Spirituality and Healing
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Come and See . . .
We see many images of Jesus, Our Savior, Our Friend, throughout our lives. However, most of us cannot simply look at an image of Our Lord and Know, but must “Come and See” Jesus, by looking first at Him through the Lens of God and enter into the very Life of Jesus more deeply.
We, as the first established Our Lady Queen of Peace Centers of Life in the Buffalo Diocese, is offering programs of prayer so that our Family of Parishes in Cheektowaga and beyond will have opportunities of faith to help us enter the life of Jesus in our midst. Through informal and formal personal and communal prayer, moments of song and silence, we can experience movements of His Spirit and know the Lord more deeply as we travel through timeless prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours as we learn to call down God’s Presence by hearing His Voice in Divine Reading. We hear God’s voice through the Holy Spirit as we do as Jesus and His disciples did – pray the ancient Psalms and learn through His Word, His Sacred Scripture and join the Lord and His people around the world and become in union, Communion with the Divine.
Come and See . . .
Liturgy of the Hours
It is especially fitting that we highlight this special prayer liturgy during the upcoming Advent Season as we celebrate the birth and coming of Our Savior. The hymns and litanies of the Liturgy of the Hours integrate the prayer of the psalms into the age of the Church, expressing the signs of our times in light of the timeless teachings of our God. [In participating in] the Hours (coupled with our responses) and readings . . . reveal more deeply the meaning of the mystery being celebrated, and assist [us] in understanding the Word of God and prepare us for further silent prayer, [reflection and relationship]. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, [CCC] 1177).
You are invited to attend an information/practice session on Wednesday, November 19, at 4 pm in the Lower Parish Hall at Our Lady Help of Christians Church. The Session will include all materials needed and light refreshments.
Also . . . stay tuned for Lectio Divina (Divine Reading) as for His Disciples and now for us the Lord opens the Scriptures and His Word becomes a personal conversation to Know Him more deeply this Advent and Always!
Come and See . . . God’s Blessings and His Graces, Fr. John
We see many images of Jesus, Our Savior, Our Friend, throughout our lives. However, most of us cannot simply look at an image of Our Lord and Know, but must “Come and See” Jesus, by looking first at Him through the Lens of God and enter into the very Life of Jesus more deeply.
We, as the first established Our Lady Queen of Peace Centers of Life in the Buffalo Diocese, is offering programs of prayer so that our Family of Parishes in Cheektowaga and beyond will have opportunities of faith to help us enter the life of Jesus in our midst. Through informal and formal personal and communal prayer, moments of song and silence, we can experience movements of His Spirit and know the Lord more deeply as we travel through timeless prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours as we learn to call down God’s Presence by hearing His Voice in Divine Reading. We hear God’s voice through the Holy Spirit as we do as Jesus and His disciples did – pray the ancient Psalms and learn through His Word, His Sacred Scripture and join the Lord and His people around the world and become in union, Communion with the Divine.
Come and See . . .
Liturgy of the Hours
It is especially fitting that we highlight this special prayer liturgy during the upcoming Advent Season as we celebrate the birth and coming of Our Savior. The hymns and litanies of the Liturgy of the Hours integrate the prayer of the psalms into the age of the Church, expressing the signs of our times in light of the timeless teachings of our God. [In participating in] the Hours (coupled with our responses) and readings . . . reveal more deeply the meaning of the mystery being celebrated, and assist [us] in understanding the Word of God and prepare us for further silent prayer, [reflection and relationship]. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, [CCC] 1177).
You are invited to attend an information/practice session on Wednesday, November 19, at 4 pm in the Lower Parish Hall at Our Lady Help of Christians Church. The Session will include all materials needed and light refreshments.
Also . . . stay tuned for Lectio Divina (Divine Reading) as for His Disciples and now for us the Lord opens the Scriptures and His Word becomes a personal conversation to Know Him more deeply this Advent and Always!
