Words From Fr Ed (From July 10th, 2011 Bulletin)

“But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears, because they hear.”

There was an expression in Illinois that went like this, “knee high by the fourth of July”. It referred to the height of the corn. If it was less than ‘knee high’ then the farmers were worried about the condition of their crop. With good soil, good seed, and good weather, corn flourishes in Illinois. Our Gospel today speaks of a sower sowing seed into various conditions of the soul. What conditions are you giving to God for His word to grow in your life?

Are you regularly sowing His word in to your heart? Are your ears blessed by what they hear? Are you vigilantly weeding out those vices, the cares and riches that can choke the life of Christ in your soul? Do you spend an appropriate amount of time in prayer every day, enriching your mind with the truth of God’s love? All these can help us to become the soil that receives God’s word and bears abundant fruit. Consider using your summer to prepare for an extraordinary harvest. How about 10 minutes of prayer every day? What about 10 minutes of study every day? 10+10 would tend to radically transform us as the Body of Christ.

Harvest
The Lord asks us to pray for harvesters, to be sent into a ripe harvest. Would you be willing to share your faith with others? RCIA is a great opportunity to both increase one’s faith and understanding while helping others to become Catholic. Please consider being a sponsor this coming year of RCIA. The harvest is ripe. Remember, RCIA is not just for the unbaptized! Contact Cynde Bosshart (253-631-1940 x104 or cyndebosshart@gmail.com) for details.

Pallium
For a good photo of our Archbishop’s investiture in the pallium by Pope Benedict along with our Pope’s homily for the occasion, see the June 29th entry at: http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/.

Commandments for Husbands and Fathers, cont.
I. Develop your relationship with Jesus
II. Get your priorities in order: Jesus, wife, children, work, etc.
III. Take priestly responsibility in your home
IV. Monitor what your children are being taught in school.
V. Pray with your wife regularly. Try to keep a simple, but sincere spiritual journal and share it with her, even if your entries are just short, inspirational sentences. Trust the Lord to guide, purify and sanctify your relationship with your wife. She is the “heart” of the home. Reverence her as such. Love her with the same love and affection Christ has for His Church. Remember that your sons will grow up to relate to women in a way they saw you relate to your wife. Similarly, your daughters will learn from their father what to expect from men in a relationship. Share with your wife her burdens, her sorrows, and her joys. Ask the Lord for the strength to love her with the same love and purity with which He loves His Bride, the Church. (from Fr. Wade Menesis at: www.fathersofmercy.com/our_apostolates/missionaries/menezes).

[From Fr. Ed: What a gift from God, to have a prayer partner. This is a great treasury for married couples that is rarely opened. The Proverbs speak of a ‘worthy wife… [whose] husband, entrusting his heart to her, has an unfailing prize.” (Prov. 31:10-11) Prayer helps to build this trust and spiritual intimacy. It is ultimately this intimacy that lasts forever. Jesus said, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage…” While there is no marriage between individuals love remains. St. Catherine of Sienna said that souls in heaven “…know a special kind of sharing with those whom they loved most closely with a special love in the world, a love through which they grew in grace and virtue….in everlasting life they have not lost that love; no, they still love and share with each other even more closely and fully…” (Dialogues 41) I encourage couples that I marry to pray daily together. Even if you are in bed and ready for sleep, reach over and hold hands and say a prayer together thanking God for each other and all the graces God has given you that day.

One other resource I can recommend is E5 Men at: www.e5men.org/. It is in Ephesians 5 that Paul admonishes husbands to love their wives. One of the programs of E5 is for husbands to fast on the first Wednesday of the month, praying for their wives’ well-being. Imagine the power in that sacrifice of love.]

Book Recommendation
I just finished a little treasure, Five Loaves and Two Fish by Francis Xavier Cardinal Nguyen. It is a short collection of meditations on his 13-year imprisonment in Vietnam. He writes of how his faith was both challenged and sustained. He shares his experience of Phu Khanh Prison Camp in 1976:
"My morale was at its lowest. I was almost in despair. In the darkness of my cell, cut off from my diocese, from God’s people, from any human contact, I could not do a thing for anyone; I could not even talk to anyone; I felt completely useless. I prayed, but God did not seem to hear. Then all of a sudden I saw, as if in a vision, Christ on the cross, crucified and dying. He was completely helpless…certainly worse off than me in my prison cell. Then I heard a voice-was it His voice? – saying: ‘At this precise moment on the cross, I redeemed all the sins of the world."
Francis Cardinal Nguyen, pray for us.