4th Sunday of Advent

O Key of David, opening the gates of God's eternal Kingdom: come and free the prisoners of darkness!

20 Dec Antiphon 

First Week of Advent - Stand Erect!!

... when these signs begin to happen, 
stand erect and raise your heads 
because your redemption is at hand. (Lk 23:28)

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My Brothers and Sisters,

Standing erect in our culture means having the courage say "no." 

Saying "no" to hate and "no" to some of the people who want to destroy the foundations upon which our country was created.  

In this challenge by God, we are also called to look "forward" to the hope of Christ's redemption for each and everyone of us – – Christmas.

Question around the Advent Wreath for the Domestic Church: 

 In what areas do we, as a Domestic Church married, single, and widowed,  have to say "no" so we can have a fulfilling Advent?

God bless you and your family,

Deacon Tom 

The Universal Prayers - Christ the King (Prayers of the Faithful)

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe B

Deacon/Lector 

 

-  For our One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church: 

      May we proclaim, celebrate, and serve the Kingdom of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth and to the end of time:... We pray to the Lord. 

 

-  For All Elected to Public Service:   

      May Christ the King lead them to place the dignity of human life at the center of all their policies, programs, and decisions:... We pray to the Lord 

- For a Transformation of our Hearts: 

      May Christ the King change our understanding of power, success, and glory so we may place ourselves more fully in God’s service:... We pray to the Lord. 

 

- For all Impacted by the Terrorism in France:  

       May healing and peace come to all the victims' families and may the peoples of the world unite in prayer to know Christ is the King of all:... We pray to the Lord. 

- For the Men & Women in the Armed Forces:  

      May the Lord preserve them from all harm and help their families cope with the challenges arising from increasing world terrorism:... We pray to the Lord.

(Please add personalized prayers for the Sick and the Dead)

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Change

All of a sudden my life becomes

        Feelings of rejection

        Feelings of pain 

        Dying to old ways...

After time, maybe a long time

Peace arrives...

        Colors of acceptance peek through 

        A new normal soothes our body and soul

        Metanoia!  Resurrection to new life...

Life is ablaze with love

Universal Prayers - 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Prayers of the Faithful

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Deacon/Lector

For all in the Worldwide Catholic Church: May we grow in faithfulness to God's Commandments; interpreting them with wisdom and discernment for the holiness of all,…We pray to the Lord

For the Leaders of Nations: May they recognize the dignity of all people regardless of status, wealth, or social position and seek to meet the basic needs of every person,…We pray to the Lord

For all in Our Community who have hearing or speech problems: May we affirm them as sisters and brothers and help them to fully use of their gifts for God’s glory,…We pray to the Lord

For a spirit of listening in our Spiritual lives: May God free us from the noise blocking our ability to hear the Word of God and the distractions obscuring the hopes God has placed within our hearts....We pray to the Lord.

For all who protect others, in particular, our military, police officers and fire fighters:  That God may grant them His protection as they serve their country and community....We pray to the Lord.

A Life of Prayer is a Call to Simplicity by Deacon Tom Frankenfield

A Life of Prayer is a Call to Simplicity

Deacon Tom Frankenfield 

The key to a full and simple life with God is found right in the word PRAY-that's right;just pray.

P - PRAISE God! Be thankful to God for all that you have

Take time to be thankful to God for all that you have been given in life. Often I am so focused on my needs that I genuinely forget to count my many blessings. During my sicknesses, I am crying out for healing and forgetting my gifts. 

For example, I have a car to drive myself to the doctors' office; I have the money to pay my bills. I am loved by a family in spite of my frustration dealing with my illnesses. When I look at my gifts, I really do have many things to thank and praise God for. 

It really helps to put God's gifts first in our prayer life. Praising God anchors us in the Blessed Trinity 

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R - REVEAL Reveal your real needs to God! 

Next, we share our needs. At first glance this seems like the easiest prayer form; at least it is often the most common. I could spend the next hour telling God all the things I would like to have. However, for the simple Christian life, I would challenge you to review your life with a different perspective. 

Can you tear away those things that are pure pleasure and see the things that you need to bring you closer to God? A new set of golf clubs might be great but ask yourself how that brings you closer to God. As we work through that process we begin to see our needs with a new vantage point. 

Let your emotions lead your prayer in telling God your needs, not the commercials on the television or the radio.

A- ADORE Adore our amazing God and all His Works! 

This next step means stopping and taking time to be with the Lord. For Catholics, we have the gift of the Eucharist to pray before. Take time in Eucharistic Adoration. 

