Wrestling with Scripture

Sooner or later, in your spiritual life, you end up battling with God as I often have when faced with an illness that has no cure or a problem that seems to have no solution. It's in moments when you desperately need God that he seems to be silent and the longing for him to act gets unbearable. Where is he at such times? Does he not hear your prayers? Does he not see your tears? At such times we can easily relate to the disciples in the boat amidst a raging storm who go and find Jesus sleeping in the stern. They seem terribly upset to find him so unaffected by the chaos around and they wake him up, just as we often shout out to God for help when he doesn't seem to respond to our problems. The disciples address Jesus saying, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" To answer their doubts, Jesus calms the storm in an instant saying "Peace! Be still!" How can Jesus give peace when there is chaos around? The key is in the next two words, "Be

I have been going to church ever since I was a kid and it became more of a habit as I didn't really understand what was happening during the mass. I would stand when the congregation stood, sit when they sat, I wouldn't utter a single prayer, grumble when the sermon was too long and wait for the mass to end. However, it all changed after I read Isaiah 6 which describes the 'call of Isaiah'. When I first read the passage, it didn't really affect me, but standing there during mass, the verses just shot out at me. I began to realize that what Isaiah described in the Old Testament foreshadowed the Eucharist that we celebrate today. Going to church had a whole new meaning for me ever since... What should we look forward to at mass? Isaiah went to the Temple of Jerusalem in 742 BC where he saw a vision of God on a high throne and he felt the glory of God fill the temple. There he saw the Seraphim, meaning 'fiery beings' attending to the one on the throne