Monthly Archives: July 2026

Homily: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

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Go to the readings for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A)

“The LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at night. God said, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.” Solomon answered: “O LORD, my God, you have made me, your servant, king to succeed my father, David; but I am a mere youth, not knowing at all how to act. I serve you in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a people so vast that it cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong.” (1 Kings 3:5-9)

I had a moment like this in my life. A while after I had graduated college, with a degree for a role I found that sadly I didn’t really enjoy, I found myself working for a temp agency. I ended up at a company that was digitizing their file room, and a small army of temps were contracted for this, and they said that they were looking to hire five temps permanently to run the filing system. I was tired of doing job interviews, and tired of the unreliability of temp work, and I made it my goal to be one of those five. Anything they asked me to do was going to be my new favorite thing in the world to do. Remove staples from old forms? That’s my new favorite thing! Run the scanners!? That’s my new favorite thing! And I was one of the first temps to get hired.

I was in my late 20s, but I still kind of felt that I had some growing up to do, to be a “real adult.” But being recruited into the corporate world seemed to me the time to grow up and step up into the call of who I was made to be. I started getting serious about my Catholic faith, was going to Church, and reading Catholic teaching I wanted to understand better; in other words, to mature into an adult Catholic faith.

And this is when God dropped into my lap the book, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Dr. Stephen Covey. It was exactly what I needed at that moment. It gave me the principles for building the kind of life I was looking for. He calls them “first principles,” in Catholic terms we call it “natural law.” When we work with how things work, things work better. And Dr. Covey deeply connected his Christian faith into his writing, which was of great benefit to me. It recently happened, almost by accident, that I came across a video reviewing the seven habits, and it blew my mind how much of my life, and how much of my priestly ministry, is connected to what I had gotten from this book.

When I read that paragraph from Solomon, “O LORD, my God, I am a mere youth, not knowing at all how to act. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to distinguish right from wrong,” I thought, I know that sentiment. And so, looking through today’s readings in preparation for this, I was like, “Oh, yes, I can definitely tie all this into the Seven Habits.

The First Habit: “Be Proactive.” Take responsibility for your particular choices, and your life, and focus your energy on things you can change. There are things we cannot choose, that are given in situations we are in. But we have the capacity to choose how we respond to them. We are not machines running programs, we are God-created people with free-will. We have to look at our habits, our upbringing, our scripts and assumptions, and strengths, and weaknesses, and make good choices, holy choices, about who we are going to become. If we focus on things we can’t change, we waste our energy and opportunity to change the things we can. We can’t change much about the politics and things we see on the news. So don’t focus a lot of energy on that. Focus on what is directly around you. How you respond in your relationships: family, co-workers, and especially with God. How you prioritize your time and energy to what you can make choices about. When you focus on where you can have responsibility – “response ability,” you find that you can change a lot more than you thought you could.

The Second Habit: “Begin with the End in Mind.” What do you want people to remember about you after you’re gone? We’ve talked before about “Memento Mori,” The traditional Latin motto, “Remember you are to die.” Remember that you will have to answer not only for your sins, but who you have made yourself to be, what fruit you have yielded from the seeds of graces you have been given, what effects you have had on those around you. As someone recently pointed out to me, the other side of the coin of “Memento Mori” is “Memento Vivere,” remember to live. Live the life of the gifts and blessings and calling God has given you to have an abundant life of grace, love, joy, and peace.The first habit is that you are the driver of your life. The second habit is, what is your destination?

The Third Habit: “Put first things first.” It’s always bothered me that this wasn’t the first habit. The main theme of this habit is to picture a square with two rows and two columns. The top row is urgent and the bottom row is not urgent. The left column is important and the right column is not important. The first quadrant is both important and urgent. You must do these, and must do them now, things that are on fire. Go to work, pay your bills, especially the late ones, buy groceries. The second quadrant is important but not urgent. This is the key, things that are the most important, your real first things, but since they’re not yelling at you, they get put off too long in order to take care of the urgent things. Quadrant 2 things that are taking care of your spiritual life, your retirement, your health, preventative maintenance tasks, continual learning, long-term goals, etc. The key to this habit is to manage your time proactively around your goals rather than to just living reacting to minor urgent events. We know the phrase, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these other things will be added unto you.” That is Quadrant 2 in biblical terms. In our gospel reading, the kingdom of God is like a buried treasure, and so we sacrifice the non-important stuff (which doesn’t matter as much whether it’s urgent or not if it’s not that important) to acquire what is most important. So a great example of the third habit, of putting first things first.

