Pilgrim progress- a disciple on a journey!

Getting angry evokes many images: blood boiling, seeing red, losing it, hitting the roof or blowing our tops. No matter what turn of phrase we use, when thinking about our own anger or that of others, there is a sense that we are not quite in control of things. It can be an uncomfortable experience! Right from our early years we knew that Jesus is like us in all things but sin. Therefore that means he knows what it’s like to be angry. The more refined and sensitive a person, obviously the deeper is his or her experience of the emotion - so we can guess how powerful anger’s movement would have been for Jesus. On that particular day in the temple when Jesus dramatically whipped up and swept away the flawed rites of worship, the finer detail about the pigeon-sellers receiving a gentler treatment remind us that there’s also another way to be angry. Jesus didn’t lose it altogether. As Christians, we want our lives to be a continuous act of worship, one that spills over into a...

The other day some kind soul left a copy of Jean Vanier’s newsletter to his community outside my door. I don’t know who it was but I appreciate the sweet thought greatly, even more, after reading and reflecting on the text. Jean Vanier is the founder of the L’Arche community. Through his friendship with a priest named Father Thomas Philippe, he became aware of the plight of thousands of people institutionalized with developmental disabilities. In this newsletter, he shares his journey of becoming older and how he is slowing down, has less energy to do all that he would like to do. He concludes: “Jesus said to Paul: “My grace is made manifest in your weakness”. More so, I continue to discover that I too am precious for God, not for what I do but for that what I am: a child of the Father” . Too often, we relate to each other on the basis of what a person can do or what they can do for us. We quantify them in terms of productivity, use and benefit. We forget that God created that person s...