Not easily shall one reach this height; it is no child’s play, nor the work of a day to turn with a decisive gesture from the allurements of life. It costs blood to stand the strain and overcome the repugnance of nature. When we bend our minds to this prayer and say it earnestly, we seem to hate ourselves and in the eyes of worldly men to act foolishly and give an opening for the charge of folly. ‘Unto the Gentiles folly’, utter folly to neglect the passing joy, to allow the flower of the time to pass by us. Yet looking on Christ we shall willingly accept such opprobrium. So sure are we of the goodness of the heart of God that we can wish for nothing better nor plan for anything more secure than what his Divine Heart wills, for never is a man so utterly right, so sure of blessings, as when he says this prayer – ‘Our father . . .thy will be done . . .’

-Pathways to God, Fr John Henaghan, MSSC

‘It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

‘It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.’

― St John Paul II

The Beautiful Hands of a Priest

We need them in life's early morning,
We need them again at its close;
We feel their warm clasp of true friendship,
We seek them when tasting life's woes.
At the altar each day we behold them,
And the hands of a king on his throne
Are not equal to them in their greatness;
Their dignity stands all alone;
And when we are tempted and wander,
To pathways of shame and of sin,
It's the hand of a priest that will absolve us--
Not once, but again and again.

And when we are taking life's partner,
Other hands may prepare us a feast,
But the hand that will bless and unite us--
Is the beautiful hand of a priest.
God bless them and keep them all holy,
For the Host which their fingers caress;
When can a poor sinner do better,
Than to ask Him to guide thee and bless?
When the hour of death comes upon us,
May our courage and strength be increased,
By seeing raised over us in blessing--
The beautiful hands of a priest.

-Author Unknown

Pope Francis: Do you want to be a priest?

Please choose the way of peace. ... In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause.

Mother Teresa, -- Letter to U.S. President George Bush and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, January 1991.

Blessed Mother Teresa on Prayer

Pray for the Christians of Iraq

Fr Ragheed Ganni, a priest of the Chaldean Catholic Church, which is in full communion with Rome, spoke in Bari, Italy, about the Eucharist on Saturday 28 May 2005, the eve of a visit by Pope Benedict XVI to close a Eucharistic Congress there.

This is what Father Ragheed said:

Mosul Christians are not theologians; some are even illiterate. And yet inside of us for many generations one truth has become embedded: without the Sunday Eucharist we cannot live.
This is true today when evil has reached the point of destroying churches and killing Christians, something unheard of in Iraq till now.

On June 2004 of last year, a group of young women were cleaning the church to get it ready for Sunday Mass. My sister Raghad, who is 19, was among them.

As she was carrying a pale of water to wash the floor, two men drove up and threw a grenade that blew up just a few yards away from her.

She was wounded but miraculously survived. And on that Sunday we still celebrated the Eucharist. My shaken parents were also there.

For me and my community, my sister's wounds were a source of strength so that we, too, may bear our cross.

Last August in St Paul Church, a car bomb exploded after the 6pm Mass. The blast killed two Christians and wounded many others. But that, too, was another miracle—the car was full of bombs but only one exploded. Had they all gone off together the dead would have been in the hundreds since 400 faithful had come on that day.

People could not believe what had happened. The terrorists might think they can kill our bodies or our spirit by frightening us, but, on Sundays, churches are always full. They may try to take our life, but the Eucharist gives it back.

On 7 December, the eve of the Immaculate Conception, a group of terrorists tried to destroy the Chaldean Bishop's Residence, which is near Our Lady of the Tigris Shrine, a place venerated by both Christians and Muslims.

They placed explosives everywhere and a few minutes later blew the place up. This and fundamentalist violence against young Christians have forced many families to flee. Yet the Churches have remained open and people continue to go to Mass, even among the ruins.

It is among such difficulties that we understand the real value of Sunday, the day when we meet the Risen Christ, the day of our unity and love, of our [mutual] support and help.

There are days when I feel frail and full of fear. But when, holding the Eucharist, I say 'Behold the Lamb of God, Behold, who takes away the sin of the world', I feel His strength in me. When I hold the Host in my hands, it is really He who is holding me and all of us, challenging the terrorists and keeping us united in His boundless love

In normal times, everything is taken for granted and we forget the greatest gift that is made to us. Ironically, it is thanks to terrorist violence that we have truly learnt that it is the Eucharist, the Christ who died and risen, that gives us life. And this allows us to resist and hope.

Two years later, on 3 June 2007, Trinity Sunday, Father Ragheed was murdered after celebrating Mass in Mosul, along with three subdeacons, BasmanYousefDaud, Wahid Hanna Isho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed.

FrGanni was secretary to PaulosFarajRahho, the Archbishop of Mosul of the Chaldean Church, Iraq's largest Christian community. On 29 February 2008 Archbishop Rahho was kidnapped. His body was found in a shallow grave on 13 March.

On Sunday, 20 July, for the first time in almost 2,000 years Mass was not celebrated in Mosul, where Father Ragheed, who gave up his profession as an engineer to become a priest, had served. Christians had been driven from their homes by the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).