Speaker 1: Welcome to Saint Patrick Catholic Community Podcast. We're glad you're with us.
Speaker 2: Zach was going through a very difficult period in his life. His business wasn't going well. He had a lot of mouths to feed in children, and that became a concern to him. And even his wife started to get worried and pressured him a little bit. So he began praying to God every morning.
And this is what he told God in prayer. God, help me win the lottery and that will solve all my problems. And he did that every morning waiting. God, if you let me win, everything will be solved. Finally, a voice came down in heaven from heaven to him during one of his prayer sessions and says, Zach, meet me halfway.
Buy a ticket. Grandma's walking down the beach and with her grandson when all of a sudden this wave came out of nowhere and came over them and took the grandson and put him out into the ocean. And immediately, grandma looked up to heaven and said, God, God, save my grandson. He's the light of my life. My only grandson, please bring him back.
And all of a sudden, the wave took up the grandson, brought him back safely and unharmed in front of grandma. Grandma looked up to God and said, he had a hat. In ancient Israel, in this village came a very serious drought, And so there was a lack of rain there, and the crops were really going bad. And so the rabbi gathered the whole village together and said, men, let's go up to the top of that mountain, and let's pray to God all day that God will send us rain. And sure enough, the men went up the mountain and all day long they prayed, nothing.
The next day he said, women and children need to join us. Let's all go and pray all day long. And they went up, nothing happened. The elderly, the sick, nothing. And even animals were called up and they spent the whole day praying and there was still no rain.
Finally, the rabbi looks up to God and says, God, why have you not heeded our prayer? And the voice came down from heaven and said, because you lack faith. And rabbi goes, what are you talking about? We've been praying our hearts out. And god goes, yeah, But did any of you bring an umbrella with you?
Those are different experiences of prayer. Some can be stories that are very serious and change of heart and others can be like probably trying to figure out how we pray to God. And so our theme, Lord, teach us to pray, continues as we began that in September. And during the advent season prior to Christmas, I broke open four points with you about how to help you in prayer. Lent has not only fasting and almsgiving, caring for the poor and those in need, it also develops around prayer.
And so Kevin McGloyde and I will be teaching three sessions starting tomorrow for three Mondays in a row, and we'll be meeting, and we wanna give you an experiential experience of prayer, kind of give you five forms of prayer and to experience that to help guide you and lead you as we ask Lord during Lent. Lord, teach us to pray.
Speaker 3: My favorite store in the whole wide world in the whole wide world is Costco. Come on. Who likes Costco? Who's got your Costco card right here? I bet you some of you are probably I don't know if it's open later, but some of you are probably going shopping right after mass.
Who's got their Costco care right there? If you think about it, Costco has everything. Absolutely everything. When you walk in, there's the sunglasses, the contact lenses. You can get glasses.
You can get a refrigerator. You can get a washer and dryer. You can get a TV screen with a big screen about as big as that at Costco. You can buy chicken for $4.99. You can get strawberries.
You can get blueberries. You can get raspberries. You can get bulk toilet paper. Costco's got everything. And you know what else Costco has?
It's chaos. Absolute chaos. I try to go to Costco on the off hours, whatever that means. So a few weeks ago, I went to Costco on a Friday night, late Friday night. It tells you about what type of social life I have.
I'm hanging out at Costco on a Friday night. And so, I got everything I need, and you know they say when you go to Costco, you intend to spend a $100, but you leave and you spend about $500. So, I was there by myself, my wife was home, my wife Lynn was at home, and I saw, after I got all my stuff, walked around a little bit, and I saw this mattress in a box. And I thought to myself, Lynn and I had been talking about that we needed a new mattress for our guest room, our guest bed. The mattress we have in there is about 25 years old, and the the springs it's so bad, the springs are coming out that we had to put duct tape on the mattress.
So so when people stayed with us, our friends or relatives, they wouldn't get impaled when they stayed in our guest room. But because I'm alone, I cannot buy this mattress on my own. I've got to check-in with the boss. So that Friday night, I went home. I took all sorts of pictures.
We looked it up. The reviews were good. So I decided to go back to Costco on Saturday morning at about 10:30. Mistake. Everybody and their mother and their grandmother and their mother and their children, everybody was there.
I I could barely get a parking spot. I go to the Costco right up here. I don't know about you guys on Hayden And 83rd Place right there. It's always mobbed. I pray to Jesus that I'm able to find a parking spot.
But I did. I went in. The problem was I couldn't use one of those shopping carts. I had to get those flatbed cart that I absolutely hate. Well, I probably shouldn't say hate in church.
I dislike because they never go straight. And so this cart that I have, I'm I'm I've got it. I'm trying to get into Costco. Everybody's coming out. Why do they do that?
Put the entrance and the exit right next to each other. Everybody collides. I've got this this flatbed cart. I'm trying to get in. I finally get in and I look at the lines.
