Prayer for Election week

 

A prayer for the week before an election

Loving God, creator of this world who is the source of our wisdom and understanding, watch over this nation during this time of election. Help us to see how our faith informs our principles and actions.

We give thanks for the right to vote. Help us to hold this privilege and responsibility with the care and awareness it merits, realizing that our vote matters and that it is an act of faith.

Guide us through this election as a nation, state, and community as we vote for people to do work on our behalf and on the behalf of our communities. Help us to vote for people and ballot initiatives that will better our community and our world so it may reflect the values Christ taught us.

Help us create communities that will build your kingdom here on earth—communities that will protect the poor, stand up for the vulnerable, advocate for those who are not seen and heard, and listen to everyone’s voice.

We pray for this nation that is deeply divided. May we come together for the common good and do as you have called us to do—to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with you through creation. Help us act out of love, mercy and justice rather than out of arrogance or fear.

Loving God, continue to guide us as we work for the welfare of this world. We pray for places that are torn by violence, that they may know peace.

We pray for communities who are struggling with inequality, unrest, and fear. May we all work toward reconciliation with one another and with you.

Help us to listen in love, work together in peace, and collaborate with one another as we seek the betterment of our community and world.

Amen.

— Rev. Shannon Kelly, minister for young adult and campus ministries for the Episcopal Church
 

More thoughts on friendship

 

Giving in Friendship

When we truly love God and share in his glory, our relationships lose their compulsive character. We reach out to people not just to receive their affirmations but also to allow them to participate in the love we have come to know through Jesus. Thus true friendship becomes an expression of a greater love. It is hard work to remind each other constantly of the truth, but it is worth the effort. Constant mutual forgiveness and a continual openness to the love of God are the disciplines that allow us to grow together in friendship. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on friendship

 

Be a Real Friend

True friendships are lasting because true love is eternal. A friendship in which heart speaks to heart is a gift from God, and no gift that comes from God is temporary or occasional. All that comes from God participates in God’s eternal life. Love between people, when given by God, is stronger than death. In this sense, true friendships continue beyond the boundary of death. When you have loved deeply that love can grow even stronger after the death of the person you love. This is the core message of Jesus. When Jesus died, the disciples’ friendship with him did not diminish. On the contrary, it grew. This is what the sending of the Spirit was all about. The Spirit of Jesus made Jesus’ friendship with his disciples everlasting, stronger, and more intimate than before his death. That is what Paul experienced when he said, “It is no longer I, but Christ living in me” (Galatians 2:20). You have to trust that every true friendship has no end, that a communion of saints exists among all those, living and dead, who have truly loved God and one another. You know from experience how real this is. Those you have loved deeply and who have died live on in you, not just as memories but as real presences. Dare to love and be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as to those whom God has given you to love. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on Saint Luke

 

Saint Luke

 

Image: The Apostle Luke | Andrey Mironov

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Saint of the Day for October 18

(d. c. 84)

Audio file

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Saint Luke’s Story

Luke wrote one of the major portions of the New Testament, a two-volume work comprising the third Gospel and Acts of the Apostles. In the two books he shows the parallel between the life of Christ and that of the Church. He is the only Gentile Christian among the Gospel writers. Tradition holds him to be a native of Antioch, and Paul calls him “our beloved physician.” His Gospel was probably written between 70 and 85 A.D.

Luke appears in Acts during Paul’s second journey, remains at Philippi for several years until Paul returns from his third journey, accompanies Paul to Jerusalem, and remains near him when he is imprisoned in Caesarea. During these two years, Luke had time to seek information and interview persons who had known Jesus. He accompanied Paul on the dangerous journey to Rome where he was a faithful companion.

Luke’s unique character may best be seen by the emphases of his Gospel, which has been given a number of subtitles:
1) The Gospel of Mercy
2) The Gospel of Universal Salvation
3) The Gospel of the Poor
4) The Gospel of Absolute Renunciation
5) The Gospel of Prayer and the Holy Spirit
6) The Gospel of Joy

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Reflection

Luke wrote as a Gentile for Gentile Christians. His Gospel and Acts of the Apostles reveal his expertise in classic Greek style as well as his knowledge of Jewish sources. There is a warmth to Luke’s writing that sets it apart from that of the other synoptic Gospels, and yet it beautifully complements those works. The treasure of the Scriptures is a true gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church.

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Saint Luke is the Patron Saint of:

Artists/Painters
Brewers
Butchers
Notaries
Physicians/Surgeons

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Click here for more on Saint Luke!