Come and See . . . God’s Blessings and His Graces, Fr. John
I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. -- Ephesians 1:16
We have heard and read about the stories of the First Thanksgiving Day in our country and how the people gave thanks with those native to this land for their survival, for the abundance of this land and their support of one another. However, let us discover more about the very first Thanksgiving meal, that of the First Eucharist (which means Thanksgiving) that Jesus instituted on the night of the Last Supper, the night before He died. Our Lord, our brother, was given to all of us by the Father for the salvation of the world. In the freely giving of Himself, He offered a final prayer, His “last will and testament”. How amazing is this portion of His prayer for us, when it is some of his last words on this earth! In John 17: 24 26, the Lord started his prayer to the Father in this way, “Father, [my disciples] are your gift to me, I wish where I am they may also be with me . . . . I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me be in them and I in them.” Jesus loved us so much and was grateful for us as His disciples that He gave thanks to the Father for this gift and He wishes to be with us forever. As we receive Him in Word and Sacrament, He is in us.
We gather here on the sacred ground of our parishes at Our Lady Help of Christians, Queen of Martyrs, Resurrection, and St. Josaphat’s with those who have gone before us, our Communion of Saints and celebrate our blessings and the Goodness from whom All Blessings flow. We gather together when possible with family and friends on the sacred ground of our homes and other places special to us and call down the Divine, Our most loving God, a God who does not remain invisible, but is revealed in all the beauty the surrounds us, the food and the goodness that becomes the Lord visible through us, and we give thanks . . .
We have heard and read about the stories of the First Thanksgiving Day in our country and how the people gave thanks with those native to this land for their survival, for the abundance of this land and their support of one another. However, let us discover more about the very first Thanksgiving meal, that of the First Eucharist (which means Thanksgiving) that Jesus instituted on the night of the Last Supper, the night before He died. Our Lord, our brother, was given to all of us by the Father for the salvation of the world. In the freely giving of Himself, He offered a final prayer, His “last will and testament”. How amazing is this portion of His prayer for us, when it is some of his last words on this earth! In John 17: 24 26, the Lord started his prayer to the Father in this way, “Father, [my disciples] are your gift to me, I wish where I am they may also be with me . . . . I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me be in them and I in them.” Jesus loved us so much and was grateful for us as His disciples that He gave thanks to the Father for this gift and He wishes to be with us forever. As we receive Him in Word and Sacrament, He is in us.
We gather here on the sacred ground of our parishes at Our Lady Help of Christians, Queen of Martyrs, Resurrection, and St. Josaphat’s with those who have gone before us, our Communion of Saints and celebrate our blessings and the Goodness from whom All Blessings flow. We gather together when possible with family and friends on the sacred ground of our homes and other places special to us and call down the Divine, Our most loving God, a God who does not remain invisible, but is revealed in all the beauty the surrounds us, the food and the goodness that becomes the Lord visible through us, and we give thanks . . .
A Psalm of Thanksgiving
(Psalm 100, written about 900-500 years before Christ)
Shout joyfully to the LORD, all you lands; serve the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful song. Know that the LORD is God, he made us, we belong to him, we are his people, the flock he shepherds. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name; good indeed is the LORD, His mercy endures forever, his faithfulness lasts through every generation.
Have a Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving!
Note: Join us during the Advent Season as we begin a Holy Hour within our parish families which will include the Liturgy of the Hours (using psalms like the one of Thanksgiving above), Eucharist, and the Rosary. Stay tuned for announcements from Our Lady Queen of Peace Center of Life recently established at our hub parish of Our Lady Help of Christians.
(Psalm 100, written about 900-500 years before Christ)
Shout joyfully to the LORD, all you lands; serve the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful song. Know that the LORD is God, he made us, we belong to him, we are his people, the flock he shepherds. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name; good indeed is the LORD, His mercy endures forever, his faithfulness lasts through every generation.
Have a Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving!
Note: Join us during the Advent Season as we begin a Holy Hour within our parish families which will include the Liturgy of the Hours (using psalms like the one of Thanksgiving above), Eucharist, and the Rosary. Stay tuned for announcements from Our Lady Queen of Peace Center of Life recently established at our hub parish of Our Lady Help of Christians.
From Our Spirituality and Healing Ministries-- New Beginnings . . .
Advent, the season of beginnings, is a prayerful time of year as we examine our relationship with the Lord and others around us as we ponder the coming of God’s Son into our lives. However, our prayerful ponderings may often disrupted by last-minute shopping, holiday preparations, anxieties about the future and the fears, discouragement and concerns surrounding changes within our parish families, divisions in our society and in our world.. Sometimes we experience a season of joy as a season of stress. In Latin, Adventus means the coming or the presence – persons in ancient time believed its meaning to be the coming of someone in high office, , a king, an Emperor. For Christians, the meaning of Adventus was transformed into the coming of the Lord and His presence among us. Advent is a time of expectant hope, when we look to the future and the past in order to focus on the present. God is in our midst.
