Jesus said to
them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his
own kin and in his own house." So he was not able to perform any mighty
deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He
was amazed at their lack of faith.
Mark 6:4 - 6
Amazed at their lack of faith. Would he be
amazed at our lack of faith? Let’s face it, we put our trust in the things we
think might have scientific or even economic certainty. Our secular community
easily mocks those who are people of faith, as if placing your trust in God
amounts to silly superstition. Christians comprise 31.5% of the world’s
population. There are 2.1 billion of us, and of those 1.17 billion are
Catholics, while the other 930 million are divided among almost 36,000
denominations. You are not alone. There are up to 1.6 billion Muslims, 1
billion Hindus and possibly half a billion Buddhists and of course there are
folk religions, Judaism and others. 1.1 billion have no religion, are
secularists – and even then most of these are in the Western world and China.
We wonder why our world lacks miracles,
and Jesus himself tells us it is because of our lack of faith.
But would Jesus really find more than a
few to lay his hands on to heal them? Would he be struck by our fascination
with possessions and our addictive consumerism, do these things prevent us from
seeing the miracles great and small taking place before our very eyes? Or would he find...
Connie Gladman, born and raised in rural
Victoria, joined the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart aged 23.
According to her family she had longed for religious life and to teach the
poor. Trained as a teacher before entering
the convent, Connie (by now Sister Mary Rosina) was sent to the OLSH mission in PNG. Connie was sitting at the back of a classroom supervising a teacher at the Magien school when she was violently
murdered on 30 November 1964.
It was believed that the murder had been 'payback'
killing because a young man from there had died in the Vunapope Hospital in Rabaul
run by the same order of nuns. Connie was a dedicated school teacher, and
later, a schools inspector. She was particularly interested in teacher
education and consequently was an early founder of OLSH Kabaleo Teachers College in Kokopo
which still exists today. The murderer, Rapui, spent most of his life in the
Laloki Mental Hospital near Port Moresby.
Her cause was presented to Rome in 2012,
seeking to recognise Connie as a martyr.
There are miracles in every aspect of
Connie's life. She never attended a Catholic school, but she found her vocation
which her father put to the test. The impact she had on the children she
taught, the teachers she trained and supervised resulted in further vocations.
She was loved and admired by her family and her (religious) sisters. Yet this
ordinary Australian woman lived an extraordinary life. Her faith led her to the
end of the earth where she met the poorest of the poor and dedicated herself to
educate their children - in state and Catholic schools, and now her life is an
exemplar to each of us. In time miracles wrought by her intercession will be
sought to support her cause, and I have no doubt many will come.
As part of our Christian faith we believe
that hope is ours, that there is something for those who wait, for those who are
patient, for those who live out being good news, for those who give their lives
for others. With faith we know the miraculous becomes possible and that we can
experience and participate in the marvellous and awesome moments of the divine
in the beautiful world God has given us.
Don’t be afraid to be a person of faith, even
if that means living on the edge. Remember Connie Gladman, she was on that edge
and that was where she lived and died in the service of her Lord.
Peter Douglas
For further information on Connie (Sister
Rosina) Gladman see:
I
wanted to become a Catholic. But first I had to give up the Eucharist—and porn.
This article appeared in America on June
25, 2018
But by September, I could no longer plead
ignorance. I had begun to participate in the Rite of Christian Initiation of
Adults and was learning about church doctrine and the theology of the
sacraments, including how the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the
Christian life.” I also learned that people were not supposed to take the
Eucharist unless they had received first Communion. How could I live with this
contradiction: breaking the rules of the very church I wanted to join?
Around that time, I posed the
question in my journal: “Maybe I should stop taking the Eucharist until
I’m confirmed, but could I bear that?” I had developed a burning desire for the
body and blood of Christ. And when I went to Mass, that was the only thing that
mattered: fulfilling this personal desire to commune with God through the
Blessed Sacrament.
But by fulfilling this desire, I was
isolating myself from others. By continuing to receive Communion I was taking
myself out of the adult initiation process and creating division between myself
and the other catechumens and candidates, who were patiently waiting for their
first Communion. I was also distancing myself from the greater Catholic
community by ignoring the stages that the church in her wisdom has laid out for
catechumens and candidates prior to full reception into the church. But the
thought of waiting for the Eucharist seemed too much to bear. My faith was growing, yes, but it was also
becoming increasingly individualistic.
There was another problem. In addition to my daily Eucharist habit, I
was watching pornography nearly every other day.
People often worry that
pornography encourages men to view women as expendable and interchangeable sex
partners, that it prioritizes sexual “intimacy” over emotional intimacy. I am
sure that is true for some users. But I had been viewing pornography since
middle school, and it was not leading me to have casual sex with all kinds of
women. Instead, it led me to completely isolate myself, both sexually and
emotionally.
In college, I developed
a fear of sex. It seemed so risky. The potential for awkwardness, rejection and pain hung over me whenever I thought about
sexual intimacy with another person. Watching pornography was much better, I
felt, because it was safe. There was no potential for hurt because I was alone
with a screen. This fear seeped into my friendships, too. It was much easier
for me to fence myself off from others and not let anyone get too close because
the potential for pain was more than I could bear.
Deep
down, however, I wanted more. I wanted to experience intimacy with others. I
started by giving up Communion. In the week following my September journal
entry, I decided to abstain from the Blessed Sacrament until my first
Communion. Abstaining meant abandoning a certain “cave mentality” of living my
faith on my own. It invited me to share my budding faith with others who were
walking with me on the journey.
But my decision to refrain from Communion
also forced me to reconsider how I thought about sex. The parallels were all
too real. If abstaining from my strong urge to have the body and blood would
allow me greater communion in the end, could the same be true of giving up
porn?
I started taking seriously the prospect of
marriage and how watching pornography might inhibit my ability to be intimate
with my future spouse. I acknowledged its disconnecting properties—that it
ultimately separates me from others. I asked, how could I share in the
beautiful gift of sex with my future spouse if I kept teaching myself, through
every porn clip, that sex was a solitary activity? How could I possibly survive
the intimacy and vulnerability of marriage when I was fencing myself off from
those exact things by using pornography?
These were the kinds of questions that
changed things for me.
I saw that I had to expel pornography from
my life in order to free myself from its narcissism. Ultimately, I had to free
myself to pursue something greater. And it was the end goal itself—experiencing
intimacy in marriage—that made pornography less and less appealing to me.
Through the grace of God, I stopped a decade-long habit of giving in to the
safe, self-gratifying act of watching porn.
Sex was never meant to be a solitary
activity, but for 10 years that was all sex was for me. In a similar way, the
way of the Christian was never meant to be solitary. The process of
Christian initiation illuminated these truths and taught me that immediate
passions must give way in order for us to experience true communion.
Four weeks before Easter Sunday, the members of my R.C.I.A. cohort were
asked to examine our lives in preparation for receiving the sacraments. After a
moment of reflection, we went around in a circle and shared our reflections. I
was shocked to hear another candidate speak about the struggle she had with a
self-gratifying sexual practice. When this person finished, I jumped in to talk
about my own similar experience. She thanked me for sharing, and for a moment,
I felt the solidarity that is our true end. We were two Christians, yearning
for more.
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