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GOD'S FAMILY

PRAYING AND SERVING TOGETHER

God desires the salvation of all His children. Heaven came to earth in the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ and brought us into the life of heaven in His Resurrection.

The Divine Liturgy  expresses this life in Christ flowing from our union with God. The night before He offered Himself  for our salvation, Jesus said: "I am the true vine and my father is the vine grower. He prunes away every barren branch, but the fruitful one He trims clean to increase their yield. You  are clean already, thanks to the word I have spoken to you. Live on in Me, as I do in you. No more than a branch can bear fruit of itself apart from the vine, can you bear fruit from Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who lives in Me and I in him, will produce abundantly, for apart from Me you can do nothing" ( Jn 15:1-5). Our participation in the Liturgy is described as an experience of the Kingdom of God- a foretaste of heaven, because during the Liturgy we are nourished by the vine which is Christ.

Jesus gives us a strong example of the importance of prayer, of time alone spent with God, listening in the quiet of our hearts to the awesomeness of God's love. Often Jesus "prayed in a certain place, spent the night in prayer" to gain strength and power for the mission His Father entrusted to Him. The disciples, observing the power and the peace that are the fruits of prayer, asked Jesus to teach them to pray. He said to them:      " When you pray, say:' Father, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins for we too forgive all who do us wrong and subject us not to the trial'"                        (Lk 11:2-4).

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