Pilgrim progress- a disciple on a journey!

Tomorrow in our community in Athlone, our PDDM community along with other religious sisters, friends, Adorers and collaborators will begin their annual retreat or spiritual exercises. For about 4 years now we have opened our annual retreat to those who serve with us in the mission and it's had a fantastic response, with about 30 to 40 participating in the retreats in Athlone and Dublin. We are aware that not everyone has the opportunity, be it for family situations or financial reasons, to go away to a retreat house for a retreat. We all need to take time out to recharge our minds and hearts and see where we are in life.  How many of us have tried out our best Olympic sprints to grab a mobile phone charger or our laptop battery when we’ve been chatting to friends and suddenly the horrible beeping noise warns us that the phone or laptop is about to die!? There is no power. Sometimes we let our spiritual life and energy get to that point too. Yes, our lives can be so busy (...

Look up ordinary in the dictionary and you get ˈôrdnˌerē/: an adjective meaning ‘with no special or distinctive features’; ‘normal’. Synonyms offered are ‘usual’, ‘normal’, ‘standard’, ‘typical’, ‘common’, ‘customary’, ‘day-to-day’ and “the ordinary course of events.” Ask a canonist what ‘ordinary’ means and they will probably answer ‘who’ an ‘ordinary’ is, that is, the pope, bishop of the diocese or any other person equivalent to him in law, as well as major religious superiors of exempt orders and congregations. About a week ago, we began what we call Ordinary Time within the Liturgical Year. We get back into the ordinary course of events. Through the period of Ordinary Time following Christmas, we become increasingly aware that this marvel of birth and growth will mature into something challenging. However we need time to focus on this and we are gifted with the time of Lent which culminates in the great event of the Resurrection, the battle of life over death, light over dark...

Time is a funny thing about which we always seem to be complaining. It wears different faces. For long periods it stretches out like a cat or passes by with indifferent precision, one thing following another. In Greek there are two words for time: chronos and kairos. Both are Greek words which mean time, but they imply different things. Chronos refers to minutes and seconds, time as a measurable resource. Kairos is the word used for time in Ephesians 5:16, an appointed time, an opportune moment, or a due season. We tend to think of our time in a chronos mindset. We think of having 24 hours in a day. We define our workweeks by the number of hours that we work. We have a list of things to do and only so much time to get everything done. This requires us to make a mental shift. Instead of looking at our time as grains of sand slipping through an hourglass, we can view our time as hundreds of possibilities given by God to enjoy the great gift which we call life. Yet occasionally there...