Men's Night 10-04-06 Recap

Ernie shared some wonderful reflections and insights from St. Alphonsus Liguori on Wednesday night. What is the one thing that you cannot save and expect to have more of in the future? Not money, friends, not hair either. You can always buy more hair if you save your money. It's time! Time is the one thing that we can never get back, or expect to get more of. I know the Rolling stones sang "Time is on my side", however in actuality time is always working against us. As young people we are taught that we have our whole life ahead of us. We believe that we will be on this earth for many decades. We act as if we are in a football game, we have six timeouts, stoppage for each quarter, and the clock stops when we throw an incomplete pass. Life doesn't work like that. There are no timeouts, no quarters or halftimes, and time doesn't stand still when we make mistakes.

So, with that fact in mind, what are we doing with that oh so precious commodity? St. Liguori spoke about utilizing the time we have to give glory and praise to God. As well as leading others to do the same. Are we good stewards of the time God has bestowed upon us, or are we taking our time for granted, letting it slip away? Like our brothers in Trinidad would say are we "just liming", or just hanging out killing time. Every day, hour, minute or second we let pass is that much time gone forever. We can lose just about everything else and get it back, but not time.

Now that we realize that we're letting opportunity pass by us like a bullet train what are we to do? First and foremost, pray and pray often. Pray from waking in the morning to going to bed at night, and every opportunity in between. Prayer is like preparing ourselves for battle, it's putting our spiritual armor on. It puts us in touch with our Head Coach, God. It calms us in times of stress, it steers us straight in times of confusion, and strengthens us in times of doubt or failure. We must remember though that we need to find some quiet prayerful time to listen to what God is telling us. Often God is calling us to action through prayer and we're just too busy doing all the talking. We must make time to listen.

When we hear what God is calling us to do we will be prepared for action. Are we all going to run out and slay dragons and save damsels in distress. I don't believe that is the kind of action God is preparing us for. It's the everyday thing that occur around us that we must encounter, before we tackle the big things. Like St. Francis of Assissi said "preach the Gospel daily and when necessary use words". It's in our work, our homes and in our community that we are called to evangelize. As living examples like the Apostles and the Saints, before us. We are all given many talents, but do we share our talents with others, with our faith community, with our families. When we all give our time and properly use our talents we can accomplish many great deeds and make a positive impact on many lives. And when God calls us home we will not have regrets about the time we wasted, instead we will say thank you Lord for the time we had, I'm ready to go home.

So my challenge to myself and to all Catholic men is this, are you ready to go home now? If not, why? Have you started utilizing your time and talents to give glory to God? If not, what are you waiting for? God Bless you all.

Peace and Love

Brother Ed

Men's Night 10-04-06

Peace be with you. It's coming up on the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means!!! It's "Men's Night" at St. Pat's House. It's a homecoming of sorts. The Covenant Keepers have been on field trips for both meetings in August. First, to Tom Balboa's house in Grand Terrace for dinner and a mini retreat with Tom. Then, for a bar-b-que at Dan's house for food and fellowship.

Now it's time to get back to business. Ernie will be presenting this week, I'm not sure of the topic, but it's bound to be timely and meaningful. In case you don't know where and when we meet here's the 411. St. Patrick House on Pigeon Pass, 7:00 p.m. John alert, John alert. John didn't make the last meeting, I smell pizza!? I hope to see some new and familiar faces there. Bring a friend!

God Bless,
Peace and Love.


Brother Ed

Our Evening with Evangelist Tom Balboa

Gentlemen, it is with great sadness that I write this update to this posting. A great friend and mentor to the Covenant Keepers, Tom Balboa has passed from this world. Though we only met with Tom on a few occasions, as a group, each meeting had a significant impact on our faithwalk as brothers. Ernie of course had a deeper relationship with Tom as he had mentored to Ernie for several years. I thought it would be appropriate to revisit a previous posting from our last group visit with Tom Balboa. This event took place in September of 2006, and since that time Tom's health had been diminishing. We'll all miss him dearly, as Tom often said "we are all pilgrims, travelers, and strangers". Fare well dear Tom, may you be with your dear wife again, praising our Lord.

Peace be with you,

Ed


What a blessing it was to spend with, Catholic evangelist, Tom Balboa last night. The St. Patrick Covenant Keepers paid a visit to Tom'sHeadquarters for the Catholic Society of Evangelists in Grand Terrace,CA.

Ten men from the group enjoyed chicken, pizza and Tom delivering a talk that would rival any lecturer on the speaking circuit today. He spoke and entertained questions from us without the use of note cards, a script or a teleprompter. It just came from the heart.

Tom has been ailing from a nagging cough that has slowed him down physically, has increased his spiritual work and prayer life. He used his malady to remind us that in order to increase spiritually, we must decrease in some other area of our life.

We must die to ourselves in order to live our lives for the Father. When we deny ourselves in fasting we depend more on God and less on our own devices. In doing so we can then unite our will to that of the Father and receive all He wants for us.

He also reminded us that this place we now dwell is not home. Our home is with the Lord in heaven. This is just the passage way to the next life, where we want to go. We should not try to make ourselves too comfortable here or we might not want to move on when the Lord calls for us. Worse yet, we might not seek the Kingdom of God if life here is too easy.

All our discomforts, ailments, sufferings and losses are in Gods plan for us and we should be thankful for those as much as we are the pleasant things in life.

"No pain, no gain" is what Tom said. Another way to put it is, the joys in life are much sweeter when you live through a little suffering.

Well there is much more than I could write in this posting about our visit with Tom Balboa, but I hope you got a feel for what I received from his discussion. I know everyone in attendance came away with something special for themselves.

I hope we can invite Tom to speak to our parish soon so that all may avail themselves to the wisdom and spirit-filled discourse of a humble ordinary man living his life forChrist.

Goodnight my brothers. Peace and Love to all

Brother Ed

You are all welcome!

We have been around since the DMV era and are touching men's hearts at these gatherings. My prayers will be that any man who will open this site will jump on the wagon and join us at our meetings twice a month. We're really a nice bunch of guys. I promise! --Ernie Lara