A Reading from the third Letter of Saint John 3 JN 5-8
Beloved, you are faithful in all you do for the brothers and sisters,especially for strangers;they have testified to your love before the Church.Please help them in a way worthy of God to continue their journey.For they have set out for the sake of the Nameand are accepting nothing from the pagans.Therefore, we ought to support such persons,so that we may be co-workers in the truth.
REFLECTION
Please help them in a way worthy of God to continue their journey.
Intercessory prayer is very important and powerful. It is most helpful when we trust in God, His promises and His justice. We have to be reminded several times to pray for one another as we can lose heart, forget or get carried away with our own problems. We need to, sort of say, "be a cheerleader" in helping them through prayer or encourager to someone who needs prayers and needs to persevere in prayer. We need to help them in a way worthy of God to continue their journey.
In PAPA we have such helpful reminders from priests and fellow PAPA kindred spirits. We pray for priests and monthly we receive notices of priests to pray for. We may be reminded by our prayer partner or have developed the habit of praying certain prayers in the morning. The priests remind us of the need for praying for one another when they offer the Sacrifice of the Mass.
The sheer sacrifice of not thinking of ourselves over someone else might be the difference in answered prayers. We have a prayer intention list on our website. We are encouraged to submit names and to pray for those on the list. We have had many who have been healed.
And now in the month of November, we pray for the deceased to help their souls reach heaven if they are in purgatory. They in turn pray for us. We prepare one another for the long journey home.
The saint of the day is St Josaphat. He was born in Ukraine and was known as John Kunsevich. He was a Basilian monk, then priest, preacher and ascetic. There was a rebellion among the clergy--most monks, fearing interference from Rome regarding liturgy and customs, refused to be united with Rome. By prayer, synods, catechetical reform of the clergy, and personal example, Josaphat was successful in winning the greater part of the Orthodox of that area to the union.
The following year, he, unfortunately, was met by a dissident mob and this time they killed him, for the same reason of not wanting to unite with Rome. The dissident Polish hierarchy simply refused to "go Latin".
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