An Unexpected Call...

This reflection commemorates Holy Family's 60th Anniversary.
We hope you will join us for our 60th Anniversary Mass on May 22.
Click here for more details.

I attended my first retreat ever (anywhere) at Holy Family in January of 2009, at the invitation, and, as it turned out, gift of a friend who has been “my Eli” since I was confirmed as an adult years ago. She had been telling me for years that I would love it. She was, of course, right.

I arrived Friday night with such anticipation, although my first take on the retreat theme – We Are Called – was perhaps a tad skeptical. At my age and stage in life, the prospect of a “Call” seemed a bit remote.

I did, however, come away from that weekend, if not called to something, then maybe awakened, to a need, almost a hunger (to risk being somewhat dramatic) for prayer at a deeper level.

I have always prayed – usually a running commentary of thanks, help, and I’m sorry throughout my day. Since that January weekend, however, I now set aside a specific time every morning to be quiet in God’s presence and to pray by name, and with intention, for people in need of healing and for the blessing and protection of my family and friends. I pray for those who have asked for prayers and for others whose particular needs I am aware of. I pray for people and for circumstances from the headlines and those with whom I share ministries in my parish. I call each one to mind and their individual needs or circumstances and place them before God. I also pray every day for those who have been and are a part of my spiritual journey.

Maybe my call was to prayer! I’ve learned that my attentiveness to prayer has made me more attentive to others and aware, as well, of God’s comforting presence and loving care in my own life.

While I am active in and committed to my home parish, Holy Family has become my extended family in faith, a place of welcome and comfort. I come back as often as I can for the renewal, fresh insight, and continuing call that are at the heart of the Holy Family experience, and always leave uplifted and encouraged … and wanting more.

Jane Woodmansee

A New Roman Missal

Catholics expect some changes to the words in the liturgy from time to time. But they will soon be using the first Mass texts since the Second Vatican Council that have been created according to a different theory of translation. The revision will have a noticeable effect on the style and sound of the texts of the Mass. Click here to read more from his America magazine article about the upcoming changes in the Mass.

The link: http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10838

Fr. Paul Turner will be coming to Holy Family on Tuesday, April 5 to reflect on new translation of the Roman Missal. Click here to register. (Same program Day or Evening)

The Miracle of Now

Many of us, perhaps most, do not live in the present moment. Our busy lives, our tight schedules, keep us focused on the next event, the next project. When we have rare "free" moments, our minds frequently reflect on what was not done well enough in the past. We then engage in remorse or guilt. Free moments may also be consumed in preparing ourselves for the next thing on our "to do" list, reflecting on when and how to accomplish a new piece of our agenda.

This habitual manner of dealing with life's very precious gift - TIME - leaves us little energy or opportunity to attend to the details, or, indeed, the richness of the PRESENT MOMENT.

There is another way to live. ....FULLY - IN EACH MOMENT - in whatever way and whenever it occurs. This is a true GIFT...one that is often hard come by - especially in today's modern, fast paced world. This manner of living is referred to by many as MINDFUL LIVING, a way of life that some medical professionals credit with good health. A valuable and well documented way of becoming mindful is to engage in two practices: SILENCE, not only of speech but also of imagination and emotions and MEDITATION - "focus" on exactly what is occuring right here, right now.
Silence and Meditation are two tools well known to mystics of all traditions, tools available to each of us and tools which hold the practitioner in the SACRED PRESENCE of GOD.

A Mindfulness Retreat such as the one we will have in early April is an opportunity to let go of engagement with the past or future and live deeply for a few hours in the MIRACLE of each BREATH, each moment - the MIRACLE of NOW. We will do this with the support of teachers who have been following this path for many years and with others of like mind. This weekend will offer the opportunity to become grounded in each moment as it presents itself. Its atmosphere will be one of quiet with the opportunity to do sitting or walking meditation, gentle stretching exercises, reading or journaling. Short talks will be given by the teachers introducing participants to the use of the BREATH as a way to live in or return to the present moment. They will suggest ways to eat and drink more mindfully and to simply enjoy the sights and sounds around us in the PRESENT MOMENT. There will be time for questions as well as a brief opportunity for those who wish to share individual concerns with the teachers.

The practice of mindfulness helps us to be present to our own lives - here and now. Rabbi Abraham Heschel reminds us, "Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy." Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh tells us, "The miracle is not to walk on water but on the earth." Jesus Christ taught,
"The Kingdom of God is within you." These are all invitations to see life for what it is, to slow down and become deeply aware of the choices we are making. These are invitations to live in a more wise, more peaceful, more compassionate way...to see each moment of our life for what it is - WONDERFUL.

By Pat Plouffe St. Onge
Mindful Meditation Weekend with Pat & Tim St. Onge

Discernment: Noticing and Responding to the Promptings of the Spirit

Integral to the spiritual life is the process of becoming who we are created to become and growing in awareness of God’s call to us for the benefit of the world. In discernment we seek to know our deepest, truest self. In this core place we discover God present and active. Discernment is a seeking of God’s presence and invitation, a seeking to be in harmony with the goodness and power of God.

