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Online sermons
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Topic Started: Thursday, 28. September 2006, 10:11 (1,256 Views)
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Rose of York
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Sunday, 29. October 2006, 23:06
Post #16
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- Fr Terry Tastard
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The 'able-bodied' by contrast are often closed to God. What is it that makes them reluctant to be open to God? Pride, perhaps. A belief that we do not need others, ie a dangerous self-sufficiency. Hardness of heart. ...................................................................... Ironically, it is often those who believe that they have no handicap who turn out to be the most disabled of all.
If you think you have no problems you don't know you need God.
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Keep the Faith!
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Rose of York
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Friday, 3. November 2006, 22:37
Post #17
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The Human Voice of God Euan Marley O.P.
5 November 2006
fr Euan Marley preaches on the dialogue between God and humanity.
- Father Euan Marley
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One morning in our Priory of Holy Cross in Leicester, I was cleaning my teeth in preparation for Morning Prayer, which is very important when you have choral prayer in a small chapel. It was seven in the morning and I suddenly heard a voice saying, 'What do you want?' It was my mothers voice, which was somewhat alarming, not because it was my mothers voice -- well not just because it was my mothers voice -- but because she was supposed to be in Glasgow where she lives.
Pausing only to remove the toothbrush, which I had somehow managed to wedge in my nose, I said, 'What do you mean, what do I want?' 'What do you think I mean?' 'Well, where are you then?' 'Where do you think I am, I'm here!'
At this point, I opened my bedroom door and looked up and down the corridor but there was no sign of her. This was starting to get seriously spooky. I came back into my room and said, 'Where's here?' 'Where do you think here is?'
A good question to which I had no good answer. Then I realised what had happened. My phone was under a pile of clothes on the floor and I had somehow stood on them, pressing the speaker phone button and the last number redial. So the disembodied voice of my mother was her speaking on the phone from under a pile of clothes.
There is something distinctly frightening about a disembodied voice. Perhaps it's a sign of the fear that entered into the human heart when we first started to sign and hid our faces from God.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the breeze of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:8)
The voice of the Lord is something fearful in the Old Testament, as in the 29th Psalm, where the voice of the Lord strips the forest bare, and shakes the wilderness. Perhaps we could never have heard the voice of God without fear, still less could we look in his face. So in the Old Testament God has to speak increasingly through prophets, who themselves hear God through their own speech. As the Prophets struggle and ultimately fail to speak for God, the way is prepared for the coming of the Christ.
Jesus is truly the embodied voice of God. It is a voice that still inspires fear of a sort. The high priests and scribes are afraid of him because the people are astonished at his teaching. Yet it is a human voice, and as such a voice that can be treated with disrespect.
Far from hiding from this voice, the various parties that Mark speaks of come up to Jesus and try to silence him by their questions. These are questions which are asked not with a view to finding answers but with a view to avoiding answers. They ask him about his authority, try to trap him in regard to the question of paying taxes to the Romans, and the Sadducees seek to show the impossibility of the Resurrection through a question about marriage.
In doing this, the opponents of Jesus damage their own speech. We cannot force the truth out of others, but we can choose to speak the truth, just as we can choose to love, but not to be loved. Yet in speaking truth, we make it possible for the truth to come to us. It is in giving that we receive and this is especially true of truth itself.
It is remarkable how many of the great sayings of the Gospel of Mark are not from Jesus himself but are drawn out from those who speak to Jesus. 'Lord, I believe, help my unbelief', 'Even the dogs under the table, eat from the children's crumbs.' When the scribe comes into the conversation, he not only asks a question but shows his willingness to speak of his own conviction, that these two commandments are greater than any sacrifice and holocaust.
So the voice of God has become flesh, and in doing so, part of the meaning of the incarnation is that from now on, all the truth of God will be spoken in dialogue with humanity, not in a monologue. In Jesus, we have heard the voice of God, and we are not afraid.
fr. Euan Marley O.P. is Subprior of the Priory of the Holy Cross, Leicester, and Catholic Chaplain to Leicester Royal Infirmary.
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Keep the Faith!
