Driving 250 miles in England is considered a long journey - I suppose you guys in the US do that just to go out for lunch or something! I'm up in the part of England that inspired some of the scenery for Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings", at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire for the Faith Winter Conference on the theme of "St Paul's Vision of Creation and Salvation."
We have 200 people here mainly young students but also plenty of priests, seminarians and religious. The Conference is not a retreat but there is Mass and some of the Office each day, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and time for private prayer as well as a "Ceilidh" (Scots country dancing) and an opportunity to catch up with many friends, priestly and lay.
8 comments:
The furthest I've ever gone just for a meal was 111 miles for lunch, from Appleton to Sister Bay, WI. The restaurant promised that it would have goats on the roof. It was raining and the goats were not on the roof.
I have driven 120 miles for Sunday Mass (when gas prices were lower) on a Sunday morning whim, from south of Richmond, VA to Washington, D.C.
Driving 250 miles in any direction takes you out of the country in my country...
The Faith meeting sounds fantastic! Please, do blog :)
I think we should do the dancing at the next Boot Camp.
Father, while you're considering Paul's vision of "Creation and Salvation" at the conference, say a prayer for me. I am walking from St John Lateran to Assisi over these days into the new year -setting off this morning,to remember the 800th anniversary (1209 - 2009) of St Francis meeting with Pope Innocent III and returning to Assisi with his first eleven brothers and the approved first Rule.
As I am a seminarian for Southwark Archdiocese at the Beda College in Rome, so I actually start my walk near to St Paul's Outside the Walls before heading to the Lateran.
On your conference theme, I might add a Franciscan thought, which I shall meditate upon during my walk in these next few days. Francis believed in the doctrine of creation, and this told him that the whole universe is the product of the highest creative power: the creativity of Divine transcendent love.
Happy new year!
I hope you have hello to the Canon lol
250 miles is peanuts!!! When I've gone up to Sacramento (amost 500 miles) I do it in one day, and I don't make my first stop until I've been over the grapevine. The 90 mile trip one way to Disneyland is also a "no brainer." So I guess it is close to 200 miles to see "the Mouse" and have lunch for me!
Fr.
Just wondering how a priest into Scotist theology and saying the traditional breviary felt when reading the Christmas Day Martyrology of Prime:
"In the 5199th year of the creation of the world, from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth..."
;-)
Hehe, Your Eminence, notice how the martyrology centres on the theology of creation.
Gareth:
Your Franciscan thought strikes me as being very like the thought of Pope Benedict XVI. He has made a number of statements, his recent address to the Curia one of them, about the need to respect the world. It would be very glib to just headline this as "Pope is green and all Catholics should be green", in some kind of politcally correct way. His context, however, is always that of the doctrine of creation and of seeing the world as a manifestation of the Creator, of God. The address to the Curia, with its reference to a "language of creation", developed this thought in a quite interesting way.
Post a Comment