Click here to read the daily readings from the USCCB website.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm not one to change up mass readings based on a national holidays. So I didn't change what I'm writing about for the blog! We shall continue our walk through Revelation and Luke. 

It's the final week of ordinary time and the final days as well. So the apocolyptic imagery intensifies. How have you been affected by this theme of the end of times?

Honestly, my prayer life has been very "eh" lately. The spiritual life ebbs and flows with consolation and desolation and I've certainly been in a trough as far as my subjective experience of prayer. When prayer is hard, dry, and inconvenient, it doesn't make me want to keep up the effort. In fact, I've probably failed to keep my prayer obligations more in the last month than I have in years. That's not really an encouraging thing.

Readings like these should snap us out of our complacency. "People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world ... But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand."

What a picture. Can you imagine standing confidently by as the physical world crumbles all around you? But that is exactly what Jesus calls us to do at the end of the world. Do you have confidence enough in Jesus to stand erect and raise your head?

This confidence must be entirely supported by prayer. There is no other way about it. It is by prayer and grace that Jesus will give us the strength to persevere to the end, to run the race so as to win. 

That's why no matter how dry, no matter how hard, no matter how inconvenient, prayer needs to be a priority in your day. This is a blog for me as much as for you. I need to begin again to make prayer the pillar of my day, to order my entire day around it.

Today is indeed Thanksgiving, and what better way to celebrate than to reflect on (and participate in if you are able) the Eucharist. Eucharist in Greek means "thanksgiving." It is the sacrament by which we praise, adore, and THANK the Lord God who made us and suffered to redeem us. 

Just as Jesus is the reason for this season too.