St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, is considered the Father of Discernment. His ability to name his experiences of discernment and the movement of the Spirit as he experienced them in his own life led him to articulate patterns that have been used in discernment for hundreds of years.

The Consciousness Examen, Ignatius prayerful reflection on each day, is a simple and very helpful tool for discernment. Everyone can use this tool as it takes only a few moments each day. In the Examen Ignatius invites us to review the day with an eye to noticing when we moved with or toward God and also to notice when we moved away from or against God. Through the Examen we are invited to look for the experience of God’s presence or seeming absence in each day.

Ignatius, who also wrote the Spiritual Exercises, offers us many techniques for working with discernment in our own time. For Ignatius, all of life is revelatory, there is nowhere God is not. Ignatius teaches us that God speaks to us in all events and through all things.

Discernment then is an ongoing process in which we use all our abilities: sensing, intuition, thinking, paying attention both within and outside ourselves, and to our experiences in prayer in order to grow in awareness of God’s movement within and among us. Learning to notice is an important skill in discernment. Noticing what Ignatius calls “inner movements” as they occur in body, mind, heart and soul help us to sense and name God’s invitations.

Once God’s invitation seems clear it will be time to “try it out” or “try it on”. The invitation is God’s, the choice to respond is ours.

As we anticipate being together for this day of retreat on discernment let us pray for one another using the poetry of J. Philip Newell in the Sounds of the Eternal:

Thanks be to you, O God

Thanks be to you, O God
For the stirrings of new life in me this day,
For rising from the dreams of the night
To a fresh flowing of energy,
For the vitality that awakened my body
And the desires that stir my soul.
Let me know the power for life that is in me,
The life-force that is in my senses
And the might that is in my heart.
Let me know you as the source of such force
And be wise to its true streams and false currents.
Let me serve love with my strength this day,
Let me serve love with my strength.
In heart and mind and body this day
Let me serve love.


Wishing you all peace this day and an ongoing noticing of the movement of God within and around you,

Andree Grafstein

Spiritual Life Center

Epiphany 2011

by Fr. William Meninger, O.C.S.O.

In the Western Church Epiphany is traditionally celebrated on January 6th. The time differs in other churches, for example, the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Epiphany on January 19. The name of the feast also differs even among the Western Catholic churches. It is known variously as the feast of Kings or the feast of the Magi, Twelfth Night or, as we call it, Epiphany, which means an appearance or revelation. In order to facilitate the celebration of this feast, the church has changed its date from 12 days after Christmas, January 6, to the first Sunday after New Years which in 2011 falls on January 2, today.

It would probably be more correct to say that Epiphany is not 12 days after Christmas but rather that Christmas is 12 days before Epiphany. This is because Epiphany was celebrated first and it was probably several generations later that the church decided to celebrate Christmas, the birth of Christ, on December 25, the first day of winter, the day when the sun once again begins to lengthen the days. The church simply did what she frequently does and baptized a pagan feast day, the feast of the Unconquerable Sun, simply because of its appropriateness. Actually the church did the same thing for Epiphany. It is a baptism of the celebration of the feast of Dionysius the god of wine as it was probably celebrated in Alexandria. It was thought that at midnight on this feast, the god, Dionysius, turned the waters of all the fountains into wine. The blessing of water so that it may become wine or, indeed, the blood of Christ, suggested to Christians two other important feast days celebrated on or close to this time. One was the feast of the baptism of Christ in the Jordan by John the Baptist. The connection is that when this happened the waters of the Jordan did not cleanse Christ but rather he cleansed all the waters of the world by his touch. The other feast is the wedding feast at Cana when Jesus changed water into wine. All three of these festivals, Epiphany, Christ's baptism and the wedding feast, celebrate beginnings. The beginnings of Christ's ministry to the world on Epiphany, the beginnings of his active ministry on his baptism in the Jordan, and the beginnings of his seven signs manifesting who he really was, at the wedding feast.

The wise man who brought gifts to the child Jesus were the first Gentiles to acknowledge him as king and who revealed him to the wider world. This was to fulfill the blessing of Simeon that "This child would be a light for revelation to the Gentiles." Jesus came for all people, of all nations, of all races, and the work of God would not be limited to only a few.

This day is now observed as a time to focus on the mission of the church in reaching out to others by showing Jesus as the savior of all people. It is also a time of focusing on Christian brotherhood and fellowship, especially in healing the divisions of prejudice and bigotry that we all too often create between God's children.

Please join with me now in this Epiphany prayer by which we may personally concretize the message and meaning of the feast we are celebrating.

Father, we thank you for revealing yourself to us in Jesus the Christ, we who once were not your people but whom you chose to adopt as your people. As ancient Israel confessed long ago, we realized that it was not because of our own righteousness, or our own superior wisdom, or strength, or power, or our numbers. It was simply because you loved us and you chose to show us that love in Jesus.

