Faith: we find ourselves believing
I shall not understand unless I believe. Anselm The Masai people of Africa, speaking to Vincent Donovan said “to have faith is to be sought out by God. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end the lion is God”. Think about times, […]
Faith: a way of looking
Faith is not an opinion, it is an attitude. Brother Roger of Taizé. So I saw and understood that our faith is our light in our night, which light is God, our endless day. Julian of Norwich. Faith is a God-given way of imagining existence, not a cold truth, easily captured in concepts. Michael Paul Gallagher […]
Faith: a way of being open
To have faith in God is to revive what is concealed. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Archbishop Jean Marie Lustiger speaks of discovering God by situating ourselves differently in relation to ourselves, the world and “the One [we] do not know”. This suggests a radical kind of openness, a new kind of appreciating – not seeing […]
Faith: the touching of a mystery
the touching of a mystery Alexander Schmemann Faith is better understood as a verb than a noun, as a process than a possession. Frederick Beuchner Catherina de Hueck Doherty talks of the gift we bring when we listen a person’s soul into existence”. Jesus – in his “openness and availability to others” – aroused in […]
A Spirituality of Communion: the reign of God
God’s kingdom is creation healed Hans Kung The Kingdom is an attractive ….. What you are in love withwhat seizes your imaginationwill affect everything. Pedro Aruppe SJ Jesus paints in bold brush strokes a picture of the reign or kingdom of God. It’s not a place – or a program: it comes as a surprise, […]
A Spirituality of Communion: discovering our worth
It is precisely this space, which we might say God clears for us, in which we find our inherent worth and dignity. God’s first gift for us is to be able to say, “l AM”. St Augustine When I was born all creation stood up and said, “God is!” Meister Eckhart Being seen: Malcolm X, […]
A Spirituality of Communion: a hidden wholeness
a ‘hidden wholeness’ Thomas Merton An Aboriginal woman said a few years ago: “We Aboriginal people are spiritual people struggling to be human. You white Australians are humans struggling to be spiritual”. If the Enlightenment focused on knowledge , and one of the marks of Post-Modernism is information (and more and more of it) – […]
A Spirituality of Communion: the gift of otherness
The way forward is the way to someone else. John Taylor I cannot be me without youand we cannot be us without themand together we have a futureIn our African language we say, “A person is a person through other persons”. I would not know how to be a human being at all except I […]
A Spirituality of Communion: creating a culture of conversation
humanity is a family which has hardly met. Theodore Zelden The Spirit or “Go-between” God is the life-giving, erotic impulse, the spark of recognition, the relational pull and attraction in whom we find life. Jesus as the Word reminds us that our relationship with God is a kind of conversation, a “dialogue of salvation”. When […]
A Spirituality of Communion: “to see or to perish”
to see or to perish Teilhard de Chardin God “sees” and “attends” – and in the act of seeing God creates. Another way of saying this is to say God “makes room” for creation by constricting divine power. This quintessential female experience – making room for another – is always creative – it is a […]