Blog - August 2023 RSS Feed

Last week I claimed that having a personal relationship was a necessary part of discipleship, since being a true disciple involves a living connection with and constant feedback from a teacher.

For my next series of blog and Flocknote reflections, I have decided to write “Letters from the Park” (Bethel Park, that is). I hope to share my pastoral year experiences as we recall that now-Deacon Dan Kushner completed his pastoral year in Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish.

Discipleship is a word that doesn’t really have an analogue in our current culture. We might talk about scholars being disciples of some prior figure in their field, but this just means that their teaching is in line with-and further develops the teaching-of their predecessor.

So, we’ve just completed a tour of the deadly sins and how they manifest in our modern lives. And I want to tie us back now to why we started talking about sin in the first place: Sin keeps us from having a healthy relationship with God.

Well, everyone knew we’d cap off this series with the sin of pride, and it’s important to distinguish between pride from vainglory, which we discussed last week. Vainglory is focused on making other people think we’re great: It leads us to really, really care about what other people think of us. Pride is being certain that we are great, and that we don’t need any help or correction in how we live our life.