St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church Carlsbad CA

Nov. 4 PHILIPPIANS 2:12-18 Source: wau.org Even if I am poured out . . . upon the sacrificial service of your faith, I rejoice. (Philippians 2:17)... Have you ever felt wrung out like a rag, dry and spent? That’s likely how Paul felt when he wrote this letter. Not only was he in prisonyet againbut he had spent much of the past year or so trying to solve problems that had cropped up in other places like Corinth and Colossae. So how could he say, I rejoice (Philippians 2:17)? That’s not usually our reaction when we feel worn-out. But look what Paul was pouring himself out on: the sacrificial service of the Philippians’ faith (Philippians 2:17). Paul focused not so much on how he felt or his circumstances as he did on his mission. He thought about how much he loved God and the people he was called to serve. He recalled the fruit of his work among the members of the community there. And that led him to rejoice. We know what it’s like to pour ourselves out for something or someone. It’s exhausting and can make us feel sad, resentful, or anxious. That’s a natural human response. But if you are spending yourself on something that God is calling you to do, and if you are doing it out of love for him and his people, then you can rejoice, just like St. Paul. You may not feel joyful at each moment, but you will experience a sense of contentment and peace knowing that you are doing God’s will the best you can. So put your trust in the Lord. Trust that he will give you the grace and strength you need to keep going every day. Trust that every choice, every sacrifice you make to love and serve will bear fruit, not only now, but in eternity. That’s what Paul did. He knew that the goal of all his efforts was salvation, not just for him, but for all those he labored for. Trust too that God is with you, especially in those moments when you feel as if you can’t do one more thing. He will not abandon you! Not only will you feel his presence, but you may even feel his delight in your willingness to serve. And that will surely make you rejoice! Lord, although I may feel ‘poured out,’ fill me with your grace today so that I can keep loving you and the people I serve. Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14 Luke 14:25-33

Nov. 3 LUKE 14:15-24 Source: wau.org A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. (Luke 14:16)... How about a twist on a familiar parable? We usually read this as a story about God inviting humanity to share in the banquet of eternal life. That’s certainly at the heart of this passage. But let’s also try exploring it as a story about one of our daily rituals: our prayer time. First, like the dinner host, God is preparing a feast of sorts for us. Every time we come to him in prayer, he is ready to fill us with his Spirit. He seeks to strengthen us so that we can follow Jesus. The Scriptures are rich with imagery of people feasting on God’s word. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel ate the words of God, and the psalmist declared that God’s promises were sweeter than honey (Jeremiah 15:16; Ezekiel 3:3; Psalm 119:103). Even today’s psalm proclaims that the lowly shall eat their fill at the table of the Lord (22:27). Second, like the man in Jesus’ parable, God is beckoning us to come join him in this feast. And there is no good reason to decline his invitation. Fields, oxen, and honeymoonsthese can represent our work and family life. Even these important and holy vocations are meant to flow out of our relationship with Jesus. They’re meant to find their purpose and energy in the grace we receive in prayer. Finally, what about the people who rejected the invitation? Is God angry with us if we miss our prayer time? No. Rather, he goes to creative lengths to get our attention and draw us in from the highways and hedgerows of our busy schedules (Luke 14:23). He doesn’t want us to miss out on his grace. This different perspective may be helpful if we usually think of God as passively listening while we pray. It’s better to see him as actively hosting our prayer, enjoying our company, and offering us nothing but the finest foods. After all, he’s the One who has been preparing, inviting, and waiting for us. Today, try to find one or two practical ways to pray like a guest who’s been invited to a banquet. Maybe imagine the Lord welcoming you warmly when you arriveor personally feeding you whenever a Scripture verse speaks to you. Lord, thank you for inviting me to eat with you. Philippians 2:5-11 Psalm 22:26-32

