Hey guys.
How has the week treated you since we last met. Russ and I hope to encourage you to find ways to apply what we learn to your lives and also to share that with others. Think of that as an exercise in finding the Holy Spirit in your life. It’s fine to sit down and talk about it, but the rubber meets the road when you start practicing it.
You can also go read Fr. Mathew’s homilies on the KC website here. https://leduckc.ca/category/homilies
He gives them to me on Mondays usually so i can post them for everyone. They are always worth the read.
Just a reminder that our next meeting is Wednesday, Oct 15 at 7pm
Last meeting we talked about sin and how it tries to define our relationships.
– Luke 9: 51-56
– Ephesians 4:17. then also 25-32
– Didn’t read it but suggested reading Hebrews chapter 11, the whole thing
We discussed the sanctity of life as it applies to suffering in our lives, and specifically end-of-life suffering. It’s often harder watch someone we love suffering than be the one suffering ourselves. We discussed the sacrifice of our suffering for God’s purposes, and that there is sacrifice in our suffering. Just like the suffering Jesus did on the cross.
Russ showed us that the cross is what bridges the gap between sin and God.
We talked a little bit about belief in the miraculous and if it is required to sustain faith. Spoiler alert. It ain’t. With faith you have reasons to believe what you do, but those reasons dont or should not depend on miraculous evidence. Should some relic or miracle prove to be false, it should not in turn shatter your foundation of faith. You should not have or depend on entirely blind faith as that is fragile and easily shaken or broken. However as you discover belief in more and more that supports your claim to faith, its easier and easier to accept the remaining things as true without evidence or personal experience, just becuase basically if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, probably a duck. You can make those leaps to belief that remain, even as you continue to explore them for the truth behind them. Your perspective just has altered from mostly doubtful to mostly faithful as you do. Some of us do need to explore the reasons why. Not all of us, but for those of us who do, we simply need to keep one foot on the ground of faith while we search for those answers.
I looked for that documentary on the virgin birth and eventually gave up. There is so many things to wade through out there on this topic, that it gets overwhelming and a bit of a chamber of debate and accusation. If i ever find it I’ll post a link, but so far I would not recommend Googling it. A bit of a battlefield of opinions and outright stupidity to be honest. And thats coming from someone trying to defend a scientific biological case for a virgin birth. I have a theory that God never breaks his own rules in nature. We just dont know them all.
I also came across this article about the Assumption of Mary after her death, or quite possibly before her death depending on what articles you are reading. My search for the actual eyewitness testimony or description of it to support the dogma just goes on unfortunately. But it’s at least a good understanding of the process towards dogma. Once again, I dont doubt the claim, i am not rejecting the teaching. Just looking for more support to scratch my own itch. I know its out there.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-assumption-of-mary-in-history
We didn’t get to these readings last week but maybe we can pick up where we left off. Here are the rest of them if you want to read ahead.
1 Timothy 5:8 – denial
1 John 4: 20-21 – hate
Hosea 4: 6 neglect
Proverbs 12: 22 – lying
John 12: 48 – unbelief
Psalm 32: 1-2 guilt
Romans 4: 7-8 – cleared of sin
Chris
