Christians do not calculate or make distinctions as to whether God is inside a certain situation or not, whether a person seems worth it or not, whether a person has any beliefs, or whether a person appears to be a good person or not, before reaching out in service. Christians help whoever is in need, independent of those considerations – like the Good Samaritan.
Pope Francis has the idea that accompanying one another is something we are all called to do. Maybe we do it already, but it is something that everyone must learn.
Haste is our enemy. It puts us under stress, makes us impatient, renders us more vulnerable to accidents and, most seriously of all, blinds us to the needs of others.
Christ invites us to love each other as he loves us. He doesn't say, love each other according to the spontaneous movements of our heart; nor, love each other as society defines love, but rather; ‘Love each other as I have loved you’ (John 15.12). How well have we done that over the centuries? How well do we do it today?
The first half of our journey through life, according to Ronald Rolheiser OMI, is a struggle with the untamed energies of youth - restlessness, sexuality, the ache for intimacy, the push for achievement, the search for a moral cause, the hunger for roots, and the longing for a companionship and a place that feels like home. The second half is more a struggle with God.
HM Ambassador Nigel Baker's blog following a visit to the Vatican of Muslim students from Cambridge and interns from the CBCEW led by Fr Dave Stewart SJ.
'Spiritual health depends on keeping a careful balance, like walking a tightrope so as not to fall off either side. It's not a question of choosing between Martha and Mary but of choosing both - Martha and Mary, prayer and action, living and doing, private morality and social concern.'
‘HOME is where we start from.’ T. S. Eliot describes an experience that can be felt both as a freedom and as a heartache. For some people the place they grew up in forty years ago has changed in so many ways they would hardly recognise it if they returned today.
Nothing human can escape the delight God takes in it since the Infinite Wisdom designed for Herself a human heart in the birth of the Christchild. God has created man in His own image and, in a sense, has married human nature to the Universe.
Today people question the reality of sin; they wonder if the psychologists and sociologists haven't put sin out of business. It doesn't take very long to see the way sin can still corrupt life, particularly in our own selfishness. But there is a way of healing these wounds - we can talk to God about ourselves. We can ask him to look at our selfishness with his healing glance. Then slowly, gradually, we can begin to appreciate more why there is rejoicing among the angels over one repentant sinner - especially when that person is ourself.