The Fourth Habit: “Think Win-Win.” Seek solutions that benefit everyone involved so all parties feel heard, feel invested going forward. It’s based on an abundance mentality that someone doesn’t have to lose in order for someone else to win: everyone can win; shifting from a competitive mindset to cooperative one, creatively looking for new options. Also involved in this is our character: integrity (aligning our actions with our core values), maturity (balancing courage with consideration, or what I need with what others need), holiness. We are our brother’s keeper, we can’t step on him or ignore him to get ahead. This is perhaps the habit of holy loving service to others. I can’t consider it a win if it’s unjust to someone else.

The Fifth Habit: “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood.” This is a line right out of the prayer of Saint Francis. “Make me an instrument of your peace,” which connects to the fourth habit. But the end of that prayer: “O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.” If I love someone, I really want to actively and compassionately listen to their story, their heart, their world, to build a win-win relationship with them, to know what they really value, who they are, and only then can we really have meaningful communication. And that includes God: are you really listening to understand, listening to hear his heart, or is it just trying to get what you want?

The Sixth Habit: “Synergize.” This means 1+1 doesn’t equal 2, but can equal 3, or 10, or more, because combining the complementary strengths of multiple people, filling in the skill gaps in a team, has a multiplier effect of the efforts. York Catholic School Board had to replace an outgoing member, and they didn’t ask, “Who would be a good person to recruit?” They asked, “What skill area are we weak in that we need to strengthen with a new member?” That’s a synergistic approach to the question. It’s progressing from shunning diversity (which is suspicious of differences of background and opinions), to tolerating diversity (coexisting, but not leveraging differences), to celebrating diversity (valuing unique strengths as creative fuel), communicating in a creative and brave exchange of ideas, and choosing the “high road” of a new, mutually beneficial path, so this is tied to the previous habit of win-win. The opposite of this is a negative synergy, based on insecurity, fear of conflict, desire for control, or strict conformity of ideas and perspectives, tearing down others, gossiping with others, silos or camps within an organization that work against each other at the cost of the whole. Heaven is mutual respect, love, and service in humility for the good of others; hell is tearing down others, climbing over others, attacking others. It’s obvious which of these a church, or a family, or any group should work that wants to be successful. Synergy.

The first three habits are “Private Victories,” they have to do with your interior disposition to set right perspectives and goals, and being proactive to pursue them. The second three habits are “Public Victories,” they have to do with interpersonal relations and working together better with others. Of course there’s overlap, because proficiency in each habit help builds proficiency in the other habits.

And the Seventh Habit is called, “Sharpen the Saw,” and it’s in its own category of “Renewal.” Which is to occasionally go back to the basics, revisit the wisdom in the habits, how they’re described, how to build them, what the bad habits are which weaken them. Sometimes you’ll need to re-calibrate your goals, your path, as you grow in wisdom, perspective, and with changes in your life. Every once in a while, take a day and spend it in prayer, reading a holy book about faith, or the scriptures. And once a year or so go away to a Catholic retreat center for a spiritual recharge and renewal.

So these are Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Christians we are called to be highly effective people. We’re also called to be highly holy people, applying natural wisdom to our supernatural calling to be a light for others. And the first step of that is to see how we are not who and what we could be, we are not the saints we could be, and to respond to the call of grace, the call of God’s love for us, to max out our response to that upward call. To quote the Chinese philosopher Lau Tzu: “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” Or to quote Pope Benedict XVI: “The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.”

Bonus: While I was creating this post, I found this little gem, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Catholics” from the great Catholic teacher Dr. John Bergsma. Enjoy!

Homily: Wheat and Weeds

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Go to the readings for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A.

