Father Kubicki???s Prayer Reflection

Although we will be following St. Luke’s gospel on Sunday this year, today the Church gives us the famous story about the Wedding Feast at Cana, where Jesus performed his first public miracle changing ordinary water into the best of wines.

While Monday is the legal holiday in honor of the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., today is his birthday. Let us thank God for his life and how his life has touched so many others.

In today’s gospel from the beginning of the second chapter of Mark’s gospel, we see the image of Jesus healing a paralyzed man who was lowered through the roof because of the great crowd at the door.

Sometimes people think of the Church as one human institution among others, and they fall into the temptation that human ingenuity and personnel management, and public relations, will solve the Church’s problems.

The Bible teaches a lot about prayer. For example, in the story of the call of Samuel which can be found in chapter 3 of the first book of Samuel, we see Samuel’s mentor Eli teaching him the simple prayer: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

After the season of Advent and Christmas, the feast of The Holy Family, Mary Mother of God, The Epiphany and the Baptism of our Lord, we are now back to ordinary time on the Church calendar.

What was the greatest day of your life? If you’re like most people, you probably didn’t think of the day you were baptized, and that’s probably because you were too young to remember it. Having just celebrated the feast of the Baptism of our Lord, it is a good time to think of that great sacrament of our own Baptism.

Today is the last day of the Christmas season and the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The second person of the Blessed Trinity became human, shared our human nature, all in order to raise it up.

Tomorrow we will be celebrating the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord by St. John the Baptist in the River Jordan. As we approach this feast, we should reflect on this event in the life of Christ and think about what it is and what it means to us.

Today, the Church celebrates the feast of St Raymond of Peñafort. He is know as the father of the Church’s law or Canon Law. St. Raymond was born in the year 1175 and by the age of 20, he was a professor of philosophy.

Today, the Church honors a humble brother of the Congregation of the Holy Cross; St. Andre Bessette. He’s a good example of how you don’t have to do big things to become holy.

In the Church’s Calendar, these are some days to honor some of the saints who lived and worked in the United States. Today we honor St. John Neumann, an Eastern European immigrant of the 19th century.

Today, the Church celebrates  the feast of the first native born United States citizen to be canonized a saint – St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. She was canonized by Pope St. Pius VI in 1975.

Names are important. When we are growing up and people make fun of our names, it hurts. In a sense our names are ourselves. That’s certainly the case for Jesus. Today we celebrate the feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.

Today, the Church celebrates the feast of the Epiphany and we remember how Jesus was manifest. That’s what the word Epiphany means, manifest to the three Mahi who visited from the East.

Today we celebrate the first day of the new year. In the Catholic Church, we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God. As we enter this new year, we pray that our heavenly mother will cover us in her love and keep us and our families holy, healthy, and safe in the new year.

As we come to the end of the 2021 calendar year, a year that has continued to be very challenging, because of the pandemic but also because of everything going on in the country and throughout the world, we need to continue to pray and put our trust in Jesus.

As we prepare for the coming of the new year, it is goo to pray and discern what resolution we should make for the upcoming year. Adding prayer to our daily lives will help us to keep focus on all other responsibilities during our year.

Sometimes people think that if you do the right thing, and try to love God above all and your neighbor as yourself, everything should go well for you. but Jesus and the martyrs show us that this isn’t necessarily true.

According to the second chapter of the gospel of Matthew, when the three Magi or kings came to find the newborn king of the Jews, they went to Jerusalem and talked to King Herod.