To appreciate the richness of this season of hope, we are to remember that the Lord keeps His promises. In the time of the prophets, God promised that He would send His Son Who would bring goodness, peace and love into the world by His giving of Self. This personal and loving Creator would definitively save faithful people from the forces not of God, by making all things new. As we anticipate Jesus’ birth, we anticipate and participate in our rebirth.
And how do we approach Our Lord for renewal and rebirth? Thomas Merton can be our guide during Advent and how to understand this beautiful time. He was a mystic, monk, and spiritual writer in the 20th century. Merton spent a period of three semesters, from the fall of 1940 to December 1941, teaching at St. Bonaventure when then a college. In his writings, he states that Advent is a mystery. He believes that it is a mystery of emptiness. Jesus came, incarnated as human, to those most in need, all of us in some way broken in our humanity. He came for those who are suffering, the most unfortunate, the sinful, those that feel empty. The Advent mystery is then a mystery of emptiness, like the empty crib of poverty, of limitation. We can all be likened to the empty crib, the manger, that the Divine infant fills up with His love, His goodness and His Salvation. In anticipation of the Lord filling up the empty crib, we await Him and anticipate Him with Hope, we await new beginnings/ In this Jubilee Year of Hope -- Hope for renewal and rebirth.
This Advent, in this mystery, let us discover the emptiness that exists. Let us ask the Lord to fill us with His Divine by completing us in His joy in the coming of the new. Let us make this prayerful time, a sacred time, and allow the mystery of Advent to be revealed. Let us open our minds, hearts and souls to the mystery and allow it to become a reality, a reality of HOPE, a reality of LOVE!
Blessed Advent Season,
Advent, the season of beginnings, is a prayerful time of year as we examine our relationship with the Lord and others around us as we ponder the coming of God’s Son into our lives. However, our prayerful ponderings may often disrupted by last-minute shopping, holiday preparations, anxieties about the future and the fears, discouragement and concerns surrounding changes within our parish families, divisions in our society and in our world.. Sometimes we experience a season of joy as a season of stress. In Latin, Adventus means the coming or the presence – persons in ancient time believed its meaning to be the coming of someone in high office, , a king, an Emperor. For Christians, the meaning of Adventus was transformed into the coming of the Lord and His presence among us. Advent is a time of expectant hope, when we look to the future and the past in order to focus on the present. God is in our midst.
To appreciate the richness of this season of hope, we are to remember that the Lord keeps His promises. In the time of the prophets, God promised that He would send His Son Who would bring goodness, peace and love into the world by His giving of Self. This personal and loving Creator would definitively save faithful people from the forces not of God, by making all things new. As we anticipate Jesus’ birth, we anticipate and participate in our rebirth.
And how do we approach Our Lord for renewal and rebirth? Thomas Merton can be our guide during Advent and how to understand this beautiful time. He was a mystic, monk, and spiritual writer in the 20th century. Merton spent a period of three semesters, from the fall of 1940 to December 1941, teaching at St. Bonaventure when then a college. In his writings, he states that Advent is a mystery. He believes that it is a mystery of emptiness. Jesus came, incarnated as human, to those most in need, all of us in some way broken in our humanity. He came for those who are suffering, the most unfortunate, the sinful, those that feel empty. The Advent mystery is then a mystery of emptiness, like the empty crib of poverty, of limitation. We can all be likened to the empty crib, the manger, that the Divine infant fills up with His love, His goodness and His Salvation. In anticipation of the Lord filling up the empty crib, we await Him and anticipate Him with Hope, we await new beginnings/ In this Jubilee Year of Hope -- Hope for renewal and rebirth.
This Advent, in this mystery, let us discover the emptiness that exists. Let us ask the Lord to fill us with His Divine by completing us in His joy in the coming of the new. Let us make this prayerful time, a sacred time, and allow the mystery of Advent to be revealed. Let us open our minds, hearts and souls to the mystery and allow it to become a reality, a reality of HOPE, a reality of LOVE!
Blessed Advent Season,
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