Thoughts on Playing the Back Nine...Part 4

 

We are born as the result of an unique action of The Creative Spirit.  Think about that for a while.  Before you were given life you were an unique thought in the imagination of The Gracious Creative Spirit, The Holy Spirit.  Each person begins as a loving thought in the mind-womb of The Creator.  Having fallen in love with that reality The Holy Spirit then weaves that into the master plan for go all of creation.  Hence, we find life, and our first love. So we come to be incarnated as the expression of that unique thought in the mind of The Creator.  Wow!!! It has been a real long winding trail that has led to my present way of thinking.  

The thought revolution began, where else, but in the 60’s and the explosion that was triggered by the Second Vatican Council.  We are still struggling to come to terms with where The Holy Spirit wishes to lead us. Let’s be blunt there was a war waged before the Council began, and it continues to the present day, with no end in sight.  Pope Francis has reignited the flame of Vatican 11 and some are standing by with their fire extinguishers hoping to put out the fire.  They may succeed for a time but one cannot oppose the workings of The Spirit forever. (Pope John the 23^rd shared in the opening of the Council in which many of his staff opposed what he had intended to do.  Those opposition forces are still wanting to build a wall to keep the tide at bay.  It will be a continuous struggle.  We must be informed, determined participants in that struggle.  Changes challenges us to let go of the familiar and journey into the unfamiliar.  Hence, we are to embrace that “Faith is a journey into uncertainty, NOT certainty.  How I have wished that was not so.  Wishing does not change reality.  I have been in the process of accepting this over these many years, decades. The Second Vatican challenged the core of clericalism.  Pope Francis has made clericalism one of the challenges facing our church today.  Has he not encouraged the shepherds to go out and get the smell of the sheep on them !!! The heroic Fr. Albert Braun O.F.M. who survived The Bataan death march proposed that all the rectories be blown up and the priests be forced to live among the people.  He was a revered presence in the diocese when I came to Arizona in 1963.