Daily Prayer
July 31st, 2010
"So, this is the commandment he has given us that anyone who loves God must also love his brother"
John 1 : 20 - 21
The God that Jesus called “Abba,” Father, was, is and always will be a God of love and compassion, a God always read to forgive us. God accepts us as we are. He knows what we are like and what weak creatures we are. However, we share in God’s divine nature so we have the light of His grace to reach out to those in eed of help, to be merciful to the weak and compassionate towards all our brothers and sisters.
Jesus says in Luke 5 : 32 “I have not come to all the virtuous but sinners.” Christ always went out to the people on the margin, those rejected by society. He dined with them and let them know they were God’s special friends, God’s children.
No matter what their past was like, if they were sorry and acknowledged their sins, then they had God’s loving forgiveness.
The publican in the Temple asked God to be merciful to him because he was a sinner. St. Luke tells us in Lk. 18 : 9 that the publican “went home at rights with God.”
“Glory be to him whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”
Prayer
God, our Father, Jesus has invited all of us who are worried and troubled to come to Him with our burdens. He promised to be with us always. Lord, help us to put our trust in you. Amen
The prayer for each day has been prepared by various members of the Holy Family Association. All who visit our website are remembered in prayer. If you would like us to pray for a particular need, simply complete and submit the form on the right hand side of this page. You may wish to leave a comment in the space below.
Just a Thought
How the Holy Family prayer: A Reflection by Pope Benedict XVI
“I would like to invite you to reflect on the place of prayer in the life of the Holy Family of Nazareth. The home of Nazareth, in fact, is a school of prayer where we learn to listen, to ponder and to penetrate the profound meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God, drawing our example from Mary, Joseph and Jesus.
Pope Paul VI during his visit to Nazareth said “we come to understand the need for a spiritual discipline, if we wish to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become disciples of Christ.” And he added: “First, it teaches us silence. Oh! That there would be reborn in us the esteem for silence, that wonderful and indispensable atmosphere of the spirit: while we are deafened by so many noises, sounds and clamorous voices in the frantic and tumultuous times of modern life. Oh! Silence of Nazareth, teach us to be resolute in good thoughts, intent upon the interior life, ready to listen well to the secret inspirations of God and the exhortations of the true masters.”
We can glean several insights on the Holy Family’s prayer and relationship with God from the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ childhood. We may begin with the Presentation of Jesus in the temple. St. Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph, “when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, brought the child up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord”(2:22). Like every observant Jewish family, Jesus’ parents go up to the temple to consecrate the firstborn son to God and to offer sacrifice. Moved by fidelity to the law’s prescriptions, they set off from Bethlehem and go up to Jerusalem with Jesus, who is now forty days old. Instead of a one-year-old lamb, they present the offering of simple families; that is two young pigeons. The Holy Family’s pilgrimage is one of faith, of the offering of gifts, a symbol of prayer, and of encounter with the Lord, whom Mary and Joseph already see in the son Jesus.”
