A Daily Spiritual Seed
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth
- blogcast from http://dailyspiritualseed.blogspot.com (comments option open)
Contents:
- Book/Resource of the Week
- Weekend Readings
- Spiritual Guidance
- Saint of the Week
- Affiliate Web Sites
- Theology Note of the Week
- Discussion Board
- Joke of the Week
- Advertising and Archives
- Subscribe/Unsubscribe links. Attributions.
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Book/Resource of the Week
The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic, How Engaging One Percent of Catholics Could Change the World, by Matthew Kelly. Dynamic Catholic.com, 2012.
- http://www.amazon.com/dp/1937509265/?tag=christianspiritu
Kelly
believes that five holy persons, namely Mother Teresa, Francis of
Assisi, John Paul II, Therese of Lisieux, and Ignatius of Loyola had
four things in common. Would you like to wager a guess as to what these
four things are?The author calls these four things: prayer, study, generosity, and evangelization. He finds these elements in the life of each of the forenamed persons. The purpose of this book is to take note of the fact that only about seven percent of Catholics are responsible for the viability of any one parish. He deplores this fact and emphasizes this sadly as he encourages the other ninety-three percent to “get with the program”. Kelly approaches this dilemma in a creative way, inviting Catholics to pray just a few minutes longer each day, to study a bit more every day, to give a little more generously than last year, and to reach out to just one person and invite them to join in the body of Christ, the Church.
To achieve these goals, Kelly starts out with providing free copies of this book to a number of parishes scattered throughout the United States. If he can get just one person in each parish to practice the four signs of living faith, he has counted the increase in the number of “new Catholics”. He wants each of these “New” persons to say, “ One minute more of prayer a day? Yes, I can do that”. “A bit more study? “That I can do”, and so on.
In Kelly’s study as he was preparing to write to this book, he carried out a survey to determine how many are contributing Catholics, how many are really dynamic Catholics, how many support financially the church, how many are inviting new members. The responses saddened his heart when he found that only seven percent are doing almost everything in their faith community and paying almost entirely for the maintenance and mission of the church. (Although his survey was with the Catholic Church, he believes it can easily be applied to churches of various denominations).
Kelly writes: “The future of the Catholic Church depends upon us finding out what makes this small group of Catholics so engaged. If we cannot identify what drives their engagement, we cannot replicate it.”
Back to the four signs, Kelly takes his readers step by step in a direction that will help people develop a more vibrant faith, much like the five holy ones he introduces earlier. This is an intriguing journey and faithfulness to the four steps will hopefully reap great rewards in personal lives and in the individual congregations of Christians.
Interesting reading! Promises of hope! Great chapter- ending summaries! Easy reading! Give Matthew Kelly a try! You won’t regret it!
(Thanks to Sr. Irene Hartman OP for this review.)
Weekend Readings
- http://www.usccb.org/calendar/index.cfm?showLit=1&action=month
Saturday
ACTS 22:3-16
PS 117:1-2
MK 16:15-18
Sunday
IS 8:23-9:3
PS 27:1, 4, 13-14
1 COR 1:10-13, 17
MT 4:12-23
Spiritual Guidance
- http://shalomplace.com/direction
Need a companion for the spiritual journey?
Consultations and spiritual direction available.
Saint of the Week
- http://www.americancatholic.org/features/saintofday/default.aspx
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74): January 28
By universal consent, Thomas Aquinas is the preeminent spokesman
of the Catholic tradition of reason and of divine revelation. He is one
of the great teachers of the medieval Catholic Church, honored with the
titles Doctor of the Church and Angelic Doctor.At five he was given to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino in his parents’ hopes that he would choose that way of life and eventually became abbot. In 1239 he was sent to Naples to complete his studies. It was here that he was first attracted to Aristotle’s philosophy.
By 1243, Thomas abandoned his family’s plans for him and joined the Dominicans, much to his mother’s dismay. On her order, Thomas was captured by his brother and kept at home for over a year.
