Tag Archives: religion

Jots and tittles

01 Saturday Aug 2020

Posted by in Audre, Bible, Faith

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I have great respect for those people who can argue the minutiae of the Bible. I’m not one of them. I guess I’m pretty much the Cliff Notes kind of Christian. But I can’t help being impressed by those folks who have delved so deeply into the Bible that they are able to discuss even the tiniest bits of the Bible with great intelligence, insight, and scholarship. Sigh … I’ll never be one of them.

On the other hand (you knew that was coming), sometimes it seems hopelessly ridiculous to me. Like, somewhere along the line, those great minds have missed the point or aren’t seeing the forest for the trees.

At one time, I was doing some light research for a piece I wanted to write and wandered the internet to see what I would find. It can be quite a journey, following links. It can lead to brightness or deep, dark places. But mostly, depending on the traveler, there’s a lot of brightness to be found and I discovered a deep conversation and discussion and debate about this sentence: Luke 23:43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. The big debate was about … the comma!

Now, I get it; two different things are at work depending on where the comma is. If one reads the verse, as shown above, Jesus is saying on that particular day the thief will be with Him in paradise. However, if the comma before ‘today’ is supposed to go after the word ‘today’, that means that on that particular day, Jesus is telling the thief that at some time in the future he will be with Jesus in heaven. The discussion included mention that the original texts don’t have punctuation and so the translators decided how the statement should read.

I’m laughing at the memory; I spent a lot of time that day, following the debate, following the thought processes of these detail oriented people. And then it occurred to me – what difference does it make if the thief goes today or some day in the future? The important message is – the thief was going to be in paradise with Jesus! He recognized Jesus’ kingship and Jesus welcomed him. Isn’t that why the story is important? So that folks know even those who have committed crimes, done bad things, can come to know Jesus, follow Him, and hope for heaven?

Jots and tittles. I’m a ‘big picture’ kind of girl.

 

Black Lives Matter

20 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in Faith, Persecution, Politics

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Yes, they do, as do all lives, but let us not use the latter to diminish the claims “Black Lives” makes on us. Historically, migrant people often suffer discrimination. That is not because some “system” is inherently racist – we cannot blame it on something impersonal; it is because mankind is tribal and our nature is a fallen one. The history of “Black Lives” in America is different from in the UK; in the former the ancestors of most “Black Lives” came in slave ships, suffered horrendously, and the marks of that left a deep scar. But that is not to say that “Black lives” in the UK have not also been the subject of discrimination. I am old enough to remember being shocked by some of the words used by adults which I won’t sully the internet with. That this situation is being weaponised by some for left-wing causes should not, and I hope will not, detract from the need to pay attention to the real problems suffered by racial minorities. I missed the protests about the way the Chinese treat their minorities, but I am sure they were equally vociferous within China, although I suspect statues of Chairman Mao may stand a while yet.

What ought to concern us all is the weaponisation of a good cause. That carries with it the potential to polarise society and make things worse. Wherever people feel there are things they are not allowed to say, they do not forget those things, and they are never exposed to the reasons why they might, on consideration, change their attitudes, they become fixed; nay, they become a virtuous cause which dare not speak its name. The most obvious example in the UK is what became the Brexit movement. When what Nixon once called “the silent majority” got a chance to speak, it did so with a vengeance. It may, to some of us, have spoken incoherently and with a force which surprised us, but that is on us; we never asked, we were never told, and so we made ourselves deaf to the feelings of others. We must try to avoid a repetition of this with “Black Lives Matter.” It is about far more than statues, and those focussing on it help the rest of us miss the point, unless we are careful.

Macaulay was correct when he wrote: “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” We might now rephrase this, as there is something more ridiculous, that is “woke Twitter.” If we proceed from the assumption there is one “correct” way of thinking and that all who disagree are bad people with evil motives, we end by creating not a society in which everyone thinks alike, but one in which everyone speaks alike; group-speak is not quite the same as group-think, although those in the solipsism usually mistake it for such. It does not last, and when it goes, it usually involves violence and a sharp move to the opposite extreme.

