Made for Mission Podcast

Welcome to Week 33 (August 21 to 27) of Bishop Earl Boyea's Disciples Together on the Way focussing on intercessory prayer. This week Bishop Boyea is challenging us to pray for someone in our lives who is lapsed from the Catholic Faith. 

"This week’s challenge is to pray for that person each day.  We are continuing our discipleship of intercessory prayer. But this week’s focus is on someone in deep spiritual need," says Bishop Boyea.  

"I would also encourage you to create your own “War Room”. It could be a special place or perhaps just a particular time of day that you spend in intercessory prayer." 

What exactly is a "War Room"? Listen and find out! God bless you.

Welcome to Bishop Earl Boyea's latest weekly Disciples on the Way challenge. This week, Bishop Boyea concludes his series of challenges focussed on cultivating virtue and eliminating vice. The focus of this week's challenge is the deadly sin of anger.

In the Holy Gospels, Jesus makes it clear that anger is a form of murder and that it has grave consequences to our souls (see Matt. 5 : 22). Saint Paul, too, mentions anger alongside adultery in his list of sins that will keep people out of heaven (see Gal. 5 : 20-21). Hence Bishop Boyea's challenge:

"Hence, our challenge this week is to reflect on times when we regularly lose our patience. Each day as part of our daily prayer and throughout the day, let us be attuned to what causes us to become impatient."

Here is his script in full:

Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Lord,

Have you ever heard somebody deploy the maxim that "There is nothing new under the sun"? Or opine that "To everything there is a season"? Or suggest that in this life we should "Eat, drink, and be merry"? All these well-worn aphorisms are drawn from the Book of Ecclesiastes. A lesser known but equally arresting and relevant phrase, though, is found in Chapter 7 of that great Old Testament book of wisdom: Do not be quick to anger, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.

These days it seems many people are quick to lose their tempers and respond impatiently with others. Indeed, many seem to feel it a right to rage at opponents regarding whatever issues they have latched on to or offenders of whatever bothers them. With recent studies claiming that many people are under more stress than in prior decades, as well as increased levels of anxiety due to multiple factors, it comes as no surprise that many of us are firecrackers waiting to go off. If we are honest, we know that we all have certain things that may trigger impatience and cause us to lose our peace. So why is anger so deadly? And how do we quell our anger with the virtue of patience? Stay tuned.

The Church has much to say about the virtue of patience. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, patience is listed as one of the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit. “The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity." (C.C.C. 1832)

We’ve all heard that, “patience is a virtue!” In the Catechism, the Fruits of the Holy Spirit are listed under the section on virtues. The reason for this is because “a virtue is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good. It allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself. The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions.” (C.C.C. 1803)

We are called to grow in virtue, and thus in patience. This takes work. It takes repetition and discipline. If we are finding ourselves more impatient than normal, we will want to call on the Holy Spirit for help and then to practice being patient in those moments. We can tell whether we are living in union with the Holy Spirit when we can see the fruits of the Spirit active in our lives. When we see the opposite, we know we have work to do.

Hence, our challenge this week is to reflect on times when we regularly lose our patience. Each day as part of our daily prayer and throughout the day, let us be attuned to what causes us to become impatient.

Once we are able to recognize what causes us to be impatient, we can pray about ways to increase patience.  This may include help to avoid those situations when we know that our patience is driven to the limits.  In addition, the scriptures are a great place to start as we pray for patience.

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Welcome to this week's Disciples Together on the Way challenge for July 17 to 23. This week Bishop Earl Boyea continues on the theme of the virtues. In particularly the virtue of temperance or, as it is also known, moderation. He says:

"My challenge for this week is for us to practice moderation at our daily meals. Let us eat a bit less than we desire by taking smaller portions and don’t tell anyone why we are consuming less.  The Lord sees the intentions of our heart." Here is Bishop Boyea's script in full:

Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Lord,

My sisters and brothers in the Lord, welcome to this week’s Disciples Together on the Way Challenge. This week we continue with the theme of the virtues. In fact, I want to talk to you about the passions. As it often does, the Catechism of the Catholic Church sets out the issue very clearly. It states: “The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy” (CCC #2339).  The Catechism adds, “Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case….  Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices” (#1768).

So how do we govern our passions? The answer is the virtue of Moderation or, as it is sometimes known, Temperance. And that’s the topic of this week’s challenge.

