Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Last week here in my bulletin column I wrote about our need to have PEACE in our lives – and that Peace is a Fruit of the Spirit just like JOY which we focused on last month. I mentioned that the way in which we let PEACE flow and enter into our lives is by eliminating fear, and focusing on God’s strength and His Power rather than focusing on everything that is seemingly going wrong or could go wrong. What we have to keep in mind as we’re panicking and trying to figure everything out is that God already knows what He plans to do to bring good from whatever situations we find ourselves in.

Of course in order to be able to do this, we need to consistently be in union with God. I want to suggest 2 ways in which we can do this:

1. We can make sure that we’re in a constant state of Grace, which happens when we attend Mass each and every Sunday. Thankfully IF we’ve fallen out of this practice or if we’ve committed any other acts that essentially are choices to turn towards things that are harmful for our souls while in the same action turning away from the Lord, we can turn back to Him in the Sacrament of Confession.

2. We remain in union with God, which enables Him to give us His PEACE, when we talk to Him in prayer. Now, my guess is that sometimes we can feel like we don’t know what to do in prayer or we feel like we wish we knew how to pray better. Thankfully I’ve got a solution for that! There is a beautiful video series on Prayer that you can watch for free on FORMED.ORG. If you haven’t signed up for this amazing Catholic Media Platform you can do so by going to FORMED.ORG – Clicking on the button in the lower right hand corner that says “Enter Code” and typing in our parish code which is: “d07cc” (the second character is a Zero and not an o). Once you’re in, you will hover your clicker over “Study” and then click on “Bible Study.” From there you’ll click on “Lectio: Prayer.” This will be our Study that I hope we can do together – watching one of the sessions each week – it’s only about a half-an-hour. It’s going to be great so I really encourage you to do this! God Bless You and enjoy

God’s peace even if it comes slowly!
Fr. Romke