FOODFORTHOUGHT

September 4, 2014
Thursday 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

1 Cor 3: 18-23 / Ps 24: 1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6/ Lk 5: 1-11

Reading: 1 Cor 3: 18-23
Do not deceive yourselves. If anyone of you considers himself wise in the ways of the world, let him become a fool, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's eyes. To this, Scripture says: God catches the wise in their own wisdom. It also says: The Lord knows the reasoning of the wise, that it is useless. Because of this, let no one become an admirer of humans, for everything belongs to you, Paul, Apollos, Cephas — life, death, the present and the future. Everything is yours, and you, you belong to Christ, and Christ is of God.   

Gospel: Luke 5:1-1
One day, as Jesus stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, with a crowd gathered around him listening to the word of God, he caught sight of two boats left at the water's edge by the fishermen now washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to pull out a little from the shore. There he sat and continued to teach the crowd. When he had finished speaking he said to Simon, "Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch." Simon replied, "Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing. But if you say so, I will lower the nets." This they did and caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. They signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats almost to the point of sinking. Upon seeing this, Simon Peter fell at Jesus' knees, saying, "Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" For he and his companions were amazed at the catch they had made and so were Simon's partners, James and John, Zebedee's sons. Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid. You will catch people from now on." So they brought their boats to land and followed him, leaving everything.

Reflection:
     Have you experienced Jesus knocking at your door? What was your response? Did you ignore the knocking and acted like a deaf person? Did you open the door and wholeheartedly welcomed Jesus into your heart?
     As a member of a Catholic charismatic community, our group would send missionaries to other countries to spread the Word of God. We were asked last year to serve in Africa as volunteer missionaries. The agreement was that we pay for our own plane fares but our hosts will provide for our lodging and meals. We said YES right away not even thinking how much was the airfare to Africa. When we learned that the airfare was very expensive and we had to go there two to three times a year, we said to God: "Lord, we said YES to you and it's not our problem anymore where we will get the funds for our airfares. I completely trust you that you will provide the funds."
     Our God is indeed a great God, for during our prayer time, as if on cue to "cast the net at the other side of the boat ... from now on, you shall be fishers of men", we were led into selling a property that we had owned. "Start storing your treasurers in heaven. Your earthly possessions mean nothing to me. You use "my money" to "catch" my people in Africa."
     Following Jesus is not easy. There will be times in our lives that Jesus will ask us to go the extra mile for Him. Will we still continue to ignore him or say YES to Jesus right away by recognizing his voice and trusting his lead?

Prayer Requests:
We pray …
… for a deep and profound respect for life, especially for the unborn
… for all the prayer intentions in the MTQ Dailyprayer Diary
… for families who are in need of healing
… for world peace and reconciliation
… for the birthday intentions of Marcelino Billanes

Finally, we pray for one another, for those who have asked our prayers and for those who need our prayers the most.

Have a good day!

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   |  The Daily Prayer, a service and an apostolate of the
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THE SMELL OF RAIN

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing.  Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.

That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing.

At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature.  Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.  "I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could.  "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one."

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived.   She would never walk; she would never talk; she would probably be blind; she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation; and on and on.

"No! No!" was all Diana could say.  She and David with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four.  Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.

Through the dark hours of morning as Danae held onto life by the thinnest thread.  Diana slipped in and out of drugged sleep, growing more and more determined that their tiny daughter would live and live to be a healthy, happy young girl.  But David, fully awake and listening to additional dire details of their daughter's chances of ever leaving the hospital alive, much less healthy, knew he must confront his wife with the inevitable.

"David walked in and said that we needed to talk about making funeral arrangements,"  Diana remembers, "I felt so bad for him because he was doing everything, trying to include me in what was going on, but I just wouldn't listen, I couldn't listen.

I said, "No, that is not going to happen, no way!  I don't care what the doctors say.  Danae is not going to die!  One day she will be just fine, and she will be coming home with us!"

As if willed to live by Diana's determination, Danae clung to life hour after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature body could endure but as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana.  Because Danae's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially "raw", the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort - so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love.  All they could do, as Danae struggled alone beneath the ultra-violet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.  There was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger.  But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.

At last, when Danae turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time.  And two months later though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero.

Danae went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted. Today, five years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life.  She shows no signs, whatsoever, of any mental or physical impairments.  Simply, she is everything a little girl can be and more but that happy ending is far from the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Danae was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing. As always, Danae was chattering non-stop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent.

Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you smell that?"

Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain."

Danae closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?"

Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet, it smells like rain."

Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, it smells like Him.  It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."

Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Danae then happily hopped down to play with the other children.

Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along.

During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Danae on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

-- Author Unknown

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