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Geste of the Great King

"Geste of the Great King" is a reference to a prayer book that St. Francis of Assisi composed. In this prayer book, Francis contemplated the journey of Christ's paschal mystery. Christ is the hero, and St. Francis is the geste who through these prayers becomes a witness and closely connected to Christ mysterious death on the cross. Inspired by Christ and St. Francis, this blog is affectionately named after St. Francis' prayer book.

Br. Billy's social distancing or physical distancing?

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March 23, 2020

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Sermon Feb. 18/18: A new Conscience in Christ

February 18, 2018

In Genesis, we hear about Noah’s Ark. One of the most popular biblical stories filled with the images of the great flood, the building of ark, animals and a rainbow. Overcome with the more Hollywood image of this tale, we often forget that this is a story about God making a change in His own behavior. God promises to never use divine anger as a means of punishing his divine art piece, creation, and his reflected divine image, humanity. The God of Israel, is moved with remorseful compassion. In other words, the very thing God set out to do was to create life, not destroy it. How do we know that God was moved by this event? God created the rainbow to be a reminder to God’s self to not give into anger and destroy his creation again—the rainbow is not for us to remember, but for God to remember his side of the contract. The first temptation we need to resist, then, is believing that God is involved in any horrific acts of violence, and terror within the world in order t...

Broken Homes and Broken Bones

February 20, 2017

For those who do not know, I live close to the inner city. Even my neighbourhood is considered low income, despite all the re-gentrification that has happened in the past ten years. As I walk to work, one can not help but notice all the abandoned houses due to fires or closures by the health board. My neighbourhood is littered with them and so is the McCauley area. Boarded up to prevent squatters, these places tend to just sit there and take up space for years, the landlords just leave the lots as they are or empty. I can not help but to make an analogy of these broken homes with some people that I serve, those whose spirits and bones have been broken. You encounter people like this coming from all walks of life and from all cultural and economic circumstances. When really wounded there is always that "danger keep out" sign in front of them. Boarded up to protect what shell of a house remains. As sad as this analogy may seem, there is hope f...

Building New Relationships by Giving Up Stuff

March 06, 2017

Stop being a hoarder! Guess what I am giving for lent. Yes, we are all in that time of year where people give up things they love for lent. A practice to create a spirit of penance, and focus on God, you know the things that matter. In recent years, people will give up on the exercise of fasting, and giving up their beloved items for lent because often it makes them unbearable human beings which in turn can be anti-gospel. Years I ago I decided to give up on "giving up" for lent. Yet, this year I decided to take up the practice again. Why? As you can guess, working in the inner city I see my share of people who need the stuff I don't use. So my wife and I realized that over the past year we have been collecting, and collecting stuff given to us. In fact, we don't know what to do with it. It becomes a contentious debate sometimes and this stuff often becomes a distraction from our daily focus of prayer, life, and family. ...