-
Lunch – and an indescribably good conversation – at the beach with Jeff! Is life great, or what?
Last night, I dropped Jeff Cavins off at the airport after he essentially ‘handed’ the entire Bible to us — in a single day — with his powerful and energetic explanation of the story of salvation history. It was an incredible event. I am still trying to absorb everything I heard, but the following things stand out:
— “It was the ‘pear’ on the ground.” (If you didn’t catch that joke, you missed a good one.)
— Psalm 51 is the (proper) response of a good king (David), when he was chastised for doing something wrong. This psalm is a great model of a contrite heart. (Don’t forget to read it!)
— Something about a bad king (Rehoboam), his little finger, and his father’s thigh. (‘Oh great, now I have to dig out my copy of Gray’s Anatomy…’)
— “I am Barabbas.”
— The ‘proto-evangelium’ in Genesis 3:15 finally makes sense to me! Specifically, where it says “he shall bruise/crush your head, and you shall bruise/crush his heel”. I had always wondered, “What? Why would something so ‘insignificant’ as a bruised heel be mentioned right after a crushed head?” I now understand that it’s important because the heel is bruised as a result of Christ crushing Satan’s head. (Picture Christ in Gethsemane crushing down with his foot on the serpent’s head…and by doing so, bruising his heel.) This line in Genesis is not meant to be a scoreboard (“The score is now one ‘head’ to one ‘heel’…”), it is meant to tell a story. Specifically, this line explains that the very act of crushing the enemy (Salvation) will itself cause suffering for Christ (the Passion). It’s the price that God has to pay — for us.
— But perhaps the most profound statement Jeff made all day came during his first few minutes, when he said that “we learn by attaching new things to things we already know”. How incredibly true! It’s a concept that I already knew quite well, but I had never heard it stated so clearly, so simply, nor so eloquently. So now that we ‘already know’ the whole story, we are equipped to attach any message in the Bible back to the main story. How amazing is that?
Jeff’s amazing Bible Timeline series can be found at www.BibleStudyForCatholics.com
Peace,
Greg
My head is way too full to be able to recall much of anything from this wonderful day, as well as Friday night. I hope the cobwebs will clear tomorrow and I’ll be able to remember all the many things that I learned… and laughed at. What a remarkable speaker and evangelist! Hope there will be more visits to St. John’s from Jeff Cavins in the future. MANY thanks to Alice for bringing Jeff to us!
Thanks for taking pictures, Lisa! 🙂
I just wanted to say how great it was to be part of the team today. I think we all agree that all the hard work (even getting up at 5AM) was well worth it. Wow, what a fantastic seminar. There are not words to describe the feeling I had observing all the people who attended absorbing all the wonderful information and insights that Jeff presented. I still cannot believe that we were able to bring Jeff Cavins to St. John’s! My thanks to Alice, Joyce & everyone involved.
Donna – To think that the wheels were set in motion because you sent your brother tickets to see Jeff in New Jersey a while back and he was so filled with the Holy Spirit that he naively called you and got you on the phone with someone from Ascension Press!
what a wonderful time I had hearing Jeff Cavins speak. Truly, he is sooo knowlegable anf funny too. Thank you Alice, Greg and all who were instrumental in bringing him to our church.
We saw Jeff live! We saw Jeff live!!!!!
See you Thursday at Bible Study!!!!!!
What an amazing journey through history and faith!
Alice, Greg and all who made this experience possible, thanks and may we all continue building an “amazing Parrish “
Pina, One of my favorite moments was during Jeff’s talk Friday evening. You and I turned to each other and joyously hugged while Jeff was speaking about the Eucharist. 🙂
Dear Lucy, it was liike yes, yes, yes !!! I knew it ,I always knew it and so did you!!! and it was just the beginning. Throughout the whole day on Saturday I kept feeling the same.
It was an amazing experience to be able to see the whole picture and to expand my understanding of the historoy of salvation by “attaching new things to things I already knew” .
