Tuesday of the 7th week of Eastertide
or Saint John I, Pope, Martyr
May 18th, 2010
"The one who believes in me will also do the works I do and in fact will do greater works than these"
John 14 : 12
Once upon a time there was a little fish that was spawned in a big river. He constantly heard his mother and the older fishes speak of this wonderful, immense ocean, sometimes calm and serene and other times wild and stormy with mountainous waves. At last the day came when all the fish returned to the ocean. They were swimming in it for some time when the little fish asked his mother where was the ocean. His mother replied, “you are in it, you are surrounded by it. If you ever came out of it you would die. The ocean is your life.”
So is God our life. As St. Paul says, “In God, we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17 : 25. We carry within us the mystery of the glory of God. Do we realise we are made in the image and likeness of God? Yet humanity is flawed, we are all flawed. We have to learn to live with ourselves, to have patience with ourselves.
Every part of one”’’s life, every experience good or bad, every hurt and betrayal is used by God to bring each of us to the fullness of life and love. St. John says, “We are already the children of God. All we know is when the future is revealed, we shall be like God because we shall see Him as He really is.” John 3 : 2.
Prayer
Prayer : Lord, make your home in us and inspire us to live in such a way that our choices each day will lead us to live faithfully in the present moment. Enable us to transform the ordinariness of our daily lives into something beautiful for you. This we ask through Christ your Son, our Lord. 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.”
