Sacred Moments

Enjoy your time alone with Jesus, savor it. Stop treating it like fast food . Because you will not find fine dining any where else like you have at the feet of Jesus.

Many come from a culture in which spirituality is measured by how solemn, dignified and holy your appearance is. This means that as a servant of God, you must wear white clothes, keep a serious face even if you are happy and carefully guard your behavior. You wouldn’t want to spoil your image by laughing out loud or running around playing with the kids.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Psalm 131:1–2 “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. ”

But how do we walk and enter into this kind of life, the life of a different world—so different than the one we see around us?

Peter risked becoming the joke of his hometown when he rowed out in broad daylight to the deep waters of Lake Gennesaret and let down his net to catch fish. Everyone watching him from the shore must have thought he’d gone mad. Even a small child could have told him that if he wanted to catch fish, he must do it at night and in shallow water.

But this was a moment in Peter’s life when he did the right thing first

How true it is that people do not need to be instructed so much as to be reminded. We need to be reminded again and again of what Jesus Christ, the second person of the blessed Trinity has done for you and me. We need to hear again what it means to be a Catholic, a member of the mystical body.

In the 21st chapter of St Matthew's gospel, Our Lord tells one of the lesser known parables. The story of a father and two sons. He asked the elder son to go and work in the vineyard. He said he would, but he never did. He asked the second son to go and work in the vineyard and he said he would not, but he did. Our Lord told this story to the civil and religious leaders of the day. He said to them, which of the sons did the will of the father.....the will of God.

It is no secret that we live in a society that is probably heavier laden than in the time of Christ. People are taking on larger responsibilities. Day after day, they rush from project to project, responsibility to responsibility, from obligation to obligation. Hardly a day goes by that someone is not overheard complaining about all the things they have to do. Jesus says, Come; I will give you rest. Yoke yourself with me.

What is it about marriage that causes people to answer with the phrase “Too Long”? Do people appreciate marriage? Especially among those who profess to follow the teachings of Christ? Shouldn’t a long marriage be a testimony to how a Biblical marriage should be?

What is your answer when people ask you about your marriage? Are you able to tell them how many years the Lord has blessed you and your spouse? Or deep down inside, if you were truthful, would you answer the same way? “Too long.”

I am sure that there are very few people in life who are not touched by the sight of sadness. And the world is full of sadness. We see it around us every day. Failed lives, broken hearts shattered dreams. To me, one of the saddest sites in the world is a rummage sale. A sale in which almost every item is part of some man, woman or child, some home, some family, some long gone holiday of the past, being sold there coldly, publicly, impersonally, sometimes being sold for charity, but being sold, and given to a stranger.

We cannot live without peace. We cannot even die without it. For when they will finally put us in the grave, they would pray that we may rest in peace. It was Jesus' own legacy to us when he was returning to his Father. "My peace, I leave with you. My peace I give to you. His is that peace which passes all understanding, which the world can neither give, nor take away.