I know!!! Now you can see why we love our Bible Study with Jeff Cavins’ DVDs. 🙂
As I sit on my patio enjoying a latte this Sunday morning recalling the events (mostly extraordinary, some challengingly!), I am overwhelmed with love for my St. John’s committee members. Alice, Joyce, Cindi, and Donna: thank you for your time and energy spent in putting this fantastic event together. To the rest of my fellow committee, it’s been a pleasure to work with you and see the dedication you all have for volunteer work in your spiritual lives. I had so many people tell me what a fabulous event it was, how well it was organized and planned, how delicious the refreshments and lunches were, and even with the plumbing issues, women were grateful that the problems were rectified quickly. We did it! Congratulations on a super successful event! May God Bless each of you.
Patti, I’m so glad to read you were enjoying a latte on your patio this morning. It was a gorgeous morning!!! You must be exhausted. You, Cindi, Donna, Shelley and Alice worked so hard to make this past weekend so enjoyable for all of us. Thank you!!!!!! We love you all!!!
Jeff Cavin’s joke about Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law reveals so much, haha! What a wonderful event! A special thank you to Alice! Thank you to the team for all your hard work.
And did you notice the Gospel reading today? It’s telling the mother-in-law story!
I love that Tonia was just at EWTN filming an episode of Life On The Rock. The show Jeff founded!!!!
It is wonderful to hear how Jeff Cavins takes something as complicated as the Bible and simplify the salvation history. I truly loved seeing the fellowship that was experienced this weekend. Thanks to all for making this weekend possible.
Dixie, I feel the same way!! I also loved seeing the fellowship that was experienced!! We get a bit of that every week at Bible study…but this past weekend was amazing!!!!!
I was so impressed by Jeff’s ability to totally connect with the audience; he creates a feeling of being on our level even though his knowledge is light-years ahead of us. I especially like how he uses his body language to illustrate his points, like when he was explaining his idea of how the apostles must have interacted when Jesus was asking them to feed the 5,000. And what a beautiful prefiguring that was; the apostles said, send them away to “feed themselves” and Jesus said, “no YOU feed them”. And what did He have them feed them (us) with? Nothing… short of a miracle! Just what we eat everytime we go to communion!
Greg, What a great website! How about changing the header picture to something more current? Maybe something from the Seminar! Just a thought.
Also, an additional thought on the bruising of the heel by the seed of the Woman… Even after the enemy has been thoroughly crushed and the danger removed, the bruise lingers on for some time; our Bible teaches us that Jesus has already defeated the serpent yet when we look around at the world we might scratch our head thinking, “really!?” (I had a converstion with a Jewish man on this exact point not too long ago, where his main objection to Jesus being the Messiah, was that the world did not appear to have been at all redeemed!). Could it be that all of the ignorance, pain and suffering that continues in the world is just the lingering remains of the pain from that bruised heel inflicted by the crushing of the serpents head!? There is a concept in some ancient spiritual traditions that parallels this; it’s called “lesh-avidya” and means “remains of ignorance” referring to the fact that even after one is enlightened (by the Holy Spirit) and experiences the inner bliss and joy of the constant presence of God in one’s heart, there still remains the struggles of life that are still fully felt, only that now they don’t overwhelm us because the house is now built on a foundation of rock (Thou art Peter and upon this rock…my Church), not sand.
‘Lingering remains of the pain’….that’s a really neat picture. (I have no idea if it’s ‘Catholic’ or not – but it’s still a neat thing to ponder.)
And, by the way, I can’t use a picture of the seminar for the header because the focus of the website is our whole parish, not just this (amazing) event. Of course, this event has been (and will continue to be) a BIG deal for our parish. To think, we just had one of the best Catholic teachers in the entire world visit our little neck of the woods. And he loved the spirit in that room! It was electric.
By the way, I do have a fantastic shot taken from the side of the stage, showing the Timeline, Jeff, a huge portion of our Parish Hall, and about a hundred of the faces in the audience. (And yes, you came out in the photo.) Ok, maybe I’ll post it…