Today’s palm branch procession, and reading of the passion of Jesus signals our move into Holy Week.
It is helpful to see these days before Easter as a week of retreat. While we continue our family and work routines, our focus is guided beyond.
In these days let us look together to Jesus.
I’ve been moving about a bit in recent weeks, across the country and further afield. I don’t enjoy the travel since planes are not designed for people of my height. But I love being with the people I end up with after a journey of any length.
Don’t get down when you hear today’s first reading.
Jeremiah is having a bad day. He’s a bit overwhelmed with the negative response he is getting when he passes God’s message to the people. In short, Jeremiah is having a Jeremiad.
The heart of the home in years past was the hearth.
It was at the hearth that the family gathered for the warmth and light of the flame and the food that was prepared there.
The fire was treated with respect since the same flame which provided energy for the home could just as easily destroy it.
The Israelites in their forty years in the desert were journeying from captivity to freedom, but the struggle of their desert years made them vulnerable to attack from every temptation as today’s first reading continues
I’m not sure if children today are told the great story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, but if not let’s make sure that the parable is taught at all schools of higher learning.
Over the last month I have had the opportunity to work with many people across Aotearoa and further afield. In every retreat and seminar I have been with committed and faith-filled people who often feel as though they are on the periphery of the Church
The pics I use on these daily posts are sometimes snapped by me, and often borrowed from free-use websites. I thought it might be interesting to move towards using only my own snaps, and then only those taken in the past 24 hours. We’ll see how I go.
I took the pic above yesterday morning on an early walk.
Perhaps we find the miracles of Jesus too difficult to understand. How can we cope with what we may not have seen with our own eyes?
Many people cope with the miraculous by reducing it to what they can understand. They say Jesus just increased the blind man’s psychological vision, or opened his eyes of faith rather than actually giving him physical sight.
Over the years I have celebrated hundreds of funerals, many well prepared with family and friends gathering to celebrate the life of the one they love. There are efficient funeral directors, beautiful flowers, glossy brochures, photographs and video presentations, eulogies and even artificial grass and sterilised sand at the graveside.
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While we leave the timing of death to God, death is not the enemy for a person of faith.
I’ve prayed many prayers which have not been answered as I had hoped.
And today and everyday I’m asking for signs from God, for evidence.
One of the greatest inspirations in my life as a priest has been hearing people tell of their own personal experience of God.
One young boy put up his hand and asked: “If you were our teacher, what would you teach us?”