https://catholic-link.org//litany-for-the-holy-souls-in-p/

Nov. 2 WISDOM 3:1-9 Source: wau.org As gold in the furnace, he proved them. (Wisdom 3:6)... As we commemorate All Souls’ Day today, we might light a candle at church in honor of our loved ones who have died. Or we might display their photos in our homes. Many cultures devote today to remembering deceased friends and family membersand to pray for them. But why exactly should we pray for the dead? It’s all about our desire for them to experience the joys of heaven. We know that because Jesus died and rose from the dead, every one of us has the hope of heaven. Jesus has forgiven us, defeated death, and opened the doors to eternal life. But we also know that the effects of sin can still take their toll, even when we are in friendship with God. Think about times when someone forgave you for an angry outburst or hurtful word, but the pain that you caused that person still lingered. Can any of that coexist with God? Those lingering consequences of sin? The mixed motives? No. Thanks be to God that when we die in friendship with him, we are saved. But for those persistent effects of sin, God offers us opportunities to be purified and cleansed even more deeply, like gold that is refined to remove impurities (Wisdom 3:6). In his encyclical Spe Salvi [Saved in Hope], Pope Benedict XVI says that when we come face-to-face with Jesus, all falsehood melts away. As we encounter him whose love has conquered all evil, we absorb the overwhelming power of his love into our hearts. That love is so strong that it burns away whatever evil or sin remain in us. Benedict calls this the pain of love (47). It’s something that can be painfulbut joyful toobecause it ultimately brings us salvation. We can look at it as God’s way of loving the sin out of us. So take heart! God wants to keep cleansing you, even after death. He wants to bring you into the joys of heavenyou and all your loved ones. So pray for your loved ones. Ask the Holy Spirit to help them pass through this pain of love so that they can see God face-to-face! Lord, bring all those who have died in friendship with you into heavenly joy! Psalm 23:1-6 Romans 5:5-11 John 6:37-40

This Tuesday is Election Day. We will have Eucharistic Adoration all day with the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet at the beginning of each hour. We invite you to join our parish community in offering non-partisan prayers for our country and praying for a peaceful and just election. We invite you to observe a day of fasting, abstinence and prayers. May God bless America. Please share.

St Elizabeth Seton Sunday November 1 2020

Nov. 1 MATTHEW 5:1-12 Source: wau.org Blessed are you. (Matthew 5:11) Stroll the halls of any maternity ward, and you’ll see parents beaming with happiness over the birth of their child. You’ll also hear them saying things like I hope he grows up to be successful in life. I’m going to make sure she has every opportunity I never had.... Here are a few things you probably won’t hear them say: I hope she finds her way to sadness. I’m going to make sure he gets picked on in school. No one wants that for their children! But these are the very types of characteristics Jesus blesses in today’s Gospel. Now, Jesus doesn’t want us to actively seek out persecution and sorrow. But he wants us to know that following him may lead to such challenges. That’s because the way of discipleship is often at odds with the ways of the world: In a world marred by resentment and vengeance, Jesus wants us to forgive and turn the other cheek. In a world focused on money and power, Jesus wants us to live humbly and give generously. In a world wounded by wars and divisions, Jesus wants us to love our enemies and work for peace. Every saint, both known and unknown, has experienced this tug-of-war between the world and the kingdom of God. And that’s precisely why we celebrate them today: they have survived the time of great distress with their faith intact (Revelation 7:14). It’s not just the saints. Every believer has their own times of great distress as well. Isn’t it helpful to know that you aren’t alone in the struggle? All the saints are praying for you. The Holy Spirit is in you to empower and guide you. And you have your brothers and sisters in Christ. It truly is possible to survive even the greatest of temptations and take your place with all the saints in heaven. Holy Spirit, give me the grace I need not only to survive but also to thrive as a disciple of Jesus! Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 Psalm 24:1-6 1 John 3:1-3

It's time to FALL BACK into church.

Oct.31 PHILIPPIANS 1:18-26 . . . for your benefit. (Philippians 1:24)... Apart from his shackles, St. Paul was treated rather humanely at the governor’s residence where he was imprisoned when he wrote this letter. He was able to receive visitors and may even have utilized a secretary. In comparison to his adventures at sea and the beatings he had endured, it wasn’t too bad. Yet Paul still confessed an internal debate to his friends in Philippi. Would it be better for him to die or to remain on earth? Paul longed to die so that he could experience uninterrupted communion with the Lord. Still, he concluded that it was better to remain in the flesh, as limiting and painful as it was. Why? Paul gave one reason that is as simple and personal as it is profound: for your benefit (Philippians 1:24). He loved the Philippiansand members of all the other churches he had visitedand he wanted to keep helping them and sharing the good news with them. This may sound excitingor intimidating. Remember, though, that for Paul, serving the Church often meant writing letters, offering up prayers, and dealing with legal and logistical matters. Leadership from afar, in other words. This might not be your typical idea of a missionary, and it may not have been Paul’s ideal either. But he spent years at a time in prison or under house arrest, so there was little he could do in person. He also spent a lot of time traveling from one place to anotherusually on foot. However, no matter how limiting his circumstances were, Paul knew that there were still great possibilities to labor fruitfully for God. Like Paul, we can glorify God whether we are in prison or free, in a kitchen or at a construction site, in college or a nursing home, even alive or dead. Every sacrifice we make for God’s people is an opportunity to build up the Churchfor their benefit. So if you’re tempted to think that you can’t do much in service of God, think again. Remember St. Paul in prison. As you offer up your time, your challenges, and your prayers in love for the people around you, you will be serving him. And God will show you how to continue laboring with himfor their benefit. Lord, I desire to glorify you despite my limitations. Psalm 42:2-3, 5 Luke 14:1, 7-11