The origin of our ills is us, as St Paul reminded the Romans long ago:

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

There is but one cure for this, and it is not group-think or group-speak. Indeed, here our own Faith risks being misused as a cover, as Jesus warned us when He spoke about how we should conduct ourselves, not trumpeting our virtues or excoriating the sins of others. We are all sinners, and that stone we wish to cast should, if we have self-knowledge, remain in the dirt where we found it. St Paul knew there was but one answer to this sin operating within us:

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord

Law can do only so much, and is, of course, necessary given our fallen nature. But only Christ can warm our hearts within us and make us whole. Before he is “cancelled” let us remember that old ex-slaver lost in the mire of sin, John Newton, who received Christ and turned from his sin to campaign against that very slavery of which he had been a victim and in which he had been a protagonist. He rightly bade us sing of that “Amazing Grace” which had saved a wretch like him.

So, as the culture wars take this new turn, and as good causes are weaponised by some for ends which others will contest, let us stop a while and remember we are on a road where we all get hurt, and that only the love of God saves; but let us rejoice that it is bestowed on all who turn to Christ. Though our sins are scarlet, yet shall we be washed clean – black, brown, yellow and white. In Christ there is no division, in Him we are all one. If we can live that as though we truly believe it, then we shall do better, and we may even begin to apprehend why “Black Lives Matter” is something to which we might all, as Christians, attend with prayerful enquiry.

A Saturation of Theology in The Confessions of St. Augustine

10 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Commentaries

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St. Augustine’s Confessions Book 7 Chapter 14

In this particular section of the Confessions, Augustine gives several short arguments that will be later used by the Scholastics. In a short amount of space, Augustine covers a multitude of ontology and cosmology that really need to utilize within the faith communities as a means to evangelize the world consumed by scientism.

Augustine discusses how a plurality of gods would contradict the nature of God. Naturally, this idea will be further developed by Thomas Aquinas in Chapter 42 of the Summa Contra Gentiles. Aquinas explains in relation to the divine:

“[2] For it is not possible that there be two highest goods, since that which is said by superabundance is found in only one being. But God, as we have shown, is the highest good. God is, therefore, one.

  [3] Again, it has been shown that God is absolutely perfect, lacking no perfection. If, then, there are many gods, there must be many perfect beings. But this is impossible. For, if none of these perfect beings lacks some perfection, and does not have any admixture of imperfection, which is demanded for an absolutely perfect being, nothing will be given in which to distinguish the perfect beings from one another. It is impossible, therefore, that there be many gods.

 It appears that Aquinas isn’t the only scholastic to borrow and develop of Augustine. Augustine gives a sort of proto-ontological argument to illustrate his understanding of unity of God. He writes, “For no soul ever has been able to conceive or ever will conceive anything better than You, the supreme and perfect Good.” Of course, if anyone’s taken a theology or philosophy course this statement may sound familiar, as the idea is usually attributed to St. Anselm of Canterbury who put forth what is known as the Ontological Proof for God’s existence.

In Chapter 3-7 of the Proslogion, one discovers St. Anselm’s argument for the existence of God. The basic argument comes from this statement from St. Anselm is that “O Lord my God, You exist so truly that You cannot even be thought not to exist…For if any mind could think of something better than You, the creature would rise above the Creator and would sit in judgment over the Creator—something which is utterly absurd.”[1]

I find it interesting that St. Anselm proposes that God cannot even be thought not to exist. Recently, I’ve been in conversation with a few Atheists who claim not to believe in God, and yet God ever preoccupies their mind to search out theist to discuss him. Again, it goes back to St. Augustine, our heart is restless until it rests in God.

Augustine also addresses challenges to the omnipotence of God. It’s fairly common for skeptics to challenge Christians by asking, “Can God create a rock so heavy that he could move it?” The question appears at face value to be a formidable objection to the concept of the nature of God. Naturally, when one understands what is God’s nature, he will see the question be absurd. So, if we start with the premise that God is all-powerful because of his omnipotence God could not do anything that would contradict his very nature of being all-powerful. Another example would be could God make a square a triangle? Well, no, they couldn’t be the same thing because for a square to be a square it has to have four sides; therefore, by having three sides it would no longer possess the nature of a square.

[1]Anslem of Canterbury, 94.

The Modern Age in arms?

