FROM THE MAILBAG: Reflection by
Father Ted - November 21, 2011
Dear Jesus, on this anniversary of the celebration of the Presentation of your Mother in the Temple at Jerusalem, help us to realize the importance of consecrating ourselves and our loved ones to the Father through You and through Your Mother.
You want all of us to know the profound love that You and Your Father in union with the Holy Spirit have for all of us.
You want all of us to accept with complete trust what You reminded us in the special Gospel for today's feast that all of us are part of Your Holy Family when we do the Will of the Father.
And as You have so frequently reminded me and I have attempted to communicate this to others - the Will of the Father is that we strive to become saints every single day.
And as You have striven to convince me - this is impossible without out willing to make time to pray - as both You and Mary did throughout Your earthly lives.
I learned the hard way, as have many others, that when we minimize the importance of daily prayer, we become blind to knowing the Will of the Father and we are not able to do the Will of the Father.
When I was a young priest, I accepted as truth that “my work was my prayer”. And like many of my peers, when I did this, I rejected what You had told me through the Church what prayers I must pray as Your ordained priest. As a result I, and many others, lost the ability to recognize truth - which truths You revealed to us through Your Church. Not only that, we also lost the ability to resist the many temptations that Satan enticed us with. And tragically, many of my peers gave into his major temptation to leave the priesthood. I almost did, but - thanks be to those who were praying for me - I was able to resist this temptation.
Today, You have been reminding us, through the Holy Father, how important our daily prayer life is. Fortunately, You had him exhort his brother bishops from our country to be the men of prayer that You want them to be. For he told them about the importance of daily Eucharistic adoration, daily Rosary, and daily praying the Divine Office. His predecessor reminded his brother bishops the importance of celebrating Mass daily - whether with a congregation or without one. You wanted them to teach us their priests to do likewise.
Why? So that we can become the saints that You want us to be; so that we can inspire our brothers and sisters to become the saints that You want them to be.; so that we can evangelize the world and thereby bring Your Peace into the world.
Jesus, You want us to experience Your Peace. We can only do this by doing the Father's Will - by becoming the men and women of prayer that He desires.
Mary, Queen of Peace, Queen of the Clergy, help us to do the Will of the Father as did Jesus and as You did.
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