Community Chat

[gloriajean]

When you can't fall asleep, spend the time talking with God and in prayer
you will soon be sleeping. Lord, next to Your heart, what a safe and
restful
place to sleep.


S C R I P T U R E F O R T H E D A Y

"Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."
~Matthew 18:20

M E D I T A T I O N F O R T H E D A Y

"Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."
The spirit of God can come upon God's followers when they are all together
at one time, in one place, and with one accord. When two or three
consecrated souls are together at a meeting place, the spirit of God is
there to
help and guide them. Where any sincere group of people are together,
reverently seeking the help of God, God's power and God's spirit are there
to
inspire them.

P R A Y E R F O R T H E D A Y

I pray that I may be in accord with the members of my group. I pray
that I may feel the strength of a consecrated group.

Hello my friends! Today I spent most of the time at the computer still
organizing my list and now I have it almost all done! Praise the Lord. I
had to ask my Guardian Angel to help me with it tonight so I could get some
sleep and I believe he did - I found a big mistake and got it corrected
before too long. Whew! Being I send it out first thing every morning, I
sure wanted it correct. Tomorrow I will get some housework done! Tonight
for supper he made pork chops on the grill, and I made some rice and calico
beans with steamed broccoli.
Not much to talk about, but His blessings are all around us! It was quite a
blessing to feel the help with my Guardian Angel tonight. I prayed for
wisdom.

Mother Teresa's Rules & Beliefs to incorporate

The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved they are Jesus
in disguise.
Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a
great thing.
It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not
how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.
Nakedness is not only for a piece of clothing; nakedness is lack of human
dignity, and also that beautiful virtue of purity, and lack of that respect
for each other.
There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives -
the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor
you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them.
Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the
silence of the heart.
Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in
your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile.
Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well.
The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the
less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not
a mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television
here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.
If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace,
because you know what you are.
Do not allow yourselves to be disheartened by any failure as long as you
have done your best.
There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that
everyone is seen as equal before God. I've always said we should help a
Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic
become a better Catholic.
If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.
It is a poverty to decide that an unborn child must die so that you may live
as you like.
If we pray, we will believe; If we believe, we will love; If we love, we
will serve.
We can do no great things; only small things with great love.
You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our people.
Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing.
Jesus made it very clear. Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you
do it to me. Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little
child, you receive me. Clear.
Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to
love God better because of them.
Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the world who live
and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day, their
daily bread, and by our understanding love, give them peace and joy.
Give me courage.
I must do something.
Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us
begin.
Let's do something beautiful for God.

Supernatural Will Power | Carl E. Olson

We Americans admire people with strong will power. We talk with respect
about those special people who have "the will to succeed" and we often hear
the optimistic saying: "Where there’s a will, there’s a way."

It’s not that the will is bad, of course. We all have a will, given to us by
God. It is that faculty by which we choose a course of action and make
decisions. As we all know from experience, the will can choose good or it
can choose evil. And not only can we will to sin, we can completely
forget–or ignore, as is usually the case–that our will is not the most
important one in existence.

Which is one reason the third petition of the Our Father–"Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven"–is so helpful during Lent, a time that
continually challenges us to choose between the perfect will of the Father
and our imperfect will.

It’s not by coincidence that Lent begins with a cross on Ash Wednesday and
leads to the Cross of Good Friday. The cross is all about the will. Not
about a will to succeed, or about exerting our own will power, but of
surrendering our will to the Father. After all, no one gets up on a cross
because they feel like it. No, they have to willfully choose to do so.


Jesus is the perfect model of the surrender and trust required; He
epitomizes the humility demanded. Although the Son "existed in the form of
God," Paul explains in his epistle to the Philippians, "he did not regard
equality with God a thing to be grasped." Instead, he "humbled himself by
becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

At the beginning of his ministry, during His forty days in the desert, Jesus
rejected the temptations of Satan. Three years later at the end of His
ministry, on the evening He would be betrayed in a garden, He again rejected
the temptation to turn away from the Father’s will: "My Father, if this
cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done."

What was the Father’s will for Jesus and what is it for us today? When we
pray for the Father’s will to "be done on earth as it is in heaven," what
exactly are we asking for? Put simply, the redemption of creation and the
salvation of man. In reciting the Our Father, the Church is praying that God
will bring about the final completion of His plan of salvation. The Father’s
will is that "all men be saved" and "come to the knowledge of the truth."

