Hello, well here is another weekend. I don’t know how many of you are working or retired. Sometimes, as I remember, being a priest, weekends were defiantly work days. But it was a work the I truly enjoyed. I would not have stayed as long as I have if I did not enjoy the work I was about.
We do not have to look too far in our newspapers or on the TV to know that there are places in our world that seem to be always at war. Peace for these people seems to be only a dream. I don’t know how they are able to live in the rubble of what was once their home, their towns, their cities. Now they live in makeshift tents or in the rubble of what may have been their home. 
Yet, the message that Jesus came to preach was one of peace. In the psalms the author says, “Peace, peace, and there is no peace.” But what is peace? Is it just the absence of war? Albert Einstein give us this thought today, “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” And what is it we are to understand? Maybe we may try to understand our neighbors. Maybe we might try to understand those who are different from us. Maybe we need to try to understand those who worship in a different way. 

Remember, what the prophet Isaiah told the people,  “Remember the tings I have done in the past. For I alone am God. I am God and there is none like me.” (Is46:9)Maybe it is time to put away our old ways of thinking, and begin to allow the Holy Spirit some time to instruct us in God’s way and let go of the past. Understanding is only possible when we are willing to move forward and letting go of that once was. 
Peace and All Good,Fr. Vinnie, osf and the Bros and Srs of the Franciscan House of Prayer.