Fr. Greg

“And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9) The readings for this Sunday have a theme of prayer. We all know we could improve our individual prayer life. It is my shared vision for Prince of Peace parish that we develop a deep culture of prayer as a parish. By “culture”, I am not meaning a superficial thing or surface-level practice like “casual Fridays” or even a program or a best practice. Instead, culture is how we think and act—how we live out each day.

In this weekend’s Gospel reading we hear Martha squabble with her sister, Mary, even going so far as to complain to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” Does that sound familiar to your home life?

 

Happy Independence Day! I hope and pray you all have a safe and celebratory weekend!

 

We welcome our new associate pastor, Fr. Andrew Gaffney! Fr. Andrew will be introducing himself at Masses this weekend. Please welcome him and pray for him. I’m excited to have him  with us!

 

I wanted to write a few words for those who were not able to be at one of the Masses this weekend as I said my goodbyes to the parish. For anyone who does not know yet I am being reassigned, and will be the pastor at Sacred Heart parish in Ottawa, KS.

 

Fathers of Prince of Peace... If Jesus, who is God, needed a human (nonbiological) father in Saint Joseph while on earth, how much more do our children need us!? Our children have a throne marked in Heaven with their name engraved upon it, but there is an enemy that seeks to prevent them from ever sitting upon their throne. Thus, fatherhood is something far more than just ensuring the safe passage of time, or getting them from one place to another, or making sure there is food on

 

Did you hear the news? If not, here is the latest for Prince of Peace.

 

Dear graduates, as the father of five adult children, I have experienced what your parents are going through right now.  Let me shed some light on what you probably perceive as truly bizarre behavior!  You see, the part of their lives that you filled while living at home will now be empty.  As you prepare to move from under their roof, they are reflecting on your journey to adulthood – and with that reflection are surges of heartache, but also hope.  The heartache is the pain of loss – as you grew, they have tried to sacrifice heroically for you.

Instead of “Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, Oh my!” as was said/sung by Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz, we have our own excitement here at Prince of Peace this weekend. I would sum it all up on the category of “vocation”. A vocation is a calling from God.

 

According to Wikipedia: The "mayday" procedure word was conceived as a distress call in the early 1920s by Frederick Stanley Mockford, officer-in-charge of radio at Croydon Airport, England. He had been asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the air traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the term "mayday", the phonetic equivalent of the French m'aidez ("help me") or m'aider (a short form of venez m'aider, "come [and] help me").