Each one of us, as a disciple of Christ, is called to a life of holiness.  And we know that such a life is not attainable unless we continually cultivate virtue in our daily life. The practice of virtue disposes us to conduct ourselves more frequently in a morally good manner. Thus, we can better resist what Saint Thomas Aquinas labeled as the three "implacable enemies of the soul": The world, the flesh and the devil. Thus, we can readily pursue the path of holiness, happiness and peace that comes through greater intimacy with our Triune God.

By practicing the virtue of Moderation we strive to tame the desires of the flesh by limiting ourselves to certain physical pleasures, or pleasures of the senses.  Now, pleasure is not all bad, for God has placed certain longings in our hearts for our good and the good of others. However, if we are led by the wrong yearnings or over-indulge our pleasures we will quickly stray from the path of holiness and in fact become slaves to such pleasures.

Again, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that Temperance is “the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the will’s mastery over instincts and keep desires within the limits of what is honorable.” (CCC 1809) As disciples of Christ we want to glorify God by living a holy, honorable life.

Therefore, by exercising Moderation in our daily lives we can, by the grace of God, keep our earthly desires in check in hopes of having a life guided by the Spirit.

So, my challenge for this week is for us to practice Moderation at our daily meals. Let us eat a bit less than we desire by taking smaller portions and don’t tell anyone why we are consuming less.  The Lord sees the intentions of our heart.

I’ll be back with another challenge on the virtues next week. Until then, may God bless you with His grace throughout this coming week, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Yours in Christ,

+ Earl Boyea
Bishop of Lansing

Welcome to another Disciples Together on the Way challenge on the theme of the virtues. This week, July 10 to 16, it's the twin virtues of generosity and hospitality. Here's Bishop Earl Boyea's challenge you: 

"Invite a family to your home for a meal or take a meal to a homebound person." 

Here's a link to his script in full: https://www.dioceseoflansing.org/news/week-27-disciples-together-way-w-bishop-boyea-july-10-july-16-virtues-invite-family-your-home

Welcome to Week 26 of Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing's Disciples Together on the Way challenge. We are now beyond the halfway mark of this yearlong pilgrimage! Deo gratias!

This week Bishop Boyea turns to the theme of the Virtues. What are the virtues? And why are they important to anybody who aspires to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?

Watch this short video to find out as Bishop Boyea reveals his latest weekly challenge: "Every day this week, recite the Litany of Humility.

Here is a link to the Litany of Humility: https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/devotions/litany-of-humility-245

Welcome to Week 25 of Bishop Earl Boyea's Disciples Together on the Way challenge. This week is a Review Week. Time to pause, pray and pick your toughest challenge. God bless you. Here's Bishop Boyea's script in full:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We are now well into the second third of our yearlong pilgrimage as Disciples Together on the Way. Congratulations and thanks for staying with your commitment. From our beginning in January, we have made it to the summer!

As with any long trip, however, it makes good sense to pull over from time to time and see how the journey is going so far.  Maybe there is a need to stretch the legs, have a bit of refreshment and be certain we haven’t lost anything along the way. 

With that sense of journeying together for the long haul, this week I invite you once again to look back and choose a challenge from the previous weeks and engage in it again.  A list of all the challenges can be viewed by clicking here.

It could be a challenge which you struggled with before. Perhaps now will be the right time, with God’s grace, for success.  Being willing to re-challenge ourselves is a sign of growth in developing the habits of a disciple.

Hopefully there was a challenge in the past months which brought you joy, peace or a new closeness to the Lord. Maybe you lived Lent in a new way through renewed prayer, sacrifice, or the Stations of the Cross. It could be that a relationship was rekindled through your prayer or deliberate thanks. If there was a challenge you wanted more of, pick it up again and work towards keeping it as a lasting habit.

Regardless of what you choose to revisit this week, know that the on-ramp to the road of discipleship is never closed for repair.  The love of God invites us back after every falter, flat tire, or detour.  Enjoy the journey, we are in this together! 

