Keeping Faith Today

Revelation is dialogue: An excerpt from Sunday By Sunday for Trinity Sunday

GoodGroundPress — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:43:01 +0000

“Remember all music was once new music.” That’s the sign-off for a public radio music broadcast that features current compositions and performances. Sounds that wrap us in melody and memory today may have once jarred listeners.

The same theme applies to revelation. All revelation was once new revelation, that is, if with our Judeo Christian faith, we believe that God has entered history, called Abraham and Sarah, made a covenant with Moses, inspired Isaiah and the prophets, suffered with the Israelites in exile, and become one of us in Jesus Christ.

And all revelation is dialogue. Our God speaks and invites people into covenant, friendship, and mission.

What word is God speaking to you?

Gospel Reflection for May 26, 2013, Trinity Sunday

GoodGroundPress — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:55:46 +0000

Jesus said to his disciples, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. When the Spirit of truth comes, this One will guide you along the way of all truth.”

John 16.12

Jesus recognizes he has more to say than his friends can hear or bear. He cannot ready his friends fully for the future. His disciples are going to have to live into the mystery of his death, resurrection, and return to God.

People who face blindness report learning to use the white walking cane is difficult until eyesight is finally gone. As long as one can see, one continues to depend on the eyes. Perhaps similarly, Jesus’ friends can discover his Spirit guiding them only as they face problems and conflicts in his absence.

How do you experience the Spirit guiding you in your present life?

Gospel Reflection for May 19, 2013, Pentecost

GoodGroundPress — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:07:25 +0000

Jesus said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

John 20.22-23

The risen Christ sends us out into the world, empowers us with the Holy Spirit, and calls us to use our power according to his way and not the world’s. We are to listen and let go of control when we are powerful. We are to speak and act when we are powerless. Equally important is our challenge to intervene against injustice: we are to find ways for the Holy Spirit to empower those who are oppressed and powerless to speak the truth and to challenge those who are powerful to be silent and listen.

How can you move the people in your work, your family, or your ministry toward Pentecost?

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An excerpt from Sunday By Sunday

GoodGroundPress — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:05:48 +0000

by Joan Mitchell, CSJ

“In the cosmology of Jesus’ time, God and the heavens were up and human beings and Earth were below. Our 2,000-year-old gospel tells the story of the risen Jesus’ return to God in the cosmology everyone assumed in the first century. To return to God is to go to the heavens. As the Church celebrates Jesus’ ascension into heaven in 2013, we wonder where he goes, where God’s home is. We hunger for lasting communion with our loved ones.”

How do you imagine communion with God?

Catholic Relief Services: 70 Years in a Heartbeat

GoodGroundPress — Thu, 09 May 2013 07:45:15 +0000

Learn more about Catholic Relief Services here.

Gospel Reflection for May 12, Ascension Sunday

GoodGroundPress — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:59:02 +0000

Then Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. As he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.

Luke 24.50-51

The ascension is the hinge event between Jesus’ resurrection and his sending of the Spirit. Luke ends his gospel with Jesus’ departure and begins the Acts of the Apostles with the same moment.

In the ascension Jesus passes over into communion with God, bridging the human and divine. He blesses this company of followers about to become a Spirit-filled community, witnesses to the paschal mystery of Jesus’ passage from death to new life.

How do you understand where the risen Jesus is? How do you imagine the communion with his Father to which the risen Jesus returns?

Gospel Reflection for May 5, 2013, 6th Sunday of Easter

GoodGroundPress — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:23:06 +0000

Jesus said, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them. To them we will come and make our home with them.”

John 14:23

This gospel tells us that when people live like Jesus, they discover the Father within them. We learn and relearn Jesus’ message from living it. Jesus comes as a friend, an equal who does not exempt himself from the conditions of human life but lives them to the end, facing death on the cross at the hands of empire.

What do you appreciate about Christians understanding themselves as friends of God?

Gospel Reflection for April 28th, 5th Sunday of Easter

GoodGroundPress — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:00:56 +0000

Jesus said, “A new commandment I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so also you should love one another.”

John 13:34

After Judas leaves, Jesus teaches his new commandment. It turns on the little word as, the likeness to his own love that Jesus expects of his disciples. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Love for each other is how others will recognize Jesus’ followers. Our love for each other will reveal the one we follow.”

How does the community of faith to which you belong live out Jesus’ example and commandment?

This Earth Day, Think BLUE! | Ryan’s Well Foundation Blog

GoodGroundPress — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:27:16 +0000

In the winter of 1998, Ryan Hreljac was a first-grader who was listening when his teacher told the class about countries that didn’t have clean drinking water. Ryan lived in Canada and had never imagined schools without drinking fountains. He was interested in helping people in the African countries his teacher talked about so he started raising money to help build a well. His fundraising and advocacy turned into a social justice movement. Today Ryan is a college student. His first-grade project has evolved into Ryan’s Well, a foundation that has helped build 749 water projects and 992 latrines bringing safe water and improved sanitation to 789,907 people.

This Earth Day, Think BLUE! | Ryan’s Well Foundation Blog.

via This Earth Day, Think BLUE! | Ryan’s Well Foundation Blog.

Example of a Good Shepherd: Norman Borlaug

GoodGroundPress — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:00:26 +0000

John’s gospel makes an extended comparison between Jesus and shepherds who pasture, protect, and water their flocks and who at night sleep in the opening of the sheepfold. Jesus is both the good shepherd and the gate to the sheepfold. This Sunday the Church reads from John 10, where the gospel makes this comparison.

A man died in September 2009 who like a good shepherd used his brains and energy that millions on our planet might eat. Norman Borlaug believed food is a moral right.

Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for developing disease-resistant wheat that grew well in Mexico, India, Pakistan, and African nations where population was outrunning food production. Famine seemed inevitable when Borlaug finished his doctorate in 1942.