Prayer for Reconciliation and Healing

WE are on the 39th day of the Lenten season.

Dear friends,

This is a personal sharing:

Tomorrow we celebrate the Palm Sunday, thus entering into the HOLY WEEK.

Let me share with you some exploratory questions and reflections which have helped me to evaluate my involvement in this season of Lent...

The Spirit of God has been generous with His indwelling presence in us and among us...

He has been accompanying us with innumerable inspirations to get out of our lethargy and prompting us to move from good to better...

Where am I now?

Let me stop for a few moments and ask myself a few searching questions:

Did I take the Lenten season seriously?

Can I claim that I have been purified by this season of penance and reconciliation?

What did I do in concrete terms to help my brothers and sisters who are "less privileged" than I am now? Did I go out of my way to say a "Hello" of recognition and compassion?

When I gave some money to help the poor, did it deprive me of something which I needed badly? If it did, thank God! My alms-giving has touched my being.

I did give something to the poor. But I do not feel that I have in any genuine way been deprived of any essential item that I need in my day-to-day life.

Well, the Spirit of the Lord tells me: "There is still time to go in for such "giving of self"? The sort of giving that pains you is a real experience of penance.

The word "penance" comes from the Latin word "Poena", and it means "penalty" or "punishment". We should not take these words in the negative sense. When we relate the words penance and alms-giving with the season of Lent they have to have that purifying effect.

Is my relationship with the Triune God so distant that I am still wondering about His redemptive love for me and others? Do I have some grudges, questions about Him and about His love? Yes, I realize that I have and they are cutting into my very being. But I also realize that God has been extraordinarily good to me. Well, it may sound like contradiction. But in spiritual life, these apparent contradictions are solved at the higher realms of trust in God and surrender to God. God can take the so-called contradictions in my life and transform them into His channels of grace and compassion. My faith tells me that this process is taking place within me. O God! You are inscrutable! Who can fathom your Depths? I surrender to You, O Lord of Compassion and Love.

Did I receive the sacrament of reconciliation with faith and fervor? Yes, I did when my spiritual instinct told me that needed purification.

How do I feel with regard to my interpersonal relationships? Do I feel at ease with every one in my family, community and the circle of friends?

Are there signs of tension, "hic-ups", in my interactions with others?

I realize that there are tensions in me with regard to these questions. But I can say that they are more in the emotional level and not in the sense that I do not want to for forgive. I have taken these experience to the Lord a number of times and have asked the Lord to heal me of these.

But alas! They raise their ugly heads every now and then and I do realize that I really stand in need of healing.

If we want to enter into an experience of peace and reconciliation, we have first to accept our strengths and weaknesses and take them to the Lord in prayer and consciously surrender them into His hands.

"What a friend we have in Jesus!

All our sins and griefs to bear.

Have we trials and temptations

Is there trouble anywhere ?

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer."

If and when we reach this stage, we are well on the way to deeper experience of the mysteries of Christ that we will be called upon to participate during the Holy Week.

May we experience the Lord's redemptive love during the Holy Week!

Amen! Come Lord Jesus!

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vmalpan@gmail.com

The tomb is not the end of it all!

!The Fourteenth Station:Jesus is Laid in the Sepulcher So great a love- so great a God- so great a day!AmenMy Jesus, You were laid to rest in a stranger's tomb. You were born with nothing of this world's goods and You died detached from everything. When You came into the world, men slept and angels sang and now as You leave it, Creation is silent and only a few weep. Both events were clothed in obscurity. The majority of men live in such a way. Most of us live and die knowing and known by only a few. Were You trying to tell us, dear Jesus, how very important our lives are just because we are accomplishing the Father's Will? Will we ever learn the lesson of humility that makes us content with who we are, where we are and what we are? Will our Faith ever be strong enough to see power in weakness and good in the sufferings of our lives? Will our Hope be trusting enough to rely on Your Providence even when we have nowhere to lay our head? Will our Love ever be strong enough not to take scandal in the cross? My Jesus, hide my soul in Your heart as You lie in the Sepulcher alone. Let my heart be as a fire to keep you warm. Let my desire to know and love You be like a torch to light up the darkness. Let my soul sing softly a hymn of repentant love as the hours pass and Your Resurrection is at hand. Let me rejoice, dear Jesus, with all the Angels in a hymn of praise ! Amen http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/stations/stat14.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You are invited to prayerfully reflect on the following: Enjoy a few quite moments of silence before reading the following… Let all the tension in you flow away… Read the following insights one by one; allow each sentence to touch your inner self… Do not rationalize… Just wonder… Let your whole self be changed for the better… The Spirit is praying within you! Amazing Grace! I have been granted the gift of another day! TODAY ! How did the universe come to be? However brilliant, educated, or experienced we may be, we do not know everything that there is to know… The more we know , the more we realize that we do not know… Happiness is not tomorrow. Happiness is now! In every word I say, each action I perform, God intervenes in history. "When you pass through the waters I will be with you;and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour." (Isaiah 43:2-3) vmalpan@gmail.com

