I grew up a Jewish boy in a South African gold-mining town known as Krugersdorp. I remember sitting in
shul (synagogue), enthralled as our learned rabbi expounded how God was a personal God he would speak to Moses, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to many others. Growing up, I often pondered how I fit into all this.
By the time I entered the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, I was deeply concerned that I had no assurance that God was indeed a personal God. I was confident that he was a historical God who had delivered our people from the hands of Pharaoh. But he seemed so far removed from the particulars of my life in Krugersdorp. Where was the personality and the vibrancy of a God who truly could speak to me?
Richard MacMaster: UF food contract should require fair wages, working conditions
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From the pulpit: Measure a year…
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Interfaith prayer marked by respect, not relativism
Pope Francis talks with a religious leader during an interreligious meeting on the plain of Ur near Nasiriyah, Iraq, March 6, 2021. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
By Msgr. Gregory J. Fairbanks • Posted March 10, 2021
Pope Francis recently completed an apostolic visit to Iraq. Any journey of a pope is newsworthy, but this trip captured the hearts and imaginations of many. It was the first visit of a pope to Iraq.
Iraq is a country that has been the center of the world’s attention for decades, being the site of several recent wars. It is the country where the biblical city of Ur is located, the ancestral home of the Patriarch Abraham, who is revered by three major world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
REFLECTIONS TODAY
The evangelist Matthew loves to point to Scripture passages as being fulfilled by Jesus. Jesus says he has come to complete “the Law and the Prophets” (two words designating the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures or the Old Testament). However, he does not propose to literally observe