SAINT AUGUSTINE'S, GRAHAME PARK
  • ABOUT US
    • Identity Statement >
      • Mission through the Eucharist
      • Sant Augustine of Canterbury - Legacy
      • Serving the Catholicity of Church - A Compassionate Mission
    • A Brief History of the Estate
    • Resources for our DCC members
    • Our personal data policy
    • Contact us
    • Financial Support
  • WHAT'S ON
    • This week's services and newspaper
    • Sunday School and Mass For Children
    • LIVE STREAM - Services/Prayers
    • Our Youtube and Facebook Channels
    • Our Social Media Notice Board
  • DONATIONS
  • SPIRITUALITY
    • PASTORAL CARE >
      • Visiting the sick
      • Weddings/ Reading of Banns
      • Funerals, bereavement
      • Baptism
      • Monastery Without Walls - Join Us
      • Confessions (Reconciliation)
    • Daily Online Old Testament study with Rabbi Gordon
    • Daily Online Bible Study
    • Daily meditations on the readings of the Mass
    • Sermons
    • The Rule of Saint Benedict in the life of our community
    • A Selection of Prayers
    • A Short Catechism - Christian faith
    • How to pray the ROSARY
    • Media Resources
    • 'Monastery Without Walls'
    • An Ignatian Spiritual Retreat
  • BLOG
  • GALLERY of our Events
    • Photo-meditations
    • For Children
    • Confirmation 2017 >
      • Confirmation and First Communion 2016
  • Hall Rental
  • YOUTHWORK
    • Art Workshops for children
    • Guitar Classes
  • our SOCIAL MEDIA
  • NURSERY

Our Biblical Blog /'Examined Life'

Emissionaries of the ‘Real’(Deuteronomy 1,3-18; Acts 1,1-14)

4/24/2017

0 Comments

 
‘The Lord our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, ye have dwelt long enough in this mount: turn you, and take your journey…’(Deuteronomy 1,6-7) This is a blueprint for mission. This proclaiming of Jesus is like the systole – diastole rhythm of the heart when pumping blood. We are recharged in the Eucharistic presence. And then, we become emissionaries of the Eucharistic table.
 
‘Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.’ Before this arrival, the life in the desert is also an important part of our missionary plan. The hardships the Israelites experienced in it are a reminder of the task that we must honestly face reality. Today, the desert becomes the symbol of real efforts in preparing the above journey. The desert is the place where our sense of the ‘Real’ is being born. Here we learn to perceive the reality of grace and God’s Glory. Thus, the desert, as the symbol of the real, is the ‘antidote’ to the constraints of the cyber-realities, which seem to be our new place of the Biblical ‘exile of the Jews’. We really should take seriously how a ‘mediated reality’, in which we choose to live, affects our sense of the reality of God.
 
‘…The Lord your God hath multiplied you, and, behold, ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude.’ This is genuine diversity: the beauty of God and the beauty of the fellowship he creates! I just wonder to what extent the flickering multiplicity offered by our screen-worlds are genuine options. Is a life unmarked by prayer a real life? Are we gravitating to the real – or merely to our death?
 
The Gospels can be in terms of this yearning for the real. ‘Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me’. This is the power to regain our real life. When life is defined again as the reality of love.
 
‘And when Jesus had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.’ Again, this vertical, which cuts across human history, is our sole real direction. His return to the Father connects us with the ‘Real’, the house of Love. Are falling apart, uncontrollable pluralities (this is wounded human history), can be hold together again in view of this Centre of centres.
 
What is most strikingly beautiful, however, is this sentence: ‘And they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.’ This is the ‘upper room of understanding’, the upper room of the Eucharist. The birthplace of the real.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    newmansermon4advent.docx
    File Size: 23 kb
    File Type: docx
    Download File

    newmansermon4advent.pdf
    File Size: 108 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File

    j_h_newman_advent_sermon1.pdf
    File Size: 107 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File

    j_h_newman_advent_sermon1.docx
    File Size: 23 kb
    File Type: docx
    Download File

    living_in_imagination_vs_real.docx
    File Size: 260 kb
    File Type: docx
    Download File

    living_in_imagination_vs_real.pdf
    File Size: 179 kb
    File Type: pdf
    Download File

    Support OUR FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN

    Soliloquy

    These are verbal Icons, expressions of how the world is seen from Saint Augustine's..

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    May 2022
    March 2022
    November 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016

    Categories

    All

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • ABOUT US
    • Identity Statement >
      • Mission through the Eucharist
      • Sant Augustine of Canterbury - Legacy
      • Serving the Catholicity of Church - A Compassionate Mission
    • A Brief History of the Estate
    • Resources for our DCC members
    • Our personal data policy
    • Contact us
    • Financial Support
  • WHAT'S ON
    • This week's services and newspaper
    • Sunday School and Mass For Children
    • LIVE STREAM - Services/Prayers
    • Our Youtube and Facebook Channels
    • Our Social Media Notice Board
  • DONATIONS
  • SPIRITUALITY
    • PASTORAL CARE >
      • Visiting the sick
      • Weddings/ Reading of Banns
      • Funerals, bereavement
      • Baptism
      • Monastery Without Walls - Join Us
      • Confessions (Reconciliation)
    • Daily Online Old Testament study with Rabbi Gordon
    • Daily Online Bible Study
    • Daily meditations on the readings of the Mass
    • Sermons
    • The Rule of Saint Benedict in the life of our community
    • A Selection of Prayers
    • A Short Catechism - Christian faith
    • How to pray the ROSARY
    • Media Resources
    • 'Monastery Without Walls'
    • An Ignatian Spiritual Retreat
  • BLOG
  • GALLERY of our Events
    • Photo-meditations
    • For Children
    • Confirmation 2017 >
      • Confirmation and First Communion 2016
  • Hall Rental
  • YOUTHWORK
    • Art Workshops for children
    • Guitar Classes
  • our SOCIAL MEDIA
  • NURSERY