By Kate Englebrecht
For many people, experience of Catholic faith and life is challenging. In light of the times, the need for us all to reflect and think again about ‘who we are’ and ‘what matters to us’ is very clear and urgent.
The situation of the Church in Australia today points to a great need to return to the experience of God, to the reality of Christ and to the capacity we all have to find spiritual strength again in the ordinariness of life.
As Catholics, we owe it to ourselves and to all those who have trusted our community, to think again. As Church, we need to engage in a process of conversion. We need to turn back to our spiritual foundations and rediscover the radical faith and fidelity of Jesus.
We can do this by listening again to the ‘Good News’ of our stories of faith and by listening to our experiences of the divine in ordinary life.
Jesus revealed God to people in his time through a focus on the ordinary lives and experiences of the people he met. He used the lived experiences of ordinary people to reveal universal truths.
Many Catholics and other Christians are aware that they have a spiritual tradition but are unaware of what it actually means for their faith. Most people know what it is they are taught to believe in terms of rules and regulations and Catholic doctrine but few people know what the Church teaches about where the heart of the tradition finds its inspiration.
In these times it is important to turn back to the heart of the Christian experience, to discover the rich spiritual tradition which has always been with us.
The Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes is offering an e-conference online event, Lessons from the Long Paddock, which will be accessed via our diocesan website. This e-conference will be launched at 9.00am on Tuesday 6 June 2017.
Go to our website to register or to our Facebook page for more information.
This e-conference opens the conversation for many people who are curious about what the experience of faith might actually feel like in ordinary life.
Through the lens of the lived experiences of specific characters from the Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes, participants accompany others into a glimpse of some of the themes which lie at the heart of our spiritual tradition.
Participants engage with conversations which signpost essential spiritual markers relevant to knowledge about what leads into fuller humanity. This e-conference draws participants to seek Christ at the heart of human experience and nurtures a capacity to trust that individuals have all they need to begin the journey into constant conversion.
The e-conference will be of value to all people of faith, particularly those entrusted with teaching about our Christian tradition to the young in our schools.
The first e-conference offered this year by the Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes has two keynote speakers, Bishop Columba Macbeth Green OSPPE and Fr Frank Brennan SJ, who will discuss Australian and Outback Spirituality. With them, we will discover anew some of the themes relevant to our experience of faith in this unique country.
The workshops will be facilitated by Kate Englebrecht, Diocesan Director of Mission in the Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes.
For more information, please contact Kate tel 0420 309 689, kate.englebrecht@wf.catholic.org.au
Source: Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes.
Posted on 22 March 2017.