There’s a book that I often recommend to people when they express difficulty in getting along with someone, especially within their family, and I also recommend during marriage preparation of couples. It’s called “The Temperament God Gave You,” by Art and Laraine Bennett. I like it for a number of reasons. It’s based on the classic humors or temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, on which all modern personality tools are based, Meyers-Briggs, DISC, etc.), it helps you discern what your primary and secondary temperaments are, and it matters which one is primary and which is secondary. It describes the strengths of each of the combinations, it describes the prayer and spiritual strengths and needs of each combination, it describes how to get along and communicate effectively with each of the other combinations (spouses, children, co-workers, etc.), and it describes the dangers or weaknesses of each of the combinations. The dangers of each temperament are the strengths of the temperament disordered or distorted from a strength into a vice, a character flaw, a habitual sin, or a weakness to a particular temptation.

What God made good, the enemy tries to pollute and ruin. In our gospel reading, Jesus describes the kingdom of God on earth using three analogies. The first image, which he then explains at the end of the reading, is that “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’” An enemy has tried to pollute and distort what God made good. In fact, distorted the inherent strength of what God made. The enemy is very accurate in how he targets his attacks.

Sister Miriam James, of the Society of Our Lady of the Trinity, SOLT, a very popular Catholic speaker, said in her book, “Restore,” and in many of her talks, “Your wounds are not arbitrary.” Your wounds are not arbitrary. They’re not arbitrary for at least two reasons. First, because oftentimes our wounds are connected to our sins. They’re the effect of distorted thoughts that you have had, errors about yourself, or about something else, that led you into a habit of sin that it has been a real struggle to escape from. Second, and the cause of the first, is that the enemy has aimed at—he’s designed his attack—to create the maximum amount of damage. He knows how to supernaturally fire a torpedo right into a narrow unshielded thermal exhaust port that leads straight to the main power source, and the strength of our fully operational temperament becomes a distorted weakness; it gets wrecked. God creates us with a unique, special vocation for our life, our personal role in the plan of salvation. God knowingly and lovingly creates us and guides us with the perfect recipe of natural gifts and strengths that will be important for our mission. And this is exactly what the Enemy most crucially targets to attack and neutralize.

Or to put it in more contemporary terms of the Church. Our society’s sexual revolution led to a plague of sinful ways of thinking about and misusing the gift of our human sexuality, given to us that we would be able to share ourselves with incredible intimacy and self-giving love with the husband or wife we are sacramentally united to as the two become one. Sex has become about dangerously distorted beliefs about marriage, about love, about sex, about humanity, about babies, about the gift of life itself. The Church has powerful healing available to correct these distortions, to heal those wounded by them, and to protect the innocent from being wounded by them. The moral teachings of the Church, especially as presented in the framework of the Theology of the Body: a beautiful presentation of God’s sacred gifts of marriage, love, sexuality, and the call to unite and create new life. But what happened just as that teaching was beginning to spread? The sexual abuse scandal in the Church, and the utter loss of any credibility of the Church to teach the world about the holiness and beauty of sexual morality.

Jesus says, “His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest.’” Biblical scholars agree that this week is called darnel. It’s a weed that is almost indistinguishable from wheat while it is growing, right up until the wheat bears its grain. And by then, the weed’s roots have tangled themselves around the roots of the other plants around it. The farmer, the landowner, doesn’t want to risk losing any of the precious wheat, even despite the damage and the wasted resources taken up by the weeds.

So we need to remember, obviously, the gospels were written a few decades into the history of the church. St. Matthew’s gospel is considered to have been written about the year 85, so about 50 years after the Ascension, and enough time for some people to become Christians that perhaps were not good personal examples of Christianity. And Matthew here is giving Jesus’ teaching that he was aware this was going to happen in the Church, in the Kingdom of God on earth, and taught about it, so as to prepare people for weeds in the Church. And Jesus’ teaching is that there has always been and will always be weeds in the Church. In this world it will never be perfect, it will always have problems, and problem children, and division and scandal and sinners. That’s not to say that God wants this, but God is going to patiently accept it, for the sake of the wheat, for the saints. And then, at an hour and day we do not know, “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

But also, this is an analogy, and analogies compare two different things and say that they are similar in this particular way. But an analogy by nature breaks down, it is limited, because it is a comparision of two things are also different in many ways. And the limitation of this analogy of comparing wheat and weeds to saints and sinners is that weeds cannot become wheat, but sinners can become saints. We can actually take loving care of those around us so that they are inspired to change, to repent, to grow in devotion and love and virtue and holiness, and by the grace of God, be more like wheat than like weeds. We’re all a bit wheat and a bit weed. The Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.” We can’t take all the evil people and send them away, because the line between good and evil isn’t out there. We all also have evil in ourselves, as good and holy as we hopefully want to and try to be. And so it’s a blessing that bad people are always going to be allowed by God to be in the Church, because each of us struggles, each of us is in some ways at some times more weed than wheat. We won’t be perfected either, until Jesus returns.

weeds cannot become wheat, but sinners can become saints.

