અંતરાગ્નિ Antaragni: Ignatian Spirituality ,Gujarat: Sharing about spirituality in the context of India, especially in Gujarat. Indian spiritual traditions can contribute a lot to the search for meaning and deep experience of the Supreme being.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Monday, July 22, 2013
Time management - 10 million for 5 min!
Its time we realize what is most important
July 22, 2013
When
the angel of death came to Joe Smith, to accompany him to his real
home, Joe dismissively responded “I am not ready to die as I have so
much left to do. Do you mind coming back later?”
The
Angel replied, sorry your time is up and we must leave now. Joe
enquired, “don’t you know who I am? I am Joe Smith, one of the richest
men in the world. The Angel nodded “I know all about you as I do
everyone else; now hurry along, Let’s go.”
Joe
pleaded; “if I were to give you 10% of my fortune, which is over a
billion dollars, will you turn a blind eye and return a year later?”
The Angel shook his head and replied, “you don’t seem to understand
Joe. It is time to go”
For
the next few moments, Joe tried his best to negotiate with the angel
giving away more of his fortune for lesser time. He finally succumbed
and offered “if I were to give you all my fortune, which is 10 billion
dollars, will you give me 5 minutes so that I can call my wife and
children and tell them that I
love them? I have never told them this and it is very important to me
that they know how I feel about them. I also need to seek forgiveness
from 2 people that I have hurt the most. All I ask is 5 minutes!” The
Angel paused and looked at Joe curiously and asked, “How long did it
take you to make your 10 billion dollars?”
Joe
replied, “30 years my friend – it took me a whole 30 years – it’s a
great deal in exchange for 5 minutes, take it – you will never have to
work another day in your life. “
The
Angel shook his head and said “I really do not understand you human
beings! If you are willing to give up 30 years of your lives’ work for 5
minutes, then why did you not make the most of every minute while you
had it? How did you value your time? Where were your priorities? Why did
you not say or do
the things that really mattered?”
The lights went off a second later, Joe was gone. His 10 billion dollars could not buy him the time to do what really mattered
Thursday, July 18, 2013
4 Pillars of Sacramental Marriage
4 Pillars of Sacramental Marriage |
Posted: 18 Jul 2013 08:43 AM PDT
Archbishop John C. Nienstedt
by Archbishop John C. Nienstedt:
Recently, I was addressing a point on the unique understanding that we
as Catholics have on the sacredness of the Holy Eucharist, when one of
my listeners blurted out, “Well, why doesn’t the Church get honest and
admit that her annulments are just another name for divorce!”
Surprised at the abrupt change of topic, I asked: “Do you
understand the difference between civil marriage and sacramental
marriage?” The man admitted that he did not. I regret to say that many
other Catholics do not either and that is a terrible shame.
‘Marriage in the Lord’
Civil marriage is based on a contract or written agreement that
this man and this woman freely bind their lives together as one social
entity (originally this was the idea behind them taking one name). That
contract continues as long as the two parties desire it to be so.
Civil governments have a stake in the outcome of such unions
because they provide future social stability through the children who
are born, educated and prepared for citizenship as a result of those
contractual relationships. When the well-being of civil marriage is
threatened, the future of the common good is placed at risk, and that
ought to be of significant concern for governmental leaders.
Sacramental marriage externally looks just like civil marriage, but
the internal reality is far different. Sacramental marriage rests on
what I call the four pillars that give it definition:
- Faith-filled: It is a union between a baptized man and a baptized woman;
- Free consent: It is knowingly and willingly entered into by a man and a woman who understand what they are doing and have the capacity to follow through;
- Indissoluble: Both believers recognize that this is a lifelong, exclusive and monogamous union because it is a “marriage in the Lord”;
- Fruitful: Being believers, the couple models the generative love of God as seen in the Blessed Trinity in willing that their love for each other will bear fruit in the procreation and education of their children.
When we view the meaning of sacramental marriage over and against
that of a civil marriage, we begin to understand why the Catholic Church
defines the sacrament of marriage as a “covenant” — a union in God and
dependent on his assistance of grace. Accordingly, divorce has no place
in terms of sacramentality because God’s grace never dies even in the
presence of human sin or weakness.
An annulment, on the other hand, results after careful
consideration has been given as to whether or not all four pillars were
present the day that the couple said their “I do’s.” If one or more
dimensions were missing, then that union, which admittedly was a civil
marriage, was never capable of being a sacramental marriage.
On the other hand, when two Lutherans are married in a Lutheran
Church, the Catholic Church presumes they, too, have entered into a
sacramental union due to the validity of their baptism. (The same
understanding of validity does not, however, extend to a Lutheran
theology of the Eucharist.) If they later divorce and one of the parties
desires to marry a Catholic, his or her union would require an
annulment before marriage to a Catholic could take place.
Some will say that all this is needless bureaucracy or “red tape.”
However, the Catholic Church sees that the dignity of the human person
requires respect for his or her public promise spoken through the
wedding vows before a recognized religious minister and two witnesses.