Will of the Father is my Food

"Lord That I may See"

God is present and active in your life today. Listen to the whispers of His Spirit in you! Just discover the message God has for you today! Glory be the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be for ever and ever.Amen ************************** The Thirteenth Station:Jesus is Taken Down From the Cross My Jesus, it was with deep grief that Mary finally took You into her arms and saw all the wounds sin had inflicted upon You. Mary Magdalene looked upon Your dead Body with horror. Nicodemus, the man so full of human respect, who came to You by night, suddenly received the courage to help Joseph take you down from the Cross. You are once more surrounded by only a few followers. When loneliness and failure cross my path, let me think of this lonely moment and this total failure - failure in the eyes of men. How wrong they were - how mistaken their concept of success! The greatest act of love was given in desolation and the most successful mission accomplished and finished when all seemed lost. Is this not true in my life, dear Jesus? I judge my failures harshly. I demand perfection instead of holiness. My idea of success is for all to end well - according to my liking. Give to all men the grace to see that doing Your Will is more important than success. If failure is permitted for my greater good then teach me how to use it to my advantage. Let me say as You once said, that to do the Will of the Father is my food. Let not the standards of this world take possession of me or destroy the good You have set for me - to be Holy and to accomplish the Father's Will with great love. Let me accept praise or blame, success or failure with equal serenity.Amen

http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/stations/13.htm

vmalpan@gmail.com

What a Friend we have in Jesus

The Twelfth Station:Jesus Dies on the Cross

What A Friend We Have In Jesus by Alan Jackson

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Reflection

God is dead! No wonder the earth quaked, the sun hid itself, the dead rose and Mary stood by in horror. Your human body gave up it's soul in death but Your Divinity, dear Jesus, continued to manifest its power. All creation rebelled as the Word made Flesh departed from this world. Man alone was too proud to see and too stubborn to acknowledge truth.Redemption was accomplished! Man would never have an excuse to forget how much You loved him. The thief on Your right saw something he could not explain - he saw a man on a tree and knew He was God. His need made him see his own guilt and Your innocence. The Promise of eternal life made the remaining hours of his torture endurable. A common thief responded to Your love with deep Faith, Hope, and Love. He saw more than his eyes envisioned - he felt a Presence he could not explain and would not argue with. He was in need and accepted the way God designed to help him.Forgive our pride, dear Jesus as we spend hours speculating, days arguing and often a lifetime in rejecting Your death, which is a sublime mystery. Have pity on those whose intelligence leads them to pride because they never feel the need to reach out to the Man of Sorrows for consolation. Amen

http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/stations/12.htm

Mail to: vmalpan@gmail.com Thank you! May great things happen to you and through you!

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT: YEAR B

Way of the Cross 11th station The Eleventh Station:Jesus is Nailed to the Cross It is hard to imagine a God being nailed to a cross by His own creatures. It is even more difficult for my mind to understand a love that permitted such a thing to happen! As those men drove heavy nails into Your hands and feet, dear Jesus, did You offer the pain as reparation for some particular human weakness and sin? Was the nail in Your right hand for those who spend their lives in dissipation and boredom?Was the nail in Your left hand in reparation for all consecrated souls who live lukewarm lives? Were You stretching out Your arms to show us how much You love us? As the feet that walked the hot, dusty roads were nailed fast, did they cramp up in a deadly grip of pain to make reparation for all those who so nimbly run the broad road of sin and self-indulgence?It seems, dear Jesus, Your love has held You bound hand and foot as Your heart pleads for a return of love. You seem to shout from the top of the hill "I love you - come to me - see, I am held fast - I cannot hurt you - only you can hurt Me." How very hard is the heart that can see such love and turn away. Is it not true I too have turned away when I did not accept the Father's Will with love? Teach me to keep my arms ever open to love, to forgive and to render service - willing to be hurt rather than hurt, satisfied to love and not be loved in return..Amen http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/stations/11.htm

