Lockport Places To Pray Dealing With Death Through Prayer Prayer For Lockportians St. Leo In Lockport?
I pray you, O Lord,
from all my heart, O Lord, I pray to you.
For Lockportians all over this earth,
with all their pains and troubles,
their worries, sufferings, disappointments.
For those abused, scorned, and disdained,
for those who are roughly treated and pushed aside,
for those who cannot find rest during long sleepless nights,
for those who have everything but joy...
Let comfort, happiness, and bliss shine upon them today.
I pray you, O Lord,
most fervently, I pray especially for
Those Lockportians here, there, and everywhere
who are afraid of death and can not come home.
Prayer for Deceased Lockportians
God, our creator and redeemer,
By your power Christ conquered death and returned to you in glory.
May all your faithful Lockportians,
who have gone before us share His victory.
May they enjoy the vision of your glory for ever,
where Christ lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
In the Gospel according to John, Jesus tells his disciples, “You know
the way that leads where I go.” Then Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where
you are going, how can we know the way?’ Jesus answers, “I am the way, and the
truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.
Thomas expresses the same doubt that we all feel when we approach death. We ask ourselves:
how can I face this tragedy? It is natural to feel sorrow at the death of a loved one but,
as Christians, we should also feel at the same time a firm hope that what we are
confronting is a separation that may be long or short but that it is not a total loss of
contact forever. Our lives are too precious for them to end without a trace. We are
acutely conscious of this when we face the death of someone that we love.
As Christians, we believe that death is not an end. It is a transition. It is not a break
in existence. It is a transformation. We believe that when the hour of our death arrives,
when our existence on this earth reaches its end, we don’t find ourselves facing
nothingness. We end up facing the merciful hands of the living God who welcomes us and
converts our death in to the beginning of our resurrection.
We should not doubt that death is the most serious crisis that we will go through in our
mortal lives. Death rips us out of our being on earth. It is a crisis without remedy to
which we have no means of responding. Death takes away our ability to communicate with
others. Only God can respond to the uncertainties that we feel about death. Because God is
really our merciful Father, our friend and our ally, God cannot look indifferently at
death. God is there to welcome us and to show us that the answer to death is eternal life
and, ultimately, resurrection.
In his letter to Timothy, Paul says, “You can depend on this: if we have died with
Christ, we shall also live with him.” Paul does not tell Timothy that he should not
grieve. We all grieve at the death of a loved one. What Paul says is that we should not
grieve as we had lost all hope. Sooner or later this sorrowful separation will end and we
will be reunited.
Christians believe that death is not final. We will be raised from the dead. We do not
give up our lives in vain; we return them to the Creator. In death we attain the fullness
of our being and we reach true life, which we call eternal life. We don’t believe
that there are two lives, this one and the one beyond the grave. We believe that what some
call “the other life” is not “other” at all. In reality it is a
continuation of this life. It is the fullness of life that began at baptism and which now
reaches its supreme moment when we come into full communion with the Father.
The physical separation that death brings does not mean that that those departed are too
far away to feel our love them. Our love reaches them in the form of prayers. We are with
our loved and departed in prayer as we remember the consoling words of Our Lord, “Do
not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith in God and faith in me… I shall come back
to take you with me, that where I am you also may be. You know the way that leads where I
go.”
About The
Resurrection Of The Dead
And The Coming Of The Lord
Sometimes, for some of us, at times of great loss or fear, a
retreat to solitude may be a comfort.
When asked about this I recalled an incident that happened many years ago at the
"old" Saint John's Church on Chestnut Street.
The funeral for a relative's wife had taken place here just the week before.
He was overcome with grief and I was "keeping an
eye on him." He asked me to leave him off at the church "to do a
little reading" while I did some downtown shopping.
(Lockport still had a vibrant downtown in those days).
When I returned to the church and entered, Charlie was still inside.
He looked up when he heard the creak of the floor boards announce my entry.
His face was bright and he was ready to leave. His disposition was greatly
improved.
He was ready to move on with his life.
I asked him what he had been reading. He showed me a copy of a portion of the
First Letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians.
I have since read it again many times. You probably have, too.
---Lou
From The First Letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians
Perhaps someone will say, "How are the dead to be raised up? What kind of body will
they have? A nonsensical question! The seed you sow does not germinate unless it dies.