As you have accepted us when we did not deserve your love, will you help us to accept those whom we find it hard to love? Forgive us, O Lord, for any attitude that we harbor that on any level sees ourselves as better or more righteous than others. Will you help us to remove the barriers of prejudice and to tear down the walls of bigotry, religious or social? Oh Lord, help us realize that the walls that we erect for others only form our own prisons!

Will you fill us so full of your love that there is no more room for intolerance. As you have forgiven us much, will you enable us with your strength to forgive others even more? Will you enable us through your abiding presence among us, communally and individually, to live our lives in a manner worthy of the Name we bear?

May we, through your guidance, and our faithful obedience, find new avenues, in ways that we have not imagined, of holding the Light of your love so that it may be a Light of revelation for all people.

Thank you for your love, we praise you for your gift, ask for your continued presence with us, and we make these petitions in the name of your son, who has truly revealed your heart. Amen

May you be happy,
May you be free,
May you be loving,
May you be loved.

Fr. William Meninger, O.C.S.O.

Click here to join Fr. Meninger for an upcoming Centering Prayer Retreat at Holy Family on February 18-20, 2011.

Can Yoga Bring Peace On Earth?

This Christmas I bought a royal blue garden flag with a wings extended white dove and the words PEACE ON EARTH. I carefully placed it on a wrought iron pole and stuck it in the lawn near my condo door. It looked great until I got up the next morning, and found the flag so twisted you could not see the bird never mind any inspirational words. I fixed it the next day, but the howling December winds continued to mangle the message. On December 26, 2010 my PEACE ON EARTH plump dove was buried under two feet of drifting blizzard snow.

Fortunately I know a metaphor when I see it. Peace on Earth has mighty forces fighting against it. For over thirty years my Somers middle school social studies students and I started September with the International Peace Day celebration. We then went week after week examining the Dark Ages of Medieval European history intermingled with US current events. “Where in the World Is the Latest Conflict” might as well be the new digital download as we worked to locate new global hotspots.

So what's a peace loving person to do? Is it possible to be hopeful in the midst of so much turmoil in this fast paced world? I'd like to offer a suggestion that I found on a card at the Holy Family Bookstore. The card reads: "PEACE. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart." I repeated this message at my Full of Grace Gentle Yoga class at St. Mary's in Windsor Locks. I could tell by the yogis smiles and head nodding that these words resonated with them. During our practice we learn to use the ancient art of yogic breath and asana positions to unite our mind, body and spirit to create a healthy, peaceful, faithfilled life. The ancient practice of yoga demonstrates peaceful practices and gives us the tools to bring light to our world. Yogis honor their bodies and develop strength for the days ahead. We know we can not stop the ocean waves from crashing against the shore, but we can learn to surf and ride the turbulent tides. Holy Family is a peaceful place to learn and practice yoga. I extend to you an invitation to my February 5^th program called Yoga with the Saints. The purpose is to enjoy yoga and learn from the inspirational contemplative saints of Ireland and India how to survive and thrive on the waves of life.

Christmas Wonder

One of the greatest joys of being a father has been the chance to tip-toe into the glow of my children's faces as they turn on the Christmas lights each morning over these Advent days. Pink fingers comb back static hair and chipping toenail polish peeks out from beneath fairy nightgowns. They giggle with a combination of delight and accomplishment. “This is the true meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown,” I think to myself. Unlike us, they seem to live with that glow not just on Christmas morning but everyday whether swinging on the swings or uncapping their favorite Sharpie or even flushing the toilet. Their secret, which we adults seem to miss, is that they look with this same Christmas wonder at a pile of fallen leaves or a shiny pair of orange-handled scissors.

We are the ones who have skillfully divided life into pleasures and chores. For adults, wonder is stingily rationed to a few greeting card moments each year when we slow our minds long enough to really appreciate the unnoticed gifts that flood our lives each day. Perhaps, children know better the sacredness of each moment, perhaps because they haven’t yet learned that there is an alternative.

They know that December 26 is as exciting and filled with possibility as the day before. It’s the day our children will toss aside Christmas presents only to play with the cardboard boxes that contained them a day before. It’s the day when they will dance the limbo with all the used ribbons tied together. It’s the day when they will plead to devour stale Christmas cookies for breakfast. It’s the day when we will all jump in bed together and have a WWF wrestling match until daddy hurts himself. It’s the day when they will go into the craft closet and find another blank page on which they will draw their lives--one rainbow and one flower at a time. It’s the day when their sleepy footsteps will stumble downstairs and stand before a tree to rival its lights with their glowing eyes.

We wish you bright eyes, wide hearts, and the wonder of ordinary things this year. May you enjoy the December 26ths of your life with the same richness and sacredness that fill your Christmas morning.

Advent Blessings,

Brandon, Susan, Sophia, and Ellie Nappi