Lord, Hear Our Prayer

The internet is a formidable force for bringing the comfort and consolation and hope of the Lord to all of us. It can be an incredibily powerful medium for community. There is an unfathomable resource for prayer here. We have on the 'net the privilege of praying for people and of being witness to the miracles brought forth when fervent, faith-fulled people pray for one another.

Let's be that community of hope and faith for one another.

How about this idea? What if I pop in here every weekend, share Sunday's gospel and talk a wee bit about how we can live it and pray it in our homes? And then you tell me how we can pray for you that week? Deal?

{And please, do return and let us know how prayer is bearing fruit.}

{iPhone image from early morning prayer walk yesterday.}

Gospel 

Jn 20:19-23

On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, "Peace be with you."
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
"Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained."

Or Jn 15:26-27; 16:12-15

Jesus said to his disciples:
"When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father,
he will testify to me.
And you also testify,
because you have been with me from the beginning.

"I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
He will not speak on his own,
but he will speak what he hears,
and will declare to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me,
because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine
and declare it to you."

Think

“Our works are in no way comparable in greatness to the tree of glory they produce. Still they have the vigor and virtue to produce it because they proceed from the Holy Spirit. By a wondrous infusion of His grace into our hearts He makes our works become His and yet at the same time lets them remain our own, since we are members of a Head of which he is the Spirit and since we are engrafted on a tree of which He is the divine sap.”

~ ~ ~

“When the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us, wishes to make our soul docile, tractable and obedient to his divine movements and heavenly inspirations, which are the laws of his love, he gives us seven properties and perfections . They are called the gifts of the Holy Spirit...These gifts are inseparable from charity. Charity is made up of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit as of so many sacred steps. They are: wisdom, understanding, science, counsel, fortitude, piety, fear."

-St. Francis de Sales

Pray

 Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. 

O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.

Act

It's a big deal feast day! Have a party! 

A salad with seven fruits is a good beginning...

Family Recipes: Roasted Beets in Balsamic Vinaigrette

This one is for Kristin.

Beets “bleed,” so to keep the juices in while they cook, leave on the skins, the roots on the bottom, and at least an inch of the green stems. It’s especially pretty to cook both red and yellow beets. You don’t want the colors to bleed on to each other, so you may want to cook and handle them separately. After they’re cooked, peel the beets over a bowl, since beet juice stains are nearly impossible to remove from wood or plastic surfaces. Expect that your hands will be stained. (Never, ever let a child help while wearing white without an apron. Just sayin'. I found these pictures on my computer. They're fairly old. I have no idea what I was thinking that day.)

This makes enough for a summer side dish for 4 people. Toss with toasted pecans and crumbled goat cheese.

OR

Roasted beets are really good in a salad of mixed greens; the marinade makes a salad dressing.

8 medium beets (about 2 pounds total)
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup olive oil
6 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 to 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, to taste
1 teaspoon sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. Trim the beets, leaving on the skin, an inch of the stem, and the tail on the bottom of each, then scrub and drain. Place the beets in a small casserole dish just big enough to hold them. Pour the water and olive oil over the beets then cover tightly with a lid or aluminum foil and bake until tender and easily pierced with a sharp paring knife, about 1 ½ hours.  (Honest disclaimer: I often do this in a disposable pan. The beet juice carmelizes, which is delicious, and incredibly hard to clean off the pan.)

3. Remove the casserole from the oven and uncover the beets carefully, keeping your face and hands away from the steam. Let them cool completely in the dish.

4. Meanwhile, combine the vinegar, 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, the salt, and pepper in a medium-size bowl and whisk to blend. Taste and add more olive oil, if desired.

5. Peel the cooled beets with the back of a paring knife and cut into ½-inch slices. Add to the dressing in the bowl and toss gently but thoroughly to coat. Marinate in the refrigerator, for up to 24 hours.

{Please pretend there is a picture of beautiful beets here. There isn't. We ate them. The beets, not the pictures.}

needle & thREAD

Hello, sewing friends!

I welcome you to needle and thREAD. What have you been sewing lately? Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo (or more) and a brief description of what you're up to? Will you tell us about what you're reading, also? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much.

Make sure the link you submit is to the URL of your blog post or your specific Flickr photo and not your main blog URL or Flickr Photostream. Please be sure and link to your current needle and theREAD post below in the comments, and not a needle and theREAD post from a previous week. If you don't have a blog, please post a photo to the needle & thREAD group at Flickr.

       Include a link back to this post in your blog post or on your flickr photo page so that others who may want to join the needle and thREAD fun can find us! Feel free to grab a button here (in one of several colors) so that you can use the button to link:-).

