{"id":795,"date":"2015-06-08T13:42:05","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T13:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/?p=795"},"modified":"2015-06-08T13:48:34","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T13:48:34","slug":"the-one-catholic-prayer-i-never-knew-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/2015\/06\/the-one-catholic-prayer-i-never-knew-about.html","title":{"rendered":"The One Catholic Prayer I Never Knew About"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am listening to a sermon by a priest that I know. I call him ‘Father Hope.’<\/p>\n

‘Father Hope’s” faith and wordsmith talent weave stories of great spirituality that stay with me long after I hear them. In fact, he reminds me much of what I love about Beliefnet. He is both faith and inspiration – hence why I initially gave him ‘his column name.’<\/p>\n

I absorb his words, as usual. <\/p>\n

‘Father Hope’ speaks of the many people that come up to him and tell him how blessed they are. He says he hears it often and from many. He hears of countless prayers of thankfulness for all of those blessings. <\/p>\n

Forgive me as I paraphrase here:<\/p>\n

“That’s great,” says Father Hope. “Blessings are great, but what about the bad stuff? Why aren’t we thanking God for all the struggles in our life because that is where a lot of the good stuff comes from – hidden blessings.”<\/p>\n

“Hmmmm,” I think. “Now there’s a new take on praying about my current situation.”<\/p>\n

After all, that is what this St. Luke’s Elementary Catholic school girl remembers most about my youth. That everything is happening for a reason and that God is giving us these challenges to make us into the people we are meant to be. That one day we will look back and be grateful that it shaped us.<\/p>\n

Well, luckily for me it didn’t take long to test the strength of this new approach. As usual, tears are not far within my reach at this time. As they flow, I begin to pray.<\/p>\n

“Thank you God for these challenges. Thank you for these struggles.”<\/p>\n

I repeat it over and over again.<\/p>\n

Then something remarkable happens.<\/p>\n

I stop crying.<\/p>\n

I start to chuckle because quite frankly, it is challenging to keep saying thank you in the midst of such stress, heartache and fear. <\/p>\n

All I can do is shake my head and think this new prayer may work well for me. It restores my hope. It takes me from a place of dwelling on being overwhelmed to instead feeling like I can’t wait to see why God has taken me here. <\/p>\n

Of course, I should expect no less from ‘Father Hope.”
\n\"how-great-thou-part\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Follow me on Facebook @Colleen Sheehy Orme
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\nwww.colleensheehyorme.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am listening to a sermon by a priest that I know. I call him ‘Father Hope.’ ‘Father Hope’s” faith and wordsmith talent weave stories of great spirituality that stay with me long after I hear them. In fact, he reminds me much of what I love about Beliefnet. He is both faith and inspiration…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":575,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,14,24,9],"tags":[230,8,41,232,56,233,19,231,21],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-divorce-2","category-inspiration","category-prayer","category-spirituality","tag-catholic","tag-faith","tag-healing","tag-inspiration","tag-inspirational","tag-prayer","tag-priests","tag-spirituality","tag-strength"],"yoast_head":"\nThe One Catholic Prayer I Never Knew About - How Great Thou Part<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/2015\/06\/the-one-catholic-prayer-i-never-knew-about.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The One Catholic Prayer I Never Knew About - How Great Thou Part\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am listening to a sermon by a priest that I know. 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Born to my native Brooklyn parents, I have a love of all things city and all things country. I found myself in the town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, which prior to The Office, nary a soul could envision less you found yourself on the hills of Interstate 81. I was held up there while I pursued my B.S. in Business. I have two passions: Business marketing and writing. The two are not so terribly different. Why? Cultivating a brand is in essence the story and the connecting of the dots of a corporate entity. I write features for various magazines and newspapers and I am a national divorce columnist (what can I say things didn\u2019t turn out quite the way I thought they would). I am also a former business columnist. For more than fifteen years, I spent my summers on the Jersey Shore in what I call my \u2018out of state\u2019 clothes once again magnetized to the northerners I find so familiar. If I were to brand my writing, I would say I write of LOVE. That is the core from which I begin most stories. I find myself drawn to dig for the moments in the story that are the passion that drive the message. It may be the love of what originally started a business or an authentically motivated personal profile, or simply the love of a subject being investigated which compels me to write. My forever favorite form of writing is the human interest essay or what I call, \u201cAn Interview With Life.\u201d The average day that is explored and somehow once again instills in us a joie de vivre\u2026..a joy of life. These human moments are the Hope Virus that spreads amongst us and can\u2019t help but propel us into better human beings with a larger sense of the world.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/author\/corme"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/575"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}