The Cathedral of the Holy Family presents our First Friday devotion: Beloved, a night where we spend time with the one who loves us the most: Jesus Christ!

Update: This schedule will continue only until the end of June.

Bishop Mark has invited everyone to pray and fast for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic and for all those affected by it on the Fridays of the Easter Season (and perhaps beyond).

Some days… okay, most days, I can be so easily distracted and caught up in the hectic pace, the to-do lists and the anxieties of the world around me that I miss out on the beauty and blessings occurring around me at every moment. I thank God that God does not give up on us “wanderers” and continually sends the Holy Spirit to nudge us along. Here is today’s nudging story:

I was sitting in the pew of a small Saskatchewan town church with family and my Baba. It was the day after we gathered as family to celebrate Baba’s 106^th birthday. It was a great celebration but at 106 she is not quite up to staying up to celebrate that long. This was the first time in many, many years that I can recall that my Baba went to bed before me. But anyway… see I told you I am easily distracted and go off on a tangent just like that, so anyway… there I am sitting in the pew, and my wife nudges me and gives me one of those head twitches to look down the pew. At the end of the pew is my Baba, hands folded and lips moving in silent prayer. My heart stirred...

A wise man taught me a dangerous prayer: “Lord, whatever you ask me to do, I will do.”

That was a little over 20 years ago. I have prayed that prayer many times. It can be scary. It requires trust, an awful lot more than I usually want to give. It requires faith, more than I sometimes have. But it’s led me on quite a journey.

I remember reading from a children’s bible every night after supper growing up. By the time I was a teenager, I had a pretty decent understanding of the major stories in the bible (whether I wanted to or not). It gave me a great foundation for my faith life.

Jane and I have tried several times to do the same thing with our children. But we failed spectacularly (usually around day number 2 or 3).