Oct. 30 Source: wau.org LUKE 14:1-6... Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day? (Luke 14:5) All you need is love. We could sing this song to the Pharisees and scholars in today’s Gospel. That’s what sums up the heart of the law, not All you need is rules. We know that the goal of all the commandments is to help us love God and his people. When Jesus likens the man with dropsy to a scholar’s son in today’s Gospel passage, he is trying to help the people see how all of the law is at the service of these two great commands to live in love. This fellow suffering with dropsy wasn’t some random person; he was a son of God, a brother in the family of God. Healing him was loving him, and loving him was keeping the law. It may seem obvious that helping someone on a Sunday wouldn’t displease God. But sometimes we can lose sight of the bigger picture of how to live God’s commands in everyday life. For example, let’s say we get frustrated when we show up late to church because we were struggling to get our kids out the door. While it’s good that we want to get to Mass on time, it’s not so important that we should lose our cool with our family. It’s good to take time to pray each day, but when a troubled friend calls in the middle of our prayer time, we may need to spend the time listening to that person instead. Working things out like this can be messy and humbling. It’s not easy to be peaceful when our expectations are upended. It certainly wasn’t easy for the Pharisees to surrender their expectations and ideas about what it meant to keep the law. It was challenging for them to receive Jesus’ teaching; it revealed that they still had room to grow in understanding and implementing the heart of the law. Jesus wants to keep teaching us how to live out the lawwith lovein our everyday lives. If we’re humble, teachable, and open to receiving fresh understanding, he will keep guiding us so that we can love as he loves. Jesus, what new ‘lesson’ do you want to teach me today? Open my heart to receive it. Philippians 1:1-11 Psalm 111:1-6

Oct 29 Source: wau.org EPHESIANS 6:10-20 Put on the armor of God. (Ephesians 6:11)... Are you ready to put on the armor of God to defend yourself from . . . yourself? When we read this popular passage, we conjure up images of righteously defending ourselves, swords drawn, from the tactics of the devil, as if these attacks would come to us from the outside. There is an element of truth to this, but we should know that spiritual attacks may come from within us as well. The devil is very clever at using our own weaknessessome that we don’t even recognizeto his advantage. He is very good at disrupting our peace and confidence in Christ and replacing them with anger, impatience, or selfishness. How do we look for those weak spots in our spiritual armor and move to strengthen them? The most important thing we can do is monitor our thoughts. Look back over the past few days and see if you can identify the situations in which you were easily angered or quickly grew impatient. Perhaps you were set off when someone interrupted your favorite pastime or moved too slowly when you were in a hurry. Sometimes the devil can even use the things we love the most to his advantageespecially if they pull us away from the Lord. How can we defend against these subtle attacks? Each morning before you get out of bed, say a quick prayer that helps you put on the armor of God. Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with the faith and confidence you need to stand firm against the devil’s tactics. Maybe even read this passage! During the day, try to pay attention to your thoughts. Take note of those ideas or memories that threaten your peace, block your ability to love someone, or undermine your humility. Recognize them for what they are, and ask the Spirit to help you counter them with the truths about God’s love and his grace. Recall God’s past work in your life, and let those memories fill you with confidence and strength. Every day, the Holy Spirit stands ready to outfit you with his armor. So take it up, put it onand put the devil to flight! Holy Spirit, help me guard my thoughts so that I may grow to be more like Jesus. Psalm 114:1-2, 9-10 Luke 13:31-35

https://www.romancatholicman.com/best-way-pray-holy-souls/