So Where Do We Start?

St. Francis of Assisi once said, ‘I want what God wants. That is why I am merry.’

Setting our mind on the Spirit means asking for the grace to really want what God wants and then taking concrete steps to make that happen. Do that, and we will have life and peace. We will be merry!

There is a simplicity to that thought which can scarcely be matched. And the best way to discover that is not to spend a lot of time reading about it (St. Francis was never much for books anyway) but to stop—-now—-and start doing it.

So…get out there and carpe diem!

God our Father in Heaven, grant us the strength to stand up and serve You, always being an ambassador of Your love. And through our service to others, in Your name, may we continue to grow closer to You each day. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen

How Can We Tell When Morning Comes?

The Pain of Disappointment

To feel that we have been let down by our family or close friends is a very bitter experience. The hurt and the anger can be so strong that we are left scarred and broken. Of course we can be the guilty party and cause great pain when we let other people down.

When Jesus chose the twelve disciples to be His close companions, during the three years of His public ministry, who would have thought that in His hour of need one turned out to be a traitor, one denied that he ever knew Him and the others deserted Him and ran away. In Pilate’s judgement hall, He stood isolated and alone and when they led Him away to crucify Him, He was left to carry His cross with not a single companion in sight.

It’s easy to understand something of what Jesus was going through. Betrayal, denial and desertion are bitter experiences and can often leave a permanent imprint on our hearts and minds. The cross was like a shadow across Jesus' life from the very beginning and grew darker and more threatening as time passed.

Gracious God, may we be willing to love each other as unconditionally as You love us, for such love forgives the wrongs of others. In love, help us forgive without harbouring anger, resentment, or disappointment. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.' (Matthew 16:24)

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Forgiving Violence

A Lesson in Forgiving

Words of Comfort For the Dying

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The Disappointment of a Child

When are U-Turns Right?

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Don't Worry

For all you boomers out there: do you remember the immortal words of Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine? ‘What? Me? Worry?’

There can’t be a more pointless piece of advice than ‘don’t worry’. We have no control over our worries. In fact, they just sit there somewhere in the subconscious, eating away at our peace of mind like a mouse nibbling cheese.

It wasn’t surprising to hear, in the midst of the television broadcasting doom and gloom of the world economy and the potential global collapse, an enlightening news item, suggesting that worry is the chief enemy of health, especially in the so-called developed nations. Too Right!

It comes in many forms, from the global to the intimately personal, but it’s probably safe to say that not many people will lie awake tonight restless and anxious because of the style of Victoria Beckham’s hair or George Bush’s ability to pronounce the word ‘nuclear.’

Unless we have a loved one actually there, I don’t suppose even the anguish of Afghanistan or Iraq disturbs our sleep. Most of those consumed with worry tonight will be haunted by the need to pay the mortgage, or the utility bills, or fear for their jobs, or the welfare of their children or partners. Whatever its face – and it has many - worry is the world’s great nagger. It simply won’t leave us alone, unless sadly, we choose to drown it in alcohol or blow it away with drugs.

If we believe the news report - and I do - then this kind of anxiety and worry actually causes ill-health. It leads to smoking, drink and drug abuse, to over-eating and to sloth. It makes us powerless and helpless, the prey to every quack remedy and short-cut solution. We become less than we are and much, much less than we could be. And the awful thing is that very often we can see this, but feel helpless to do anything about it.

Interestingly, Jesus spent a substantial part of His famous ‘Sermon on the mount’ on this very subject, thus proving that anxiety isn’t simply a modern invention. In fact, the worries He pinpointed are much the same as have always troubled human beings since they began to live in communities: finance, food, drink, clothing, health, appearance. ‘Life,’ He said, ‘is more than food and the body more than raiment.’ ‘Well, yes,’ they may have muttered in the ranks, ‘but try living without them.’ To which unuttered objection He gave a simple reply.

‘Trust God to meet all your real needs, and don’t worry about the rest.’ He knows that you need them and wants you to have them - but get your priorities right:

‘Strive first for the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be yours as well.’ In other words, forget for a moment your own problems and concentrate on what is just and right and good, for others as well as for yourself. From that, only good consequences can flow. We shall be living as the Creator intended us to live.

Well, most have tried all the complicated remedies - drugs, therapy, counselling, hypnosis.


Perhaps it’s now time to try the simple one?

Loving Lord, hear our prayer. Give us the strength to bear all our joys and sorrows. Give us the strength to make our endeavours in Your name fruitful. Give us the goodness never to ignore the poor or those in need. Give us the wisdom to raise ourselves above petty things that do not glorify Your name and give us the strength to surrender ourselves to You in all we do. Amen

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Fast Tracks To Hell

Perseverance

We Just Won the Lottery!

