Posted October 1, 2011 Book: Tomorrow’s Catholic: Understanding God and Jesus in a New Millennium Author: Michael Morwood, MSC Twenty Third Publications, New London, CT. 2010. pp. 146 An Excerpt from the Jacket: Is God localized somewhere above us, looking down on us? Did God lock us out of heaven? Did Jesus ‘come down’ from heaven to save us --- and what does ‘save’ mean? Are human beings the cause of death and disaster on this planet? Tomorrow’s Catholic asks these and similar questions to challenge an outdated worldview that has influenced our images and ideas of God to the present day. An Excerpt from the book: The Place of Prayer Alongside our participation in Eucharist, we need personal prayer to deepen our convictions. Many Christian adults remain fixed at a level of prayer that offers little chance for their spirituality to deepen. Most of us learned as children that prayer is talking to God. When, as adults, people stay at that level of understanding, prayer is mainly concerned with speaking to God, asking God for favors, or thanking and praising God. No one would want to criticize these forms of prayer. However, there is also the prayer of reflection and of contemplation, and many Christian adults never have the opportunity to be nurtured into the practice of these prayer forms. These prayer forms require some silence, some slowing down of the mind, and sensitivity to the movement of our hearts and moods. One way to pray is to sit in silence with a passage from Scripture and allow it to speak to us personally. This is clearly in contrast with a prayer form that fills up the time speaking to God. Another form of prayer that many people find helpful is prayer that engages both the human heart of Jesus and our own hearts. We could take a Gospel story and imagine what it was like for Jesus responding to his invitation to know his heart. This helps us to image Jesus as more human, and very much like us in the events of his life. We can also take time to sit quietly and be present to the moods of our own hearts, naming and owning what is there, being real with ourselves, and then asking Jesus if he had ever felt like this. Table of Contents: 1. Our images of God 2. A changing worldview 3. God in us 4. Revelation 5. Understanding Jesus 6. Jesus reveals the sacred in each of us 7. A radical spirituality 8. Leadership in a new millennium