The second image Jesus uses is the familiar image of the kingdom of God as a mustard seed, a very tiny seed, that grows into a very large bush. So a few quick things about this image. First, mustard plants are not beautiful. They’re kind of gnarly to look at. It probably surprised Jesus’ audience who were used to Old Testament images like the size and power of the cedar trees, or the mighty oak trees. But the kingdom of God is like a mustard plant? This ties into the previous image, that in this world, in history, the kingdom is going to be surprisingly disappointing in its appearance. It’s not going to look how you think it should look. It’s going to have…issues. The second thing about this image is that mustard plants are an invasive species. The kingdom will spread surprisingly fast, and it will be very hard to stop.

And that takes us to Jesus’ third image in our gospel reading, a little bit of leaven changes the whole picture. The kingdom may be humble and small, but it will have a remarkably great impact on everything else. Pope Saint John XXIII was once giving a tour to reporters, and one asked how many people worked in the Vatican? He answered, “About half of them.”

Matthew Kelly, the author of “Rediscovering Catholicism,” once did a study to see if the 80/20 rule of business (that 80% of the work is usually done by 20% of the people) was true in the Church. He found that it was not. What he found was that in many of the parishes he studied, 93% of the work was accomplished by 7% of the parish. If your car, or your heart, maxed out at 7% its capacity, you would see that as a frightening problem. I know that many of the faithful are giving a lot of their resources to activities outside the church. Our strengths and mission are in different areas of humans society: to youth activities, to important fields and roles of work, to caring for sick or elderly family members, to volunteering and giving to many different wonderful things going on in our local community, and that is good. Just as long as you keep service, worship, and love of God first in your life, and you are humbly, prayerfully seeking to follow his plan for you, and his teaching through the Church of what is moral, what is good, what is required of you as his holy people, and what must be rejected in obedience to your primary identity, at all times, as a faithful holy servant and child of God.

The rest of our readings beautifully teach us that while God judges us, as only he has the power to do so, as he alone searches and knows our hearts, that while his power and perfection are the rule of what is true and just, yet in his sovereignty he is lenient. While he shows his power to those who are disobedient, to those who know him, he rebukes foolishness. While he is the master of all, he judges with clemency. And as our first reading ends, “And you taught your people, by these deeds, that those who are just must be kind; and you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.” He allows and he wants weeds to become wheat. He does not want them to remain weeds, to be thrown into the fiery furnace. He made them each for a special mission, not only to be pure in happiness in his glory forever, but for a particular personal role in salvation history in this world. And for that they must seek his mercy, and the healing of the wounds inflicted by the enemy that weakens or even neutralizes the strengths given for that mission. He wants us to pray for them, to be patient with them, because they are us. We each need each other’s love, patience, and prayers, to become what we were created to be in the mystery of the kingdom.

Homily: Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

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Go to readings for 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Hopefully everyone here knows where this poem is from. It’s called “The New Colossus,” written in 1883 by the Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus, who was inspired by the suffering of the Jewish immigrants fleeing the antisemitism in Russia, and were flocking to New York for refuge, as well as the newly emancipated the slaves following the American Civil War. Emma Lazarus was commissioned to write a poem to be auctioned off as part of the fundraising to build the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, dedicated in 1886. This poem inspired a dear friend of Emma Lazarus, Rose Hawthorne (daughter of author Nathaniel Hawthorne), to later found the Hawthorne Dominican Sisters to care for the poor and afflicted.

Americans are rightly proud of the many accomplishments, inventions, victories, and successes of the countless great Americans throughout our history. But it is a very Catholic principle, which Pope Leo XIV touched on in his recent Catholic Social Teaching encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas”, that God gives abundant gifts not for the praise of the one receives them, but to be shared for the good of the whole community. And so while we proudly wave Old Glory, it’s not just to celebrate our country’s prosperity, but also what she has always stood for in the minds of the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free in every land. These aren’t necessarily going to be huddled masses of great doctors, great inventors, great businessmen, great statesmen (although these will rise up from among them). It’s going to be mostly good people, the simple, religiously faithful, unsophisticated lower classes, who suffer the most under unjust government and economic systems.