Allow yourself to be transformed! Allow the real presence of God to permeate your being. As a last resort use words! 

Others will look at the beauty of God's creation; the beauty of our family and friends. The key here is to be present to God in these situations-then absorb the goodness!

Y - YES! Say "yes" being lead by the Holy Spirit! 

After praising, requesting and an experience of adoring, we are ready to completely give our lives to the Holy Spirit. 

In opening our lives to The Spirit many of us have experienced God in more of fruitful ways. For some, Scripture comes alive, with words seemingly jumping out off the pages; most have a craving for deeper prayer and for everyone, the Lord's peace and joy reigns in our lives in fresh ways. Can you let go to the Spirit?

Come, Holy Spirit, come. Teach us to pray. Anoint us so we have no fears of giving our lives to you!!

For Your Family Reflection

1.  How do we pray in our family; either individually or communally? Are we making rules to make it too complicated?

2.  Are you ready to a leader in your Domestic Church by walking through the 4 steps of PRAY. Lead by example and trust God to do the rest.

Holy Spirit Alive!: A Lifelong Journey - Going Home

Holy Spirit Alive!: A Lifelong Journey - Going Home

A Lifelong Journey - Going Home

A Lifelong Journey - from Henri Nouwen's Bread for the Journey 

Going home is a lifelong journey.  There are always parts of ourselves that wander off in dissipation or get stuck in resentment.  Before we know it we are lost in lustful fantasies or angry ruminations.  Our night dreams and daydreams often remind us of our lostness. 

Spiritual disciplines such as praying, fasting and caring are ways to help us return home.  As we walk home we often realise how long the way is.  But let us not be discouraged.  Jesus walks with us and speaks to us on the road.  When we listen carefully we discover that we are already home while on the way. 

 

For further reflection ... 

"Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." - Joshua 1: 9b (NIV) 

Our Mother of Sorrows  - where I was Baptized 

Lent—A Time of Transformation

© 2015 The Word Among Us. All Rights Reserved

Spring is a time of anticipation. Winter has faded, and we all begin to look for signs of new life. The sun is closer to us and the earth is warmer. 

We can feel a sense of newness in the wind, a feeling that something wonderful is going on around us. Flowers begin to bloom; leaves start to bud; birds begin to sing; even the earth smells fresh and vital.

For those who garden, spring is also a time for tilling the ground and planting seeds. Looking for a good harvest, we watch closely the rhythms of sun and rain and keep an eye out for any signs of growth. We stand in awe of the mystery of God’s creation as we ponder the relationship between soil, sun, seeds, and water as they work together to produce new life.

The season of Lent is related to spring and all that it evokes in our minds. The word “Lent” comes from the Old English word lencten, which means to lengthen and refers specifically to the lengthening of days in the springtime. Like its counterpart in the natural world, Lent is the season when we anticipate and prepare for the new life to come. It is a time of tilling the soil of our hearts, planting the seeds of faith and love, and watching eagerly for the fruit of our efforts at Easter.

The forty days of Lent recall the time that Moses spent on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24:18), Elijah’s forty days in the desert (1 Kings 19:8), and, more specifically, Jesus’ time of testing in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2). As always, God invites us during this season of Lent to reflect on our lives, both individually and together as his people. Moses, Elijah, and Jesus were especially close to God during their forty days of reflection and prayer. We too can experience the Lord’s love more deeply as we draw close to him and reflect on all he has given us in baptism and as we ask him to free us from our sins and weaknesses (see Vatican II, Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, 109).

A Season of Hope Think of what it’s like to plant a garden. Would you till the soil, plant the seeds, and faithfully monitor the crops if you had no hope for any growth? Would you spend your time, money, and energy for nothing? Of course not. We plant because we expect some return, some fruit, for our labors. With this in mind, we can understand how deeply God our Father is committed to the church. God loves his creation. He loves each and every person. His intention that his church bear lasting fruit is unshakable and unending. Full of love, God looks for a fruitful return on all he has given us.

Lent is a season of hope. Our hope rests in the fact that Jesus has defeated sin. He has delivered us from the bondage of sin and he will continue to deliver us with ever-increasing power. How he longs to gather his children together in his embrace (Mark 10:16). We have hope because God is for us, and no one can stand against us (Romans 8:31-32). He is on our side, eager to give us everything we need to grow more and more into the image of his Son, Jesus.

God will never abandon us. He will show us the way to our eternal home, and as we travel along the way, he will form us into his body. In his mercy, he has not left us helpless, but has given us wonderful gifts to help us follow him—faith and grace, his body and blood in the Eucharist, sanctifying gifts, and spiritual gifts. How wonderful is our God, so wonderful that we can see our lives change to reflect his life more and more!

