Liturgical Resources

Reflection Time: Who has been a role model of a missionary heart in your life? Call to mind an example of how this person lived their missionary call.

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!

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.)

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."

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?

There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Emmanuel's veins; And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains; And sinners, plunged benath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.

For the 25th anniversary of the Kansas City Province of the Society of the Precious Blood.

Come, ev'ry soul by sin oppressed, There's mercy with the Lord, And he will surely give you rest By trusting in His word. Only trust Him, only trust Him, only trust Him now. He will save you, He will save you, He will save you now.

Down at the cross where my Savior died, Down where for cleansing from sin I cried, there to my heart was the blood applied; Glory to His name. Glory to His name, Glory to His name! There to my heart was the blood applied; Glory to His name.

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: