Thursday, May 5, 2022

Thursday of the Third Week of Easter

NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER-CINCO DE MAYO

Psalm 66, verse 16

Come and hear, all you who FEAR God, while I recount what has been done for me.

It is just that we recount how God has removed our faults and how he imputes no guilt on us when we sincerely repent and turn away from our sins and ask for forgiveness. Once He has freed us, it is then that we can gratefully receive the counsels of the Holy Spirit which show us our path.

The Shema Yisrael which is the same prayer the Christ prayed every morning tells us that God is to be loved.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your Heart, and with all your soul, and with your entire mind, and with all your strength.

Christ is the living example of God’s love for us. His heart could not rest until He repaid our debt. His soul was so tormented for love of us that He sweated blood in the garden for us. His mind was ever on us when He multiplied the loaves or healed the sick and with all His strength, He offered his life as an eternal sacrifice before the Father. He for love of us took the cup and drank it to the dregs during His passion.

To help us understand this love of His for us is the mission of the Confraternity of the Passion International [1] who document the full suffering of our Lord to show us how we are loved knowing that Christ and His mother weep over lost souls and delight over converted ones.

National Day of Prayer[2]

National Day of Prayer is an annual holiday that serves to encourage Americans to pray, meditate and repent. It is also used to draw awareness to prayer and religious beliefs. The origins of National Day of Prayer date back to 1787. Benjamin Franklin asked President George Washington to open each day with prayer, and to realize that prayer is deeply intertwined in the fabric of the United States. However, it was not until February 1952 during the Korean War that Reverend Billy Graham petitioned support of Representative Percy Priest to observe a National Day of Prayer. On April 17, 1952, President Harry Truman signed a bill proclaiming National Day of Prayer, to encourage Americans to turn to God in prayer and meditation. National Prayer Day is celebrated every year on the first Thursday of May.

National Day of Prayer Facts & Quotes

· 2020 marks the 69th Anniversary of the National Day of Prayer

· According to the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study of 2015, 23% of Americans have indicated that they are not part of any religion. The survey is based on responses of more than 35,000 Americans.

· On October 3, 2008, The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sued President George W. Bush and staff to challenge the designation of a National Day of Prayer. On April 14, 2011, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the National Day of Prayer did not cause harm and a feeling of alienation cannot suffice as injury.

· According to the Pew Research Center, more than 55% of Americans pray every day. 60% of older Americans are likely to pray every day, compared to 45% of young Americans.

· Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart. - Mahatma Gandhi, Civil Rights and Freedom Activist

National Day of Prayer Top Events and Things to Do

· Attend a religious service at your place of worship on the National Day of Prayer.

· Offer a prayer for your loved ones and for those who are serving at the frontlines to protect America.

· Attend a spiritual retreat that appeals to your beliefs.

· Practice mindfulness by focusing upon the internal and external experience of each moment of life. Mindfulness creates awareness and encourages one to be grateful for their blessings.

· Attend a prayer event on Prayer Day. There are many local events, some religious based, others meditation oriented.

Cinco de Mayo[3]

Today is Cinco de Mayo; sometimes referred to as Cinco de Drunko, due to the heavy consumption of alcohol connected with the hedonistic celebration. Cinco de Mayo is a relatively minor holiday in Mexico. However, in America it is up there with some of our most celebrated: like the Fourth of July and St. Patrick’s Day. The holiday has reinvented itself in America, from celebrating Mexico's win at the Battle of Puebla, to celebrating Mexican culture, and beer, and tequila. If we're being completely honest though, the actual meaning of Cinco de Mayo in America is pretty lost on us, but so is the meaning of St. Patrick’s Day. Today instead of following this hedonistic celebration try and make it to Mass today.

Things to Do[4]: other than drinking yourself into unconsciousness

Attend a Cinco de Mayo Festival. Popular such festivals can be found in San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.
Go eat or have drinks at a Mexican restaurant.
Make Margaritas with Mexican tequila.
Attend a Parade.
Make a piñata with your friends. Piñatas usually contain sweets or treats that fall out once it has been smashed open.

Instruction on Intemperance[5]

“Be sober and watch.” I. Peter v. 8.

