The Fabric Of Love

A loving heart, a gentle smile, A warm and tender touch.
We give so many things in life, But nothing means as much.
A little inspiration, When someone loses hope.
A kind word of encouragement, When they no longer seem to cope.
A simple phrase - I Love You- When no one else is there.
Taking hold of a hand, In a heart-felt prayer.
Love is never silent, It has so much to say.
And is it our greatest blessing, When we give it away.

Fr. Tomas Del Valle-Reyes

Discovering 21 Century /Descubriendo el siglo 21

P. O. BOX 1170

New York, NY 10018

212.244-4778

The Lord was alone ! ! !

In the beginning, Lord I was alone
Like the earth, before your Spirit
moved over the waters.
I was formless and empty
and darkness filled the depths of my heart.
Then, it was as if you declared
'Let there be Light'
and out of the darkness
I began to see hope like a shimmering ray of love
breaking through the parting clouds at the conclusion of the night.
In the beginning, Lord I was alone
but when I saw you in the light
I was no longer afraid.
You held out your hand and though I had a choice
I had no choice 
because to refuse was to embrace again the darkness.
In the beginning, Lord I was alone
Now I feel a part of your creation
loved, wanted, needed, family.
In the light of your presence
I hold out my heart that others
might glimpse your reflection through it
and be drawn from the darkness
that I once embraced
into the light of your sunrise
the brightness of your face.

Fr. Tomas Del Valle-Reyes

Discovering 21 Century /Descubriendo el siglo 21

P. O. BOX 1170

New York, NY 10018

212.244-4778

Teach us how to Pray: Luke 11.1

The disciples asked Jesus to “Teach us how to pray,"
He just answered by teaching them the prayer we call the
Our Father or The Lord's Prayer.
The Lord's Prayer is a basic Christian prayer.
As a model of prayer, every Christian learns it by heart.
It appears everywhere in the church's life: in its liturgy and
sacraments, in public and private prayer.
It 's a prayer Christians treasure.
Though we memorize it as a set formula, the Lord's Prayer shouldn't be repeated mechanically or without thought. Its purpose is to awaken and stimulate our faith. 
Through this prayer Jesus invites us to approach God as Father. 
Indeed, the Lord's Prayer has been called a summary of the gospel.
Our Father, who art in heaven,hallowed be thy name.
When Moses approached God on Mount Sinai, he heard a voice saying, "Do not come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."
An infinite chasm separates us from the transcendent God.
In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus invites us to draw near to God who is beyond human understanding, who dwells in mystery, who is all holy. 
We can call God "our Father".
Calling God "Father" does not mean that God is masculine. 
God is beyond the categories of gender, of masculine or feminine. None of our descriptions of God is adequate. 
God, who is "in heaven", whose name is holy, cannot be fully known by us.
By calling God "Father" we are more rightly describing ourselves and our relationship with God.
Jesus teaches that we have a filial relationship with God; God sees us as if we were a daughter or a son. 
And we, on our part, can approach God in the familiar confident way a child approaches a loving parent.
What is more, we approach God through God's only Son, Jesus Christ, who unites us to himself.
Thy Kingdom come,thy will be done,on earth as it is in heaven.
God's kingdom. Jesus often said that God's power would appear and renew all creation.
God like a mighty king would rule over the earth according to a plan that unfolds from the beginning of the world. God's kingdom would be marked by peace and justice.
Good would be rewarded and evil punished.
The kingdom, according to Jesus, is not far off, but already present in our midst, though not yet revealed.
In the Lord's prayer we pray that God's kingdom come, that God's will, which is for our good, be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
We are God's children. What can be more childlike than this petition in which we pray for our daily bread, a word that describes all those physical, human and spiritual gifts we need to live. 
With the confidence of children we say: "Give us this day what we need."
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
This petition of the Lord's Prayer is a demanding one. 
Not only do we ask God's forgiveness for our daily offenses, but we link God's forgiveness of us with our forgiveness of others.  
Forgiving others is not always easy to do. 
We need God's help to do it. But it must be done or we ourselves cannot receive God's mercy.
And lead us not into temptation,but deliver us from evil.  
Amen.
 Life is not easy. It is a daily battle. Trials like sickness and failure can crush our spirits. 
False values and easy promises can entice us and even destroy our souls. 
And so we ask God to keep us from failing when we are tested, to help us to know the right thing to do, to deliver us from the evil which awaits us in life.
The Lord's Prayer sums up the teaching of Jesus. It is also a prayer that offers the grace of Jesus: his reverence for God, his childlike confidence in his Father, and his power to go bravely through life no matter what comes. When we pray his prayer, his spirit becomes our own.

Fr. Tomas Del Valle-Reyes

Discovering 21 Century /Descubriendo el siglo 21

P. O. BOX 1170

New York, NY 10018

212.244-4778

Lord Jesus

Oh Lord Jesus, Heavenly Father,
Our Lord Our God,
Our Holy Redeemer,
Son of the Holy Almighty.
I thank you for this day, thank you for my family.
Thank you for your infinite Love,
Your forgiveness of sin,
Your Crucifixion,
Our Redemption and Salvation.
Thank you for our Blessed Mother, Virgin Mary,
Your saving Grace,
And all your gifts of Love that you have given us thru our lives.
Amen.

Fr. Tomas Del Valle-Reyes

Discovering 21 Century /Descubriendo el siglo 21

P. O. BOX 1170

New York, NY 10018

212.244-4778

WHO PACKED YOUR PARACHUTE TODAY

Charles Plumb, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was a jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. 
He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. 
He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.
One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!" "How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb.
"I packed your parachute," the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. 
The man pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!" Plumb assured him, "It sure did. 
If your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today".
Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. 
Plumb says, "I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat, a bib in the back, and bell-bottom trousers. 
  I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning,' 'how are you?' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor." 
Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.
Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute?"
Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. Plumb also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory -- he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.
Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachute.

Fr. Tomas Del Valle-Reyes

Discovering 21 Century /Descubriendo el siglo 21

P. O. BOX 1170

New York, NY 10018

212.244-4778

A Prayer for my Parents

Almighty and most merciful God, who in Thy infinite goodness hast committed us unto the charge of loving parents, who are to watch over us and provide for all our wants of body and soul, we pray Thee, protect and prolong their life, that we may continue to enjoy their loving care, and strengthen us that as obedient children we may be subject to their will and hold them in love and esteem; through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.

Fr. Tomas Del Valle-Reyes

Discovering 21 Century /Descubriendo el siglo 21

P. O. BOX 1170

New York, NY 10018

212.244-4778

A THOUSAND MARBLES

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings.
Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. 
Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.
A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement shack with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. 
What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it. 
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. 
 Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice.  
You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business.
He was telling whomever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles."
I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.
"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. 
I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. 
Too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital."
He continued, "Let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities." And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."
"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.
Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime."
"No, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part."
"It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail"; he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. 
I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy."
"So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. 
I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in the sack next to my gear. 
Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away." 
"I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focus more on the really important things in life." There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."
"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. 
I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time."
 "It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. 75 year Old Man, this is K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!" You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. 
I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. 
"C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." 
"What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. 
"Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent Saturday together with the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles.... 
- AUTHOR UNKNOWN -

Fr. Tomas Del Valle-Reyes

Discovering 21 Century /Descubriendo el siglo 21

P. O. BOX 1170

New York, NY 10018

212.244-4778