And may God bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

+ Earl Boyea
Bishop of Lansing

Welcome to Week 24 of Disciples Together on the Way with Bishop Boyea. This week we conclude the theme of The Eucharist. Here's Bishop Boyea's challenge for this week: Pray a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament. Below is his script for this week: 

Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Lord, 

The night before his passion and death, Jesus suffered greatly as he prayed to his heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. In his sorrow and distress he turned to Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, James and John. Christ asks them to remain with him in his agony. What followed? The Holy Gospels tell us: “When he returned to his disciples he found them asleep. He said to Peter, “So you could not keep watch with me for one hour?” (Matthew 26:40) 

My friends, can we keep watch with Christ for one hour? That will be the challenge in this week’s Disciples Together on the Way as we conclude our four week theme on the Holy Eucharist. 

The challenge for this week is to pray a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament. 

Some of you may already do it on a regular basis. Perhaps you are already signed up at an adoration chapel near you that offers perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Or perhaps your parish offers a weekly holy hour to which you regularly go and spend some time with the Lord. If so, you already know all the goodness that spending just sixty minutes with Jesus brings into your life.

We Catholics believe that, during such a Holy Hour, Jesus Christ is actually present in the Blessed Sacrament. This means that when we go to adoration we really are in the presence of God the Son. Therefore, when we enter the church or the chapel, we have no doubt that there is no better place on earth to spend that next hour.

In his Encyclical Mysterium Fidei, Pope St. Paul VI wrote: “As St. Thomas says, the fact that the true body and the true blood of Christ are present in this Sacrament "cannot be apprehended by the senses but only by faith, which rests upon divine authority… Do not doubt that this is true; instead accept the words of the Savior in faith; for since He is truth, He cannot tell a lie."

So, let us always enter the church or the chapel with this is mind.  And we should prepare ahead what it is we would like to  do in His presence. Remember that Jesus is always waiting for us to come to Him and enter in a communion of love with Him, as we read in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him and he with me”.

As we enter the church or adoration chapel let us get ready to open the doors of our heart to Jesus. We can talk to Him as with a good friend. We can share our joys and successes.  We can ask Him for advice on the difficult matters of our day.  We  may also tell Him about the bigger challenges we are facing in our life. He already knows them but opening up with Him is a good way to begin our conversation.  Then, we should listen deeply in our heart for what He wants to tell us.

If you are not used to spending time with the Lord in adoration, reading your Bible or praying a Rosary are helpful ways to begin. Read the Gospel for the upcoming Sunday and find a phrase that catches your attention. See what the Lord is trying to tell you through it. You can also pray the Holy Rosary and offer it for a special intention or pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet or another favorite devotion.

See you next week and, also, be assured of my prayers for you.  Until then, may God bless you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+ Earl Boyea

Bishop of Lansing

Dear Brothers and Sister in Christ,

I was born in April 1951 in the city of Pontiac. The eldest of ten children, our family went en masse to Sunday Mass at our local parish, Our Lady of the Lakes. As you can imagine, we had to arrive pretty early to get a pew that could accommodate us all. Not least because in the 1950’s it is estimated that nearly 8 in every 10 Catholics in the United States attended Sunday Mass. Now that figure is estimated to be about 4 in every 10. The big drop occurred during the 1970’s.

That’s a lot of Catholics who are not at Sunday Mass and, thus, distant from Our Lord truly present in the Holy Eucharist. That has to be a source of great sorrow and, indeed, heartache for those of us whose loved ones no longer practice their Catholic faith. So, what can we do? That’s the theme of this week’s Disciples Together on the Way

This week I challenge you to offer the grace from your attendance at Holy Mass for a person who is away from the Mass. This is one of the groups that I highlighted in my 2012 pastoral letter, Go Announce the Gospel of the Lord.

Over the intervening decade, we have all put considerable effort into inviting “the lost sheep” back to Holy Mass, especially Sunday Mass, and to the Holy Eucharist. As a Diocese we have also focused on this group more recently in our work on the upcoming Synod and have attempted to engage in conversation with some of our neighbors or family who do not attend Mass or have lapsed from the practice of the Faith.

This is a group which can be tricky to talk with.  Many people are reticent to talk about why they left, or maybe they don’t think anyone cares that they did.  Either way, we don’t often find ourselves in situations where people are open to discussing it. That is why prayer should be our first step in this effort. Trust in God to provide the mercy for their soul and the help that a person needs to turn back to him in the Holy Eucharist.

While it is impossible to lay out the value of any particular intercession we offer for other people, here is a point of catechesis. It is always fitting to offer your attendance at Holy Mass for this; in essence, you are offering to the Father the Holy Eucharist for someone’s return to the Holy Eucharist. This symmetry is most apt.

