Homilies and Reflections

I would venture to say that most of the images of blood that we are exposed to reveal situations here blood is poured out in violence. We see casualties of war, shooting in the street and domestic violence in the home. Blood is seen s a scary thing. For some, the very sight of blood causes them to turn pale, get light headed and pass out on the floor!

Near the end of the year at our little Catholic school, in the Gospel at the children's mass we heard Jesus tell his followers that unless they became like little children, they could not enter the kingdom of heaven. I love that reading and the children probably do too. It is a vindication for their way of life. Nearly always the situation is reversed and they are shown adult role models and told to act more grown up. Once in a blue moon, in church, they get to listen in as the grownups are told to act more like children.

Over the years that our oldest son, now a senior, played high school football, I experienced a slow conversion from being someone who hated football and most other sports to someone who could on occasion tell a guard from a tackle. (The guard is next to the center and the tackle is on the end of the offensive line, duh.)

Our sixth grader's basketball games in our little Christian league always began with a prayer. Players, coaches and officials gathered at the center of the court and recited the same prayer each week from battered pieces of paper that were collected to be used again the following week.

But at one away game last season, somebody forgot to pack the prayer papers. There was a moment of stunned silence before one of the coaches on the opposing team volunteered to lead an extemporaneous prayer.

In the life of a missionary, what goes around comes around. Nearly 20 years ago Fr. David Kelly, C.PP.S., met a young man named Xavier McElrath-Bey when Fr. Kelly went to minister at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago.

"I was facing a murder charge, and Fr. Kelly was a great source of consolation to me," McElrath-Bey said. "He shared the Word of God with me, and he kept me motivated, thinking about my future."

The members of a parish draw comfort and strength from each other. That spiritual strength can also stretch far beyond the walls of the parish church.

At Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Ottawa, Ohio, as at many Precious Blood parishes, the people have initiated outreach to C.PP.S. missions in other countries. Sts. Peter and Paul has a twinning relationship with the C.PP.S. mission in Guatemala.

If you had to define your spiritual life, if you had to identify its characteristics as if it were a new species of butterfly, could you do it? How would you describe your spirituality? Are you a contemplative, a mystic, a missionary, a preacher, a poet, a doer, a disciple? What songs and prayers most stir your spiritual imagination? What path calls to you on your walk of faith?

"...I understand that Joe and I are following the Moderator General’s retreat of last year (Fr. Francesco Bartoloni’s) very successful retreat of 2006. Let it be known that neither Joe or I have aspirations for the MG position..."

Last fall, while I was on retreat, I came across a poster that caught my eye. It was a picture of a mother holding her infant and the caption read: “Every human being began in the heart of God.” There is something about the image of a heart that speaks a language all its own. We hear it in such simple phrases such as: