26 Oct Thu 29th Week in Ordinary Time Eph. 3:14-21 Ps. 33:1-2, 4-5, 11-12, 18-19 Lk. 12:49-53 How To Pray With Shalom Home Page of Shalom Index of This Month        "May you be planted in love and built on love, so you will be filled with the fullness of God". With these words of the first reading, St Paul asks the Father to strengthen through His Spirit those who have become Christians, that they may understand deeply each day the greatness of their call. A very much needed grace for all of us today, and much in the context of the Gospel.     The words of Jesus prophesize the difficulties of the time He came to inaugurate. He is worried because His time, our time, is not a time of pleasure and easiness. It is a time of decisions which radically divide us. We are not yet in the time of perfect and total peace and to work for it provokes divisions and tensions among us.     With St Paul let us ask that the love of Christ may live in our hearts so that knowing His love we may make the right decisions and live in peace within ourselves and with one another.      Lord, in these critical times, we need Your wisdom to make the right decisions. DAILY OFFERING Eternal Father, I offer You everything I do this day; my thoughts, words, joys and sufferings. Grant that, vivified by the Holy Spirit and united to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, my life this day may be of service to You and to others. I also pray that all those preparing for marriage discover in Sacrament the source of Christ's grace for living a fithful and fruitful love. Amen. PRAYING WITH THE CHURCH INTENTION That young married couples may be sustained by the example and assistance of their parents and other families MORE
- END - P R A Y I N G    W I T H    T H E    C H U R C H     INTENTION : That young married couples may be sustained by the example and assistance of their parents and other families The testimony and help that parents and other families must offer to sustain young married couples finds its place in the ambit of post-matrimonial pastoral care. Parents and other families are the most suited to offer this assistance to young spouses because clearly they have lived personally the values which they must transmit. These parents show faithfulness through living in the best possible way the commitments assumed during their marriage. One could ask, but why is it necessary for young couples to be sustained by the testimony of their parents and other families? The answer is, because today there are many negative attitudes which scandalise and discourage young people. Being new to the condition of matrimonial life they need advice, encouragement, moral support, correction and prayer. They cannot be left alone or abandoned in this phase of their lives. Couples need to take advantage of the wealth of the experience and wisdom of their parents. "The pastoral action of the Church must be progressive, also in the sense that it must accompany the family, following it step by step in the various stages of its formation and development," (Familiaris Consortio n65, 69). - END -