apriori_2008 December

reposted by special request

“Pray, my dear children. Pray!”

During the Mass for Healing on Friday December 5th, our Chaplain Father Mike, spoke in his homily of the hopelessness people are feeling during these troubled times and especially during this time of year, not necessarily for themselves but for family members and close friends who have not been called to conversion or have somehow along the way lost their faith. His solution, “When there seems as if there is nothing you can do, you can always pray!”
As simple as it sounds, how difficult it is. “I don’t know how to pray.” “I don’t have time to pray.” “I don’t know what to pray for.” We’ve all said this to ourselves at one time or another or have heard someone else with the same lament.
Yet it really is simple, and true and POWERFUL!
Simple. When the children of Medjugorje asked the Blessed Mother what it was she was asking of them Our Lady said, “Pray my dear children. Pray!” They asked her how do we pray and Mary said simply to say the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
Powerful. St. Faustina asked, “Jesus, I beg you by the inconceivable power of Your Mercy, that all the souls who will die today escape the fire of hell, even if they have been the greatest sinners....because Your mercy is inconceivable, the Angels will not be surprised at this.” (Jesus pressed me to His Heart and said...) ‘My beloved daughter, you have come to know well the depths of My mercy. I will do what you ask,...’(873)
For that same reason the Blessed Virgin continues to ask for prayer and fasting: "You have forgotten that with prayer and fasting you can ward off wars, suspend natural laws."
What do we pray for? We should pray for ourselves, our family, relatives, friends and neighbors, the Pope, bishops, priests and religious, government leaders, lawmakers, judges and public officials, the sick and the dying, sinners, unbelievers, the suffering souls in purgatory, and even for our enemies. It would almost seem a better question is, “What don’t we pray for?
As a very young person I was told that a day not offered up was wasted and I was taught this simple prayer, “Dear God, I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day.” That together with an “Angel of God” with my breakfast cereal pretty much had me covered for the rest of the day. Later I learned there are 7 types of prayer: blessing, adoration petition asking forgiveness, intercession and thanksgiving, everyone of which interestingly enough is found in the prayer Jesus taught us, the “Our Father.”
It is, however, possible for a child to lose sight of the gift of faith, of prayer, of love, along the way. But having learned how to pray in his childhood with his family, that person can once again open himself to prayer & to communion with God. For this reason it is incumbent on us as Knights to pray often, pray together and teach our families to pray. It is our right and it is our responsibility.

apriori_2009 December

"In all your affairs, rely entirely on the Providence of God through which alone all your plans succeed … Strive always to cooperate with it. Then, believe that if you trust well in God success will come to you.”
~ St Francis de Sales

Sometimes we muse about what might have been. I had a thought the other day - and when I say thought I suppose looking back on that thought I really mean insight - that after I finished my engineering degree I should have gone into medicine. The engineering side of medicine has always seemed to me to be full of unlimited frontiers. Especially with the technology that exists today the only limit would be your imagination. But the insight was that it occurred to me that my desire to do so was/is not so much because I want to help people but because there is stuff I (emphasis on "I") want to know and learn that I don’t know. If in the process of satiating my own curiosity I accidentally help mankind, OK, but really that wouldn’t have been my primary goal. I suppose though, the fact that I am considering that the byproduct of my effort may go to the benefit of mankind may be my nature, there is some goodness there. And the awareness of my nature is possibly a byproduct of the awareness of the concept of prayer and love.
Where I’m going with this is that prayer life for me has been a series of epiphanies, for lack of a better word, and we are in the Christmas season and there are 24 more shopping days until the Feast of the Epiphany. Back then I might have prayed to become a successful medical engineer . That’s all, nothing more, because that’s what I wanted. As I matured and became more aware of “not my will but Your will be done.” I may have prayed to be successful so I can help people, but was that really it or would I have been really trying to trick God into making me successful by saying “See, you should help me succeed (and oh by the way prosper) because I want to do good.” Yeah, I know, trick God, LOL. The one laughing out loud would be God. I do believe he has a great sense of humor. Thankfully He is also infinitely patient.
Which brings up a whole new level of prayer, especially considering the idea of free will and the fact that even though He knew before we were even born everything we would do, we still have that free will and He still loves us no matter what stupid stuff we do. He still loves us. He still loves us. I can’t stop saying it. I can’t stop thinking about that love and praying every day that the Holy Spirit will open my heart just a little bit and let some of that love in. That LOVE. That love that helps overcome pride. That love that joins us with the Communion of Saints. That love that is present at the sacrifice of the Mass, that is on the altar during adoration. That love that in the beginning was the Word, the WORD THAT BECAME FLESH. The Word that became flesh because Mary said yes. That love that we are preparing ourselves to receive on Christmas Day.
VIVAT JESUS!