~ ~

I don't have much to report this week. I finished that hand sewing on the Painted Portrait Blouse and Mary Beth clicked this very squinty picture. When I saw how squinty I was, I thought about a re-do. But I am reminded that I squint all. the. time.  why even waste another minute trying?

My Kindle coordinates nicely with the blouse, I think.  I told you earlier about one of my reads this week. (Go back and be sure you're entered in the giveaway.) The other was The Enchanted Barn by Grace Livingston Hill. As I mentioned, Kim enthusiastically endorsed these books ages ago. I'm definitely late to the party. This one lived up to her general summation of GHL books. It is a very nice, story, if a wee bit farfetched. Especially appealing is the attention to domestic details. For me, the biggest criticism of this volume was the baby talk of the youngest child. She is a four-year-old little girl and all her dialgue is in tedious, overly-sweet baby talk. Throughout my reading, I kept reminding myself that I was so enjoying the story that the baby talk could be overlooked. But the last lines of the story were spoken by the four-year-old. Huge bummer. 

There are lots of Grace Livingston Hill books in the Kindle store. I'm definitely going to read another.

So, what about you? What have you been up to this week? Reading, sewing, embroidering? Do share.

Let the Recovery Begin

Thank you all so much for your prayers and your kind notes. 

A few seconds after this photo was taken, Patrick tore his MCL. He was very, very fortunate to come away with his meniscus and his ACL intact. He asks me to point out how well muscled and fit that leg is;-).

Thankfully, he does not appear to require surgery. He is looking with hope towards a summer of healing and plans to be back on the pitch before the fall.

We are all so appreciative of your kindness and concern. 

to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God

{Note: This piece originally ran in the Arlington Catholic Herald. I rarely re-print columns in their entirety here, but I'm especially fond of this one and I wanted to be sure it's tucked into my archives here.}

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”

(Mi 6:8).

What does the Lord require of you?

I love this verse. Love it. To commit it to memory is to have a life’s mission statement always before you. God shows us what is good. And then, He tells what He requires of us to act in His image. Because He is the teacher, He gives us a concise instruction in how to live. What do we know about what He requires?

He demands we act justly, with mercy. St. Therese also writes about justice and mercy together. Mercy is the lens through which she views justice and mercy is the perfection that graces her contemplation of all other virtues.

“To me (God) has granted His infinite Mercy, and through it I contemplate and adore the other divine perfections! All of these perfections appear to be resplendent with love; even His Justice (and perhaps this even more so than the others) seems to me clothed in love. What a sweet joy it is to think that God is Just, i.e., that He takes into account our weakness, that He is perfectly aware of our fragile nature. What should I fear then?” (Story of a Soul)

Is this how we live justice? Are we just in such a way that the people to whom we dispense justice have nothing to fear? When we point out another’s shortcomings do we do it in a way that takes into account her weaknesses and is aware of her frailties? This is the justice that we are called to live. Not an iron fist of fear, but a level-headed, even kindhearted, mercy.

Speaking of kindhearted mercy, this verse also is translated, “to act justly and to love kindness” (Revised Standard Version of the Bible) and “to act justly and love goodness” (New American Bible). Which is it: mercy, kindness or goodness? It’s all of them, rolled together. To be merciful is to be kind and to act with genuine goodness.

It’s an emotional response, to be sure, a sense of empathy, but we are required to offer so much more than empathy. We are required to make a decision to care, to be compassionate, to love with self-sacrifice. Then we are required to do something. We must act on that compassion. We have to respond with genuine effort. It’s a simple thing to call a wrong a wrong. It’s a simple thing to point out someone’s faults or failings. We are a people who have been shown God’s goodness; we are required to do more. We are called to act justly and love mercy.

Remember: Every person’s shortcoming causes her suffering. It is a wound. Jesus came to tenderly dress the wounds and to heal the suffering of the sinner.

“Mercy is love when it encounters suffering. More specifically, it is two movements that take place within us when we see someone (or something) suffer. The first is an emotional movement, a movement of compassion that we feel in our hearts or even, when the suffering is particularly intense, deep in our guts. The second is a movement of action. In other words, as we see someone suffering and feel compassion for him, we soon find ourselves reaching out to alleviate his suffering. In sum: Mercy is love that feels compassion for those who suffer (heart) and reaches to help them (arm)” (Consoling the Heart of Jesus, by Father Michael Gaitley).

Merciful justice requires us to feel and to alleviate someone’s suffering. That’s a very different concept from the one of judging, scolding, punishing and humiliating. Finally, we are called to walk humbly with our God. In our humility, we are not quick to condemn our neighbor. We recognize our own sinfulness. We recognize that we are nothing without Him and that we are limited in our own capacity to understand another person. We respond with genuine humility when we are gentle, allow ourselves to be infused with the kindness, goodness and mercy of Our Lord, and become ministers of that mercy to everyone we meet.