Br. Ed Van Merrienboer, OP

God called Jeremiah to become a prophet and promised to give him the words to speak when it was time. In life, we often find it difficult to know what to say at times. In conversations that matter, we should be open to prayer and allowing God to inspire us with the right words to say.

The spiritual bonds that we can form with others by living out the will of God can be even more profound and important than the the ties of kinship that bind us to our biological family.

While at sea with his disciples, Jesus rebuked a violent squall and told it to be quiet, and it obeyed. His disciples were amazed. Can we trust in the power of Jesus? Do we have a sense of the awesomeness of God?

Jesus famously said that we cannot serve two masters, God and mammon. If we serve God first, then we can have healthy attitude towards our own material goods, not clinging to them, but using them to help those who do not have enough.

The Letter of James advises those who are sick to be anointed with oil by the elders of the church, which is part of the basis for our Anointing of the Sick, a beautiful sacrament of healing and comfort that does not need to be put off until the end of life.

Building on Jesus' teaching against divorce and the Church's teaching that the family as the domestic church is the basic building block of a stable society, we are challenged to reach out to help families that are struggling, to help them draw closer to God's love.