"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Today I gave a talk on a retreat entitled “Jesus In Disguise”, where I look at the different ways in which we can encounter God behind the veil of the ordinary. The audio is available below:
Jesus in Disguise (Download)
Over the last few years I’ve had the honour of sponsoring several people for Baptism and Confirmation. Over my time as a godparent, I’ve asked other sponsors what they do to live out this special vocation.
In today’s post I’ve assembled all the advice I’ve heard from other godparents and sponsors and come up with the top five ways to godparent like a rockstar…
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Continuing our discussion concerning the Christian dating scene, today I would like to talk about “Friends First” dating. I would like to ruminate over some of the advantages of this approach, but I would also like to discuss some of the potential pitfalls, at least as I see them.
In Christian formation and catechesis, you often hear praise of romantic relationships which were first based on friendship, before the addition of a romantic component. This is what is known as “Friends First” dating.
The approach certainly has much to commend itself. After all, it makes sense to get to know someone, that person’s character, personality, interests etc., prior to the big rush of hormones and emotions that come with dating. The “high” that comes from being in a relationship can leave one blind to the warning signs. It’s not hard to find examples of what happens when someone rushes headlong into dating and becomes so emotionally entangled with the other person that it becomes extremely difficult to deal with problems in the relationship, or even to recognize when problems exist.
I know plenty of people who have got together through physical attraction and initial chemistry, only to find out a month or two down the line that there isn’t really anything else on which to base the relationship. To their shock, they realize that the other person is not the person they thought at all! After all, it’s not too hard to “hide the crazy” for the first few months… 😉
The other day I did a post in which I looked at the sequence of events in the creation narrative of Genesis. In verse two of Chapter 1, we are told that “the earth was without form and void” and I explained how God spends the rest of the chapter fixing these two problems.
He solves the problem of formlessness in the first three days by creating the domains of time, space and habitat. He then solves the problem of emptiness by then populating each of these realms with rulers: first sun, moon and stars, next fish and birds, and then finally land animals and humanity.
I compared Genesis chapter one to the building of a house, God first builds the structure of the house and then fills its rooms. However, at the end of the post I explained that God wasn’t just building a house, but a temple…
Why do I say that God was building a temple? Well, we know that other cultures at the time of Genesis’ authorship also considered the cosmos to be something of a temple in which the gods were to be worshiped, but we also find a similar strain of thought concerning the first book of the Pentateuch…
It’s time for another Manvotional from Art of Manliness to be recorded onto MP3. I actually think this is my favourite one to date…
Manvotional (Download)
“Water Lily” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
The unaccompanied MP3 is available here.
The Readings this Sunday ask a basic question: whom do you choose?
In the First Reading, Joshua asks this question of Israel. Whom will they serve? Yahweh or some other god? In the Gospel Reading, after hearing the “hard teaching” of the Lord about His Body and Blood, Jesus asks the Twelve if they wish to leave along with some of the other disciples. Peter answers the question in the same way I hope we would all answer: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”.
We have a fundamental choice in life. Do we choose God, or do we choose something or someone else? As we hear God’s Word this week and gather around the altar to “taste and see that the Lord is good”, let us renew our commitment to the Lord and say with Peter “We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God”.
A while ago in our Young Adult group we were talking about praying before the Eucharist (“Adoration”) and I had asked the question “What do you actually do during Adoration?”
Some of the group spoke about reading Scripture.
Others spoke about praying the rosary.
One girl beautifully described it as “…just having quality Father/Daughter time”.
One word which was absent from the discussion was “Intercession”. It got me to thinking. How often do I regularly pray for those in my life? My family? My friends? My co-workers? What about the employees of the shops where I purchase my morning coffee or lunchtime sandwich? How often do I intercede for these people? Almost certainly not as much as I should…
My friend Art went to Lourdes and took with him prayer requests from his friends here in California…
So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this: this week, especially during Adoration, I’d invite you to spend a little bit of time interceding for those people you know – friends, family, country…favourite bloggers.