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Liturgy of the Day

READING: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12; Hebrews 5:5-13; John 12:20-33 SERMON : [The time was the roaring twenties. The place was Oklahoma. JohnGriffith was in his early twenties - newly married, and full ofoptimism. Along with his lovely wife, he had been blessed with abeautiful blue eyed baby.John wanted to be a traveller. He imagined what it would be like tovisit faraway places with strange sounding names. He would read aboutthem and research them. His hopes and dreams were so vivid that attimes they seemed more real than reality itself. But then came 1929and the great stock market crash. With the shattering of the economy came the devastation of John's dreams. Brokenhearted, he, like somany others, packed up his few possessions and with his wife andlittle son, Greg, headed east in an old Model-A Ford. They made theirway toward Missouri, to the edge of the Mississippi River, and thereJohn found a job tending one of the great railroad bridges thatspanned the massive river.Day after day John would sit in a control room and direct the enormousgears of that immense bridge over the river. He would look outwistfully as bulky barges and splendid ships glided gracefully underhis elevated bridge. Then, mechanically, he would lower the massivestructure and stare pensively into the distance as great trains roaredby and became little more than specks on the horizon. Each day helooked on sadly as they carried with them his shattered dreams and hisvisions of far-off places and exotic destinations.It wasn't until 1937 that a new dream began to be born in his heart. His young son was now eight years old, and John had begun to catch avision for a new life - a life in which Greg would work shoulder-to-shoulder with him, a life of intimate fellowship and friendship. Thefirst day of this new life dawned and brought with it new hope and anew fresh purpose. Excitedly father and son packed their lunches and,arm in arm, headed off toward the immense bridge. Greg looked on with wide-eyed amazement as his dad pressed down thehuge lever that raised and lowered the vast bridge. As he watched, hethought that his father must surely be the greatest man alive. Hemarvelled that his father could single-handedly control the movementsof such a stupendous structure.Before they knew it, noontime had arrived. John had just elevated the bridge and allowed some scheduled ships to pass through. Then, taking his son by the hand, they headed off for lunch. Hand in hand, theyinched their way down a narrow catwalk and out onto an observationdeck that projected some 50 feet over the majestic Mississippi. There they sat and watched spellbound as the ships passed by below. As they ate, John told his son, in vivid detail, stories about the marvellousdestinations of the ships that glided below. Enveloped in a world of thought, he related story after story, his son hanging on every word.Suddenly John and his son were startled back to reality by theshrieking whistle of a distant train. Looking at his watch indisbelief, John saw that the bridge was still raised and that theMemphis Express would be by in just minutes.Not wanting to alarm his son, he suppressed his panic. In the calmest tone he could muster, he instructed his son to stay put. Leaping to his feet he jumped onto the catwalk and ran at full tilt to the steel ladder leading into the control house. Once in, he searched the riverto make sure that no ships were in sight. And then, as he had been trained to do, he looked straight down beneath the bridge to makecertain nothing was below. As his eyes moved downward, he saw some thing so horrifying that his heart froze in his chest. For there, below him in the massive gearbox that housed the colossal gears that moved the gigantic bridge, was his beloved son. Apparently Greg had tried to follow his Dad but had fallen off thecat walk. Even now he was wedged between the teeth of two main cogs inthe gearbox. Although he appeared to be conscious, John could seethat his son's leg had already begun to bleed profusely. Immediately, an even more horrifying thought flashed in his mind. For in that instant John knew that lowering the bridge meant killing the apple of his eye. Panicked, his mind probed in every direction, frantically searchingfor solutions. Suddenly a plan emerged. In his mind's eye he sawhimself grabbing a coiled rope, climbing down the ladder, running downthe catwalk, securing the rope, sliding down toward his son andpulling him back up to safety. Then in an instant he would move back to the control room and grab the control lever and thrust it down justin time for the oncoming train.As soon as these thoughts appeared, he realized the futility of hisplan. There just wouldn't be enough time. Perspiration began to beadon John's brow., terror written over every inch of his face. His mind darted here and there, vainly searching for yet another solution. What would he do? What could he do? His