The Power of Prayer

It is only at the end of this world that we shall realize how much the destinies of persons and nations have been shaped, not so much by the external actions of powerful men and by events that seem inevitable, but by the quiet, silent, irresistible prayer of persons the world will never know.

Anthony de Mello, SJ

The power of prayer is indeed a miraculous thing. And now with the technology of the Internet, it is possible to solicit prayers from all over the world, which is exactly what I am doing with this post.
Someone very dear to me, we will call her "M.", who had battled breast cancer about 18 months ago, and was in remission, just found out that the cancer is back, this time with a vengeance and in her liver and bones. The prognosis is “fair” at best. Right now, she has opted to fight this disease. I have posted to the right, the prayer of St. Peregrine, for those suffering from cancer. I humbly ask that anyone who visits my blog, please take a moment and pray for her.

Thank you and God Bless!

Pearls...

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being....
Correction does much, but encouragement does more."

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Eternal rest grant unto him, O, Lord...

Requiescat in pace

USMC Sgt. Frank J. A. World, of Tonawanda, NY, was killed in action in Afghanistan on Thursday April 1, 2010.  He leaves a wife and 2 small children.  My thoughts and prayers go out to his family & friends.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O, Lord

and let perpetual light shine upon him.

May he rest in peace.

Semper Fi

This is the day that the Lord has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad !

Christ has Risen!

Alleluia! 

But Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" She thought it was the gardener and said to him, "Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni," which means Teacher. Jesus said to her, "Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord," and what he told her.

John 20: 11-18

May the blessings of our Risen Lord be with you and your famiily !

Happy Easter!

In the Tomb

This year the Triduum has taken on a new meaning for me. It is a grace I have received from my participation in the 19th Annotation. For the past few weeks, I have been using the Passion accounts from all of the Gospels in my prayer time. For an hour (or sometimes more) per day, I have been praying and meditating with these passages using a technique called the “application of the senses” in which I fully enter into the stories in which I am reading, seeing, hearing, touching smelling and tasting everything, as if I am truly present. I have, with the grace and help of God, been able to “be” with Jesus and his disciples as the events of His passion have unfolded.


It has not been an easy few days. Reliving the betrayal and abandonment of Jesus by his friends, has brought up a lot of my own “stuff”. Betrayal and abandonment are things I would not wish on my worst enemy, let alone my “best friend”, and I fully understand how Jesus must have felt. I would much rather deal with physical pain than with the emotional pain caused by such acts. For me, the betrayal and abandonment of a friend was far worse that any physical pain I have ever suffered, and while the gaping hole left in my heart and life by this experience has been healed through prayer and by the grace of God, there are still twinges of pain when I am reminded of the happy times that I had spent with my friend. And this pain, I believe, will never fully go away. It is something I will carry with me for the rest of my days. It is there, in the form of doubt, when I am about to share something of myself with another. It is there as a constant reminder that the unconditional love that I seek is something that can only be given to me by God and God alone.

As I sat in Good Friday services yesterday afternoon, and at the Tenebrae service I attended last night, thinking about what Jesus did for me- the suffering, the humiliation, the pain, the abandonment, I was overcome with grief. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to know how the people that I loved could betray and abandon me. I wanted to know how, people who claimed to be Jesus’ friends and followers could have handed Him over to such a horrific fate. And then I heard Jesus’ words so clearly, that I almost thought He was sitting right next to me,

“Father forgive them: they do not know what they are doing.”

and suddenly things became crystal clear.

As a human being, I am a sinful creature. My sinfulness comes out of my thinking that I am in control of things, and that my will is what is important. What Jesus showed me on the cross is that it is not, has never been and never will be my will that brings me peace and salvation. Only God, through the life, death and resurrection of His son, can do that for me. The catch is I have to let Him!

As I prayed before the cross last night, I offered all of my feelings of anger, loss, grief, abandonment and betrayal there at the foot of the cross. Today, as I “sit in the tomb”, I can, with God’s help, finally let go of all of the negative emotion that has brought me into my one personal “hell” the past few months. I can offer my suffering in solidarity with that of Jesus’ suffering. I can take my human brokenness and leave it there in the tomb, so as to make room in my heart for the awesome gift that Jesus has in store for me,
new life in Him!

I found this beautiful image of Jesus being laid in the tomb at www.sistermarygrace.artspan.com.  through  a "google image" search.  There is much more artwork available.  I urge you to take a moment and check out the website, and maybe even buy something.  I know I will!

Judas, what were you thinking?!

As we enter into Holy Week, my prayer time is bringing me deeper and deeper into the Passion, and I find many of my thoughts, outside of my prayer time, are of Judas.