Thoughts on Satan

 

Thoughts on sacraments

 

Thoughts on wounds

 

Live Your Wounds

You have been wounded in many ways. The more you open yourself to being healed, the more you will discover how deep your wounds are. . . . The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your hurts to your head or to your heart. In your head you can analyze them, find their causes and consequences, and coin words to speak and write about them. But no final healing is likely to come from that source. You need to let your wounds go down to your heart. Then you can live through them and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds. Henri Nouwen

Inspirational quote

 

Thoughts on nature

 We who tend to think of nature as nothing more than a usable commodity can learn a great deal from Francis’s relationship with the environment. He teaches us the liberating truth that our physical surroundings are holy because they aren’t purely physical. Instead, they’re permeated through and through with the Spirit and beauty of God. In a mysterious way that the mind can’t fathom but the heart knows full well, we don’t just dwell in God’s world. In dwelling in God’s world, we also abide in God himself.

—from the book Perfect Joy: 30 Days with Francis of Assisi  by Kerry Walters

Thoughts on creativity

 A Christian celebration of humanity consists in lovingly midwifing our fellow humans into full being. One of our God-given endowments is creativity, the ability to cooperate with God in the inauguration of the kingdom. We’re called to use this creativity in nurturing our brothers and sisters as full members of that kingdom, and we do this by going out of our way to help them recognize and affirm themselves as images of God. In concrete terms, this means performing the acts of charity listed in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew: clothing the naked, tending the sick, visiting the imprisoned, giving food and drink to the hungry and thirsty. Celebrating the sheer existence of others often demands that we do the dirty work of easing the material burdens that inhibit them from arriving at a conscious appreciation of their own holiness.

—from the book Perfect Joy: 30 Days with Francis of Assisi  by Kerry Walters

Thoughts on God's love

 

God’s First Love

Knowing God’s heart means consistently, radically, and very concretely to announce and reveal that God is love and only love, and that every time fear, isolation, or despair begin to invade the human soul this is not something that comes from God. This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without any conditions or limits. This unconditional and unlimited love is what the evangelist John calls God’s first love. “Let us love,” he says, “because God loved us first” (1 John 4:19). The love that often leaves us doubtful, frustrated, angry, and resentful is the second love, that is to say, the affirmation, affection, sympathy, encouragement, and support we receive from our parents, teachers, spouses, and friends. We all know how limited, broken, and very fragile that love is. Behind the many expressions of this second love there is always the chance of rejection, withdrawal, punishment, blackmail, violence, and even hatred. . . . The radical good news is that the second love is only a broken reflection of the first love and that the first love is offered to us by a God in whom there are no shadows. Jesus’ heart is the incarnation of the shadow-free first love of God. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on your identity

 

Accept Your Identity as a Child of God

Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to you as an opportunity for strengthening your basic identity, because the identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame. You belong to God, and it is as a child of God that you are sent into the world. Henri Nouwen

Thoughts on spiritual warfare

 

LUKE 10:17-24

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus equips his disciples for defeating the devil. And the Lord continues to empower them for spiritual warfare. We are reminded that the battle is not simply with flesh and blood and not merely on the psychological or political stage, when Jesus says to the chief of his Apostles: “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail.” That the new-born Church will be in for a fight becomes clear in the surprising words of Jesus: “But now one who has a money bag should take it, and likewise a sack, and one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one.” He is setting up a contrast between these instructions and those that he gave them when he sent them on their missionary way earlier in the Gospel. In giving the first set of directives—carry no bag, no travelling staff, no sandals, etc.—he was encouraging in them an attitude of radical dependency upon God; in giving the second—including the recommendation to carry a sword—he is readying them for a struggle. Bishop Robert Barren

Thoughts on Guardian Angels

 

Thoughts on the Little Flower

 

The Little Flower from Lisieux The “Little Flower” from Lisieux continues to captivate women and men today. St. John Paul II, St. Teresa of Calcutta, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Dorothy Day, and many other well-known Catholic figures have had a deep devotion to St. Thérèse. St. John Paul II was so taken with the profundity of her thought that he her declared her a Doctor of the Church, giving her a place alongside such notable women as St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Hildegard of Bingen. This is quite an accomplishment for a young woman who regarded herself as a little toy ball tossed aside and forgotten by Jesus. Each of our lives matter to Jesus. Perhaps this is why so many lives still resonate with hers. It is easy to feel insignificant and unimportant. Yet, the clear and compelling language of her story and her letters remains the perfect antidote to such feelings. —from the book The Way of Simple Love: Inspiring Words from Therese of Lisieux by Father Gary Caster