The “American Dream” has its roots in the beginning of the Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It was clearly associated with the abundant advancement of the “blank slate” of the western frontier. Here we encounter that spirit of “Rugged American Individualism,” the conception that we have the right to be left alone, and the opportunity to accomplish what we will, and the obligation to figure it out and “get-r-done” for ourselves. From a Catholic perspective, there are two potential difficulties that may come from this. First, it fathers the “secular religion” of “Moralistic therapeutic deism” whose tenets include that we don’t need to call upon God or have a relationship with him except out of necessity as a last resort. And second, an almost karmic belief that demographic groups that are not successful do not need systemic help (correction of sysemic injustice), but rather just need to learn to be more proactive to “get-r-done” for themselves, as everyone who has worked their way out of difficulty has done before. The Church’s Social Teaching principles of “common good”, “solidarity” offer a tempering effect to be more personally and voluntarily (virtuously) generous to share one’s abundance with those in urgent need. Failing that, the political principle of communism legally forces the redistribution of wealth, and is always a temptation, especially to those who are suffering and frustrated.

There have always been problems with poverty, economic inequality, political corruption, and other hurdles to overcome. Perhaps one of the blessings of the World Cup tourists the last few months has been the revelation that within our own country, we see and experience our problems right in our face. But when visitors come from other places, they’re struck in wonder how blessed, how generous, how kind and welcoming, how patriotic, how “America the Beautiful” is real, which they thought was just in movies.

But as we know, our house does have some big problems to face. And if there were easy answers, we would have solved it by now. So, we continue to pray that God bless America; that he would continue to stand beside her, and guide, her through the night with a light from above.

There’s always been a kind of “promised land” “new world” sort of vibe to America, that sense of hope that we just talked about. And we as Catholics have a special role to play. We know by faith what God our creator has revealed about what is good for both human individuals and human communities, whether that community is a family, a parish, a town, a state, a nation, or the world. We have the light in the darkness of the fallen world, and as Jesus instructs us, we are not to hide light under a bushel basket, but set up on a pedestal for the whole household to see by. Some of them might recoil from the light, if all they have known is darkness, and call their darkness light. But a fire in a cave is not a beautiful sunny Saturday in the park (I think it was the Fourth of July). We have to assure them they were made to dance in the light, liberated and healed of the burdens of sin. Some of them might not only recoil but try to extinguish the light, if they prefer the darkness and its disordered pleasures. But it is God’s eternal light of divine wisdom and love. While they might take out a few candles, we know that the glorious light, God, wins in the end.

Our first reading, from a time of suffering and corruption in Israel, tells the people of God to rejoice, to shout for joy, for the Prince of Peace comes to us. Not an earthly ruler, as Israel was expecting, but God himself, from whom all authority is given.

A king preparing for war processes in on a horse; a king ushering in a time of peace rides a donkey. And it says he shall banish the chariot, a vehicle of war, from the division in our people, and the horse, a spirit of war, from the heart of our people. He shall proclaim peace to the nations, and his dominion is all nations. All world leaders are called to be peaceful, to dialogue, to avoid in every way possible how war ravages nations, lands, and especially the poor. Again, let us ask God to bless our country, our leaders, our people, not only for the suffering, but those who have the power and potential to alleviate suffering.

Saint Paul reminds us in our second reading, from his letter to the Romans, that we are not to look just at what we see with our worldly eyes, to think with our worldly brains, and accept the terms and conditions. We are called to be heavenly while in this world. We are reminded that we are not to live the life of the flesh. On the contrary, we are in the spirit. And so it is from the Spirit, who inspires the teachings of the Sacred Tradition of the Church, that we receive and are formed by what is true and good, not from the world, not from a political party, not from podcasts, not from movies and series and magazines and famous people. We do not judge the Church from what oozes into our brains from society. We judge everything in society by the light that comes to us from the Scriptures, from the Catechism, from the bishops, pastors, and documents of the Church.

