A message from Father Pete

Amos 6: 1, 4-7; 1 Timothy 6: 11-16; Luke 16: 19-31 How do I feel that I am keeping Jesus’ teachings?   Are there ones that I like and some that seem too hard for me ?   Do I realize and admit that all Jesus’ teachings are equal in their seriousness and must all be followed?   Jesus constantly used care for the poor and the needy as primary in following His law of love.   Do I live this way?   The American ‘ideal’ is to take care of ‘me’ first.   Is this how I am living?   I have been honored to visit Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru for three weeks to watch groups of priests and religious minister to the very poor.   I have also spent 6 days in Haiti with Food For The Poor watching how they care for the poorest of the poor especially in City of Soleil.   This is an extremely impoverished and densely populated shanty town. It has grown to an estimated 200,000-400,000 people who live in extreme poverty.   It is regarded as one of the ...

Amos 8: 4-7;  1 Timothy 2: 1-8; Luke 16: 1-13 How do I regard the people in my life?  The initial response to this question is ‘ well, that depends.’  And what does it depend on, ‘ It depends if they are family, neighbors, people I work with and am associated with, people at my church community and then those who appear in my life at times.’  So what forms the basis of my treatment of them?  ‘ That depends on how well I like them, how they have treated me, if it’s worth my while to be nice to them…you know I just can’t like everyone!’  This is an accurate exchange of thoughts I had with a small group of people recently.  I never asked, ‘How does God expect us, and need us to treat others?’  This attention-getter was written in Sunday Homily Helps this week:  “Once a wonderful pueblo Indian woman told a young Franciscan how to pray.  She said: ‘First, you pray for the world, for everything and everyone in the world, everything i...

Exodus 32: 7-11, 13-14; 1 Timothy 1: 12-17; Luke 15:   1-31 It is good for us as we progress in the spiritual life:  To Remember.  To remember where we have been and how we have gotten where we are today.  When we analyze these past times we realize that we certainly were not perfect.  We learned by the uncomfortable ‘road of hard knocks’.  If we are making an honest evaluation of our lives, we ‘ remember’ that we were not angels…sometimes…more like devils.  And we see that we have changed… and changed we hopefully say, for the better.   It is good to even look deeper and see how this happened.  I believe that a very true statement in almost all of the cases is that God has placed someone in our lives to touch us…who reached out to us with care, kindness, compassion, a helping loving hand and so much more.  These ‘God touches’ showed us that we were loved.  That’s the most perfect way to express it because we were in need of...

Wisdom 9: 13-18; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14; 25-33 The readings today focus in on each person’s ability to listen to God.  Perhaps one of the most frequent phrases we hear when we are in disagreement with someone we have a love relationship with is:  ‘You just are not listening to what I am saying!’  The response is most often, ‘ Yes I am’  Do we really hear what the other person is saying?  Am I hearing what I want to hear?  Or am I hearing exactly what the other person is saying?  The bottom line:  since someone makes this statement, there is evidently miscommunication going on.  Often we apply this to our religious journey:  ‘ God isn’t listening to me…My prayers are not being answered…Maybe it’s just because God doesn’t care about me?’  Could it be that I am not giving God a chance to talk?  Am I more concerned with getting the answer that I want that I refuse to be open to listening to anything else?  So the ...

Sirach 3: 17-18, 20- 28-19; Hebrews 12: 18-19, 22-24; Luke 14: 1, 7-14 Do I try to be what I am or am I more often than not, out to prove something that I’m not? The age old adage:  Know Thyself  is so important…why do I not reflect on this as often as I should?  Socrates said that ‘people make themselves appear ridiculous when they are trying to know obscure things before they know themselves .’ Wikipedia   Do I reflect that I am a ‘child of God’?  Do I really take time to understand what this means now, to me? Do I really understand the depths of what it means that God is always with me…in the now?    If God were standing next to me, how would I act?  Would I be afraid to be the way I normally am?  Do I put the needs of another person before my own?  Do I think of others before myself?  Do I not draw attention to myself?  Do I acknowledge that I’m not always right? Much of what I am referring to in these reflective quest...

Isaiah 66: 18-21; Hebrews 12: 5-7, 11-13; Luke 13: 22-30 What do we know:  the world will end.  All living things that we know will come to their end.  You and I know that we came into this world, not of our own accord…and we will leave the world at a time we do not know.  We don’t think about this probably because we don’t want to think about it.  I am closer to the end of my days than I am looking back to the beginning of my days.   Am I afraid…no I’m not.  Am I looking to the time of heaven forever…yes, I am.   The readings today plead with me to look at the time now till the time of the end of my earthly sojourn.  I like the word, sojourn… its synonyms are:  stay, visit, stop, stopover, residence, draw to a close, conclude, terminate, fade away.  I like the British informal definition, to stay somewhere for a short time…’you’ll have to stop the night’.  I don’t think most people want to hear this concerning our time on ...

Jeremiah 38: 4-6, 8-10; Hebrews 12: 1-4; Luke 12: 49-53 How do I view the world today?  Do I tend to focus on all the wrongs, evil, pain, suffering?  Do I lose sight of the mission I have from God to be an instrument of His peace to my world and the bigger world?  What is my approach to people who always seem to be negative and find the ‘bad’ in so many places?  When do I tend in this direction myself?  As my life has enfolded have I realized that God has a plan to redeem myself and every one in the world?  Do I want to be an active participant in God’s plan or am I suspicious?  Do I ever confront the difficulties and obstacles that seem to attack my beliefs and faith?  Do I realize they mainly are focused on living solely for myself and not for my brothers and sisters?  Have I found myself tending toward depression or despair?  Do I see that the struggles that are a part of so many lives like addictions, life-threatening violence, ...