apriori_2009 September

In the months before Father Robert left for his assignment in Union City we occasionally had the opportunity to go on long walks together. Sometimes we caught up on each others lives and families, sometimes we would silently enjoy the peacefulness and beauty of our surroundings and sometimes we would discuss spiritual things. It was these moments I treasured most because without fail I would come away from them with a richer spiritual life and deeper understanding of my faith. During one of these walks I told him about a prayer I would say after Holy Communion thanking God for the Graces He had given me by receiving the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of His Son. What I learned from Father that day is that grace doesn’t come from performing individual acts. We have the Grace of God from the moment we are born.

The individual acts, the way we live our lives, is what determines the benefit we receive from the grace we have been given. Align yourself with the will of God and the grace of God will bring you peace. As we stray from our relationship with Him, the more we fight His will, the more the benefit from our inherent graces decrease and the more materialistic we become. This is why we see people that have many possessions yet are unhappy and in this economic downturn why those same people, as they lose those possessions, become even unhappier.

Do we have to live the life of a saint to avail ourselves of the Grace God has given us? No, but we can strive to develop some saintly virtues within our own lives:

Prayer. Everything begins with prayer. Being faithful in prayer allows God’s grace to well up within us and flow forth.

Love. Act charitably. Be kind and helpful to all you encounter, not in a haughty or superior way, but humbly allowing the grace of God to flow in your selfless love.

While we work to develop these virtues in our lives we can take comfort in the knowledge that the one thing we all have in common with the saints is that we are human yet were graced by the Divine the moment we were conceived and given the gift of the Holy Spirit at baptism. As Knights of Columbus these are our precious treasures which we must preserve and pass on to our family by our thoughts words and actions. VIVAT JESUS!

Heck & Gosh

apriori_2009 August

Chris Frame wrote:

apriori_2009 August

Our Mission Statement calls us to work to create an environment within the Domestic Church (aka the Family) which combines both a movement inward toward God and outward to society by promoting Family Life. In our Council our primary focus is to offer fathers, the priests of the Domestic Church, resources on how to build a strong, loving and confident identity in a culture that often does not value fatherhood or masculine virtues so they can  build stronger marriages and families and pass those values and virtues on to their children.

Lofty words, much easier to write about than often times to do. One challenge we face is conquering and freeing ourselves from the inhibitions of being able to talk freely about our faith. Everything begins with prayer.

“It’s always good to pray with brothers!” these were the first words out of Father Nathan Malavoti’s mouth as we began the discussion he led in Stelling Hall earlier this month. He went on to say, “In order to pass the faith on you must be a man of faith, you must be a man of prayer.”

St. Ephraim, a Doctor of our Church, said in a homily, “Do nothing at all without the beginning of prayer. With the sign of the living cross, seal all your doings, my son. Go not forth from the door of your house till you have signed the cross. Whether in eating or in drinking, whether in sleeping or in waking, whether in your house or on the road, or again in the season of leisure, neglect not this sign; for there is no guardian like it. It shall be unto you as a wall, in the forefront of all your doings. And teach this to your children, that heedfully they be conformed to it.”

Another struggle is for us to not lose our own faith when we do all the right things, say the right things, set the right examples, when we work so hard to pass on the faith and still see our children losing their faith. But I challenge you to look back upon the genesis of your own faith, look at your own faith journey. Were there ever doubts?  Who prayed for you? Who had faith for you?

Consider the example of the paralytic who was lowered thru the roof of the house where Jesus was teaching and healing. So, (from a priori page 2)   the story goes, they carried him up to the roof  broke a hole through the roof large enough to admit the paralyzed man, and lowered him down through it with ropes or some other means. When Jesus saw the faith of those helping the paralytic, He said to him, "Son, your sins are forgiven.” So it is with your children, by your faith will they be healed.

 

So it is also that we must overcome our pride and realize that we don’t have the strength to do this by ourselves. Father Malavoti reminded us that we could ask not only Saints but someone in your family who has gone before, to intercede on their behalf and there is no better time to seek their intervention than at the Consecration. As we approach the moment when bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, the Communion of Saints is realized. Where Christ is present, there are His saints in glory, the holy souls in purgatory and all of us struggling in this world. The presence of the Communion of Saints at the consecration is a powerful realization and a peaceful knowledge. Ask them for strength and it will be given.