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Rose of York
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Saturday, 4. November 2006, 21:54
Post #18
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5 November 2006
Father Terry writes:
Few things sting Christians as much as the charge that they are hypocrites. It cuts us to the quick. And the trouble is, that somewhere within us, a voice agrees. We know that in today's Gospel (Mark 12.28-34) Jesus himself summarises Christian living as love of God and love of neighbour. Which of us could say that we do these things perfectly? We long, sometimes, to love God and neighbour sincerely, wholehearted, uncomplicatedly, creatively, freely. We also know how we fail.
So are we hypocrites? I think not. The English word hypocrite comes from an ancient Greek word that is almost identical to the English one, and the Greek means actor, someone who plays a part. Someone who consciously and deliberately sets out to be something that they are not. Now, you and I may be sinners. But we are not hypocrites. To be someone who tries and who sometimes fails is not hypocrisy.
In our opening prayer for this Sunday, we ask God's help that we may 'live the faith we profess,'. At the same time we acknowledge, 'Only with your help, O God, can we offer you fitting service and praise.' There is a realism here. We may yearn to live in a way that will fulfil love of God and love of neighbour. But we also know our weakness. So we do not claim to achieve these things, but rather in our aiming high we rely not on our own power but on the strength of God.
This is who we really are: people of faith, people brave enough to aim higher. Never quite getting there, but as people who believe that God's Spirit is with them, never able to stop trying. No actors here, surely, no hypocrites, but instead, people who know their own faults and failings and yet believe that God can work even with our human weakness.
Finally, wouldn't it be much easier not to have ideals? Perhaps. But that would be a worse world by far, a world of cynicism, where there was nothing to inspire us. Christians are both realists and idealists. Realists, because we know human beings are flawed; idealists, because we believe that with the grace of God, there is always the possibility of improvement. And so, day by day, we set out, hoping that this day we may be able to fulfil Christ's commandment to love God and to love neighbour.
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Keep the Faith!
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Eve
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Thursday, 9. November 2006, 12:36
Post #19
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The Gamble of Love Richard Finn O.P.
12 November 2006 Thirty-Second Sunday of the Year (Year
B)
fr Richard Finn finds in Christ's death and resurrection a transforming 'Yes' to the generosity of two poor widows.
- Father Finn
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What are we to make of these two nameless widows? Are they perhaps just a pair of batty old ladies, heedless of the disaster looming over them, and conned out of their few savings by the sort of men whom Jesus condemns in the Gospel for wolfing down widows' properties? That's roughly what they look like from the perspective of a modern cynic. One puts her last two coins, her whole living, into the Temple treasury at Jerusalem; the other seemingly hastens her own death and that of her son by sharing what little food remains with an unknown visitor to Sidon. You have to ask not only what makes for such reckless generosity, but what justifies it. How can it ever be right to be so prodigal, to be so spendthrift? Or are these two actually canny gamblers, a shrewder pair by far than their sceptical critics, staking their all on their only hope, the One God, the source of every good gift? They certainly know at one level exactly what they are doing. The less you have, the more nearly you know its precise value. The widow of Sidon makes plain what fate she sees waiting for her at the bottom of meal jar. Their extraordinary, self-denying, generosity is rooted in a recognition of God's prodigality, God's generosity first towards Israel. Their gifts are grounded in his gift of life in his image and likeness, of the covenant, and the protection extended to the poor through the Mosaic Law and the cry of the prophets. If to some extent they are gamblers, staking everything on the final card, it is because they are first lovers, in love with the God who has graced their lives thus far, and this is not a dicey game of chance, but a journey in faith. In today's Gospel Jesus condemns the long prayers made by those who fancy themselves as holy men; such prayers will only gain them God's punishment. They thus fail to work as prayers at all. The real prayer is in what these faithful women do, what they spend of themselves. What the widows could not know, of course, is that the divine prodigality has now been made manifest in Christ, his incarnation and passion, for - Quote:
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He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
Jesus comments on the widow's gift at the Temple knowing that he himself will shortly make his life an offering to the Father, making of death upon the cross a self-sacrifice. So if either widow is at all foolish, their folly is Christlike. Their action makes only as much sense as Christ's gift of his all, his life, makes sense.
