Dear Friend,

We need to possess an enduring love. Endurance: the power to withstand hardship or stress, to keep on going despite all setbacks.

I recently heard of a Catholic woman who, after having four children, started running and then entered marathons. This year, she is running the London Marathon, but before she does, she will run four other marathons each day before the London Marathon. So she will be running 26 miles every day for five days. It will take great endurance to complete, but on British TV she said she is committed to enduring all that she will have to face to complete the marathons set before her.

Dear Friend,

Pope Saint John XXIII often reminded people, "Do not forget your prayers. These may be as short as you wish if you find long prayers too hard, but do not forget them. Even a sign can be a prayer."

We all have our routine and we don't always want to change it. Never-the-less we can find more time for prayer, if we just look at our daily routine.

Dear Friend,

C. S. Lewis once provided a powerful image of the difference between heaven and hell.

He described hungry people sitting at a huge banquet loaded with delicious food. Every person had a meter-long fork and knife attached to their hands (that’s about three feet long).

Dear Friend,

Yvette, who is a young mother in Washington D.C., recently told me her remarkable story, she wrote:

“It was the end. I knew it. I could no longer fight. I sat here emotionless. I was totally alone. Others had tried to help - doctors, nurses, parents, husband, children. But they were gone. Hours earlier I had come into the hospital on an emergency basis. I had back pain so severe that at times, it dropped me to my knees. This was not my first hospital stay. I had been sick for a long time it seemed...

Dear Friend,

What does hope in God do for humanity?

Hope shines brightest when the hour is darkest.
Hope motivates when discouragement comes.
Hope energizes when the body is tired.
Hope sweetens while bitterness bites.

Dear Friend,

Think how many temptations we might face in an ordinary day.

Growling at the breakfast table - the temptation to unkindness.

Arguing over who should change the baby this time - the temptation to selfishness.

Dear Friend,

Sin demands to have a person be alone. It withdraws the individual from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him or her, and the more deeply the person becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is the isolation.

Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed, it poisons the whole being of a person.

Dear Friend,

In the early days of the church Baptism was a declaration that the believer was definitely identifying with that group of people who were called Christians and were often despised and hated.

To be a Christian meant taking a leap of Faith. To identify yourself with those who were called Christians meant persecution, maybe death; it meant being ostracized from your family and shunned by friends. Finally, the one act which was the final declaration of this identification was Baptism.

Dear Friend,

These are the last New Year's Resolutions of Saint Sir Thomas More who was executed by the English King Henry VIII in 15ti5 because of his fidelity and loyalty to the Pope. He was the Lord High Chancellor of England. The Church has named him Patron of Statesmen and Politicians

"Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God's help, I do humble entreat Him, by His grace, to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to His will, for Christ's sake. [I will] remember to read over these Resolutions once a week.

Dear Friend,

Christmas can still arrive when you least expect it, some mes in the most unexpected manner. A priest friend of mine relates a story of an elderly woman named Stella Thornhope who was struggling with her first Christmas alone. Her husband had died just a few months prior through a slowly developing cancer. Now, several days before Christmas, she was almost snowed in by a brutal weather system. She felt terribly alone - so much so she decided she was not going to decorate for Christmas.

Dear Friend,

The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. He gives life, he brings forth different charisms (gifts) which enrich the people of God and, above all, he creates unity among believers: from the many he makes one body, the Body of Christ. The Church’s whole life and mission depend on the Holy Spirit; he fulfills all things.

Dear Friend,

Two hundred years ago, in the early 19th Century, as astonishing as it may seem, Christmas in Great Britain had become almost extinct.

The Times newspaper did not mention Christmas once between 1790 and 1835. Not once!

However, Charles Dickens was instrumental in reviving Christmas during the Victorian era. He wrote his book ‘A Christmas Carol’ in 1843 for several reasons.

Dear Friend,

Johann Sebastian Bach was born into the musical family of Bachs in 1685. By the age of ten, both of his parents were dead. Early in his friction filled life, young Johann determined he would write music … music for the glory of God … and this he did. Most of Bach’s works are explicitly Biblical. Albert Schweitzer referred to him as the fifth evangelist, thus comparing him to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.