Hello everyone! How’s your week so far? Mine was great! Let me tell you somethink about it.
There wasn’t much going on from Thursday to saturday. On Friday evening we were at Beardslee Castle, where we had a nice dinner. We ate a lot of good food and were completelly full. Their chicken wings were phenomenal. If you’d ever find yourself in the area make sure to visit and order something good. But careful – the castle is supposedly haunted!
I had another sermon on Sunday. This past few weeks we read a lot about the kingdom of heaven. The thirteenth chapter of Matthew speaks a lot about it. It is interesting to see to what we can compare the Heavenly kingdom. There are many examples. But we need to keep in mind that those are only parables. The Kingdom of God will be much greater! Actually it is so great that it is worth losing everything we have here on earth. It is a great investment because even if you give everything you have, you can be certain that you will gain much more. You’ll get profit in 100% of cases. After church we headed out for a visitation in the hospital. One of our parishioners was hospitalized. He was sleeping so we prayed for him.
This Monday, there was no morning prayer at church but we had a funeral. Few weeks ago I told you about a man we visited to give him last rites and on Monday we said our last goodbyes to him. The church was full. Pastor knew the man personaly and it was emotional even for him. Some of his relatives and friends said a few words. It was truly a wonderful funeral.
On Tuesday we visited a few local shrines with father Joe. In the area lived a native American saint Katheri Tekakwitha. There are teo shrines we visited. In one we could see the native American history of this region around the Mohawk river. It is interesting to learn about local history and American history in general since I like history and there’s a chance I will write my master’s thesis about Church history. It is necessary to remember what happened. The good thngs but even the wrong things. In Auschwitz is a popular inscription that says: Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It is most certainly true. The second place is a shrine dedicated to martyrs who died while spreading the gospel to Native Americans. It is dominated by a big building called the Colliseum which you can see on the picture bellow. You can see there many statues ad paintings of Jesuits and saints. It was a quiet place with beautiful nature.
On Wedneday the usuall service and evening prayers took place. We were speaking about what in means to pick up our cross and deny ourselves and follow Jesus. I remembered a lifestory of one of my favourite theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He lived during the Nazi era in Germany. He was a theologian and pastor who openly spoke against Hitler’s party even before it gained power in Germany. After Hitler became the state chancellor, Bohoeffer warned the German nation before the idolatrous cult of this party. He was the enemy of the regime. When Nazis took over the German church, he and a few other people founded the Confessing church, where the Gospel wasn’t preached based on politics. They aimed to preach the gospel in purity. They also founded an underground seminary. It is also said that Bonhoeffer planned to assassinate Hitler. Also he helped Jews to flee to Switzerland. But one day he was arested. A month before the end of WWII he was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp. He always believed that the church is not only responsible to help the Jews but also to stop this hateful ideology. One of his most famous quotes states: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” If we want to know what it means to deny ourselves and pick up our cross and follow Jesus then Bonhoeffer’s life can be a great example. We are called to give our life and not only figuratevly bur potentionaly literally. We need to be ready to give our life for Jesus. We need to be ready to lose everything because of our hope.
And today, we had morning prayer. Nobody showed up, only me and Joe. So we did our prayers anyway. Afterwards we attended a burial, where many people came. I read the Gospel an also did one of the prayers. I am very glad to gain so much experience here.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed your week as much as I did enjoy mine. I would like to hear you feedback on my posts so don’t be shy. You can send me also a few questions and I will do my best to answer them.
Be tuned for next week. I’ll be visiting New York City so if you wanna hear my thoughts on this, make sure to be here next week.
God bless you!
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