Perhaps we should really say that Christ's death gives sense to all our self-sacrifice, our many deaths to self in love of God and neighbour. When Jesus observes the widow by the Temple treasury, we should not imagine that he is unmoved, or that his death merely happens to take the shape of her own generosity. His offering is an act in loving solidarity with hers. It is even occasioned by hers, though not by hers alone. It is God's redemptive response to all our reckless loves, though that response does not end in the death of Christ, but in his glorious resurrection and ascension.
If the widow of Sidon soon discovers that God miraculously rewards her generosity towards his prophet, this is also a sign which looks forward to the redemptive generosity of God pouring forth upon humanity in the Pentecostal gifts of the Risen Christ.
Christ in turn then invites us into a new generosity with the gifts we have received through the Holy Spirit, who has incorporated us into the Body of Christ, the Church.
Admittedly, it's not always easy. It is hard to learn that we and our gifts are not in competition. Your beauty, whether that is physical or the astounding beauty of virtue, is a gift for me to delight in and respect, not something I can only envy, nor something I must somehow deny if my own gifts are to count for anything, nor something to plunder and consume. The more important gifts need to be recognised in order to grow. They are usually the fruit of others' work as well as of our own, in the sense that gifts like virtues need to be practised, perfected, in relationship and dialogue with friends, spouses, strangers, and enemies. And of course, first and foremost, we have to accept the gifts we've been given as gifts at all.
There is a temptation to privatise gifts which are meant to be shared. The Gospel is also witness to a more insidious form of temptation, to make religion the means to our own self-aggrandisement. There is clearly a warning here for all of us who have been ordained, all members of the Church's hierarchy. If mutual service is subverted to become a power game, an ego-trip, we shall face God's justice. Let's learn from the widows while we still can. fr. Richard Finn is the Regent of Studies of the English Dominicans, and subprior of the Priory of the Holy Spirit, Oxford.
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Howdy Folks. Has anybody seen my husband lately?
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Rose of York
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Sunday, 12. November 2006, 02:00
Post #20
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- Fr Terry Tastard
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Spiritual reflections
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12 November 2006
Father Terry writes:
We all know what is meant by public relations. It means to project a good image to the public, to create a favourable impression for a company or famous person. This has become a profession in itself, with its own skills. In the days of Jesus they had not heard of public relations, but they had their own way of increasing public esteem. We know, for example, that when rich people made a big charitable donation, they sometimes sent messengers out into the streets, literally to trumpet the news (see Matt. 6.2).
The trouble is, public relations works. It is sometimes called (in jest) a dark art. We do begin to think more highly of people or organisations who spend money for this very purpose. And this, too, was true in Jesus's day. The public tended to think well of people who drew attention to how generous they were. The rich tended then, as now to obscure humbler people who were also generous. In fact, it was thought that to be a truly religious person you had to be rich. Hence the astonishment of the disciples when Jesus says that on the contrary, richer people have a harder time entering the kingdom (Luke 18.25-26). It all creates a situation where the humble people are made to feel even more humble, the poor feel even poorer. This is not how it is to God. As we stand before God, we are all equal. Equal in being sinners, equal in needing his mercy and grace. And each of us, equally loved by God.
Jesus was not against charity or generous giving. He did, however, dislike the way that such giving was used to create a good impression. He used a powerful metaphor to describe how we should give: it should be so low-key that our left hand does not know what our right hand is doing (Matt. 6.3). Jesus sees with the eyes of God, and hence his delight in the woman giving two pennies to the Temple treasury (Mk 12.41-44, today's gospel). He sees here a lesson for the vain egos, and, looking into her heart, he sees great faith and great love. True riches.
Fr Terry Tastard's new book has just been published. THE WAY TO LIFE is a series of 14 meditations and prayers accompanying 14 original icons on the theme of the Resurrection painted by Caroline Lees. The pocket-sized book is ideal for personal prayer (ISBN).
It is published by St Paul's Publishing, 187 Battersea Road, London SW11 3AS
editions@stpauls.org.uk Tel: Fax: It is available from them at £3.99 each plus postage; or from your nearest Christian bookshop.
