Saturday, April 28, 2007

Big-Headedness

I just went to a blog called Vocation: Thoughts of a Teenage Christian. It is a very nice blog, written on by a 15 year old boy in England. It has icons, pictures and a lot, and I mean a lot of facts about the Church and her saints. Before I had gone to this blog I had thought I was pretty good in my Faith, at school many people think I am being called to the priesthood (and I only a freshmen). Obviously my head was blown up quite a bit. This blog completely deflated it. He knows so much more about Catholicism then I do and I have been one my whole life, he just joined the Church.

This reminds me of a time when my mom mentioned to me during a conversation, that many religious people act like they are better than others. I wonder how many people have been turned away from the Faith because they met a Catholic who thought they were better than them. It makes me think of the time some Jews caught a woman (Mary Magdalene) committing adultery. (how did they catch her, was it planned, just to bring her down?) They brought her to Jesus, in an attempt to trap him, asked what they should do with her. They knew Jesus was very merciful and hoped that he would show her mercy when the Jewish way is to stone her. Then Jesus began to write on the ground, and when prompted answered, "he who has no sin shall cast the first stone." Since obviously none of them had not sinned they dropped all their stones and walked away.

That story reminds me of a homily given by my Pastor. After this story was read he injected the idea, what did Jesus write? He said that many have speculated over things in the Bible but this one has been overlooked. It must be important because it was mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures. He thought of maybe he wrote a chart, wrote the name of one of the Jews and his favorite sin. Then the next person and his favorite sin until he had gone through all of them. Now completely humiliated and probably a little anxious to get out of there, they wanted to get on with it. He then said what he said and they, now known as sinners in the eyes of the people, could not throw their stones. Of course my pastor said it a lot better and explained it more thoroughly.

This also reinstates the Jesus is God. He mentioned things only the Lord would know (the favorite sins of many Jews), that is why I love this homily so much. It also ties together with my point because they must of had bigheads because they thought they were so perfect that since this woman had sinned she should die and they should kill her. Anyways thank you Jesus for deflating my head again, now I can think of other things besides myself.

3 comments:

John said...

Thanks for the comment James! You've got a very thought-provoking blog.

Suzanne said...

I do not see you as "big-headed,"
although we know ourselves more than anyone, but God. Still the fact that you are humble enough to admit this, speaks volumes about the kind of person you are and wanting to stay "on top" of our egos, etc. and keeping things in the right perspective, is a great thing to always do.

PS In reading your posts, I can see
a good story teller...one of my favorite priests is a priest who keeps my attention during his homilies because he is such a good story teller, in that he lays out the homily with rich "history" added in and always an idea of how to look at what we can do to apply the Gospel or readings from the Bible at Mass...today, in our life.
Keep up your efforts and no matter what vocation that God is calling you or your new friend John to, you will be able to use them for His honor and glory and that is all you want to do...that is all He wants mostly! :) God be with you!

James Bogdan said...

Thank you John. And Suzanne thank you very much, I like to write and hope to be able to use any skill I gain in the future.