Healthcare Holy Hour
Healthcare Holy Hours, 2023
Schedule of Intentions for the Healthcare Holy Hours, Epiphany to Easter 2023
Healthcare Holy Hour
Healthcare Holy Hour Fall 2022
Schedule of Intentions for the Healthcare Holy Hours, Fall of 2022
Faith
DOES GOD ALWAYS ANSWER our PRAYERS?
Yes! God always answers our prayers. Jesus assures us of this over and over again. “Ask and it will be given to you, he says, Seek and you will find . . . For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds . . . If you, who Read more…
Healthcare
THE “WHY” QUESTION
Why is this happening to me? Why did this happen to my child? What have I done to deserve this? Is God punishing me? Why doesn’t God answer my prayers? I hear questions like these frequently. As a priest and a chaplain to suffering patients their families, I get the Read more…
Faith
CRIPPLED by ILLNESS; RUNNING to MEET the LORD
The patients I encounter in my health care ministry are not, for the most part, runners. Many of them can walk, others have hopes of walking or even running again, and some, sadly, must accept that their ambulatory days are behind them. For all these people, however, and for every Read more…
Faith
SADNESS, HOPE, and REVERSAL of FORTUNE
There are great joys that people in health care get to experience. Patients get well, receive favorable diagnoses, overcome difficult bouts of illness, and emerge from sickness with deepened gratitude and fresh perspective. Those who care for those patients feel that joy too, along with the satisfaction of having helped Read more…
Faith
“GOD’S REMEDY”: the STORY of RAPHAEL the ARCHANGEL
I am writing this on September 29, the feast day of the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. They are the three angels who are named in the Bible, whom God sent to his people for specific purposes. Those purposes are revealed in the meaning of their names: Michael means “Who Read more…
Faith
The ROAD to EMMAUS: ACCOMPANYING the SICK on their JOURNEY
In recounting the events of Easter Sunday, The Gospel of Luke presents us with the beautiful narrative in which Jesus walks with the two disciples travelling on the road to Emmaus. The disciples were speaking to each other about their sorrow and disappointment about what had happened to Jesus. They Read more…
Faith
LENTEN PENANCE: SUFFERING in UNION with CHRIST
Throughout the forty days of Lent, the Church invites us to practice penance by praying, fasting, and giving alms. As the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday (see Matt 6:1-6, 16-18) reminds us, that penance is not meant to be a matter of merely external observances, but is to proceed from Read more…
Faith
PRAYING for MIRACLES
People faced with dire circumstances often pray to God for miracles. The patients in the hospitals I serve, along with their families and loved ones, frequently offer such prayers. In the church of St. Catherine of Siena, where I live and minister, we have a shrine to St. Jude, who Read more…
Healthcare
BEING ANGRY with GOD
“I am angry with God” I often hear this from patients in the hospitals. They are expressing disappointment, the feeling that God has let them down. It may be a woman who has prayed to God for healing and the illness has only gotten worse. It may be a man Read more…