Try Reading

When I was a kid reading wasn’t at the top of my list of favorite things. I preferred baseball, marbles, and climbing trees. Reading was for school and the rare basketball story where the team won the state championship against all odds.

Seminary, of course, was a whole bunch of reading. We read books on sacred scripture, Christian Anthropology, dogma, Church history, moral ethics etc. I studied hard and enjoyed much of what I read. But the “habit” of reading never caught on. The peace and contentment of reading words that in- structed or inspired was a pleasure unknown to me.

But now, older and less concerned with “proving myself”, I’ve found a whole world out there through books. I’m no voracious reader (Fr. John is!) but I’ve enjoyed this new kind of recreation.

All this to say I’d like to share with you some of the wonderful thoughts about God and human beings that I’ve come across the last couple years.

In the bulletin from time to time there will be a paragraph or two from something I feel is particularly on point. The authors will be mainly theologians . . . cause that’s what I like to read! We’ll call it “Spiritual Masters”. Here’s the first one. Hope you enjoy.

Spiritual Masters …God as a Person

“God is not a universal mathematical formula. He is not just an omniscient present spirit in the world. He is not the ‘harmony of nature’, or an infinity that can not be named. He is the origin of all harmony. The Living One, the Lord.”

“God has all the essential characteristics of what we mean by a ‘person’ . . . conscious awareness, the ability to recognize, and the ability to love. He is someone who can speak and who can listen. That is what I think is essential about God.”

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) God and the World. P. 96

Enjoy your week.

Fr. Tim