Pilgrim progress- a disciple on a journey!

As the New Year  continues, filled with new hope and new resolutions, here are 10 such commandments that might serve us well as we walk the long road: 1.Acknowledge your contingency, your helplessness. You are a creature, not the creator.You are not God, but a creature. Only God is ‘ipsum esse subsistens’, a self–sufficient being. Like all creatures, you’re dependent and interdependent. Life works when you acknowledge this, when you accept that you can’t give yourself life. All is gift. If you try to live the illusion of self–sufficiency and try to guarantee your own immortality, you mimic the sin of Adam and Eve, complete with all the futility of effort, the lording–it–over, and the alienation from nature that ensues. Proper living begins with the words: “I am not God!” 2.Pray prayers of helplessness, gratitude, and praise. Pray always! Also pray formally each day. By your baptism you’re a priest. Pray as priest: Hold the world up each day to God. Hold up both its wonders ...

Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI This piece was written by Ron Rolheiser over ten years ago but it still has so much to say to us today, especially to those who work in vocation ministry and with young people. The italics and bold in the text are my addition.  The Right to Call Another to a Vocation June 23, 2002 "Recently I participated in an International Conference on vocations. It gathered a wide assortment of persons to reflect upon why less people in the Western world are entering the priesthood and consecrated religious life.It was a wonderful event, filled with prayer, hope, and energy. It was too a time of reflection on strategy: What might we be doing, practically, in terms of attracting more people into priesthood and religious life? What became clearer as the conference went on is that, in terms of drawing people into a deep religious commitment of any kind, strategy is not what is ultimately at issue. What is? Depth of commitment and sanctity within our own live...