{"id":8443,"date":"2021-08-29T08:56:20","date_gmt":"2021-08-29T12:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/?p=8443"},"modified":"2021-08-29T08:56:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-29T12:56:20","slug":"from-fr-tom-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/2021\/08\/29\/from-fr-tom-50\/","title":{"rendered":"From Fr. Tom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Greetings to you all<\/strong>. <\/span>Hopefully your week was filled with <\/span>God and His Grace. At the beginning of my reflection for this <\/span>weekend I\u2019d like to ask: have you ever heard about a canned <\/span>heart? A canned heart is a closed heart where no one goes in <\/span>and no love goes out. <\/span>It doesn\u2019t get hurt. It is a well<\/span>–<\/span>preserved <\/span>heart with lots of preservatives! Inside a canned heart, there <\/span>are no turbulences, no crises, no life and no love. <\/span><\/div>\n
How many people\u2019s hearts today are canned? <\/span>Even within <\/span>our Catholic Church today! I think about everyone: the leaders <\/span>of the church, priests, religious, and about us. How often are <\/span>our hearts canned?! <\/span><\/div>\n
How do I know if my heart may be canned? When we hold <\/span>back our heart before God. When we hold back our heart our <\/span>love from others. When we are filled with hatred, guilt, hurts, <\/span>pride and other filth. What we need is a can opener <\/span>–<\/span>to open <\/span>our heart. Only Jesus is the can opener of all hearts. The only <\/span>thing that we should do is to allow Him to open your heart.<\/span><\/div>\n
We can apply this Gospel reading very easily to our life. It <\/span>says to us that we must not identify our religion or being <\/span>religious by just performing external acts like: going to church <\/span>on Sundays, attending Mass, saying prayers, reading the <\/span>Bible or giving to charity, because these do not guarantee us <\/span>holiness. What is most important is the love in our hearts that <\/span>motivates us to do what we do. We go to Mass and we pray to <\/span>God because we love Him so much. We give our charity to <\/span>those in need, because we love them. If our hearts are filled <\/span>with bitterness and pride, then all these external acts won\u2019t <\/span>make us holy before God and enter His Kingdom.<\/span><\/div>\n
If our heart is clean, if our heart is not divided, if our heart <\/span>is not canned, a lot of unclean things may enter us and not <\/span>soil us because the heart does not accept them. If our heart is <\/span>clean we may have seen something very obscene; we may <\/span>have been exposed to a lot of corruption; we may have heard <\/span>a lot of gossip; we may have heard about physical or mental <\/span>abuse, as Catholics today we may have been the object of <\/span>hatred. <\/span><\/div>\n
These occasions may disturb us and arouse strong feelings <\/span>or temptations in us. As long as we do not accept them or <\/span>consent to them in our heart, they have no power over us, <\/span>they do not defile us, but they may provoke us to show <\/span>everyone through our own actions what is the true image of <\/span>LOVE, what is the true image of our God who is LOVE! <\/span><\/div>\n
What is in your heart today? Where is my heart? Let\u2019s pray <\/span>today that God gives us an open heart and the grace to honor <\/span>Him not only with our lips, but especially with our hearts! <\/span><\/div>\n
Prayer Basket….coming up! <\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
How many intentions do we bring to Jesus when we come <\/span>to church? A lot…. our hearts are always filled with worship, <\/span>praise, supplication, petition or intercession, or gratitude. We <\/span>bring all of those intentions believing that God will hear and <\/span>listen to our prayers and give us what we need. <\/span><\/div>\n
Next weekend you\u2019ll have an opportunity to write your <\/span>intentions on a paper and place them in the Prayer Basket. <\/span>The Basket will be displayed by the picture of Merciful Jesus, <\/span>close to the Memorial Board, by the back wall. Over the <\/span>weekend, at each Mass, the prayer basket will be brought to <\/span>the altar during the offertory procession. Each Monday <\/span>evening the Intercessory Prayer Team will pray for and over <\/span>these intentions. On Fridays we\u2019ll place these prayers in the <\/span>front of the Blessed sacrament during adoration.<\/span><\/div>\n
I encourage you to bring your prayers, intentions, bring all <\/span>of these people for whom you pray for regularly, pray for those <\/span>who have asked you for your prayers, for our country, our <\/span>world, for every intention of your heart and place them in the <\/span>Prayer Basket. <\/span><\/div>\n
I truly believe that this form of devotion will help us be <\/span>more open, more specific, precise, and more trustful, but also <\/span>knowing that other people will be praying for my intentions <\/span>would bring more hope and peace in our hearts. Don\u2019t be <\/span>afraid, bring your intentions before Jesus and just have <\/span>FAITH. <\/span><\/div>\n
Fr. Tom<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Greetings to you all. Hopefully your week was filled with God and His Grace. At the beginning of my reflection for this weekend I\u2019d like to ask: have you ever heard about a canned heart? A canned heart is a closed heart where no one goes in and no love goes out. It doesn\u2019t get hurt. It is a well–preserved heart with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fr-tom","ctfw-no-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8444,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8443\/revisions\/8444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}