If your Catholic faith doesn’t make your life more joyful, you’re doing it wrong.
Now “joy” isn’t the same as happiness, and it is often the opposite of comfort. But Jesus said “I have come that they might have life … and abundantly.”
A Kiwi priest has died a hero after sacrificing his life for a 7-year-old boy drowning off the coast of New Caledonia.
Jeremy Gray, 29, was walking in shallow water with the boy while on a New Year's church picnic celebration, when the pair fell into a hole in a coastal reef at Yate, near Noumea.
Neither of them saw the hole because the water was muddied by the recent rainy season floods. They were trapped by the swirling seas.
Gray managed to push the boy out of the deep water and back into the shallows and, despite being tired from his efforts, refused to take the youngster's outstretched hand.
"Jeremy shouted 'go back, go back'. He knew he would pull the small boy back into the water and they would both die," said Father Bernard Girol, one of those at the picnic.
"He used all his energy to save the boy and he got tired. It was Jeremy who saved his life."
The 7-year-old ran to get help and returned with his father, who dived into the rough water to rescue the unconscious Gray, but it was too late.
"Jeremy was already gone, and the boy's father almost drowned too; he got caught in the whirlpool as well," Father Girol said.
Other rescuers pulled both Gray and the 27-year-old father out - but the trainee priest was dead.
There's quite a bit more to the article. You can read the rest at NZHerald.
I pray for the family. They have some tough times ahead.
