One morning last week I was talking to my daughter and telling her of all the things going on with work, home events, family events and the long list of things that pop up and need to be handled immediately.  I was commenting about all the different opinions, needs and wants of all these people when she said, “How do you handle all those comments, demands and sometimes illogical behavior of people?”  I thought for a bit and replied, “That’s a really good question and I don’t always handle it well.  Sometimes it makes me angry, sometimes it makes me feel like people don’t like me and sometimes, I just consider the source and move on!”   But what I have learned to do over the years is to put my faith in God and know that if I’m trying to do God’s work, He will love me and in the end, that’s all that really matters.  Each day I take time to visit with God in prayer about my day. I ask God to provide His Grace and call up the Holy Spirit to be with me, guiding me and giving me the strength and wisdom I need to deal with whatever life brings my way that day.  I didn’t always do that in years past; I believed I could handle anything that came up all on my own.  And then a day came when I couldn’t handle what was happening in my life and I needed help beyond myself.

On this day of Mother Teresa’s canonization, I read about her life and come to know that every day was difficult for her.  She had many days when she knew she needed help beyond this earthly world.  So when she put her faith in God, life was not quite as difficult and she gained the strength to give of herself to others.  But even then, there were still many days  when it seemed that God was nowhere to be found and didn’t care about her needs and the needs of those she was serving.  Just like the days when I feel that God has forgotten about me and I feel alone and abandoned.  But when I stop to think about it, I know that’s not true and what it  means is that I forgot about God.  I had reverted into my old habits of determining for myself how the day should go.  It is in those moments that I am reminded to take time to reflect about what’s going on and then accept what I can’t change, change what I can and leave the rest up to God.

Now I wish I could say that getting to that point was an easy task, but like most changes in life, they don’t come easy.  I needed to gain experience in learning to trust in God.  I needed to build up my faith and trust that He is always looking after my best interests.  If God truly is my Father, then as with our earthly fathers, we come to trust in their guidance and faith that they are always looking out for our best interests.  But as with our earthly fathers’ it takes some learning experiences to know that maybe I should have listened to “Father Knows Best”.  That’s why faith stories are such an important part of my journey.  I now take the time to listen to the stories of others.  The stories about their faith and trust in God and how that brought them peace and understanding.   I heard many stories about the power of prayer and how prayer can change things in our lives.  All of these help me to know that faith does make a difference in our lives and the lives of others.

In a conversation with my brother last week, he asked me about this very topic!  He said a mission was happening in their parish.  The speaker said he would be focusing on helping people be healed from Neuropathy.  My brother asked if he should go and could he be healed?  My answer was, “do you believe you can be healed?  That might be a good place to start.”  And he responded with, “I don’t know how to do that, I don’t know what I need to do to believe”.  I told him to start with “Faith”.   Faith in God the creator and realize that God can heal us, if that’s what we need and we have faith in God to meet our needs.   But in that process it’s important to remember that healing can have many different meanings.  You might be healed in such a way that your Neuropathy doesn’t bother you as intensely and you have been given a way to deal with your affliction.  You may learn how to suffer pain and the suffering becomes a catalyst to do other things like Padre Pio did with his pain, or maybe you will be healed from Neuropathy.  Whatever happens, it will be what’s needed when it’s needed if you have faith in God.  I suggested he might start by praying for God to heal him.

As a way to provide a personal experience of this faith I shared with him the story of one of my traveling companions on a trip to Ireland this past spring.  She was so excited to be able to visit Our Lady of Knock Shrine because she had a really special request she wanted to make of our Lady of Knock.  Here is her story:

“It has been awhile!  My life has been very busy since our return from Ireland!  As you may know, my main goal on the trip was a special request from our Holy Mother when we visited Our Lady of Knock Shrine.  I asked for her intercession in my prayers for my daughter to have a child.  She and her husband had been trying for 3 years.  Upon, my return, I had a very vivid dream that my daughter had a baby girl.  The day after Mother’s Day I told my daughter I thought she was pregnant.  That evening she took a home pregnancy test and it was positive!  Long story short, her first ultrasound confirmed her date of conception as April 14^th the day we were at the Knock Shrine!  She is due on January 5, 2017!  Her second ultrasound confirmed a baby girl!  Our first grandchild!  I just had to share my blessing with you all!  Our Holy Mother is amazing and her love is Devine!!! “

So is this co-incidence or faith in God working in our lives?  I’m going with Faith!