thoughts rushed in anguish to the oncoming train. In a state of panic, his agonized mind considered the 400 or so people moving inexorably closer toward the bridge. Soon the train would come roaring out of the trees with tremendous speed. But this - this washis son - his only child - his pride - his joy. His mother - he could see her tear stained face now. This was their child, their beloved son. He knew in a moment there was only one thing he could do. He knew he would have to do it. And so, burying his face under his left arm, he plunged down the lever. The cries of his son were quickly drowned out by the relentless sound of the bridge as it ground into position. With only seconds to spare, the Memphis Express - with its 400passengers - roared out of the trees and across the mighty bridge. John Griffith lifted his tear stained face and looked into the windows of the passing train. A business man was reading the morning paper. A uniformed conductor was glancing nonchalantly at his large vest pocketwatch. Ladies were already sipping their afternoon tea in the dining car. A small boy, looking strangely like his own son, pushed a long thin spoon into a dish of ice-cream. Many of the passengers seemed tobe engaged in either idle conversation or careless laughter.But no one looked his way. No one even cast a glance at the giantgearbox that housed the mangled remains of his hopes and dreams. In anguish he pounded the glass in the control room and cried out,"What's the matter with you people? Don't you care? Don't you knowI've sacrificed my son for you? Want's wrong with you?"No one answered; no one heard. No one even looked. Not one of themseemed to care. And then, as suddenly as it had happened, it wasover. The train disappeared, moving rapidly across the bridge and outover the horizon. - - - - This story is but a faint glimpse of what God the Father did for us - of what Jesus did for us in offering up for us his own life.Unlike the Memphis Express, that caught John Griffith by surprise, God - in his great love for us - determined to sacrifice His Son so that we might live. As First Peter 1:20 says - "He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for our sake."Jesus was not accidentally caught in the gears of a bridge - as wasJohn's son. Rather he willingly sacrificed His life for the sins of human kind.Hear these words from today's gospel reading once again. "Now my soul is troubled." said Jesus. "And what should I say - 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name."The suffering and the death of Jesus had a purpose.Those who join themselves to him, those who grasp that he was lifted up on the cross for them, and in faith submit their own suffering and their own pain tohis, honour what God has done. Paul writes in I Corinthians, chapter one, verse 18 "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.""Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains buta single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit."It is difficult to comprehend the will of God, difficult to grasp justwhat He has done. But we know this - and we are called to accept this - and to embrace this -that it was done for us - so that we might live. Let us pray.... PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE O Lord - when we contemplate the sacrifice of Jesus - your Son - we are overwhelmed. Your mercy and your love know no human limitations. Your grace and your forgiveness are greater than all we can tell. Help us,O Lord, to declare your compassion and to give all praise and honour toyour most holy name. Put in us the willingness to follow where-ever youmay lead us.... Lord hear our prayer.... Lord we pray for all those who do not understand you this day -especially we pray for those who would blame you for the suffering thatthey or others must endure. Show them, O Lord, your will is entirelygood -- that you take upon yourself our pain, our guilt, our death, sothat we may live in wholeness and in eternal peace. Show them O God, andrelieve their distress.... Lord hear our prayer.... We pray, O Lord, for those who bear the cross of Christ this day, forthose who give of themselves without regard to the cost.... We pray forparents who care so deeply that they forget themselves for the sake oftheir children; for brothers and sisters who give up what is theirs sothat their siblings may prosper, for those of faith who sacrifice theirtime, their energy, and often their very lives, so that those around themwho are in need may be satisfied...... Lord hear our prayer.... Father, we pray for those who have been lifted up before you today inour sharing time - and we ask your blessing upon them.... We pray:d recovery period for Colin Lord hear our prayer...O Lord, accept all our prayers this day. We ask it in the name of ChristJesus, he who died that we might live, and who lives that we may neverdie. Amen] Rev. Richard J. Fairchild - Spirit Networks, 2003 - 2006 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Mail to : vmalpan@gmail.com