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Keep the Faith!
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Eve
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Thursday, 11. January 2007, 22:28
Post #21
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Link to weekly sermon, reproduced with permission
- Quote:
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Columba Ryan O.P.
14 January 2007 Second Sunday of the Year ©
Fr Columba Ryan preaches on the miracle at Cana.[/b]
The last time I did this Torch sermon I had an e-mail from a priest all the way from New Zealand to say how mediocre and boring it was. Fair comment, gratefully received. But then he went on to suggest I should be like my talented, much younger brother in religion, Tim Radcliffe. That hardly seemed fair, rather like asking a tin-pot village musician why he didn't play as divinely as Jehudi Menuhin. After all, Tim Radcliffe had been Master of the Dominican Order, the 86th in some 800 years.
We can't all expect to achieve such distinction and experience, unless we live in a world of VIPs with no foot-soldiers. I rather wonder how such a world would work?
'There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee'. I imagine there were any number of tin-pot musicians there. It wasn't the kind of place you would have found the top-notch musicians of the Empire, a small peasant village in the mountainous countryside of Galilee. I remember once being in an Italian village of the same kind for a funeral. Everyone turned out, all the villagers together. The wedding in Cana must have been like that -- no need to invite people, all the village would have been there. If Jesus and his disciples were invited, I suppose, it was because they didn't belong there.
Cana was not the kind of place where the wedding host would have offered flamingos' tongues and mullet livers or any of the other delicacies favoured by Marcus Gavius Apicius, a noted Roman gourmet who lived at the same time as Jesus. Even the wine, on the one occasion I visited Cana, was so indifferent I threw it away. Yet this forsaken place was where Jesus gave the first of the great signs of his glory of which John's Gospel claims to be the record.
The modern reader would like to know if there is any historic basis to the story. For all its importance as an outstanding miracle and a turning point in the disciples calling it is not recorded in any of the other Gospels. Was it then just a theological fantasy on John's part? No doubt John used his customary craftsmanship to write the whole thing up, but it is worth remembering what kind of glory was revealed in Christ: at Cana he told his mother that his hour had not come. When his hour came the 'glory' was in the ignominy of the crucifixion. 'Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you'.
The place of crucifixion was even more forsaken than Cana of Galilee. At Cana, his mother was present, and she was present also on Calvary. But in both cases she was strangely distanced from her son at Cana by his gentle rebuke to her meddling in his affairs ('What is that to you and to me?'), at Calvary by the distance between life and death. Yet on both occasions her trust in him was absolute: 'Do whatever he tells you' and at the Cross she stood near him when others fled.
Cana was a forsaken little place with tin-pot musicians whose wedding party ran out of wine, but surely in that trivial setting something did happen which opened the eyes of Jesus's new disciples to his glory. It may not have been dramatic enough to occupy everybody's attention. Nor was the everyday crucifixion of criminals thirty years later enough to engage the attention of the world at large. But the glory was there. It opened the eyes amongst others of the centurion: 'In truth this was a son of God!'
The miracle at Cana was almost a secret one; at the time the only people who knew it to be a miracle were the servants who drew the water out. But what did strike home was the sheer abundance of new wine. That was the sign that confirmed the disciples in their new following. Their eyes were opened to the absolute newness and abundance of life in Christ. 'This was the first of the signs given by Jesus. He let his glory be seen, and his disciples believed in him.'
fr. Columba Ryan is the longest-standing member of the English Province, and lives and works at St Dominic's Priory, London.
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Howdy Folks. Has anybody seen my husband lately?
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Derekap
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Thursday, 11. January 2007, 22:43
Post #22
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Jesus said: "What is that to you and to me?"
Sounds very formal to me
"What's it to us?" ?
Nit-picking apart, it is a very good sermon!
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Derekap
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Rose of York
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Thursday, 11. January 2007, 22:56
Post #23
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Dare I say:
if my son said that to me, I would tell him not to be so cheeky.
It cannot possibly mean "Mind your own business".
These words puzzle me:
"Was it then just a theological fantasy on John's part? No doubt John used his customary craftsmanship to write the whole thing up..........."
I wonder if Deacon Robert will be online soon to help me out on this.