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Keep Your Eyes Open

When Jesus says, ‘Keep your eyes open, for you know not the day or the hour,’ He’s not talking mainly about dying. He’s talking about God, the groom in the parable, who keeps showing up when you least expect him. God is always with us, but He shows himself more clearly at certain unforeseen times and He speaks important words to us at odd moments. There’s no telling when that will happen, so Jesus says we just have to be watchful.

Sometimes God speaks to us through nature, its immensity and grandeur, its delicate and subtle beauties, the softness of an invisible breeze, the sweet smell of a hidden flower or the majesty of the seas. God is there, reminding us who He is and what a blessing life is.

Sometimes God shows His face reflected in the faces of His good people. Some of those faces are very tiny, some are old and wrinkled, some have big smiles and others big tears. But shining through all those different good faces is God’s face, showing us His goodness and reminding us we’re not alone.

Sometimes God cries out to us through human voices racked by pain or despair, voices weeping and voices laughing. God speaks to us through their voices and tells us where we’re needed, where our light needs to shine.

Whether in light or in darkness God shows Himself and speaks to us continually every day, comforting, blessing, encouraging, challenging, and always wrapping us with His love. So keep your eyes open. This is something you really don’t want to miss! Be quiet with Him. Listen and watch. You’ll be amazed!

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God our protector, You hear us in our whispers and in our cries. Help us to see You in each and every thing You’ve created for us. Amen

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The Wrong Words of Comfort for Someone Dying

Who Are We Forgetting?

Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?

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Don't Take Me For Granted!

The financial state of our western society provides strong indicators as to what family life may be for many–fraught with stress and worry. Meteoric rises in mortgage repayments, grocery costs are sky rocketing, and most worrying of all, utility costs that are forcing many of our elderly to have to choose between eating and being warm.

During difficult times relationships can easily become strained and communications between couples start to fracture.

One of the most common complaints between husbands and wives is that they take each other for granted. And how predictable that is! Two people live in the same house, share the same life, and follow the same daily routines, doing what needs to be done, keeping things afloat.

It takes conscious effort not to settle into seeing one another's goodness and caring as no more than one's right and no great gift. What an illusion that is and what an extraordinary presumption.

If we do that to one another, what surprise is there that we regularly do the same to God. We take for granted His wonderful gifts, and we so easily call them our own. And some of us persist in that illusion until the very moment when we're called to give them back. What a stark and dreadful awakening that can be.

Thankfulness for life and for all of God's gifts is the starting point for anyone who seeks to be truly wise. But it's certainly no burden. To see the truth of how undeservedly beloved we are is to find some sense of how valuable and important we tiny, mortal creatures are to the creator of this grand universe.

'Tell it to your children,' says the Old Testament reading. And so we must.

But tell it to yourself first, over and over again:

Loving God, it is You who made me and You who loves me with everlasting love. I know You will never let me go. Amen

Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. Joel 1:3

Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?

When We Need A Little Help

Words of Comfort for the Dying

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What Will I Be Like When I'm Older?

There's something in us that can't stop wondering what the next part of life will be like. How old will we become? What hobbies will we enjoy? What will our bodies be like? We have all sorts of questions and even more fantastic speculations about the answers. And none of it matters one iota.

The Apostle John leads us in a more useful direction. ‘What we shall be later has not yet come to light. But when it comes to light, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.’ There’s some gold hidden in that line, which we could easily miss. John is saying that the very experience of seeing God face-to-face will transform us into God’s likeness. The change will not come by force from the outside, but freely from the inside, from the heart which at the sight of God will instinctively let go of anything less than God and give itself into God’s hands to be reshaped.

That brings us squarely back to the present, for the ultimate transformation that John is talking about is simply the final stage of what our life and especially our prayer should have been about all along, namely, being reconfigured into God’s image and likeness. The process of making ourselves malleable in the hands of our Father is the essential work of every day and of a lifetime. So why let another day pass?

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Life giving Lord, we give thanks for all the beauty You place before us each and every day. As we absorb the beauty of this world, we pray that we absorb the wisdom to appreciate it and all You have given for us to enjoy. We rejoice in those gifts and we rejoice in the day we come to stand before You to share what we have learned. In Christ's name. Amen

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Who Are We Forgetting?

Spots of Wrinkles

Faith is Not a Crutch for Living

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Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side

No matter who or where we are, we are sometimes tempted to look across the fence at our neighbours and wish we could trade lives. It’s not just that we’d like to be a little richer - or maybe a lot. There are all kinds of ways that other folks’ lives can seem so much more carefree and easy than our own.

But don’t be fooled! Troubles come in many shapes and sizes, some of them hidden deep and endured in silence. And no one, absolutely no one, is immune. So don’t waste any more time looking across the fence.

