Thursday, May 24, 2012

Saints and Prayers


It has been awhile since I have posted a blog. All is well--the past year has been the greatest year of my life and I have been filled with many blessings. All I can say is, that God does not always answer our prayers because sometimes he has something greater in store for us.

So let's first start off with a prayer in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit:

Grant us O Lord our God, a mind to know You, a heart to seek You, wisdom to find You, conduct pleasing to You,  faithful perseverance in waiting for You, and a hope in finally embracing You.

I highly recommend watching Saints Alive, a great TV show that is shown weekly shown on EWTN network. It is a show where actors study a saint and they return to the present world to answer questions. You can also buy DVD copies of these episodes for $10  a piece from http://www.ewtnreligiouscatalogue.com/. It will be the best $20 you have spent recently.

Two episodes of Saints Alive that I highly recommend are ones on Saint Augustine (a 4th/5th Century saint) and Saint Thomas Aquinas (a 13th Century saint). Both of these saints were brilliant minds filled with great wisdom. When I watched these, I was amazed with the intellect and wisdom of people who lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Both of these episodes are highly enlightening, spiritual, philosophical and intellectually challenging. I have had to watch them several times as they are filled with so much deep spiritual wisdom that I felt the need to rewind them many times just to take notes.

Why I feel the need to recommend these, as Christians, we are all called to be saints (Romans 1:7) and we live in challenging times in a secular world. If you want to be a saint, just like anything else, you need help by studying about how to become one. The lives of saints, what they went through, how they become one gives us this insight. We are all sinners who need not procrastinate on our call to be saints. We are all faced with our own life challenges. It is never too late to become a saint. Apostle Paul persecuted Christians before becoming one and later became canonized a Saint.

As Saint Augustine said: "Every saint has a past, Every sinner has a future."
In conclusion, I would like to talk about the moral lesson learned from the movie "Click" That we shouldn't rewind or fast forward through our life. As Carroll Shelby once said "The past is history, tomorrow is a mystery, so live for today." And when you feel the desire to fast forward through life's challenges and difficulties--that every moment in life serves a purpose, an opportunity to learn a lesson or to test our faith.

And finally, paraphasing Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Finding Truth is not too hard, what is hard is not to run away from the Truth once we found it."

Saint Thomas Aquinas was nicknamed "The Dumb Ox" as a youth for his size, demeanor and stubborness. We all tend to be a bit stubborn about things from time to time, probably without realizing it. Just the other day, I took a shower, was running late and went to put my socks on. My feet weren't dry so putting the socks on feet that aren't dry is always harder. It dawned on me then that I have done this many times and still haven't learned this lesson. And many times when it comes to our call to be Christians, to serve and trust God, we still tend to do things the hard way instead of God's way.


We Christians need to pray more and trust God. You will be filled with many more blessings when you do.

Peace be with you.
Michael J. Cox