Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Understanding and Appreciating Our Differences
Added to this is the notion that when God speaks to us, we generally experience it as a surprise, as something unexpected, and as something that does not easily square with our normal expectations as to how God should work and how we should learn. There’s a reason for this.
Simply put, when we think we are hearing God’s voice in what’s familiar, comfortable, and secure, the temptation is always to reshape the message according to our own image and likeness, and so God often comes to us through the unfamiliar.
What’s familiar is comfortable and offers us security; but, as we know, real transformative growth mostly happens when, like the aged Sarah and Abraham, we are forced to set off to a place that’s foreign and frightening and that strips us of all that is comfortable and secure. Set off, God told Sarah and Abraham, to a land where you don’t know where you’re going. Real growth happens, and real grace breaks in when we have to deal with what is other, foreign, different. Learn to understand, writes John of the Cross, more by not understanding than by understanding.
What’s dark, unfamiliar, frightening, and uninvited will stretch us in ways that the familiar and secure cannot. God sends his word to the earth through “angels” and they’re not exactly something we’re familiar with.
Join one of our many Adult Bible Studies or a Small Faith Community and listen to his voice through and with other!
Join us as we embark on a journey of spiritual growth and knowledge of the Holy Bible. The scripture class will approach the study of the Word of God utilizing contemporary Catholic biblical scholarship that is truly integrated, uniting exegesis and theology, faith, reason, Scripture and Tradition and the Old and New Testaments.
Our goal is to provide the participants with an in-depth critical-historical understanding of the Old & New Testaments from a Catholic perspective by providing a lecture format and encouraging interactive class participation on the discussion of the relevance of the faith and moral teachings of the Bible to the Catholic Christian experience in our modern contemporary society. In conjunction with this goal, we will emphasize a spiritual environment conducive to building a deeper faith and a stronger sense of community.
Instructor: Jesse Del Rio, Graduate of LMU's Catholic Bible Institute
Via ZOOM beginning April 2020- MONDAY EVENINGS
6:30 to 8:00pm
Reach out to Jesse via email for instructions to Join weekly Monday evening study night. Learn more on our Bible Study page: /bible-study
Loyola Marymount's Catholic Bible Institute that began at our parish September 2019, concludes via Zoom: http://www.academics.lmu.edu/extension/crs/programs/bible/
P.M.F.P. is a series of faith classes for adults called Parish Minister Formation Program.
This series begins with a Saturday workshop and continues over 6 months. Classes are held at local parishes...
For details about the curriculum and schedule, visit our Diocesan Website:
https://www.sbdiocese.org/ministries/ministryinfo.cfm?id=1380076