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Keep the Faith!
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nelly k
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Thursday, 11. January 2007, 23:12
Post #24
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Thats a brilliant Sermon, for me just now... nelly
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Deacon Robert
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Friday, 12. January 2007, 16:25
Post #25
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These words puzzle me:
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"Was it then just a theological fantasy on John's part? No doubt John used his customary craftsmanship to write the whole thing up..........."
The Gospel according to John, is considered to be written in a more literary and symbolic style than the synoptic Gospels. Though I can’t see what is in the Homilists mind, I think he may be inferring that the story is more symbolic and not historical fact. This Gospel story is the first of seven in John’s Gospel that point to Jesus’ divinity and the ongoing conversion of the apostles. (I do disagree with his statement “The modern reader would like to know if there is any historic basis to the story” I think it waters down the message of this Gospel)
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It cannot possibly mean "Mind your own business".
No, I think more along the lines of “it’s not our business”. The following may explain my reasons, here is part of my homily for this coming Sunday
…….The symbolism of John's Gospel reveals something more of this marriage we have with God. In our day, it is the custom for the bride's family to provide the wedding feast that we call the reception. In Jesus' day, it was the responsibility of the groom.
Unfortunately, for this groom, the wine runs out. This does not reflect well on the host. But Jesus steps in. Our Lord takes on the role and responsibility of the groom and becomes the host. Though this is known only to a few, He provides the wine. The party continues uninterrupted.
It is startling that when Jesus' mother asked Him to do something about the situation, He refused. We cannot explain this away. He refused her, but He did ultimately take upon himself the responsibility to fix the situation. Why? Again John's Gospel is telling us something of God's relationship with us. Jesus did not perform a miracle because He was asked - even if asked by Mary, His mother. Jesus ultimately performed the miracle because that was what God wanted to do for us. It was not the request that moved Jesus; it was His desire to take responsibility as the groom.
Our passage from Paul provides a lesson for how a good relationship works. God wants us to know Him. Inasmuch as we are all made in God's image, we have been gifted individually. We must take great care to use our gifts to our best advantage to learn about each other and the God who loves us. A good relationship exposes these gifts, not swallows them up. Jesus is the Eternal Groom waiting at the altar for us. He is the loving groom, that once He sees us taking the first steps down the aisle toward Him, any hurt, slight or sin is forgotten. There is only love.
God wants to be the groom. Jesus wants to take responsibility as the groom in our lives. We just have to get ourselves to the aisle.
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The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God. - William Bernard Ullanthorne
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PJD
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Friday, 12. January 2007, 22:03
Post #26
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Funny how you interpret things differently.
I have thought Christ, in referring to His time not having come yet, was simply a reference to the actual moment of the miracle not being due i.e. not due a second before or a second later etc.
That's how simple I am sometimes (smile).
PJD
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Derekap
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Friday, 12. January 2007, 23:07
Post #27
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Although Jesus Christ appeared to rebuke His Mother's comment and hint He could save the situation He probably had second thoughts and agreed to do something about it. In which case it is an example to us of the influence of Our Lady on Jesus Christ and why we can ask for her prayers for our intentions.
True or not, that is way I have interpreted the event.
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Derekap
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Rose of York
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Friday, 12. January 2007, 23:35
Post #28
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Isn't it a shame that a lot of people who are not attached to a church, and whose knowledge of the Gospels is limited to what they learnt at State school, know all about Jesus turning water to wine but little about the reason why he died on the Cross - to save our souls.
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Keep the Faith!
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Emee
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Friday, 12. January 2007, 23:37
Post #29
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I agree with Derek. I think the time hadn't really come for Jesus to start performing miracles but He loved / loves His Mother so much that He performed it anyway, and by telling her that His time had "not yet come" and then performing the miracle, He was showing her to what lengths He was prepared to do as she asked - even amending timing of the Plan.
The event is usually cited as an example of Our Lady's powerful influence over her Son. It is a lovely passage as it shows how much Jesus is willing to listen to those He loves.
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Emee
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Friday, 12. January 2007, 23:38
Post #30
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And I agree with Rose too - but she beat me to the posting!!
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