Whether we pray the Holy Rosary, or the Liturgy of the Hours, or commemorate a saint’s feast day, we are always pointing back to the work of redemption that Christ accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection, which is celebrated and re-presented in each Mass. The full paschal mystery, therefore, is ever present in heaven. In the Eucharistic liturgy, we, here on earth, reconnect with that perpetual heavenly event.  We can help make that connection for our friends’ sake.

So, ask the Heavenly Father to give you a name of someone to lift up in prayer, perhaps a family member who has been away from the Holy Eucharist or someone else in that situation.  Then the next time you attend Holy Mass, either one day this week or next Sunday, offer your participation in the Mass for that person.  It might provide the grace needed to move him or her toward coming back to Jesus Christ truly present in the Holy Eucharist.

May God bless you in your endeavors in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Yours in Christ, 

+ Earl Boyea
Bishop of Lansing

Welcome to Week 22 of Bishop Earl Boyea's Disciples Together on the Way. This week's theme is the Eucharist. This week's challenge from Bishop Boyea is thus:

"Spend 15 minutes praying before Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration, praying before the Lord who meets us and becomes our companion along the way."

Here's Bishop Boyea's script in full:

Dear Friend,

Welcome to Week 22 of Disciples Together on the Way and our second week focusing on the theme of the Holy Eucharist. As we walk together this week, let us recall the story of the Road to Emmaus:

Disheartened by Jesus’ death and bewildered that someone might have taken his body from the tomb, two followers of Jesus made their way out of Jerusalem for the village of Emmaus.

Understandably, these grief-stricken disciples left Jerusalem and the normal joys of Passover week — the seven-day Festival of Unleavened Bread — sad and downcast.  They “had hoped that [Jesus would be] the one [who would] redeem Israel” (Luke 24:17) … and now, he was dead.

They had likely heard Jesus preach, raise the dead, feed thousands, give sight to the blind, make the deaf hear, cast out demons (see Luke 24:19). Not only was this someone in whom they had placed all their hopes; but now he was dead.  He had actually been executed as a criminal, by crucifixion!

Perhaps you’ve had times in your life that you’ve felt this kind of devastation? Perhaps you didn’t know it was possible to be so heartbroken? What breaks most of our hearts is a loss of love. 

Pope Benedict XVI talks about this kind of sadness when he says that “the root of man’s wretchedness is loneliness, is the absence of love – is the fact that my existence is not embraced by a love that makes it necessary." (1)

The US-based Dominican priest, Fr. Peter John Cameron, writes: “Our misery arises when we live without a love strong enough to justify our existence no matter how much pain and limitation go along with it. What our heart is crying out for is a true companion in whose love we experience how truly necessary and invaluable our existence is.”

On their journey to Emmaus the hearts of these disciples burned within them as the mysterious man walking beside them opened the Scriptures to them: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26).

Arriving at their destination, they urged the man to remain with them. It was then, at table, as they received the bread Jesus gave to them, that he vanished from their sight. Even as he vanished, Jesus — Emmanuel, “God with us” — abided with them in the bread become His Body.

Again, Fr. Peter John Cameron writes, “the very word companion derives from the two Latin words cum, meaning 'with', and panis, which means ‘bread'. A companion is literally ‘bread-with-us’ — in other words, all that we need. This literally is the Eucharist! The Eucharist proclaims that God is not a distant fact toward which human beings strive with great effort. 'Rather he is Someone who has joined man on his path, who has become his companion'.” (2) Jesus is the love which gives our lives a full meaning; and the Eucharist is that loving presence with us always.

Hence, this week’s challenge is to spend 15 minutes praying before Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration, praying before the Lord who meets us and becomes our companion along the way. 

Whether it’s formal exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in your parish or if it’s just fifteen minutes before the tabernacle, spend this extended time with Jesus, who is our true Companion.

And may God bless you, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
+ Earl Boyea
Bishop of Lansing

Footnotes: 

(1) Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Mary Frances McCar

Welcome to Bishop Earl Boyea's latest Disciples Together on the Way challenge for Week 21, May 29 to June 4, on the new theme of The Eucharist. Bishop Boyea's challenge is:  "Attend Holy Mass at least one day this week in addition to Sunday." Listen to the Bishop explain why he has chosen this as the latest challenge of Disciples Together on the Way.