Bread of Life

• The Catechism
• Patron Saints
• Papal History
• Stations of the Cross
• Catholic Prayers
• Wkly Word Archives
• Return to St. Joe's

He Gave His Only Son

"Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

John 21:29

• There should be less talk. A preaching point is not a meeting point.


• The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved-- they are Jesus in disguise.


• In the West there is loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than our poor in Calcutta. (Commonweal, Dec 19, 1997)


• It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.


• The poor give us much more than we give them. They're such strong people, living day to day with no food. and they never curse, never complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them.


• I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?


• I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness.


• Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.


• If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

~Mother Teresa~

Over the years I've heard that we should pray the old prayers. At one point I was looking for prayers for priests because of the troubles our church was having. And I'd been told to be creative in my prayers. Since I'm a convert from about 33 years ago, I'm very anxious about changing prayers around. However, I found a couple old prayers each stating about half of what I thought should be prayed at the time. So I cut them up a bit to eliminate duplicate wording, then added them together. And since we've been working around some religious people I wanted to include them in my prayers, too. The following is the resulting prayer:

"O my Jesus, I beg You on behalf of the whole church: Grant it love and the light of Your Spirit. Lord, give us holy priests and religious people, You yourself maintain them in holiness. O divine and Great High Priest, may the power of Your mercy accompany them eveywhere and protect them from the devil's traps and snares. May the power of Your mercy, O Lord, shatter and bring to naught all that might tarnish the sanctity of priests and religious people, for you can do all things. I ask You, Jesus, for a special blessing and for light for the priests before whom I will make my confessions throughout my lifetime. O Jesus, please keep all priests and religious people everywhere close to Your heart and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen."

After awhile, I remembered Fr. John taught us to personalize our prayers and I'm involved in Teams Of Our Lady. So I altered the above prayer as follows:

"O my Jesus, I beg You on behalf of the whole church: Grant Duane and me love and the light of Your Spirit. Lord, make us holy; You yourself maintain us in holiness. O Divine and Great High Priest, may the power of Your mercy accompany Duane and me everywhere and protect us from the devil's traps and snares. May the power of Your mercy, O Lord, shatter and bring to naught all that might tarnish the sanctity of our marriage, for you can do all things. I ask You, Jesus, for a special blessing and for light for the priests before whom we will make our confessions throughout our lifetime. O Jesus, please keep us everywhere close to Your heart and bless us abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen."