Be remembered by what you love not by what you hate.

Consider This

Thank You, America!

In case you do not know, as a transplanted American (notice to hyphenation here) of Filipino descent, I am very aware and very sure of the great opportunities that the USA has afforded me and my family, which otherwise would not have been possible for us back in the PI.

I would like to take this time, after the 4th of July, to say thank you America.

You might find this a bit parochial, and probably politically incorrect, considering the US of A is a favorite country to hate among those outside AND inside its borders. And yet, strangely, the USA is still by far the most favorite travel destination for pleasure, fame or fortune.

Maybe you can share with our over 1000 readers why you, too, are thankful of your own country, wherever you may be.

Letters

The Lord surely works in mysterious ways...it seems just four short years ago my wife and I were going through some really turbulent times in our lives...I was resigning from a 15 year government career, her career was in jeopardy...we were just recovering from years of straddling a large amount of debt...our relationship was being tried, once again...things seemed to be spiraling out of control and we knew were headed for some really hard times and neither one us were really sure what sort of decisions we would make.

Strangely enough, when I think back now, almost simultaneously, as our "earthly" lives were seemingly being extinguished, our new heavenly lives were being established. I found a full scholarship to finish my bachelors at a prestigious catholic university and at the same time felt a need to return to my faith at baptism, the Catholic faith.

Our home, which we had been living in for many years, became a central point in a major revitalization plan in our city and we are now sitting on, as one appraiser put it, "a gold mine!" My wife, having kept her job, was accepted into a masters program at another prestigious university and is now an active alumni.

Not having children, we now have become thoroughly involved with our many nieces and nephews and international students by opening our home to them throughout the year so they can take advantage of educational opportunities. Our home is now chock full of kids who we enjoy advising and mentoring.

I have just started a masters program that will take me to China and many potential opportunities of a new career path. And most importantly, both my wife and I have embraced our faith (the Catholic faith) and are amazed at the many blessings that have come from what, at first, seemed like the end of our lives.

I cannot help but to contemplate how the Lord has just begun new lives for us. We know find ourselves actively planning for leading more faithful and purposeful lives, especially with regards to helping those less fortunate and those in other parts of the world. It's exciting...the way of the Lord, Amen.

More power and prayers to Tony and hiss family. Indeed, it is exciting - the way of the Lord.

Join the regular contributors to the newsletter by submitting a short article about your parish, comments, humor and prayer requests by using this link.

If you have a special occasion to celebrate or announce, please let us know by using this link.

Please remember our brothers and sisters who are requesting our prayers to help in seeing them through their own journeys. To visit the prayer request page, please click here.

Please also read the back issues of My Prayer Box Newsletter.

If you like My Prayer Box, please do a friend and me a big favor and let them know.

If a friend DID forward this to you and if you like what you read, please subscribe to My Prayer Box by clicking here.

1. Sunday Readings: Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2006
   
2. Today: Relevant Articles For Catholics
   
3. Cath Humor
   
4. Our Engine: SiteBuild It

Please visit the website at: My Catholic Tradition

Parish News

What's Cooking In My Parish: St. Antoninus in Newark, NJ, a charismatic catholic parish is hosting Father Anthony Ozele PhD from Nigeria at the 10AM Mass on Sunday July 16, 2006. Father Ozele, from the Warri Diocese is known as a very dynamic preacher who has led many to repentance. The mass will be followed by opportunities for healing prayer.

If you are interested or you live close to Ron's parish, send me an email so I can forward it to Ron.

To find out more about Father Anthony Ozele’s work, please go to this link.

Got news about your parish or community that you would like to share? The short questionaire will guide you. Fill it out as completely as you can. Write a short story about what your parish does in the community.

Just click here.

Sunday Readings

July 9, 2006
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2006

First Reading: Ez 2:2-5

As the LORD spoke to me,
the spirit entered into me
and set me on my feet,
and I heard the one who was speaking say to me:
Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites,
rebels who have rebelled against me;
they and their ancestors have revolted against me to this very day.

Hard of face and obstinate of heart
are they to whom I am sending you.
But you shall say to them: Thus says the LORD GOD!
And whether they heed or resist—for they are a rebellious house—
they shall know that a prophet has been among them.

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 123:1-2, 2, 3-4

R. (2cd) Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, pleading for his mercy.
To you I lift up my eyes
who are enthroned in heaven —
As the eyes of servants
are on the hands of their masters.

R. Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, pleading for his mercy.
As the eyes of a maid
are on the hands of her mistress,
So are our eyes on the LORD, our God,
till he have pity on us.

R. Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, pleading for his mercy.
Have pity on us, O LORD, have pity on us,
for we are more than sated with contempt;
our souls are more than sated
with the mockery of the arrogant,
with the contempt of the proud.

R. Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, pleading for his mercy.