It's the first thing I do when I go to Costco, they're all the way down the aisles. I'm like, oh my gosh, this I'm gonna be here forever. But then I thought, Kevin, you only have one item, that mattress in a box. So I thought, will go through self checkout. So I get the mattress, I go to the self checkout line, and the self checkout line is almost by the frozen food department.
It is so long. So I finally get out, check out, get in the put it in the SUV, head home, and I'm like, that was chaotic. And you know in a lot of ways, Costco is symbolic of our lives. Our lives in a lot of ways, my friends, are very chaotic. You think about it, in our world, we're like a pinball in a pinball machine going all over the place.
Do you know two two Christmases ago, I did see a pinball machine at Costco? Costco? Did you know that? It's like we're going all over the place, and we think about our own lives. We have no time for silence.
We have no time for quiet. We have no time for reflection, to be calm. It's go, go, go. How do we handle it? How do we handle the chaos in our lives?
A few years ago, I read this book. Listen to the title. The ruthless elimination of hurry. The ruthless elimination of hurry. And in it, the author basically said that if the devil can't make you to sin, he's going to keep you busy.
He's going to keep you distracted. And you know there's a lot of truth to that. In the twenty four years that I worked here at Saint Pat's, there were so many good and holy people, and there still are holy people at this parish. And I'm sure most of you are trying not to sin. But what I noticed is that so many of you are so busy, especially our families, especially our young families, that they're so busy and so distracted that they have no time to listen to the voice of God.
Speaker 2: Kevin makes an excellent point that feeds in today's gospel. And in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus after his baptism goes into the desert and he fast for forty days. Forty is the number that means for a long time. The desert is a place of silence. It is a place of no distraction.
So Jesus leaves behind the crowds, the distraction, all the things that would inhabit any human being. And when he goes into the desert, he wrestles with things, temptation, things that really need to be done in his life. And so prayer is the model that Jesus gives to us for Lent going into the desert. The problem with prayer sometimes is we think it's so passive and that we think that prayer has to be a 100% focus. And we don't allow ourselves to be fully human that God understands that, that our minds can wander.
The archbishop of Canterbury, a long time ago, many years ago, was asked by a reporter and said, how often or how long do you pray in the mornings? And he responded, one minute. And the reporter goes, you're a clergy person. You're a you're a man of God. What do you mean you only pray one minute?
And he goes, it takes me fifty nine minutes to calm down. And you know that's our prayer life. At Advent, I had asked parishioners to really commit for four weeks of Advent for ten minutes of prayer. Just ten minutes or whatever minutes that you can provide as well. And you know, I got some good feedback where people really said it made a difference.
For others, I think it was a real challenge even to find ten minutes when you have so much going on. But here's the point. All that God wants us to do is stop. He does the rest. If we understand the theology of prayer according to Saint Paul in the bible, this is what he says.
We're not doing the praying. The holy spirit does but the holy spirit can enter in if we stop and be stilled and let go of the distractions or as Kevin talked about eliminating the hurriness that happens as human beings. The quote from scriptures is be still and know that I am God. And so even if you only get a good minute out of ten minutes or thirty seconds, God takes that. All that God wants is the gift of our bodies.
The greatest gift to give God is the gift of our time even if our mind wanders, even if we're worried or concerned because it takes practice. And so I invite you for these six weeks of lent that are coming up. Can you give ten minutes, just a quiet prayer, whether it's in the car, whether it's at home or in the bathroom or wherever that is, to be able to say, God, this is your time. Be still and know that I am God.
Speaker 3: I've had the opportunity to minister in the Catholic church for about forty years. And what I've seen in terms of people's prayer, and this is just anecdotally, there's not empirical evidence, it's just my experience, is most people have two types of prayer. Either a prayer of thanksgiving, is that they're telling God there's something thankful for, or they have a prayer of petition, that they're asking God for something. And what we wanna do on these next three Monday nights from 06:30 to 07:30 is teach you five different types of prayer to be reflective, to be quiet, to examine your life, and to look at scripture in a whole new way. I'm sure most of you have never experienced this.
It's part of the prayer of the church that has been around for centuries, And we're gonna take you through it. We're gonna teach a little bit about it, and then you're gonna experience. And at the end of the three weeks, we're gonna give you a handout, a kind of a spiritual tool for your toolbox for you to help you to continue to pray reflectively. And you know what? On these Monday nights, father Eric told me, everybody who shows up, we're all going to Culver's afterwards, and he's gonna pick up the tab.
Speaker 2: No. We're going to Costco for hot dogs. Oh.
Speaker 3: No way. I'd I'd like to get serious for just a sec. I'd like to talk about my mom, Nancy. My mom passed away about three months ago, a little more than three months ago. My mom had what was called dropped head syndrome.
