Surprising Grace

Our guest writer is Afra fcJ, who lives in Manila. Read her last post "To Be Humble and Not Know It!" here . TO HOPE MEANS... When the destruction is so overwhelming –           from smoky mountains of garbage and plastics,           to floods and uncontrollable forest fires,           and global warming – When divisions intensify (in families, work places, schools, the Church, and all around us),           radicalism is getting stronger and more powerful           and terrorism, violence           and harsh and doubting words even from those closest to me fill the air –   To hope means           to choose not to be paralyzed by the size of the problem           not to close my eyes to the reality – both local and global –           but to learn what is happening around me           and take what small steps I can, today.   It takes courage and it is a choice           to be positive today           to swallow the doubting word

Road to the Holy Sepulchre Our guest writer this week, Grace, is a Singaporean Roman Catholic. Her last post on this blog reflected on four years of law school. One and a half years later, she tries her best to capture her experience on "Sequela Christi": a Franciscan pilgrimage for young adults through the Holy Land, Rome, and Assisi. The photographs accompanying this post are her own.  ***** Road to the Holy Sepulchre 5.25am. I (not a cold-weather person by any means, and definitely not an early-morning person) trundle out of the hotel in the cold, my hands encased in gloves and shoved into my jacket pockets. I am joined by a few pilgrims, but for the most part, we’re too tired to talk. As we walk away from the hotel and get closer to our destination, the stones beneath our feet get older, our path more steeped in history. When, for a brief moment, we make a wrong turn in one of the Old City’s many alleyways, the brief sight of another group of foreigne