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Showing posts from December, 2014

Happy New Year! An astronaut's guide to optimism

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HAPPY NEW YEAR folks!! An Astronaut's Guide to Optimism - my favourite astronaut helping us to finish the year by looking on the bright side and encouraging us to resolve to make things around us even brighter in 2015.

Following the call

Here’s a reflection on vocation/call by Don Schwager from his excellent collection of daily scripture reflections inspired by the readings of the Mass for that day, to be found at http://dailyscripture.net : Are you ready to follow the Lord Jesus wherever he may lead you? With the call the Lord gives the grace to respond and the strength to follow all the way to the end. Why does Jesus issue a challenge with the call? Jesus was utterly honest in telling people what it would cost to follow him. When a would-be disciple approached Jesus and said he was ready to follow, Jesus told him it would require sacrifice - the sacrifice of certain creaturely comforts. Jesus appealed to this man's heart and told him to detach himself from whatever might hold him back. Spiritual detachment is a necessary step for following the Lord. It frees us to give ourselves without reserve to the Lord and his service. While many of us may not need to give up the comfort of our own home and bed to follow

Sunset over the Dee towards the end of today's cycle - 3

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Sunset over the Dee towards the end of today's cycle - 1

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Blessed Advent 2014

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Here's a nice reflection video on Advent.

Being "missionary-disciples" - Pope Francis + Catholic "orthodoxy"

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Here's something I wrote a few weeks back in a webpage comments section. Just thought I'd share it here: *************** Pope Francis has chosen a particular way of responding to God's call to follow Christ, his Son, by striving to become more like him in his own daily actions and relationships with those he meets, of being, as Francis puts it, a "missionary-disciple".  This is the theme for the year in my congregation and its wider  Mennaisien  Family with our lay associates, colleagues and friends. It is a  challenge  that the Pope reminds us is given to all Christians through their baptism, not just to religious and clergy. As disciples of Christ, we are by definition also given a responsibility to share the faith we have been given, to share the graces bestowed upon us and to do so with the joy in our hearts that only God can give. It seems to me that in this sense he is far closer to the core of Catholic "orthodoxy" than most of us,