A Prayer…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

In the Antiochian Archdiocese Financial Report for the year ending on January 31, 2010, page 50, the Bishops of the Archdiocese are listed as “auxiliaries”. If this is a mistake it is a significant one and if this was a statement it doesn’t seem wise given the struggles that ensued and the decisions made following the attempt to return our Diocesan bishops back to auxiliaries. What good would be served by recalling old hurts?

I just want us, all of us with myself the first, to rise above. There are serious challenges to the Faith, a culture that is increasingly hostile, social breakdown, a world wandering in the dark. So what is the answer? Return to our first love as we are hard, cold, and lost without it.

Holy Spirit, come and renew us, refocus us, call to mind in our hearts the reasons why we embrace this Faith, make us tender again. Lift our eyes to heaven and our hearts towards God. Let the things You desire be our desire, forgive us where we have sinned, and set us again on the path of salvation.

Changing the heart…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

is difficult. This is why there are millions, even of the Church, enamored of politics, power, and acquisition and only a few who are pious. Yet the world will one day be inherited not by the politicians, generals, academics, or captains of industry but rather by the meek.

LeBron…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

I presume I may be one of the many Americans who couldn’t care less about where Lebron James plays basketball. Yet I suppose its a sign of the times when the sports media is breathlessly on his trail reporting every meeting and analyzing every statement for some hidden clue.

Now if he was the person who developed a cure for cancer…

Voltaire…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.” – Voltaire

John Donne…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou’rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell’st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.