Stories of Reconciliation: For Give, by Lou Ruoff. Resource Publications,
1991.
Ruoff, a gifted storyteller, combines stories from the Bible with his own experiences of rejection, hurt, discrimination, and anger, even as he draws the readers to trust in God’s love to forgive and be forgiven. He makes the Gospels come alive in messages that fit today’s language and symbols. In the
Introduction, William J. Bausch comments that telling one’s story is to open oneself to self-discovery. “This story-telling becomes an essential process in finding God.” Father Ruoff, now pastor in Virginia, reveals much of his own life and his struggles with forgiveness as he tells his story and stories of many whom he encountered in ministry.
Even though Ruoff probably didn’t intend his book to be a preacher’s guide, he does direct his stories to specific Sundays in the liturgical year. For example, the woman in sin for the first Sunday in Lent; Judas’s betrayal for Palm Sunday, and the Samaritan Woman for the third Sunday in Lent. Every Scripture he uses from the Prodigal Son to the parable of the corrupt judge, focuses on the blessing of
forgiveness.
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Saint of the Week
St. Apollinaris: (d. 79). July 20.
According to tradition, Saint Peter sent
Apollinaris to Ravenna, Italy, as its first bishop. His preaching of the Good News was so successful that the pagans there beat him and drove him from the city. He returned, however, and was exiled a second time. After preaching in the area surrounding Ravenna, he entered the city again. After being cruelly tortured, he was put on a ship heading to Greece. Pagans there caused him to be expelled to Italy, where he went to Ravenna for a fourth time. He died from wounds received during a savage
beating at Classis, a suburb of Ravenna. A beautiful basilica honoring him was built there in the sixth century.
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A man is skydiving, enjoying his free-fall, when
he realizes that he has reached the altitude where he must open his parachute. So he pulls on the rip cord, but nothing happens.
“No problem,” he says to himself, “I still have my emergency chute.” So he pulls the rip cord on his emergency parachute, and once again, nothing happens.
Now the man begins to panic. “What am I going to do?” he thinks, “I'm a goner!”
Just then he sees a man flying up from the earth toward him. He can't figure out where this man is coming from, or what
he's doing, but he thinks to himself, “Maybe he can help me. If he can't, then I'm done for.”
When the man gets close enough to him, the skydiver cups his hands and shouts down, “Hey, do you know anything about parachutes?”
The other man replies, “No! Do you know anything about gas stoves?”
