JSTM


 

 

  

 

A WORD FROM THE PASTOR

Storms of Life and Sinking Peter

The gospel passage gives us two insights which are very relevant for us in this pandemic time:

Call Jesus in the storms facing the Church and our lives. Let us approach Jesus with strong faith in his ability and availability to calm the storms in the life of the Church and in our lives. Church history shows us how Jesus saved his Church from the storms of persecution in the first three centuries, from the storms of heresies in the 5th and sixth centuries, from the storms of moral degradation and the Protestant reformation movement in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the storms of sex abuse scandals in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Now the practice of faith is rocking us during this pandemic time.

Jesus raising up PeterIt is the presence of Jesus which gives us peace even in the wildest storms of life: storms of sorrow, storms of doubt, tension and uncertainty, storms of anxiety and worries, storms of anger and despair, storms of temptations and storms in family relationship. But this demands a personal relationship with God, with Jesus, enhanced through prayer, meditative reading of Scripture and active participation in the Holy Mass.

We need to imitate the short prayer of sinking Peter: We are expected to pray to God every day with trusting faith for strengthening our personal relationship with Him and for acknowledging our dependence on Him.  But when we have no time or mental energy for formal prayers, let us use the short prayers in the gospels like Peter’s prayer: “Lord, save me,” or the prayer of the mother of the possessed girl: “Lord, help me,” or the blind man’s prayer: “Son of David, have mercy on me,” or the sinner’s prayer: “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.”

We get plenty of time during our travels to say the short prayers like the “Our Father”, “Hail Mary” and “Glory be to.” We may begin every day offering all our day’s activities to God and asking for His grace to do His will and conclude every day before we go to sleep, by asking God’s pardon and forgiveness for our sins. Keeping the Bible on our table will encourage us to read at least a few words of the Bible and thus listen to what God is telling us to do.

In the Service of the Lord,
   Father Thainese Alphonse

 

 

   
     
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