It is said of Abba Agathon that he spent a long time building a cell with his disciples. At least when it was finished, they came to live there. Seeing something during the first week which seemed to him harmful, he said to his disciples, ‘Get up, let us leave this place.’ But they were dismayed and replied, ‘If you had already decided to move, why have we taken up so much trouble building the cell?’ People will be scandalized... Read more
Consider your own calling … Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.... Read more
Many of us may have noticed last week that “Ashes to Go” is apparently a growing Ash Wendesday trend among Episcopal parishes. Maybe I shouldn’t be bothered by this. After all, who am I to go around playing liturgical police, and for a communion other than my own at that? There’s no reason for anyone to ask me whether this is a good idea – but if they had, I would have expressed some ambivalence. On the one hand, the idea of “taking... Read more
The proper reading of text is often much more difficult to accomplish than the average person assumes. There is a belief that if one just reads a text, unless it is purposefully created to be a riddle, one just can pick up a text, read it and understand it. The questions which are required for proper exegesis do not cross the mind of the average reader, and so they do not understand what they read with any depth. They can... Read more
The Journal of Medical Ethics has posted an article defending infanticide. After the young authors received a lot of hate mail, the editor, Julian Savulescu, ran an editorial comment posted on the JME blog. Here’s an excerpt from the editorial: Many people will and have disagreed with these arguments. However, the goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely... Read more
… the recent Oxford ‘debate’ between Professor Richard Dawkins and Archbishop Dr. Rowan Williams on the topic, “Human Beings & Ultimate Origin.” Edifying, entertaining, challenging, and above all CIVIL! The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny moderates. (Hat tip: Fr. James Martin, SJ) Read more
Introduction and Part II “God’s providence controls the universe. It is present everywhere. Providence is the sovereign Logos of God, imprinting on the unformed materiality of the world, making and fashioning all things. Matter could not have acquired an articulated structure were it not for the directing power of the Logos, who is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom and Providence of God.”[1] (more…) Read more
“The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.” Jesus was driven into the desert. Driven. Christ submits to the will the of the Spirit and wanders the desert in prayer, fasting, under siege by temptation. This Lenten time reminds and foretells Gethsemane, where again Jesus would submit his will to the Spirit and the will of the... Read more
“The world of finance, while necessary, no longer represents an instrument that favors our well-being or the life of mankind, instead it has become an oppressive power, that almost demands our adoration, mammon, the false divinity that truly dominates the world.” – Pope Benedict XVI, continuing a theme laid out in Caritas in Veritate, and echoing Pius XI’s concerns about the financial sector in the 1930s. Read more
Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the... Read more
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