Pastor’s Letter: February 9, 2025

Pastor’s Letter: February 9, 2025

7 Feb 2025 | Posted by: chadmin

Dear St. Philomena Parish Family,

Blessings to you all this day! I hope everyone is healthy and well this week—I know many have been in the midst of sickness, especially at our school. As I am writing this, I decided to offer some extra prayer today for everyone’s physical health. Coupled with our St. Blaise throat blessings that we offered last week, may the Lord grant us good health…and good perseverance to those who are still in the midst of illness.

How is your prayer life? Most people I talk with say they feel like they don’t pray well…or that they aren’t consistent with prayer. Some feel too distracted…some want to try and handle things themselves. One of my favorite maxims on prayer was from Mother Teresa: “If you want to pray better, you just have to pray more.” It is a great reminder to keep going to the Lord, especially during those times where we don’t feel like our prayer is very fruitful.

Some might know a story about Mother Teresa and a bishop who was visiting her community. If you know the Missionaries of Charity, you know that they work very long days serving the poorest of the poor. Their long days are bookended by adoration prayer in the morning and evening, as well as some periodic prayer in the day…and of course the Mass each day. One time, a bishop was visiting and was completely amazed at how much the sisters were able to do in a day. Yet, being a practical man, he asked Mother Teresa, “Couldn’t you do even more work for the poor if you didn’t spend so much time praying?” She smiled and said in reply, “We could not do what we do if we weren’t strengthened by prayer.” She went on to challenge the bishop: “You should also pray this much every day.” He replied he would like to but he had so many meetings, travel, appointments…Mother Teresa interrupted him and said, “I understand, you don’t want to be productive!”

Without a doubt, prayer is one of the centerpieces of Christian life. Prayer is our conversation with God—our relationship with God. We know prayer can help give us the answers we need to difficult questions. We experience that prayer can be the strengthening we need to see the goodness of others and to serve in generosity and love like the Missionaries of Charity. No question, we know prayer is important! Yet, one of the things people say to me most often is, “I don’t know how to pray very well.” I hear it in almost any context with people of any age and life situation. It reminds me that we need to be more practical in our instruction, as well as help by modeling prayer even more. Of course, there is a tremendous amount of instruction for prayer within the Mass. We hear praise, petition, and thanksgiving. We pray with singing; we pray through meditation on the Scriptures. There are moments of communal prayer and periods of silence for personal prayer. The Mass really is a perfect prayer, because we are joined with the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus. The Mass is one place where we can really be confident in how we are talking with God…and how we are listening to Him.

But how can we pray when we are on our own during the week? How should we pray before starting a hard conversation? How do we pray when we are at odds with someone over something difficult? For many of us, it is hard to get going…hard to know what to say…hard to know if we are “praying the right way.” I know many of us often feel like we are too busy to really pray. Perhaps sometimes we give in to discouragement and we back off from prayer. Maybe like the bishop in the story above, we wonder if we could “do more” if we concentrated more on action. Yet, the wisdom of Mother Teresa reminds us of just how essential prayer is for us. If you find prayer difficult, I encourage you this week to try and be consistent each day. Just a few moments to say: God, thank you for this person in my life—a true gift to me…Lord, I am tired today and need extra strength…Jesus, help me be patient with this hard situation…Lord, help me know in my heart how you love me. Whatever you need in the day, just spend a few minutes telling God about it—and then spend just a couple minutes in quiet listening. Remember Mother Teresa’s wisdom, “If you want to pray better, you just have to pray more.”

As I’m finishing this writing, I am stopping a moment once again to pray for all of you—for all our faith family here at St. Philomena. I pray that this week will be one where we can take a moment of quiet to talk with God and experience the presence of God more deeply. I pray that we will receive the inspiration for deeper prayer and make the commitment to connect with God in prayer each day. Please pray for me also—please pray for ongoing health and for wisdom in helping our family grow! May God’s blessing be upon you and may the gift of prayer be strengthened in you in the days and weeks ahead!

In Christ,

Father Luke