St. Peter prescribes sobriety and watchfulness as necessary means for resisting the attacks of the devil, who by day and night goes about seeking whom he may devour. Woe to those who, by reason of their drunkenness, (The term drunkard applies to any person who is caught up in the addiction cycle, whether it is drink, gambling, drugs or sex.) live in a continual night and lie in the perpetual sleep of sin! How will it be with them if, suddenly awakened from this sleep by death, they find themselves standing, burdened with innumerable and unknown sins, before the judgment-seat of God? For who can number the sins, committed in and by reason of drunkenness, which the drunkard either accounts as trifles, easily pardoned, or else, not knowing what he has thought, said, and done in his fit of intoxication, considers to be no sins at all? Will the divine Judge, at the last day, thus reckon? Will He also find no sin in them? Will He let go unpunished the infamous deeds and the scandals of their drunkenness?

He Who demands strict account of every word spoken in vain, will He make no inquiry of so many shameful, scandalous, and blasphemous sayings, of so much time wasted, of so much money squandered, of so many neglects of the divine service, of the education of children, of the affairs of home, and of innumerable other sins? Will they be able to excuse themselves before this Judge by saying that they did not know what they were doing? Or that what they did was for want of reflection, or in jest? Or that they were not strong, and could not bear much? Will not such excuses rather witness against them that they are the worthier of punishment for having taken more than their strength could bear, thereby depriving themselves of the use of reason, making themselves like brutes, and, of their own free will, taking on themselves the responsibility for all the sins of which their drunkenness was the occasion? What, then, awaits them? What else than the fate of the rich glutton who, for his gluttony, was buried in hell? (Luke xvi. 22.)

Yes, that shall be the place and the portion of the drunkard! There shall they in vain sigh for a drop of water. There, for all the pleasures and satisfactions which they had in the world, as many pains and torments shall now lay hold of them (Apoc. xviii. 7); there shall they be compelled to drain the cup of God’s anger to the dregs, as they, in life, forced others into drunkenness. This is what they have to hope for, for St. Paul says expressly that drunkards shall not possess the kingdom of God (i. Cor. vi. 10). What then remains for them but to renounce either their intemperance or heaven? But how rare and difficult is the true conversion of a drunkard! This is the teaching of experience. Will not such a one, therefore, go to ruin?

Catechism of the Catholic Church

PART ONE: THE PROFESSION OF FAITH

SECTION TWO I. THE CREEDS

CHAPTER TWO-I BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST, THE ONLY SON OF GOD

ARTICLE 2 "AND IN JESUS CHRIST, HIS ONLY SON, OUR LORD"

III. The Only Son of God

441 In the Old Testament, "son of God" is a title given to the angels, the Chosen People, the children of Israel, and their kings. It signifies an adoptive sonship that establishes a relationship of particular intimacy between God and his creature. When the promised Messiah-King is called "son of God", it does not necessarily imply that he was more than human, according to the literal meaning of these texts. Those who called Jesus "son of God", as the Messiah of Israel, perhaps meant nothing more than this.

442 Such is not the case for Simon Peter when he confesses Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of the living God", for Jesus responds solemnly: "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." Similarly Paul will write, regarding his conversion on the road to Damascus, "When he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles..." "and in the synagogues immediately [Paul] proclaimed Jesus, saying, 'He is the Son of God.'" From the beginning this acknowledgment of Christ's divine sonship will be the centre of the apostolic faith, first professed by Peter as the Church's foundation.

443 Peter could recognize the transcendent character of the Messiah's divine sonship because Jesus had clearly allowed it to be so understood. To his accusers' question before the Sanhedrin, "Are you the Son of God, then?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am." Well before this, Jesus referred to himself as "the Son" who knows the Father, as distinct from the "servants" God had earlier sent to his people; he is superior even to the angels. He distinguished his sonship from that of his disciples by never saying "our Father", except to command them: "You, then, pray like this: 'Our Father'", and he emphasized this distinction, saying "my Father and your Father".

444 The Gospels report that at two solemn moments, the Baptism and the Transfiguration of Christ, the voice of the Father designates Jesus his "beloved Son". Jesus calls himself the "only Son of God", and by this title affirms his eternal pre-existence. He asks for faith in "the name of the only Son of God". In the centurion's exclamation before the crucified Christ, "Truly this man was the Son of God", that Christian confession is already heard. Only in the Paschal mystery can the believer give the title "Son of God" its full meaning.

445 After his Resurrection, Jesus' divine sonship becomes manifest in the power of his glorified humanity. He was "designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his Resurrection from the dead". The apostles can confess: "We have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Daily Devotions

· Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them in fasting: Today's Fast: True Masculinity