Fr Jim's (old) Blog

Like so many people I was astonished last November that Donald Trump was voted president of the US. In hindsight, President Trump won by doing what President Obama did eight years earlier: mobilising a cohort of people who usually didn't vote. In Obama's case it was young people, poor people and black people. I remember this well; I was in Chicago in 2008 and my friends who had never voted before were registering to vote. In Trump's case, it was the blue collar unemployed, racists and the anti-government fringe.  So, while lots of us are wringing our hands or expecting the apocalypse, the ever magnanimous Pope Francis has wise words for us "Wait and see". In an interview reported by the Catholic News Service he said Being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view, quite reckless," the pope said. "We will see. We will see what he does and then we will judge -- always on the concrete. Christianity either is...

Well, the blog is back after too long away! This weekend in my homily we are watching the first two minutes of a TED talk by Tim Urban called "Inside the mind of a master procrastinator" Click here for the whole talk At lot of people can resonate with the way we tend to put off difficult, boring or unpleasant tasks, and the way that sometimes catches up with us. I then contrast that very human tendency with the very graced way that Peter & Andrew, James and John respond when Jesus calls them in Matthew 4:12-23. When Jesus calls, they respond at once (or immediately in other translations). But not everyone who Jesus calls acts this way. There are others who procrastinate, saying yes, I'd love to, but first let me finish what I'm doing or let me go and do that thing first such as in Matt 8:21 or Luke 14:18-20. But they never return, and we never even learn their names. They are the unnamed, uncredited extras in the drama of the gospels. So when we kno...