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The Online Prayer book is a gift from the Holy Family Community and friends who contribute reflections, art, music, technical assistance, and proofreading skills. Original Music for this Prayer Book is from our own Holy Family Parishioner Ben Coria, 5:30 Mass Music Director. If you would like to participate in this wonderful book, please contact Dawn Pon- net at dponnet@holyfamily org Memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop & Dr. of the Church Jeremiah 15:10, 16-21 Psalm 59:2-3, 4, 10-11, 17, 18 Matthew 13:44-46 SUMMARY The first reading is the Prophet Jeremiah complaining about the all the trouble he has met with in trying to teach others about the word of God. People were full of contempt and scorn for him and so Jeremiah laments about it would be better to not to have been born. God reminds Jeremiah that He will protect him. The Gospel reading details Jesus analogy of heaven being like the most wonderful treas- ures found here on Earth and we would give up all we have to experi- ence Heaven. REFLECTION God tells Jeremiah that all those who believe in Him and who trust in him will be protected against their enemies, I will free you from the hand of the wicked, and rescue you from the grasp of the violent. God is always there for us, even in our darkest moments when we might feel alone, distrustful, slandered against or persecuted; God is there to rescue us from the hand of the wicked. How comforting to know that God is there accepting us, protecting us and guiding us! Too many times we lament about our lives and the impossibility of our situations, but as Jeremiah did, we must believe and have faith in our God and his ability to free us and protect us. Jesus reminds us of this in the Gospel. Heaven is like a wonderful jewel, ready for us, welcoming us and all it takes is faith and belief, we just need to give away our doubt and our life to God and in return we get the most re- markable gift in return! PRAYER Dear Heavenly Father On this wonderful feast day of Saint Alphon- sus Liguori, help us to emulate him. He gave away his care-free life and his career to heed your call and help those less fortunate. Help us to have faith in Your journey for us and have heed Your call to us. We ask this through our Lord Jesus. Amen. _______ Vicky Ryan Parishioner Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time Jeremiah 18:1-6 Psalm 146:1B-2, 3-4, 5-6AB Matthew 13:47-53 SUMMARY In the human journey, we experience great joy and devastating darkness, empowering courage and paralyzing fear, uplifting success and dejecting failure, but the hand of God, like the potter with her clay or the fisherman casting his nets, cherishes each one of us in various states of grace. REFLECTION Shortly before we were married 15 years ago, I met a potter named Bob on the volcanic island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. Bob was from Maine, and he decided in his 50s to join the Peace Corps to introduce the potters wheel to potters who had spent a lifetime making pots, pitch- ers, candlesticks and vases slowly and lovingly by hand. The bowl pictured here with the tree of life was made by Bob, a wedding gift from a mutual friend, and I have both this piece with the perfect base from a pot- ters wheel and other pieces made by hand in the Nicaraguan tradition, and all are perfectly useful and beautiful. In both the first reading and the gospel, God breathes messages of the necessity of good and evil in every facet of life. This message is revealed to Jeremiah through the work of the potter: Whenever the object of clay which he was making turned out badly in his hand, he tried again Like- wise, in the gospel of Matthew, in the middle of a string of parables, Jesus described the kingdom of heaven being like a large net of all the fish in Gods creation, including both the old and the new, the good and the bad. In the end, the good will triumph over evil. I distinctly remember that when I came home from Nicaragua, I realized that my world and culture had been measured largely by progress . Pro- gress was good; being stagnant was bad. This dualistic, black and white thinking has, needless to say, gotten me into a lot of trouble in my spiritual journey, and by the grace of God in the last few years, these readings have rung true for me. We need both progress andandand setbacks, and, in fact, the Lord exists as the kernel of truth in all realms of this beautiful life. PRAYER Lord, I invite you to dwell in me, so that I may see you in the face of my community in all of its humility and glory. Your word reveals that any progress in our eyes is really the stroke of your loving hand. I pray that you will release me from my du- alistic mind so that I may realize the ne- cessity of each experience and of all creation. May the Nicaraguan fish vase below remain a symbol for me of your vast, life-giving kingdom as I pray in Je- sus name, Amen _______ ERIN MALONEY Education/Formation Commission Member Memorial of St. John Vianney Jeremiah 26:11-16, 2 Psalm 69:15-16, 30-31, 33-34 Matthew 14:1-12 SUMMARY At the urging of priests and prophets who spoke to princes and the people, Jeremiah was threatened with death because he had called the city to repentance and reform from evil ways and deeds. Jeremiah was rescued after the princes and the people recognized and then told the prophets and the priests that Jeremiah had spoken in the name of God. Not only the great servants of God like Jeremiah, but also, the Psalmist declares, the lowly and the poor too who seek God may be glad in and rescued by his great love. Matthew tells us that, when Herod became aware of Jesus mighty powers, he feared that Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead. REFLECTION In linking the mission of Jeremiah, a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:3) and the ministry of John the Baptist, of whom Jesus said, among those born of women there has been none greater (Matthew 11:11) to the life of a truly humble French parish priest, John Mary Vianney, the Church retells us how the lowly who discern and do gladly routine work as Gods work allow God to do great things. Jeremiah and John were probably extraordinarily gifted men. But, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vianneys difficulties in making the preparatory stud- ies [for priesthood] seem to have been due to a lack of mental suppleness in dealing with theory as distinct from practice a lack accounted for by the mea- greness of his early schooling, the advanced age at which he began to study, the fact that he was not of more than average intelligence, and that he was far ad- vanced in spiritual science and in the practice of virtue long before he came to study it in the abstract. Jeremiah publicly proclaimed reform, and John publicly preached repentance. But Vianney spent thousands of hours hearing private confessions, one soul at a time. Jeremiah and his vocation were known to God before God formed him in the womb. (Jeremiah 1:3.) In Elizabeths womb, John jumped for joy over the divine presence in Marys womb (Luke 1:41), a sign of Johns unique voca- tion to make way for the Messiah. John Vianney found the Mary within him in the womb of the confessional up to 18 hours a day during the last 10 years of his life -- where his priesthood bore extraordinary fruit, reconciling the great and the lowly who repented of their sins and resolved to reform their lives in Christ. God also revealed to John Mary his other gifts such as supernatural knowledge to see a sinners unacknowledged sins. John Marys spiritual direction came to be in great demand; in 1855, for example, the pilgrims who journeyed to see him reached 20,000. We are always pilgrims, even in the comforting wombs of our own homes. How may I, like John Mary, humbly allow you to work more fully through me in the rou- tine responsibilities of my life? Let me, like John Vianney and Mary, the mother of Jesus, see my lowliness so that your Word. may bear fruit through me. PRAYER We pray for all parish priests and especially for our priests at Holy Family in grati- tude for their humanity, their parents, their prayers, their many gifts to this com- munity. And, together with St. John Mary Vi- anney, we pray in gratitude for them espe- cially today as confessors, spiritual directors, and ministers of the sacrament of Recon- ciliation. ______ PHIL ARGENTO , Chair Worship Commission MEMORIAL OF SAINT DOMINIC , PRIEST Jeremiah 31:1-7 Jerermiah:31:10, 11-12 ab, 13 Matthew 15:21-28 SUMMARY Matthews gospel recounts the unusual story of the Canaanite woman who de- sires healing for her daughter and who is initially spurned by Jesus, because as a non-Jew she is not part of his mission. Her faith is a remarkable counterpoint to the lack of faith displayed by his own people, and convinces Jesus to heal her daughter.