And our gospel reading, one of the most inspiring and loved words of Jesus. “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones.” Jesus had just preached throughout Galilee, and instead of a national miracle of renewal, he was, even with his wondrous signs, ignored and rejected. And yet he stays faithful and confident in his mission. He was sent not just to the leaders, full of themselves and comfortable with the status quo. But he was sent also to the people of the land, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. And Jesus rejoices in them, as they rejoice to receive him.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” Humanity was not created to carry the burdens of sin, injustice, hatred, resentment, or even the burdens of wrestling to figure out what is right and what is wrong, good and evil. We were created to receive all that we need from God, to rest in him, to trust in him, to follow him, to love him, and to know in our hearts that we don’t need to avoid or go around God to get what we really need, but to trust ourselves to God, that he knows us better than we know ourselves, and truly wants us to have joy, peace, and happiness, to cooperate with his divine will with a meek and humble heart. The burden we were made for is love, to honor and protect love, and do works of self-giving love.

Jesus showed us humanity perfected from sin, humanity without sin, in perfect relationship with the Father, and invited us (called us) to follow him, to take up our cross of purifying ourselves from the errors and injuries this worldly life inflicts on us, and to embrace his life, his love, his communion with the father, as the new spiritual life within us. The burden is to live in this world by this light of divine life within us. And the yoke is easy. A yoke unites two animals to share the workload, and an easy yoke is one that is custom fit and well made. Our way of being united to Christ is unique to each of us, our own special way of making the work of Christ visible in our lives by the gift of his grace.

And so trusting in our Lord, not only for our own sake, but for our families, our community and especially, this weekend, for our nation, we respond with the call to prayer: to entrust to God the needs of our nation. And what better way to do that than the official prayer of the first bishop of our nation, Archbishop John Carroll, whose cousin, Charles Carroll was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. It is an excellent prayer, especially for the times we live in now, over 200 years later, to remind us of the crucial role faith and prayer has always played in our nation since its beginning.  Also each year on July 4th, Independence Day, we can especially pray for our government as we are commanded to do in Sacred Scripture: “I desire therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men: For kings, and for all that are in high station: that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all piety and chastity. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2 1-4).

And so let us pray:

We pray, O almighty and eternal God, who through Jesus Christ has revealed thy glory to all nations, to preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church, being spread through the whole world, may continue with unchanging faith in the confession of your name.

We pray Thee, who alone are good and holy, to endow with heavenly knowledge, sincere zeal and sanctity of life, our chief bishop, the pope, the vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the government of his Church; our own bishop, all other bishops, prelates and pastors of the Church; and especially those who are appointed to exercise among us the functions of the holy ministry, and conduct your people into the ways of salvation.

We pray O God of might, wisdom and justice, through whom authority is rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgment decreed, assist with your Holy Spirit of counsel and fortitude the president of these United States, that his administration may be conducted in righteousness and be eminently useful to your people over whom he presides; by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion; by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and by restraining vice and immorality.

Let the light of your divine wisdom direct the deliberations of Congress, and shine forth in all the proceedings and laws framed for our rule and government, so that they may tend to the preservation of peace, the promotion of national happiness, the increase of industry, sobriety and useful knowledge; and may perpetuate to us the blessing of equal liberty.

We pray for his excellency, the governor of this state, for the members of the assembly, for all judges, magistrates, and other officers who are appointed to guard our political welfare, that they may be enabled, by your powerful protection, to discharge the duties of their respective stations with honesty and ability.

We recommend likewise, to your unbounded mercy, all our brethren and fellow citizens throughout the United States, that they may be blessed in the knowledge and sanctified in the observance of your most holy law; that they may be preserved in union, and in that peace which the world cannot give; and after enjoying the blessings of this life, be admitted to those which are eternal.

Finally, we pray to you, O Lord of mercy, to remember the souls of your servants departed, who are gone before us with the sign of faith and repose in the sleep of peace; the souls of our parents, relatives and friends; of those who, when living, were members of this congregation, and particularly of such as are lately deceased; of all benefactors who, by their donations or legacies to this Church, witnessed their zeal for the decency of divine worship and proved their claim to our grateful and charitable remembrance. To these, O Lord, and to all that rest in Christ, grant, we beseech you, a place of refreshment, light and everlasting peace, through the same Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior. Amen.