//The Contemplative Monk//
Christmas Wish List
Begin and End Your Days With Thoughts of Gratitude
//Clergy Coaching Network//
The Catechism in a Year – Day 287 – The Gratitude of Children
Gratitude is the proper response of children toward their parents. Out of this gratitude comes respect. When we are children at home, this respect includes “true docility and obedience.” Fr. Mike emphasizes respect for parents doesn’t expire when we leave home as adults. Grown children are responsible for caring for and supporting their parents in their old age. As Fr. Mike stresses, this can be the simple but often overlooked phone call to mom or dad. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2214-2220.
Click on link: https://youtu.be/3RScC-G64J8?si=ieSuZlY5YRXZ0c10
Gratitude Unlocks the Fullness of Life
//Clergy Coaching Network//
A Way to Practice Gratitude
It can be easy in our modern world to fall into the trap of envy and jealousy. When we dedicate our energy and focus on what others have, we can get lost in what we don’t have.
But God hopes to remind us of a powerful truth through the practice of gratitude.
Today, Fr. Mark-Mary shares a secret for growing in gratitude and harnessing the power of living in the reality of who God has chosen us to be.
(See Ephesians 1:3-10)
Practice Gratitude
//Clergy Coaching Network//
Minute Meditation – Another Year Ends
As another year draws to an end, let us pause before the manger and express our gratitude to God for all the signs of his generosity in our life and our history, seen in countless ways through the witness of those people who quietly took a risk. A gratitude that is no sterile nostalgia or empty recollection of an idealized and disembodied past, but a living memory, one that helps to generate personal and communal creativity because we know that God is with us. God is with us. Today the Word of God introduces us in a special way, to the meaning of time, to understand that time is not a reality extrinsic to God, simply because he chose to reveal himself and to save us in history. The meaning of time, temporality, is the atmosphere of God’s epiphany, namely, of the manifestation of God’s mystery and of his concrete love.
—from the book The Peace of Christmas: Quiet Reflections from Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek
Daily Reflection – Embrace Your Cross with Humility and Gratitude
Daily Reflection – Gratitude Changes Our Lives
Minute Meditation – An Attitude of Gratitude
Many were the occasions, when speaking with the friars or other people, that Solanus would extol the importance and necessity of gratitude. His letters express this theme over and over. He calls gratitude “the first sign of a thinking, rational creature.” …To some people asking for God’s help in their needs, he would suggest that they “thank God ahead of time.” This might seem a bold idea, sort of “putting God on the spot,” as he explained to one of the brothers, but certainly a great leap of faith. While Solanus could not get personally involved in the daily work of the soup kitchen, he did keep close to it by urging others to support it, especially when he came into contact with people of means. He considered this charity toward the poor one of the best ways to thank God and obtain heavenly favors. His own fervent prayers on behalf of the poor sometimes obtained remarkable results.
One day Fr. Herman sent word over to Fr. Solanus that they were running out of bread. Solanus left his desk and hurried over to the soup kitchen. He asked the people standing around waiting for the meal to join him in praying the Our Father. As they finished the prayer there was a knock at the door. A man came in with a large basket of bread and said that he had a truck full of loaves outside. After all the bread was brought in and piled up, the man looked at the pile in amazement and said, “That’s more than the truck could hold.”
—from the book Gratitude and Grit: The Life of Blessed Solanus Casey,
by Brother Leo Wollenweber, OFM Cap, pages 51-52
//Franciscan Media//