The Church in that sense is only holding each party to his or her word
and thus defending the integrity of their promises.
In addition, the increasing number of marriages in our archdiocese between persons of “mixed religious”
backgrounds is a source of deep concern for me, precisely because a
mutually unified understanding of sacramentality in many cases is not
present and because a fully unified practice of faith is not possible.
In such instances, pastoral leaders must devote extra time and
attention to ensure that these couples are prepared to face the
inevitable challenges that will face their commitment.
Importance of children
Lastly, allow me to speak to the overall importance of the
procreation and education of children in regard to the sacramentality of
marriage.
The Second Vatican Council’s constitution, “Gaudium et Spes,” did
not use the distinction of “primary” and “secondary” in referring to the
two-fold significance of the conjugal act, namely its procreative and
unitive significances. This has led some commentators to conclude that a
conflict could arise whereby the procreative significance may
legitimately be ignored in favor of the unity of the couple, thus
rationalizing the immoral use of contraception or sterilization.
My bishop, John Cardinal Dearden (for whom I served four years as
his priest secretary), served as the committee chair when that section
on marriage was being drafted. He told me personally that the above
interpretation was never intended by the Council Fathers. While the two
ends are essential, they do not bear the same moral weight. The
procreative intent of marriage has been its defining character “from the
beginning.” (Genesis 1:28)
St. Paul speaks of marriage as a “great mystery,” a marvelous
participation in God’s life and mission. It is a blessed vocation and a
holy adventure, wherein a man and a woman entrust their hearts, their
lives and their eternal destinies to one another. God is the silent
companion in the living out of that commitment. Marriages flourish when
that is understood and when God’s assistance is sought in daily prayer
and Sunday Eucharist.
Discover More
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Monday, July 15, 2013
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Where the hell is God?
21 March 2011
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In a new book due to be launched tomorrow in London, Australian Jesuit, Richard Leonard looks at how we understand the presence of God in our lives when we are faced with suffering. Using his own experience of a family tragedy, Fr Richard speaks about his personal response when he is tempted to ask: ‘Where the hell is God?’ |
 download this article in PDF format |
| Most explorations of where or how God can be found in human suffering
tend to be fairly academic. I have found them to be immensely
important, even when I have disagreed with their arguments or
conclusions. I have even found the intellectual distance they establish
to be somehow helpful in dissecting an anything but distant enquiry. My passion for some answers in this area started from a different base. It was not, primarily, an academic question, though I hope my thoughts are intelligent. My interest started from experience, from my grappling with a family tragedy which forced me to confront how I can hold on to my belief in a loving God in the face of suffering. On 23 October 1988 my sister, Tracey, was involved in a freakish car accident: she dislocated the 5th cervical vertebra and fractured the 6th and 7th vertebrae. For the last 23 years she has been a quadriplegic. Tracey is one of the finest people I know, and even at the time of the accident, at 28 years of age, she had already lived in Calcutta for three years and nursed the poorest of the poor at Mother Teresa’s House of the Dying. She had returned to Australia and got a job working with the Sisters of Our Lady of Sacred Heart, running a health centre for Aboriginal people at Port Keats. It was near there that the car accident happened. Within twelve hours of my mother finding out about Tracey’s accident, she was standing in a hospital room in Darwin asking, ‘Where the hell is God?’ In the months that followed I received some of the most appalling and frightening letters from some of the best Christians I knew. A few wrote, ‘Tracey must have done something to deeply offend God so she had to be punished here on earth.’ They actually believe that God is out to get us. I have discovered since 1988 that this theology is far more common than I would have ever imagined. I have met people with cancer, couples with fertility problems and parents who have lost a child – all of whom have asked me what they ever did to deserve the curse under which they think God has placed them. |
Why Bother Praying?
12 July 2013
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Australian Jesuit, Fr Richard Leonard, is the author of the 2010 book Where the Hell is God? and the Director of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting. He introduces the themes in his new book by explaining what motivated him to explore the question: Why Bother Praying? |
download this article in PDF format |
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I never thought I would write a book on prayer. The Lord knows that
at this stage I am no mystic. In fact, given that there are three routes
to canonisation – heroic virtue, mysticism and martyrdom – I think my
only chance of making it is via the latter. I share with many other
Christians the usual desolations, and a lack of discipline and focus,
that see my own prayer life a very humble offering to God each day. Why Bother Praying?, however, emerged from the responses to my earlier book, Where the Hell is God? I discovered that others had very different ideas about prayer to mine. They are fully entitled to hold them – indeed they must follow their informed consciences – but the image of God behind their positions was frightening to me. It all came down to me saying that I thought we should, ‘stop praying for rain.’ For the record, I am delighted if others want to pray about the weather; I cannot do so, because if God is a big meteorologist in the sky then he seems to be very bad at it – we go from a drought to a flood in a matter of days. In their responses, my readers outlined their reasons why they are not troubled when their prayer does not seem to be answered, or when things get demonstrably worse. Some were familiar to me: · ‘we were praying about the wrong things, because God knows what we need rather than what we want’; |
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