Tag: faith

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Current Events Catechism

In Common

Created in the image of the one God and equally endowed with rational souls, all [people] have the same nature and the same origin. Redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, all are called to participate in the same divine beatitude: all therefore enjoy an equal dignity.

Vaticana, Libreria Editrice. Catechism of the Catholic Church . United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Kindle Edition. Paragraph 1934

What we share in common exceeds, both in quantity and quality, what we hold as differences: it’s God-given.

Just like the peace that passes all understanding.

And the love that doesn’t fail.

And the joy the world can’t take away.

In common because offered to all at no expense to us, ultimate expense to Jesus.

Could we rid our hands and minds of our differences enough, just enough, to embrace what God has given us all?

Grace and peace to us all…

dw

Categories
Catechism Current Events

Those people

This same duty extends to those who think or act differently from us. The teaching of Christ goes so far as to require the forgiveness of offenses. He extends the commandment of love, which is that of the New Law, to all enemies. Liberation in the spirit of the Gospel is incompatible with hatred of one’s enemy as a person, but not with hatred of the evil that he does as an enemy.

Vaticana, Libreria Editrice. Catechism of the Catholic Church . United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Kindle Edition. Paragraph 1933

The catechism reminds us of what Jesus tells us He would do:

  • make Himself a neighbor and actively serve those people who think or act differently from Him
  • forgive those people who offend Him
  • love those people who are his enemies

Do we choose to follow?

God in heaven, in your mercy, help us – those people – to follow.

Grace and peace to you

dw

Categories
Poetry

Mary-ing

Christmas is a lot of Martha-ing
Not so much Mary-ing

I’d like to choose the good part
Alongside Mary

A Mary Christmas seems fitting

dw

38 Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who was also seated at the Lord’s feet, and was listening to His word. 40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do the serving by myself? Then tell her to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42 but only one thing is necessary; for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Luke 10:38-42, New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. All rights reserved.
Categories
light and darkness prayer the real self

Life with the Darkness Gone

Life: that’s what we all hunger for, wait for always,

whether we keep coming back to places like church to find it or whether we avoid places like church like the plague as the last places on earth to find it:

both delivered in part and derelict in part, immigrants and mongrels all of us.

It’s life as we’ve never really known it but only dreamed it that we wait for.

Life with each other, Life for each other.

Life with the darkness gone.

Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “Delay”

Jesus, you said

I am the Light of the world
I am the way, the truth, and the life
I came that they might have life abundantly
My joy I give to you

May your words prevail this day
in my life
and in our world

Light shining in the darkness,
the darkness not prevailing

May it be

Grace and peace to you…

dw

Photo by dw

Categories
hope the real self

That One Voice

Faith is a way of waiting – never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost.

There is doubt hard on the heels of every belief, fear hard on the heels of every hope, and many holy things lie in ruins because the world has ruined them and we have ruined them.

But faith waits even so, delivered at least from that final despair which gives up waiting altogether because it sees nothing left worth waiting for.

Faith waits – for the opening of a door, the sound of footsteps in the hall, that beloved voice delayed, delayed so long that there are times when you all but give up hope of ever hearing it.

And when at moments you think you do hear it (if only faintly, from far away) the question is:

Can it possibly be, impossibly be, that one voice of all voices?

Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “Delay”

False choices
The next following hard on the heels of the last
Made by a desperate imposter self
Desperate for anything to distract
From its emptiness, its nakedness

False choices
Exchanging dopamine poofs
For the overwhelming reality
There is a real soul in there
Dying to be known and loved

Dying to hear the One Voice
Calling softly, tenderly
Come home, come home
I’m waiting for you
I will wait

Grace and peace to you…

dw

Photo by dw