In today’s Gospel, Mary anoints Jesus with some very expensive oil. Oil that Judas believes could be better used by selling it and giving the money to the poor. That is not really a bad thing, is it? 300 days wages was a lot of money. It still is, if you really think about it. If I work 5 days a week, for a whole year without a day off, it is only 260 days. Would I have felt the same way Judas did? Would I have seen what Mary did as wasteful?

I remember watching a program on the History Channel, I believe, that speculated on who Judas Iscariot really was. I do not remember all of the details, and unfortunately do not even remember the title of the program, yet I do remember that it brought up some very interesting ideas. The basic premise was that Jesus and Judas had been life-long friends, and that their families had a long connection. It went on to speculate that Jesus and Judas were “revolutionaries” who fought against the Roman occupation during what we refer to as the “lost years” in the life of Jesus. The speculation continues with the idea that Judas, discouraged by the fact that they had not eradicated their Roman oppressors, continued to believe in, and follow that path that Jesus now took in His public ministry. Judas is named as one of the 12, and we can only assume that for the years of His public ministry, Judas was working side by side with Jesus in preaching the Good News.

So, I can’t help but to think, might it have been this episode from today’s Gospel that was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” for Judas? Were things not happening fast enough for him? Did he have a misunderstanding of what Jesus was actually trying to teach? Was Judas looking for a prize? Was his understanding of “kingdom” that of one of wealth and power and not one of love and service? What causes someone to betray someone that they love?

I don’t have to imagine how Jesus must have felt. I have been there. The betrayal of a friend, in my experience, is like having a piece of yourself ripped from within you. It leaves a jagged, gaping hole in your heart and in your spirit. The darkness can consume you if you let it. I know, because I almost did. And I remember praying, no pleading with God, to take this pain away, and make everything “better” again.

God did not take my suffering away from me, just as He did not take the suffering away from Jesus. Jesus suffered the ultimate betrayal; He lost His life because of a friend. In the end though, Jesus not only gained new life, but He gained it for me, too. Jesus took the ultimate betrayal and turned it into the ultimate act of love.

Can I do the same?

True Friendship

I am in the 3rd Week of the Spiritual Exercises. We are contemplating Jesus’ life during His final weeks. The past couple of weeks I have been praying with the stories of the Last Supper and the Agony in the Garden. There is much to be learned about friendship from Jesus' experiences.

This was Henri Nouwen’s Daily Meditation from March 23.  I love Henri. I have read just about everything he had written, and his "The Return of the Prodigal Son" changed my life.  I believe that this is the kind of friend Jesus must have been~ 

A friend is more than a therapist or a confessor, even though a friend can sometimes heal us and offer us God's forgiveness.
A friend is that other person with whom we can share our solitude, our silence, and our prayer. A friend is that other person with whom we can look at a tree and say, "Isn't that beautiful," or sit on the beach and silently watch the sun disappear under the horizon. With a friend we don't have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us.

True friendship like this is a rare and wonderful thing. The pain of being betrayed or abandoned by a friend is one that cuts deep to the core. Jesus knew this. And I suspect most of us do, in some way or another.
Yet Jesus never stopped loving His friends, and, in the end,  He gave His life for them.

Could I do the same?

In Honor of St. Patrick

The Prayer of St. Patrick

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven;

Light of the sun,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of the wind,

Depth of the sea,

Stability of the earth,

Firmness of the rock.

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me;

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to guide me,

God's eye to look before me,

God's ear to hear me,

God's word to speak for me,

God's hand to guard me,

God's way to lie before me,

God's shield to protect me,

God's hosts to save me

Afar and anear,

Alone or in a mulitude.

Christ shield me today

Against wounding

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in the eye that sees me,

Christ in the ear that hears me.
I arise today

Through the mighty strength

Of the Lord of creation.

On Healthcare

I have resisted the temptation to get involved in any debate about healthcare. I work in the industry, and have seen first hand the lunacy that is working with insurance companies, and the Medicare and Medicaid systems. I am not saying that I don't think something needs to be done, but "ObamaCare" is not the way!


A note to all politicians-

Until you can prove to me and to the rest of America that you can fix the systems we already have (Medicare & Medicaid), please do not try and come up with something new!

I received this in an e-mail today. “Maxine” is one of my favorite characters, so I share with you her take on healthcare-
 don’t think I could have said it any better!

Let me get this straight......


We're trying to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president that also hasn't read it, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that is broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

You know it's a Monday when...

it seems like you are surrounded by idiots!!!!!

Some quotes about stupidity...
take from them what you will.

"The law is a rule to the fool, but a guide to the wise." ~ Anonymous

"There are two kinds of fool.  One says, 'This is old, and therefore good.'  And one says, 'This is new, and therefore better.'  ~ Dean Inge

"In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that he did not also limit his stupidity."  ~ Konrad Adenauer