She was a few weeks shy of her ninetieth birthday. She could no longer pick her head up. She lived in a senior home, a group home, with about eight or nine people. Beautiful facility. They took great care of her over in Peoria at 83rd Avenue in Happy Valley, pretty close to my sister's house.
And so my mom would always say, my mom prayed all the time. She went when she was younger and she was able to, she was a daily communicant, she went to mass every day, She prayed the rosary a couple times a day. As she got older, I think she prayed it three or four times a day. And she would tell, you need anybody to pray for me, let them know. And so my mom would say and just to give you a clarification, my dad died about eleven years ago, and my dad was my mom's life, and she missed him so much.
And I I also gotta tell you, my sister and brothers and I, we hit a grand slam in terms of parents. We had really good, loving parents. And so my mom used to always say, I just want it I am not afraid to die. I just wanna be with Jesus, the blessed mother, and your father, Kevin. And I said, mom, are you sure?
Are you sure you're okay to die? And she said, I am. I have no problem with dying. I just wanna be with Jesus, your blessed mother, the blessed mother, and your dad. And so I kinda pressed her once, and I said, mom, I've had the opportunity with people who are dying to work with them, to minister with them, and a lot of people are scared.
A lot of people are afraid. And she said, she cut me off and she goes, Kevin? And I heard that about a billion times in my life. Kevin, I am not afraid to die. And so I told my mom, well mom, pray for a happy, peaceful death.
So, about three and a half months ago, on a Saturday, I spent four hours with her. We had a wonderful time. We watched college football together, she read, she prayed the rosary, and it was time for her dinner. Said, mom, I'm gonna take off. I'll see you on Tuesday.
Gave her a big hug, told her I loved her, she told me she loved her, and that was the last time I saw her. The next morning, Sunday morning, about 07:30, I get a call from my sister Noreen, and she says, they just called me and said mom's not responsive. So by the time I got to the house, my mom was dead. And there she was in her bed. It was actually incredibly sad, it was incredibly beautiful.
She looked like she was asleep. She had died in her sleep. She had a happy, peaceful death. Her prayer was answered. And I really believe that she was not afraid of death.
It was because she was a person of prayer. She was so connected to the heart, to the love, to the joy of Jesus Christ that she wasn't scared. I had the opportunity about thirty years ago to work with a priest, father Mike O'Grady. Father O'Grady was a pastor in this diocese. He has since passed away for about fifty years.
Great guy. I worked with him down at Saint Daniel's in Scottsdale. And father O'Grady was the most joyful man that I ever met. Not happy, he had to work with me, but he was one of the most joyful men. Parishioners just loved him, absolutely loved him.
And you know what father O'Grady did every day before he started his day? He went to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, and he sat there for thirty minutes in the presence of God. And it connected him with God's love, with God's heart. And I think that's why he was such a joyful man, is he spent that time in prayer. I used to have the opportunity to lead the Edge Middle School program here at Saint Pat's, and when this just as summer ended, we would go up to Edge Camp in Payson with adults and kids, high school teens.
We would take close to 200 people. We had all sorts of activities, from being in the lake, to throwing food, to zip lines, you name it. These edge camps almost killed me, but they were incredible. The last thing we would do with the kids is what was called Eucharistic adoration. And if you're not sure what that is, is we get the monstrance, we put the blessed sacrament in it, and the key and we all pray silently.
Now we taught the kids what was gonna happen. We taught them all about it, and we did it for about thirty minutes. 200 kids for thirty minutes, completely still, completely quiet. We asked them at the end of the edge camp, of all the activities we did, what did you like the best? Hands down, they all said, Eucharistic adoration.
For kids who have want these phones and going in a million different directions, playing all sorts of these sports, what are they seeking? They're seeking to be still. They're seeking to be calm. They're seeking silence in their lives when there's so much chaos out there. Ultimately, what they're searching for is Jesus Christ.
So we thought, okay. If it works for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, we're gonna try it with our rock 45 kids, the fourth and fifth graders. So we took them here into the daily mass chapel, taught them what we were gonna do. We brought in at a time 15 kids. They sat there for ten or fifteen minutes.
We did not have one discipline problem. They were all silent. We were done. We came out. All these little kids, they come up to about here on me, they go, when can we do this again?
When can we do this again? The quote from scripture is father Eric said, Psalm forty six ten, is be still and know that I am God. Not be chaotic, not be wild and crazy, not be going all over the place, not being a pinball in a pinball machine. It is be still and know that I am God.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow, Monday, 06:30 to 07:30 at the parish office. Follow all the signs. We'll begin at 06:30. Prayer one zero one. Great opportunity just to experience different forms of prayer in our rich Catholic faith.
Speaker 1: This has been a Saint Patrick Catholic community podcast. For more of our shows, go to our website and click Saint Patrick's Studio.