Every Lent, God, like a farmer, wants to plant seeds in the church and watch them spring up. He eagerly waits to see new fruit, both in our own lives and in our neighborhoods and communities. He wants to see his people experience all the grace and power they received when they were baptized. He longs to see his church shine as a light to the world as the people proclaim the gospel in words and in acts of love.

Transformed by the Spirit Let’s take a look at how a “transformation process” can help us understand how we can grow this Lent. The process begins with baptism, when we are united with Jesus in his death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5). In baptism we were given, in seed form, everything necessary to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48); we were brought from the death of sin into Jesus’ resurrection. All of this is the work of God’s wonderful grace, freely given to all (Titus 3:5-6).

Wonderful as it is, baptism is just the beginning of our life with God. As we mature, God wants us to experience the reality and hopeful assurance of all the blessings we have received. Just as parents want to see their children mature, so God wants to see us grow up in our faith and enter into our full inheritance as his sons and daughters.

Not only are we immature in faith, we are also weak and vulnerable to sin. Immersed in a sinful world, we have a disordered tendency (the “flesh”) to commit personal sins. Consequently, our experience of the grace of baptism is often hindered by our immaturity and our personal sins.

The Holy Spirit wants to nourish us every day so that we can move toward spiritual maturity. Just as God told Ezekiel to eat the scroll of his word (Ezekiel 3:1-4), the Spirit wants to feed us with the word of God—God’s very thoughts. The Spirit also invites us to draw closer to our Father in prayer and to receive Jesus’ body and blood in the Eucharist. Through the gracious work of the Spirit, we can be transformed into God’s likeness and come to love him more and more. The Holy Spirit will enable us to treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated (Matthew 7:12). We will want to love other people and take up Jesus’ call to share the gospel.

God knows that we all sin. In his mercy, he wants to reveal our sins and imperfections to us so that we can repent and be free (John 16:13). By choosing reconciliation, we choose to turn away from sin and toward God. Repentance leads to deeper conversion and greater joy as we see our life in the Spirit mature.

In this transformation process, God wants to shower his grace upon us. Grace is the power of God made active in our lives. As we turn to the Holy Spirit in prayer, at Mass, or as we read scripture or other spiritual writings, God fills us with grace. We experience his love. We know peace, even happiness, as we grow in our desire to please the Lord who has been so good to us.

Grace empowers us to repent and follow a more godly pattern. Through the power of God’s grace, we find ourselves increasingly uncomfortable with sin, even to the point of hating sin and its impact on our lives and the lives of our families. We find ourselves praying more, asking the Spirit for strength to resist temptation and turn away from sin. When we do see our sin, we are not discouraged; we are filled with hope, knowing that through repentance we can return to the Father who fills us with mercy and peace. We seek forgiveness and reconciliation, knowing that it is not achieved through our strength but by the indwelling Spirit. All of this is the power of God’s grace to transform us by his love.

The Grace of Lent During these lengthening days of spring, let us ask our Father for the grace to mature in our baptism and to turn away from sin. He who gives us the spring sunshine will also make the springtime of grace flow more freely. We need only ask, be open, and receive his grace.

Hope is the expectation that we can be transformed into the pattern of Christ. Our minds can be renewed as God our Father forms us according to his plan, not according to the ways of the world (Romans 12:2). Lent is a time when we can expect to see God change the church through his transforming grace. As we choose to accept his grace, it will become a part of us, transforming us through and through.

The natural season of spring brings change every year. Flowers begin to bloom, the earth comes back to life, the air becomes warm and inviting. Similarly, the spiritual season of Lent is a time to look for significant change. Just as God pours out a new spring of life in the natural realm, he is likewise eager to pour out a new spring of life in our hearts to renew and refresh his church. This Lent, as we look to God, let us reflect especially on our baptism, and on the gift of repentance, with the assurance that God will produce abundant fruit in our lives and in our church.

Blessing of the Children

I love the comtemporary setting of a one room school.   How would we present this verse in today's culture?  I wish I could draw.   It would be fun to try.  In the gospel of Mark there is an episode where women bring their children to Jesus to have them blessed. Jesus' followers stop them, but Jesus then says that one should receive the Kingdom of God the way a child would if one wants to enter it. This work is linked to Mark 10:14 Fritz von Uhde 1848 – 1911 Let the children come to me oil on canvas (183 × 280 cm) — 1884 Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig

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