Fr Jim's (old) Blog

Our children at Holy Cross School are studying Cambodia as part of their religious education "Mission" unit. It's great to see the natural sympathy the kids have for kids who don't have what they have. They naturally sense the injustice and want to help. But their options for helping seem to be limited to the inevitable "let's do a fundraiser". Which means getting other people to give money. I see this premise also in high school kids who are full of good will to raise money for charity, and even better, go on a "mission trip" or immersion experience, but who rarely correlate their own standard of living with an unfair share of the world's resources, of which the object of their concern suffer the lack. For awhile I've been watching our school do the eco-friendly project of collecting the lunch scraps and feeding them to the chickens. But the quantity of food thrown out has staggered me - 4 or 5 buckets a day, which is far too much f...

Weddings. Check. Baptisms. Check. Funerals. Check. I've done plenty of each. But a couple of weeks ago I got a call to do something I've never done before: bless a boat! This was a new surfboat. Macs are a fairly competitive club and do well in the state competitions. The club president gave a speech, I did a one minute prayer and blessing with holy water, and the widow of a long time club member poured champagne on the boat before the crew took it out for an inaugural row. There was such a good vibe there, and a few people I know from the parish. It struck me that there is a strong sense of community there in the surf club. Three things which the church offers; community, purpose and opportunities to serve, the surf club also does. For people without religious faith there must be a number of similar places in society which offer these.

During my time in Omaha I studied the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius . It is one thing to study them, but another to do them.The exercises can be done as a 30 day intensive retreat, or a week by week program. Much as I would love to, there isn't a spare month I could be away from the parish again, so I am doing the 30 week version. I receive spiritual direction via Skype from my director (referred from the Jesuit retreat centre in Pymble ). Each week she sends me a list of scripture passages to meditate on and other prayer exercises, and then in an hour conversation via Skype we talk just about how I have been praying. It has been a very focused experience of prayer thus far. In other experiences of spiritual direction in the past we have talked about a broader range of issues of life, prayer and ministry, but this is just about prayer, nothing else. I am praying with passages of scripture which of course I have known, such as Jesus' declaration of bringing good news t...