God desires that no one should perish, but that all will know Him. This
doesn’t mean that man cannot reject God, or that there is no h ell. It does
make clear, however, the depths of God’s love for His wayward children and
the lengths He will go to in order to save them.

The immeasurably deep and wide plan of the Father has been initiated through
the Son, who in turn has entrusted its message to His Body, the Church. "To
carry out the will of the Father," stated the Second Vatican Council,
"Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of heaven on earth and revealed to us the
mystery of that kingdom."

Mankind now has access to the Father, through the crucified and resurrected
Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are now able to enter into God’s
will and, Peter states, become "partakers of the divine nature." Heaven and
earth were once separated by sin, they are now joined by the Redeemer who is
both God and man.

This wondrous plan of salvation is not just for us and a select group of
friends, but is meant for the entire world. St. Augustine states that we
must pray that God’s will is accomplished in sinners also, not just in the
saints. One way this happens, he explains, is by our prayers for our
enemies. That’s a truly Lenten task: How many of us naturally desire to pray
for our enemies and hope for their salvation? How many of us, by our own
strength, love those who annoy, irritate, anger, and frustrate us?

Lent is a call to love; love is the heart of God and of His will. The
Catechism remarks that the commandment to love one another as ourselves
summarizes all the other commandments "and expresses [God’s] entire will."

To the world, the Cross is an embarrassment and a scandal. To Christians, it
is love in action. The world sees a dying, bloody man; we see the Son of God
with open arms, reaching out to embrace the entire world in love–"on earth
as it is in heaven."

By gazing on the Cross, our Lenten journey stays on course. By contemplating
the sacrifice of our Savior, we begin to comprehend the will of the Father
and how to choose it. "United with Jesus and with the power of the Holy
Spirit," the Catechism states, "we can surrender our will to him and decide
to choose what his Son has always chosen: to do what is pleasing to the
Father."

Any reflection on doing the Father’s will would be lacking without
considering Mary, the Mother of God. "Let it be to me according to your
word," she said in complete obedience to the Father. She knows His will; she
happily accepted her vital role in His plan of salvation, a perfect model
for each of us. "By entrusting ourselves to her prayer, we abandon ourselves
to the will of God together with her."

C. S. Lewis once wrote, "There are only two kinds of people in the end:
those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’; and those to whom God says, in the
end, ‘Thy will be done.’"

Those are the choices. We can either thrive in the Lenten desert by
embracing the Father’s will, or we can destroy ourselves by pursuing mirages
and dust devils. "The world is passing away, and also its lusts," the
Apostle John observes, "but the one who does the will of God abides
forever."

Now that is true will power.

(This article was originally published in the March 14, 2004 edition of Our
Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

The Four Candles

The Four Candles burned slowly.
Their Ambiance was so soft you
could hear them speak...

The first candle said, "I Am Peace, but these days, nobody wants to keep me
lit."

Then Peace's flame slowly diminishes and goes out completely.

The second candle says, "I Am Faith, but these days, I am no longer
indispensable."

Then Faith's flame slowly diminishes and goes out completely.

Sadly the third candle spoke, "I Am Love and I haven't the strength to stay
lit any longer."
"People put me aside and don't understand my importance. They even forget to
love those who are nearest to them."

And waiting no longer, Love goes out completely.

Suddenly...

A child enters the room and sees the three candles no longer burning.

The child begins to cry, "Why are you not burning? You are supposed to stay
lit until the end."

Then the Fourth Candle spoke gently to the little boy, "Don't be afraid, for
I Am Hope, and while I still burn, we can re-light the other candles."

With Shining eyes the child took the Candle of Hope and lit the other three
candles.

Never let the Flame of Hope go out of your life.


With Hope, no matter how bad things look and are...Peace, Faith and Love can
Shine Brightly in our lives.


Author Unknown

FRIENDSHIP IS A BLESSING


Friendship is a blessing
it's the best you have to share,
The talents and the wisdom,
the capacity to care...
It's being there to lend support,
whatever needs arise,
It's making sure that others know
they're special in your eyes...

Friendship is a blessing,
and, to all who have a friend,
It's one of the most precious gifts
that life could ever send.

~~Author Unknown~~

And I am blessed to have you for friends!! Have a good Tuesday and God
bless you!