I Am Said I (Huruma)

‘I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms' (Luke 4:1-13) It was the Holy Spirit who led Jesus went into the wilderness; He was filled with the Spirit throughout the ordeal of fasting and battle. After forty days and nights He was weak with hunger and it is when we are most fragile that the devil makes his strongest attack against our vulnerability.  There is the temptation to power; to be strong instead of weak; to be in control. Satan says to Jesus ‘I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me and I give it to anyone I choose. Worship me, then, and it shall all be yours.’ This is very attractive, seductive. Up until the time of Paul VI the popes wore a triple tiara and were carried shoulder high on a throne. But I heard somewhere that a man would walk beside the pope saying something like the Ash Wednesday refrain 'remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return' - re...

It's part of my responsibility to meet with the seminarians one-to-one and together as a community - a formal "business" meeting and an evening of recreation. We're in Nairobi at the formal gathering. I have given a positive, encouraging talk and feel quite satisfied with myself until, one by one, without exception the students begin a tirade of complaint and criticism - not against me directly but against our way of life. By the time they finish I'm feeling fairly depressed and in my desperation I ask, "if it's that bad, then why are you still here; what's keeping you here?" They ponder in silence for a while and then, one by one without exception they tell me why. The response that has stayed with me is that of Jackson from Rwanda. Jackson was at school when a Pallottine came to talk about vocations, looking for new recruits. He read the call of Jeremiah - "before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you came to bi...