Have you heard the phrase, “Don’t be a thermometer, be a thermostat”? A thermometer reads the temperature of the room and responds to it. A thermostat sets the temperature.
Are you setting the spiritual temperature of the room? Or do you find yourself constantly responding to how your kids are acting (and are you letting that determine the kind of parent you will be)? Are you basing the kind of spouse you are today on your husband or wife’s mood? Are you responsive to the virtue – or lack thereof – in your workplace, and letting that determine how you interact with the people around you? Continue reading
A reposting from All Souls 2016 – Part of the blessing being a parish priest is that you are invited into some of the most intimate moments of a family’s life. There is perhaps none more intimate and intense than the moments when illness passes through uncertain diagnosis, to one which blurs into the final days of a life. It is part of a life of ministry to be into a family whose loved one’s days are numbered. It is a privilege to journey with the family are they prepare for the loss that surely and steadily this way comes. In those times, Hope can seem more tentative, more distant; perhaps hovering on the edge of disappointment. 