When you sow, you do not sow the full-blown plant, but a kernel of wheat or some other
grain. God gives body, to it as he pleases---to each seed its own fruition. Not all bodily
nature is the same. Men have one kind of body, animals another. Birds are of their kind,
fish are of theirs. There are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies. The splendor
of the heavenly bodies is one thing, that of the earthly another. The sun has a splendor
of its own, so has the moon, and the stars have theirs. Even among the stars, one differs
from another in brightness.
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown in the earth is subject to decay,
what rises is incorruptible. What is sown is ignoble, what rises is glorious. Weakness is
sown, strength rises up. A natural body is put down and a spiritual body comes up.
If there is a natural body, be sure there is also a spiritual body. Scripture has it that
Adam, the first man, became a living soul; the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit.
Take note, the spiritual was not first; first came the natural and after that the
spiritual.
The first man was of earth, formed from dust, the second is from heaven. Earthly men are
like the man of earth, heavenly men are like the man of heaven.
Just as we resemble the man from earth, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from
heaven. This is what I mean, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;
no more can corruption inherit incorruption.
Now I am going to tell you a mystery. Not all of us shall fall asleep, but all of us are
to be changed---in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last
trumpet. The trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be
changed. This corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility, this mortal body
with immortality. When the corruptible frame takes on incorruptibility and the mortal
immortality, then will the saying of Scripture be fulfilled: "Death is swallowed up
in victory." "Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your
sting?" The sting of death is sin, and sin gets its power from the law. But thanks be
to God who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror;
then we shall see face-to-face.
What I know now is only partial;
then it will be complete---
As complete as God's knowledge of me.
Sometimes
We Can Help
The Lockport Home Page welcomes Memorial Tributes written about deceased
Lockportians whose passing is recorded in our Recent Death pages.
If the funeral director failed to provide us with obituary
information, it is never too late for
family members and friends to submit via E-Mail to Editor@Lockport-NY.com.
There is never a charge for any of these publication services at your Lockport Home
Page.
Certainly one of the miracles of the Christian faith is the event of two-way communication with God through prayer. For the faithful and patient, such communication is an experience that words can't adequately describe in a brief paragraph. It has and does take place between God and many of His faithful here in Lockport and throughout the world.
And what about communication between today's Christians and the early Doctors of the Church? The Apostles, and some of the early Popes? Well, not so likely. But as the celebration of Christmas arrives we take some liberties with our imagination.
Consider for a bit Saint Leo, the Pope between 440 and 461 and a man who wrote and delivered many stirring sermons.
Were he to be with us today in Lockport, what would he say? And where, and how, would he say it? We have those answers for you here at the Lockport Page.
Saint Leo would arrive in Lockport Christmas Eve from points west of here in Niagara County where he had stopped to visit with Saint Nicholas at the Fatima Shrine. His motorcade would stop at Grace Episcopal Church at Genesee and Cottage where he would make an ecumenical courtesy call. Then on, of course, to an impressively decorated St. Patrick's on Church Street. There, a normally frugal Pastor Francis Schimscheiner, will have turned all the original lighting on so that the high alter is beaming in white, spotted with holiday floral tributes. His Holiness would take a background position in the initial celebration of Christmas Midnight Mass but would advance to the pulpit after Father Schimscheiner had read the Christmas Gospel.
His sermon this Christmas would likely be the same as the one he delivered in 450. And that would compliment the message of 2000 years ago. Media, dialogue, and venues may change...but that Christmas message of Peace on Earth, Goodwill Toward Men...remains the same.
If he were with us this Christmas, Saint Leo would be speaking in Latin, of course. However, leave it to The Lockport Home Page to provide you the translation below:
Today our Savior is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.
No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be glad as he receives the offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he is summoned to life.
In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God's wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which he had overthrown mankind.
And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim peace to his people on earth as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvelous work of God's goodness, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men?
Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love- for us he took pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ, so that in him we might be a new creation. Let us throw off our old nature and all its ways and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh.
Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God's own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God's kingdom.
Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.
Twenty years a child; twenty years running wild;
Twenty years a mature man—and after that, praying.
...Irish Proverb.
Prayer Is An Important Part Of Lockport Life.
And Lockport Life Is An Important Part Of
The
Lockport Home Page: www.Lockport-NY.com
THE PICTURE OF LOCKPORT