Second Reading: 2 Cor 12:7-10

Brothers and sisters:
That I, Paul, might not become too elated,
because of the abundance of the revelations,
a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan,
to beat me, to keep me from being too elated.

Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me,
but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you,
for power is made perfect in weakness."
I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses,
in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.

Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults,
hardships, persecutions, and constraints,
for the sake of Christ;
for when I am weak, then I am strong.

Gospel: Mk 6:1-6

Jesus departed from there and
came to his native place, accompanied by his disciples.
When the Sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue,
and many who heard him were astonished.

They said, "Where did this man get all this?
What kind of wisdom has been given him?
What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!
Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary,
and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?
And are not his sisters here with us?"
And they took offense at him.

Jesus said to them,
"A prophet is not without honor except in his native place
and among his own kin and in his own house."
So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there,
apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.
He was amazed at their lack of faith.

Today

India: Mother Teresa’s Sisters Are Also Hostage to Fanatic Hinduists

Sandro Magister has a disturbing article about what is happening to Mother Theresa’s Sisters. The anti-conversion laws sought by the nationalist parties are fostering violence against Christians. The protest from the pope and from Indian cardinal Ivan Dias, the new prefect of “Propaganda Fide”

Please read the sample paragraphs below and read the full article. Pray.

ROMA, July 7, 2006 – The latest annual report on religious liberty in the world issued by Aid to the Church in Need, which was presented on June 27, indicates India as one of the countries in which “Christian missionary activity is the target of systematic violence that even reaches the point of homicide, as in the case of the Catholic priest Fr. Agnos Bara, and of the Protestant pastor Gilbert Raj.” And it denounces the “increasingly numerous anti-conversion laws adopted in various Indian states.”

Benedict XVI is aware of all of this. And he wants the world to know it, too. Last May 18, while receiving the new Indian ambassador to the Holy See, Amitava Tripathi, he called the attention of the government he represents back to this issue …

Ivan Dias, the archbishop of Bombay, intervened in defense of what Benedict XVI had said to the ambassador with a statement on May 23. Dias is the Indian cardinal who is preparing to move to Rome to lead the Vatican congregation “de Propaganda Fide” for the evangelization of the peoples.

Dias cites the following statistics of Christian service in India, which are startling:

“Christians in India number only 2.3% of the total population: of these 1.8% belong to the Catholic Church.

Despite being such a tiny minority, the Christians cater to:

• 20% of all the primary education in the country
• 10% of the literacy and community health care programmes
• 25% of the care of the orphans and widows
• 30% of the care of the handicapped, lepers and AIDS patients.

The vast majority of those who avail themselves of these institutions belong to faiths other than Christian.”

And yet the persecution has begun. Please read the full article from here. from here. .

Please Support Your Local Charities

For news that affect Catholic Life, please follow this link.

You can also subscribe to news concerning the Catholic community by following this link.

References On Catholic Apologetics

I really encourage you to read at least the following:

• ¹What Catholics Really Believe-Setting the Record Straight: 52 Answers to Common Misconceptions About the Catholic Faith, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1992, by Karl Keating, director Catholic Answers, a lay-run apologetics and evangelization organization, and editor of the magazine, This Rock. He is also the author of the best-seller, Catholicism and Fundamentalism.

• ²Nuts & Bolts: A Practical Guide for Explaining and Defending the Catholic Faith, Basilica Press, San Diego, 1999, by Tim Staples, a former Assemblies of God youth pastor who converted to the Catholic Church.

• ³Catholic Source Book, Harcourt Religion Publishers, 2000, by Rev. Peter Klein. Rev Peter Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Winona in Minnesota.

• ⁴Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Encyclopedia, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Huntington, Indiana, 1998, by Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas, editor. Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas is the author of eleven books and more than 500 articles. He is the founding editor of Catholic Answer and the administrator of St. John the Baptist Church of Bayonne, New Jersey. He likewise serves as adjunct professor of education at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

For more great information about our faith, please read Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Encyclopedia. This is an excellent addition to a Catholic family library. I refer to this book everytime I come across a questionable term. It is also a very good source of a summary of Catholic Doctines, without the deep and brooding terminologies.

What's that again?

• If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
• If you're born again, do you have two bellybuttons?
• One nice thing about egotists: They don't talk about other people.
• To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
• Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
• The older you get, the better you realize you were.
• I doubt, therefore I might be.
• Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
• Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
• Women like silent men, they think they're listening.
• Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
• Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
• A fool and his money are soon partying.
• Do pediatricians play miniature golf on Wednesdays?
• Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?
• If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?
• If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown too?
• If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2?
• If work is so terrific, how come they have to pay you to do it?
• If you ate pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry

Got any inspiring, good (clean) jokes or funny stories? Share them with us by using this link.

Our Engine

Check out the Quick Tour Slide Show!

Want to try to win a free copy of the "Genie In A Box?" Click right here!