,
You purchased by unworthy soul,
Deliver me from all my sins,
Teach me kindness and self-control.

Fill me with love beyond compare,
The kind of love You bore for me,
That all I do and all I say
May reflect Your sovereignty.

Be with me, everyday, my Lord,
Protect me from each harmful way,
Touch my body, mind, and spirit,
And never let me slip away.

Amen!

Riddle Me This

Bible Study

Okay, so I’m reading through the Old Testament and am in the middle of 1 Kings.

Here’s the issue:

15:1-2 — Here we meet Abijam, he rules Judah for 3 years and his mother’s name is Maacah daughter of Abishalom.

15:9-10 — Here we meet Abijam’s son (according to verse 8), Asa. His mother’s name is Maacah daughter of Abishalom.

Wait. What? The same woman?

Is there something Oedipal going on here?

The Embarrassing Truth

Exciting Adventures of the Everyday

Here is the embarrassing truth:

Master Bedroom: Original State

My master bedroom is a disaster.

My myopathy means that I get tired super quick. Okay, not “tired”, but exhausted to the point that I can only lay supine on some flat surface. I also get short of breath a lot. And have cardiac arrhythmias. And build up lactic acid like a fiend.

So simple household chores are really difficult for me to stay on top of. Especially considering that I still work full-time and have other obligations that take me outside of the house. The general rule is that I don’t get home until about 9:30 pm or so. And then, I’m lucky if I have enough energy left to make dinner.

Forget about doing the dishes.

And laundry? It’s exhausting just to bring the hamper to the laundry room and then move the clothes from the washer to the dryer. Usually the dryer is running while I sleep. Then, in the morning, I grab the clothes onto the bed and find whatever I need to wear for work that day. I don’t have time then to put them away or fold them. When I get home, I’m too tired to deal with them. So, I shove them to one side of the bed and sleep on the other side. Eventually, they fall off onto the far side of the bed and lay there in a heap of clean laundry.

I also don’t have a good organization system for things. And I’m terrible with flat surfaces. It’s just so easy to plop something down on the nearest available surface and forget about it. Things pile up with alarming frequency. I need real help in this area.

I recently took a Project Management course where we had to come up with a project charter and plan. I did mine on a bedroom make-over.

See, for about a year now, I have wanted to replace my dressers (which I don’t really use for clothes) with a shelving system from IKEA that I can use to organize books and pictures and things.

And I also wanted to repaint my bedroom a more exciting color. Like aquamarine. It’ll be like a beach theme.

Eventually, I also want to buy a chair for the one corner so I can read by the window, replace the light with a light/ceiling fan combo, and finish upgrading the outlet to 3-prong receptacles.

My goal is to get all of this done by this fall. (Hopefully, much sooner, but I’m giving myself time.)

I’ll be creating a new tag for this project, so that you can follow along as I go (and find the thread of post among all the other stuff I put up here).

Thanks for your support! 🙂