They said to her, “None of your relatives has this name.” Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And all of them were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God.
Tag: Christianity
Gospel of the Day | The Magnificat
Let us truly magnify the Lord, the maker of all things, that he has entered into our stories through his beloved son — that he has humbled the proud and the mighty in the imagination of their hearts and has raised up the lowly. Let us rejoice in God who has truly saved us. Holy — holy is the Lord — he does great things for us. Holy is his name.
Sunday Sermon | Fourth Sunday of Advent 2022
The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem is not only the setting of a wonderful Gospel story, it is an icon of the Christian life — a model of the request made of each and every one of us. We too are the holy family. We are Mary. We are Joseph. And we are Jesus. How can we be Mary, Joseph, and Jesus — Jesus, like! — how can this be? It sounds wrong. But really it isn’t, it speaks to the oldest beliefs of the Church; that ‘God became human, that people might become God (St Athanasius).’
Did Jesus Have a Human Soul
As Catholics, we profess that the Son of God is ‘God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made,’ and that ‘for us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.’
The Holy Trinity
The Holy Trinity is, as is all theologia, a mystery. The trinitarian faith is revealed in sacred scripture and in the tradition of the Church but not explicitly, so the Holy Trinity is a theological development and not an innovation or invention. The Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church arrived at the understanding of the Trinity by a process of rejecting trinitarian heresies; ideas that did not fully conform to the revelation of scripture and tradition.
By What Authority?
Radical transformation wouldn’t be radical if it wasn’t stepping on someone’s toes. Only the upstarts are described as ‘radicals.’ Jesus was an upstart, and those in power — those who assumed a monopoly on righteousness — wanted to know by what authority Jesus did what he did. But this is the power of the doing of God’s work: When God calls Moses to act, to lead the people of Israel through the sea, there is no doubt who is doing what. ‘You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians (Exodus 6:7).’
Sunday Sermon | Third Sunday of Advent 2022
Surely these are radical ideas? Jesus is a radical figure. Jesus comes to a world in which men have made themselves in the image of gods, a world in which the weak have been made the servants of the strong and the rich — our world. Jesus comes to our world, the reality we have created and he is renewing it. Trust me, there is nothing more radical than this message — and it points to the rich and it says without equivocation: It is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. Yes, this is radical. The good news is radical.
Church on the Foothills
One of the sheep has gone astray, and here I am not convinced the Gospel is talking about the people in the poorer areas. It reads more to me that the ‘Christians’ are the lost sheep. The very idea of community ministry has gone astray. Both churches sit on the foothills between the green pastures and the mountains, and they have danced up into the mountains in search of plummy things and have gotten lost.
Questions and Answers
Jesus, as we encounter him in the Gospels, never gets into the habit of telling people who he is. Rather, he demonstrates who he is in what he does and says, and so invites us to answer the question of his identity. In today’s Gospel reading the religious authorities are shocked that he says to a man that his sins are forgiven. Only God can forgive sins. So who is Jesus then? The Pharisees and the Sadducees are left with a problem: Once they have removed all of the improbable answers to the question, they are left with only one answer. Only God can forgive sins. This is true. And Jesus forgives sins. So who is this Jesus?
Forbidden Fruit | A Theological Discussion
Right at the heart of this hedonistic philosophy — the protagonist’s modus vivendi — is a dark and dire fatalism. He is, as the psalmist says, ‘walking through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4).’ All about him other men use the slightest insult as a justification for violence and murder; that is like sports fans enraged with a referee for miscalling a technical fault (I had to look that reference up). Life is cheap on the street.
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