AD SENSE

Conquer stress to keep New Year's resolutions

ANI | From Deccan Chronicle
     
A new research has shown that in order to tackle New Year's resolutions, people will have to counter their stress.
According to a new research, stress negatively impacts people's ability to lose weight, quit smoking and stick with a new healthy lifestyle change.
In The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living, Mayo Clinic stress management and resiliency expert Amit Sood, M.D., draws on decades of groundbreaking research to offer readers a scientifically proven, structured and practical approach to reducing stress.
 He explains the brain's two modes - focused mode and default mode - and how an imbalance between the two produces unwanted stress, and he shares newBook cover Mayo Clinic's Guide to Stress-Free Living, with female doing cartwheel insights about how the mind works, including its natural tendency to wander. 

2 Sunday A -Lamb of God -2014 - Homilies

Fr Bill Grimm's Video at the bottom: Ordinary Times
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Starters......

1) Lamb at the roof:

In the city of Werden, in Germany, there stands a Catholic Church with a lamb carved out of stone and placed on its roof. Centuries ago a worker was once up on the roof of that church in order to repair it. His safety belt snapped and he fell. The area below was filled with large-size rocks. As luck would have it, a lamb was having its lunch on grass growing between the rocks. The craftsman fell on the poor lamb. The lamb was slain… but the man lived. So the craftsman did the decent thing. He sculpted a lamb and, in gratitude, situated it on the roof. Today we come together at this Liturgy to remember and salute another Lamb. Each of us owes Him much. As a matter of fact, we owe Him our spiritual lives because he saved us from the eternally fatal fall from grace. (Msgr. Arthur Tonne).

Today we come together at this Liturgy to remember and salute another Lamb. Each of us likewise owes Him much. He too gave His life for us. But with one substantial difference. Jesus  voluntarily surrendered His life to save ours.
This Gospel opens just after Jesus had finished His forty day fast. He was probably bivouacing in a farmer's reed hut near the Jordan River and near John the Baptist's camp. He would soon head north into Galilee to begin His life's work. One hopes He took the time to put some pounds back on His lean frame after His fast. He had to be just skin and bones.
He had come once again to check out John the Baptist whom He would always admire. He had a premonition He would never see him again. We know He was correct.
What did John have in mind when He excitedly pointed at Jesus and shouted for all to hear, "Behold, the Lamb of God..." (Fr. James Gilhooley)

2) Pastor joke:  

My neighboring pastor put sanitary hot air hand dryers in the rest rooms at his church and after two weeks took them out. I asked him why and he confessed that they worked fine but when he went in there he saw a sign that read, "For a sample of this week's sermon, push the button." (Bret Blair)

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Thomas O’Loughlin
Introduction to the Celebration


We gather here each Sunday to encounter one another and to encounter the Chosen One of the Father. We are, as St Paul tells us, ‘the holy people of Jesus Christ, who are called to take their place among all the saints everywhere who pray to our Lord Jesus Christ’. So let us reflect on who we are as a group and on how we have become this holy people through our baptism.

Epiphany of the Lord - Magi- Homilies

Fr. Bill Grimm's Video Message at the bottom
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Story: A husband asked his wife, "Why would God give the wise men a star to guide them?" She replied, "Because God knows men are too proud to ask directions."

"When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, heal the broken, feed the hungry, rebuild the nations, bring peace among people, make music in the heart." So wrote Howard Thurman.
 

More from last year’s post:


Jan 1-Mary, Mother of God - Homilies and Stories

Anecdote: There is a beautiful, little story about a long, tedious train journey made, one Christmas day, by some elderly residents of a nursing home who were on their way to a vacation spot. At one station, a young mother with a small child entered the train. The child smiled at all the grim faces around him and began moving from one lap to another talking, shouting with joy and chatting with everyone. Instantly, the grim and silent atmosphere in the train was changed to one of joy and happiness. Today we remember with joy and gratitude, how Mary and her Divine Son Jesus transformed a hopeless, joyless and sinful world into a place of joy and happiness.
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A boy asked his father, "Dad, if three frogs were sitting on a limb that hangs over a pool, and one frog decided to jump off into the pool, how many frogs would be left on the limb?"

The dad replied, "Two." 

"No," the son replied. “Here is the question again: There are three frogs and one decided to jump, how many are left?" 

The dad said, "Oh, I get the point! If one decided to jump, the others would too. So there are none left."
The boy said, "No dad, the answer is three. The frog only DECIDED to jump." 
 
Does that sound like our last year’s resolutions?  Great inspiration and great resolutions, but oftentimes we only decide, and months later we are still on the same limb of doing nothing. 

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