Sunday Meditation: When God Doesn't Seem to be Answering Prayers....

....THINK AGAIN!  

St. Augustine & St. Monica, pray for us.

God always answers our prayers. Sometimes He says yes and sometimes He says no. God loves us so we can be sure when He says no that what we are asking for is not good for us. 

When He says yes, sometimes He takes His own time. Abraham and Sarah prayed for a child. God told them, yes, not only would they have a child, but their descendants would be like the stars of the sky. But God made them wait...and wait...and wait.

Instead of trusting Him, they decided to take things into their own hands. Sarah convinced Abraham to have relations with her maid, Hagar. Ai yi yi! We all know how that ended and we're still suffering from the battle between Isaac and Ishmael today. 

Maybe God delays fulfillment of His yes to help us grow in patience and perseverance. And sometimes, He rewards that patience and perseverance with an abundance we can hardly imagine. Let me share an excerpt from Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence about St. Monica and her sixteen-year prayer vigil for the conversion of her son, Augustine:

Thanks to Mothers who Work to Keep their Families Together!

Divorce is Killing Our Children

Here is the pithiest section of Dr. Fitzgibbons' article outlining the "cost" of divorce to children and adults:

...research on the children of divorce provide overwhelming evidence to disprove the myth that divorce does not harm children. In fact, the divorce epidemic has contributed to the serious and growing psychopathology in American youth. One example is the first major study of American adolescent psychopathology published in 2010 (Merikangas et al.): 49 percent of the 10,000 teenagers studied met the criteria for one psychiatric disorder and 40 percent met the criteria for two disorders. 

Feast Day for Faithful Mothers

Today is St. Monica's feast day. St. Augustine's mom had plenty to pray for as she sought the conversion of her rebellious son. She constantly exhorted him to change his way of life. What a challenge to parents today who often prefer silence lest they anger their sinful children. And then they wonder why their children persist in mortal sin.

St. Monica offers both hope and a challenge to parents who see their children wandering far from the altar of the Lord. They need to first imitate her in prayer and then constantly challenge their children in love. One might describe Monica as a "holy nag." Augustine ran away and she followed him, even across the sea. But it all began with prayer, fasting, and suffering.

Here's what St. Augustine says about his faithful mother in his Confessions:

O God, my hope from my youth, where were You all this time, where had You gone? ... I walked thorugh dark and slippery places, and I went out of myself in the search for You and did not find the God of my heart. I had come into the depths of the sea and I had lost faith and all hope of discovering the truth. By this time my mother had come to me, following me over the sea and land with the courage of piety and relying upon You in all perils.... She found me in a perilous state through my deep despair of ever discovering the truth. But even when I told her that if I was not yet a Catholic Christian, I was no longer a Manichean, she was not greatly exultant as at some unlooked-for good news, because she had already received assurance upon that part of my misery; she bewailed me as one dead certainly, but certainly to be raised again by You.... So her heart was not shaken with any tumult of exultation at hearing that what daily she had begged of You with tears had in so large part happened: for I was at least rescued from heresy, even if I had not yet attained the truth. In fact, because she was certain that You would give her what remained since You had promised her all, she answered me serenely and with a heart full of confidence that in Christ she believed that she would see me a faithful Catholic before she died. So much she said to me. But to You, O fount of mercy, she multiplied her prayers and her tears that You should hasten Your help and enlighten my darkness: and she hasted to churh more zelously than ever.

Oh, that all those in deadly sin should have such a mother to zealously pursue them for the Lord!

St. Monica, pray for us and for our family and friends who wander from the fold. Ask the Lord to give us wisdom and zeal to pursue our children with love and never rest in silent acceptance of their grievous sins. Lord Jesus, bring us all to the eternal bliss of your heavenly kingdom. Amen.

Immaculate Mary, Your Praises We Sing

December 8, Feast of the Immaculate Conception

As we get ready for Christmas the Church gives us a beautiful reminder that God Himself prepared in the days before He sent His Son. He gifted the Blessed Mother with her Immaculate Conception, saving her from the effects of original sin at the very moment she was conceived in the womb of her mother, Ann. That preparation is a reminder to us. God didn't start out by choosing apostles, teaching them, and sending them out to the world. No, He began at the very beginning preparing the hearts and minds of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. St. Joseph himself revealed to Blessed Catherine Emmerich that he was saved from original sin immediately after his conception. So God prepared a holy home for His Son before Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb.

I think the message for Christians is that we need to be saved personally before we can evangelize others. How can we help to "remove the beam of sin" from the eyes of others, if we haven't repented of our own sins and sought God's forgiveness, especially in the Sacrament of Confession. How many of us are out saving the world while we ignore evil and faults in our own lives?

We are called to be witnesses to the world, but our witness begins with giving an example of repentance. In Advent especially we should listen to the call of St. John the Baptist, "Reform your lives." We cannot hear the good news if our own ears are ringing with the world's noise. We can't hear the angels' hosannas while we listen to the siren song of the evil one. We can't help others to see the truth if our own eyes are filled with images of heterosexual lust from the catalogues of Victoria's Secret and homosexual lust from the catalogues of Abercrombie and Fitch. In today's world protecting our eyes is more important than ever because evil is mainstreamed in mall windows, grocery store magazine racks, and on the Internet.

We need to pray constantly for protection and conversion. A good model for us is St. Augustine whose mother, St. Monica, pursued him literally and in prayer until he finally succumbed to the Hound of Heaven.

Pray the conversion prayer of St. Augustine today to prepare yourself to be a soldier in the army of Christ.