Another personal note relates to my ongoing battle of the bulge. Late last month I joined Diane in her quest to shed some unneeded pounds. We began taking a three- to four-mile brisk walk together each morning while simultaneously changing the way we eat. The combination has had marvelous results. I'm down a total of 14 pounds and have only 30 to go. My goal is to return to what I weighed during most of my adult life...before retirement and its accompanying lifestyle changes. (That's just a euphemism for an old guy pigging out.) As a result, I already feel a lot healthier and seem also to have more energy. And how wise of me not to have tossed all those smaller-sized clothes that I had "out-grown." They're stashed away in boxes and I look forward to the day when I can fit into them comfortably.
The point of all this is to encourage those of you who might need to slim down a bit. If you want to make that excess weight very real try doing what I did yesterday. While at the local Winn-Dixie supermarket to pick up some donated food for the Soup Kitchen (Thank you, Winn-Dixie!!), I stopped by the sugar aisle and picked up three five-pound bags, just to see what 15 pounds felt like. It was really quite heavy...and that's about what I've lost over the past 30 days. Hard to believe I was lugging that extra and very useless weight around all these months. I'ts no wonder I feel better.
Now on to less personal, more serious, and no doubt more interesting, things...
As someone who, at my own very limited and parochial level, ministers in a number of different ecumenical settings, I have developed a real interest in what has been happening with respect to achieving the unity among Christians that Jesus Christ prayed for to the Father. Pope John Paul II certainly worked to bring us closer to this unity and our current pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, has carried that work forward with even greater enthusiasm. The recent announcement of the Apostolic Constitution relating to Anglicans who desire to return to full communion with the Catholic Church is an excellent example.
And then today I read that a leading Orthodox bishop -- Bishop Tichon, head of the diocese for Central and Western Europe of the Patriarchate of Bulgaria -- has told Pope Benedict that he is fully committed to achieving unity and communion with the Catholic Church. In his words, "We must find unity as soon as possible and finally celebrate together." He went on to say, in effect, that people do not understand the differences that separate the Orthodox and Catholic Churches and that, "the theological dialogue that is going forward in these days in Cyprus is certainly important, but we should not be afraid to say that we must find as soon as possible the way to celebrate together."
This is a wonderful breakthrough in Catholic-Orthodox relations and we should all pray that it will act as a catalyst for bringing about full communion in the near future. To read more, click here.
Pope Benedict meets Armenian Orthodox Patriarch and other Orthodox prelates in Rome (2008)And lest you think this might be just an aberration, a case of a rogue Orthodox cleric with Roman leanings, read this article about Russian Orthodox Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev's call for increased cooperation between the two churches.
Yes, sometimes it takes persecution and the threat of persecution, along with the realization that as Christians we really are strangers -- "exiles of the Dispersion" -- in a world that has no room in it for Jesus Christ...sometimes this is what it takes to bring us together.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever!
No comments:
Post a Comment