RBWords - Volume 20 - Number 1: January 2007
Something to Think About
In January 1988, I first began writing RBWORDS. I had just left a wonderful campus ministry at Southeastern Louisiana State University in Hammond, LA, in response to a call from my Dominican brothers to become Master of Novices. I missed the bit of extra preaching I did every Sunday in the bulletin. I had been sending copies of that bulletin to friends. So, I decided to create RBWORDS as a way of continuing that preaching/connection with friends. I spent a year in Columbia, SC and then the novitiate moved to San Antonio in 1990. For the next 15 years, I moved back and forth between New Orleans and San Antonio until finally the Lord blew the whistle and gave me the wonderful ministry I serve now in Kentucky .
\"Itinerancy\" is one of those \"buzz words\" that Dominicans use when discussing our vocation in somewhat idealistic and romantic terms. Those of us who have moved often know that itinerancy is no piece of cake. It takes a physical and emotional toll. Yes, there is the stimulation of a new locale and new challenges and new people. I\'ve experienced all of that on numerous occasions (between 1988 and 2005 I moved seven times). However, my new ministry here in Kentucky allows me to travel to ministry opportunities such as retreats or parish missions (itinerancy) without having to change my place of residence. One of the hidden meanings behind itinerancy is that there are no guarantees one way or the other. Some friars stay in one place almost all their life and others move often. My hope is that the \"often\" no longer applies to me!
As I begin this new volume of RBWORDS, I extend an invitation to all my patient and loyal readers to come to Kentucky for a visit. The combination tour of Maker\'s Mark bourbon distillery and the Trappist monastery, Gethsemani Abbey, is hard to beat (\"Mash and Merton\")! ITS SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
It Has Been Said
\"Faith is a gift from God that catapults itself into human experience with a high degree of unpredictability. Even where there is human intermediacy, faith seems to be caught rather than taught. It is a living flame that springs from an ardent heart and kindles a fire in another. Packaging, public relations, and salesmanship can never be adequate substitutes for God. There is always the danger that theological and moral rectitude (orthodoxy and orthopraxy) loom so large on our religious horizon that relationship with God recedes into the background. In this age, more than any other, we need the divine boldness to affirm that Christianity is not a matter of being good but of becoming God. It is only by the wholehearted acceptance of the truth that God\'s Son fully shared our humanity that we can be emboldened to find in him our way towards an intense and transforming relationship with the God who exists beyond human experience.\"
Michael Casey OCSO in FULLY HUMAN, FULLY DIVINE - AN INTERACTIVE CHRISTOLOGY
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