When a dark day comes, listen instead to what Jesus says to us: ‘Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you.’ God wants us to have what we need, and He’ll give it to us if we ask with trusting hearts. And what exactly are we supposed to be trusting? That God loves us even more than we love ourselves, and that He will give us what we need if our hearts are open to receive it.

Sometimes, of course, what we ask for is not what we really need. In that case, our heart has to be so trusting that it’s ready and willing to be changed and redirected to see as God sees and to want what God knows is best for us. The prayer of an open, trusting heart is always answered.

Sometimes it takes quite a while to start seeing what God sees and wanting what God wants. Take the time, sooner rather than later.

Our hearts will thank us.

Gracious Lord, help us to learn that true joy is never gained from material goods, but rather from our spiritual gain. Having You in our hearts is the greatest gift of all. Amen

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Right now three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

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Who is The Church Forgetting?

When Traditions Become Weights

Writing to Our Children

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Where Was I ?

A few years ago I heard an interesting question asked by one of my daughter’s friends which I thought was worth pondering: 'Where were you when your parents were children?' The answer is understandable and simple: We were nowhere.

We simply WEREN'T.

Intellectually the answer is obvious, but it's hard for us to grasp at an emotional level: There was a time not so long ago, when I simply wasn't and never had been, when nobody had ever thought of me or knew my name or even knew that I might be coming. That does put things in perspective!

Having been around for quite a few years now, we tend to take a lot for granted. We grow accustomed to ‘MY body, MY talents, MY brain, MY home, MY family, MY life,’ and we feel as if they really belong to us. And sometimes we act almost as if we thought we gave them to ourselves. That's an illusion, as any one of life's fateful turns can make clear in a moment.

The fact is that everything we have, including our life, is a gift from God that we didn't earn. And we have it, not because of any merit on our part, but simply because God is generous. When we get clear about that we know what we need to do. We need to give thanks, over and over, and not just in words but also in deeds.

So what are the deeds of a thankful heart? Compassion, forgiveness, and generosity: sharing what we have with others as open-handedly as God shares with us. In doing that we become like God, and when our time here is ended, we will know the way home to Him.


Lord God, we are Your miracle. We are the living, breathing, loving, creation of Your hands. Throughout today and all our tomorrows, may we share with others, the same love and generosity that You gave when You made us. Amen

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A Time to Live a Time to Die

Words of Comfort for The Dying

Victims of Child Trafficing

The Book in the Attic

Surgical Incompetence

Every now and then a real life story confronts us with enormously difficult moral dilemmas. After ruining the lives of many women through surgical incompetence and mistakes, a gynaecologist lost his license to practice in the city of Vancouver. Later he was re-employed in a non-clinical role within the Canadian Health Service. Understandably former patients have reacted with incredulity and anger. Women are appalled that he should be allowed back in any capacity.

Meanwhile the former gynaecologist himself says he is full of remorse for what he did. He is ashamed of his horrific incompetency and has apologised publicly and will continue to repeat the apology. He still believes that he has something to give, not in clinical medicine, but elsewhere in the field. Yet to place him completely outside his chosen field is, he believes, to treat him with fewer rights than a convicted prisoner. Is he to be forever condemned?

It is fascinating how words normally associated with religion appear in everyday discourse. In this case words like shame, remorse, apology and the implicit idea of forgiveness are all present. But look at the complexity in it all. There are women whose lives have been ruined. They are real victims who need to be heard and supported in their struggle to be survivors.

On the other hand here is the person responsible for the horrors; now remorseful, ashamed, humiliated, apologetic, feeling that he is not being allowed to make amends. Is forgiveness possible? How much remorse would he need to show and what amends would he need to make, to be forgiven?

It can be very easy to talk about forgiveness and also very easy to speak of condemnation. Both reactions may be ways of avoiding hard choices, tough decisions, inner moral struggles.

The victims/survivors cannot forget. There is a journey to be made deep into their personal anguish, and the emotional loss of self-esteem. Feelings of destructive anger including vengeance need to be named and confronted. For the perpetrator there is denial to overcome, the humiliation of public apology and the paralysis of guilt and worthlessness to be faced.

There is the struggle to make amends, which is appropriate. For both there may even be the pain of a face-to-face encounter.

But how else does everyone avoid being a prisoner of the past? It is a hard-nosed, core Christian insight that there is no forgiveness without justice and no justice without forgiveness. But is that precisely what Christ would expect of us? Is it clearly and unequivocally what He would do?

How difficult is it for us to forgive without reservation, accept the scars we carry, and in God's light, move on?

For some, it's impossible. For others, it's a destination.

Lord God, grant us the insight to feel the suffering of others and the wisdom to understand. We place ourselves before You as your faithful servants, and pray that we may be grateful for the gifts we have received from Your grace. Amen

Posted for Fr Bill

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I'm Only Dying

When We Think God Doesn't Listen