“You are a priest forever.” — Psalm 110:4
Fr. Al Lauer, founder and long-time author of One Bread, One Body, often told this story about God’s perspective on fasting: “A man once told God in prayer that he hated the way his priest ran the parish. God responded by telling him to fast for his priest on one meal a day for three months. At the end of the first month, the man reminded God that he had kept his fast, but God hadn’t changed the priest at all. After two months, the man grumbled to God that his priest wasn’t changing at all, and he was about to quit fasting since he didn’t see much good from all his sufferings. Finally, three months passed. As the man was attending Mass in his parish, God reminded him that the three months were up. The man had forgotten the deadline since he had given up his fast weeks ago. God asked him how he thought his priest was doing. The man responded: “Oh, him? Father’s doing just fine!”
Would you like to get a lot of priestly vocations fast? Then fast a lot for priestly vocations. Would you like someone you love to be converted? Then fast for that purpose. When the Lord sees we are regularly fasting for an intention, He’ll know that our prayers are serious and that we want it enough to sacrifice for it.
Fasting gives evidence of our personal commitment. God wants to know that we are truly fasting for His sake, for what He wants. “Was it really for Me that you are fasting? Or was it not rather for yourself?” (see Zec 7:5-6) Fasting breaks bonds, sets God’s will in motion (Is 58:9-14), and puts everything in “fast forward.” When God’s people truly hunger for His will to be done, for His Church, for holy vocations, for conversions, for an end to abortion, then they will fast (Mk 2:20).
Prayer: Father, may I hunger for Your will more than for food.
Promise: Jesus “became the Source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.” —Heb 5:9
Praise: Before Jeanne died at the age of sixteen, she led her best friend and that friend’s family to Jesus.

January 19, 2015 by dgcree

Have faith in Christ, and love

From a letter to the Ephesians by Saint Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr

Try to gather together more frequently to give thanks to God and to praise him. For when you come together frequently, Satan’s powers are undermined, and the destruction he threatens is done away with in the unanimity of your faith. Nothing is better than peace, in which all warfare between heaven and earth is brought to an end.
None of this will escape you if you have perfect faith and love toward Jesus Christ. These are the beginning and the end of life: faith the beginning, love the end. When these two are found together, there is God, and everything else concerning right living follows from them. No one professing faith sins; no one possessing love hates. “A tree is known by its fruit.” So those who profess to belong to Christ will be known by what they do. For the work we are about is not a matter of words here and now, but depends on the power of faith and on being found faithful to the end.
It is better to remain silent and to be than to talk and not be. Teaching is good if the teacher also acts. Now there was one teacher who “spoke, and it was made,” and even what he did in silence is worthy of the Father. He who has the word of Jesus can truly listen also to his silence, in order to be perfect, that he may act through his speech and be known by his silence. Nothing is hidden from the Lord, but even our secrets are close to him. Let us then do everything in the knowledge that he is dwelling within us so that we may be his temples and he may be God within us. He is, and will reveal himself, in our sight, according to the love we bear him in holiness.
“Make no mistake,” my brothers: those who corrupt families “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” If those who do these things in accordance with the flesh have died, how much worse will it be if one corrupts through evil doctrine the faith of God for which Jesus was crucified. Such a person, because he is defiled, will depart into the unquenchable fire, as will any one who listens to him.
For the Lord received anointing on his head in order that he might breathe incorruptibility on the Church. Do not be anointed with the evil odour of the teachings of the prince of this world, do not let him lead you captive away from the life that is set before you. But why is it that we are not all wise when we have received the knowledge of God, which is Jesus Christ? Why do we perish in our stupidity, not knowing the gift the Lord has truly sent us?
My spirit is given over to the humble service of the cross which is a stumbling block to unbelievers but to us salvation and eternal life.