Your Love, Your Love, is all that really matters

Dear LORD,

I pray for my friends tonight and their intentions. I pray particularly for Paisley Hays, and that the Infant Viability Bill passes in Australia, and I pray for her and for her parish priest, currently on sabbatical. I pray for Nora Sailor's children, that they be filled with Your Holy Spirit to overflowing. I pray for Phil and for a surly Peach, that they be good and holy parents to their children and that they draw closer to you. I pray for Phil that he resist temptation like St. Padre Pio and St. John Vianney. I pray for Paul Grandi, Judy Riggs, and Rachel Lamb. I pray for all those today who need You, but don't know to ask or don't have the strength to ask. I pray for my family this Memorial Day weekend as they pray for me as I run my first marathon. Please comfort them, those silly geese!

I pray in thanksgiving for all the blessing You have rained down on me: my family and friends, my work, my good health, food on the table, a roof above my head. The very, very simple things that so many do not have today, and that so many others take for granted, not for gifted.

And Love. Your Love is never-ending. Please, LORD, be with those who need You most today.

I pray all this in the Name of Jesus, the Christ.

Amen.

A 'Case of the Mondays'

Dear LORD,

Please help me.

Please help me to be productive and helpful, kind and charitable at work. Please help me not to be angry and bitter, sullen and spiteful. Please take my anger and fear, my dislike of this new job, into Your hands and forge it anew, transform this passionate distaste into a passionate desire to help and then into a passion for my work that does help. Translate passion into passion. Make me an instrument, not of destruction and sabotage but of an example of Your Grace, a guiding light for my coworkers to admire and to emulate. Turn my place of work from being dispirited to being inspired.

LORD, I need the gifts of the Holy Spirit today, now, and as I go into work, and stumble and fail. When I do that, do not let me wallow, but pick me up, so that I may try again, and keep trying until it works, and I work, and we all work.

Labora, a gift from you. Please let it be so for me and my coworkers today, and everyday.

I ask this in the Name of Jesus, the Christ.

Amen.

The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are:

1. Wisdom
2. Understanding
3. Counsel
4. Fortitude
5. Knowledge
6. Piety
7. Fear of the LORD

Auld Lang Syne

Dear LORD,

Last, or, penultimate, day of work at Fannie Mae for the present.

Thank You for allowing me to start this last day correctly in Your Presence, LORD. Funny how we are always in the present in Your Presence, but we are always dwelling on the past or always worrying about the future. Why is that, LORD? Why is it that we dwell on the things we can no longer change or worry about the things that will most likely never come to pass? Why cannot we always be, now, like You, and instead of dwelling or worrying we could simply be, like You, and praise the gift You've given us, every second: the Present?

Thank You, LORD, for today. Thank You LORD, for the gifts that You are giving me today: my wife, who loves me and understands me and accepts me, no matter how trying I am. Thank You for the gifts of my children, who, no matter how stern, strict, and angry I can be with them, still forgive me and se me as their 'funny Papa.'  Thank You for letting me lose my cell phone last Thursday, allowing me to unplug from pointless distractions and plug back into what really matters: You, my family — my life.  Perhaps this job-chage will be to me what Father Berez's trials were to him: a roommate in seminary that he didn't want and an assignment to St. Michael, a parish he didn't ask for in prayer — stumbling blocks that became cornerstones in his life. Perhaps leaving this very good thing where I am loved and accepted, and going onto this new thing where I will start over and rebuild trust and understanding, are blessings from You.

Please make it so?

I ask these things in the Name of Jesus, the Christ.

Amen.