Once free, he went to Paris and then to Cologne, where he finished his studies with Albert the Great. He held two professorships at Paris, lived at the court of Pope Urban IV, directed the Dominican schools at Rome and Viterbo, combated adversaries of the mendicants, as well as the Averroists, and argued with some Franciscans about Aristotelianism.
His greatest contribution to the Catholic Church is his writings. The unity, harmony and continuity of faith and reason, of revealed and natural human knowledge, pervades his writings. One might expect Thomas, as a man of the gospel, to be an ardent defender of revealed truth. But he was broad enough, deep enough, to see the whole natural order as coming from God the Creator, and to see reason as a divine gift to be highly cherished.
The Summa Theologiae, his last and, unfortunately, uncompleted work, deals with the whole of Catholic theology. He stopped work on it after celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273. When asked why he stopped writing, he replied, “I cannot go on.... All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.” He died March 7, 1274.
Affliate Web Sites
- Please give them a visit
Emanuella House of Prayer: a place for prayer and silence in British Columbia.
- http://emmanuellahouse.shawwebspace.ca/
Kyrie Places of Pilgrimmage and Renewal
- http://www.kyrie.com/places/index.htm
Temenos Catholic Worker: support for homeless youth in Polk Street neighborhood, San Francisco.
- http://www.temenos.org/
The Sanctuary Foundation for Prayer: resources for spiritual growth.
- http://fromholyground.org/index.htm
Philothea.net: promoting the love of God as expressed in The First Great Commandment
- http://philothea.net/
Hearts on Fire: a blog to spark inspiration, thought, wonder, laughter and prayer.
- http://heartsonfire33.wordpress.com/
Stillpoint: Programs in spiritual direction, contemplative prayer.
- http://www.stillpointnashville.org/
The Ark: Providing a variety of scripture and lectionary study resources.
- http://theark1.com/
Contemplative Ministries of the Pacific Northwest: Teaching and support on contemplative practice.
- http://www.prayeroftheheart.com/
Shalom Place: Resources on Christian spiritual living.
- http://shalomplace.com/
Inner Explorations: a vast array of spirituality resources for the mature Christian.
- http://innerexplorations.com
SeeScapes: picturing the deeper dimensions of our spirituality.
- http://www.seescapes.com/
Heartland Center for Spirituality: sponsoring Internet workshops year-round.
- http://heartlandspirituality.org/
Reach hundreds of people who have a similar interest in Christian spirituality. Simply publish a link to Daily Spiritual Seed-- http://heartlandspirituality.org/dailyseed.html --on a prominent place on your web site and we will reciprocate with a weekly link to your site in the newsletter. Contact the Editor when you're ready to begin.
Theology Note of the Week
- http://carm.org/s
Sacrament
A sacrament is a visible manifestation of the Word. The bread and wine in the Lord's Supper are considered sacraments in that they are visible manifestations of the covenant promise of our Lord: "In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you,'" (Luke 22:20).
God, in the Old Testament, used visible signs along with His spoken word. These visible signs, then, were considered to have significance. Among the OT sacraments the rites of circumcision and the Passover were stressed as being the OT counterparts of baptism (Col. 1:10-12) and the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 5:7).
Discussion Board
- http://shalomplace.org/eve/forums
Topics being discussed at this time include:
Lonergan vs. Aurobindo
- Book and Movie Reviews forum
Snippets from the Hard Copy (on universal reconciliation)
- Recommended Resources forum
Apophatic Christian spirituality
- Christian Spirituality Issues forum
Joke of the Week
- http://www.pacprod.com/jokes.pl
The engineer and the manager
A man is flying a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts, "Excuse me. Can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man below says, "Yes, You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees N. Latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees W. longitude".
"You must be an engineer," says the balloonist.
"I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost."
The man below says, "You must be a manager." "I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," says the man below, "you don't know where you are, or where you are going, You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault."
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Amazon Gift Cards: Good for any occasion.
- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00067L6TQ/?tag=christianspiritu
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- http://heartlandspirituality.org/support.html
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