09 Saturday Feb 2019

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Near the beginning of the Sword of Honour trilogy, Evelyn Waugh allows his main protagonist (it will hardly do to call him a ‘hero,’) Guy Crouchback, a moment of epiphany when the news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is revealed: ”The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms.” Suddenly the world is the way the Crouchback, the scion of an ancient Catholic family, needs it to be. The moral complexities, the ambiguities attendant on everyday life, the shabby little compromises, all these were swept away – there was a righteous cause once more.

Within two years, Crouchback’s hopes were dashed. As he struggled back to Egypt from the wreckage of a doomed attempt to save Crete, the news came of the German invasion of Russia:

“He was back after less than two years’ pilgrimage in a Holy Land of illusion in the old ambiguous world, where priests were spies and gallant friends proved traitors and his country was led blundering into dishonour.”

The “Crusade” moment may have brought peace and clarity to Crouchback, but in the real world from which he was escaping, it led his country close to invasion and defeat. By June 1940 Britain and her Empire stood alone against a Continent divided between German and Russia. Had it not been for the invasion of Russia, it is hard to see how Britain, even with American help (had that come) could have won the war.  It was the very event Crouchback so deplored which brought the downfall of the evil of Nazism. But it resulted in the triumph of Communism and its dominance in Eastern Europe for half a century, and its pernicious influence remained a global threat into recent times.

The lesson is clear. What we were brought up to believe, that the good guys win because they are the good guys, and however great the odds against them are, they can be surmounted. That is not true.

We can, if we like, comfort ourselves with the thought that as Christians we can survive in some pure bubble of like-minded Christians, but that is not only a delusion, it is in itself a betrayal of the Great Commission. Jesus did not say “Go thou and take the Benedict option” – we have an imperative duty to share the good news. We live and exist in a world which is not as we would want it to be; but we always have.

One constant feature of human thinking is to posit the existence of a golden age. It happened just before we came to consciousness. So, in one version of this, there was a time of tight, faithful Catholic communities, when the age-old Mass ruled, priests were diligent and pious, and all was well with the world; then came Vatican II and the world began to go to hell in a handcart. Put so baldly it is clearly nonsense, unless one posits (as its proponents do) a Satanic conspiracy to destroy the Church. Had that golden age existed, then its inhabitants would surely have been able to have resisted?

We cannot, as Christians, retreat from the public square and try to keep ourselves pure. We are bound to stay and bear witness amidst the messiness and brokenness which are the inevitable concomitants of what we believe about the human condition. Do we find those things in our own Church? Of course we do, why would we not? The temptation at such times is to think oneself a better Catholic than those we think are less orthodox than us; that too is part of our own brokenness. It is unsure that people are saved by their orthodoxy; it is certain that our own uncharitableness and want of love will have a bad effect on us.

That should not be read as meaning belief does not matter; it does. But it does mean that we need to get things in order. That we disagree with our fellow Catholics is natural. That we express it in terms which imply that we are entitled to consider them as agents of Satan is to elect ourselves to a position that can be held only by God. We cannot judge as He can.

Christians have a duty to engage in the public square. If I were to make a complaint, it would be that we have been too willing to to speak about the moral components of our faith to the world whilst not emphasising its roots in Christ. We believe in loving each other because we are one in Christ, which is the same reason that we engage in good works, in education and in politics. We witness in what we do and say. What, to one, is righteous zeal is, to another, an act of bigoted self-righteousness. It was and always will be so until her comes again in Glory.

Crouchback’s experience is that of the world. There is a clarity in the enemy being clear, but if within our own self there is a satisfaction in that because it makes our live easier, that is not necessarily the road that God intends us to take. God is love and the world is as it is. That expresses the task before us. To believe both parts of that sentence, and the make the world a better place for our work and witness.

 

God and Mammon

08 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by in Abortion, Education, Faith

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The parallels between the world into which Christianity was born and this world are obvious; the major difference is the legacy of the Faith, and the witness still borne to it.

The Roman world recognised no sacred nature inhering in being human: abortion; infanticide; slavery and a material view of life were the norm.  As we move away from our inheritance, it is not surprising to see some of those things reappear. What we want from our life is the only standard by which we judge; as long as it does not go against the Law of the land, we can have it. “Justice” redefines itself as “what is legal” and “what the State allows.” As we have developed the concept of “human rights” around the same principles, it follows that my right to choose trumps some intangible “right to life.” If necessary we can use the flexibility of language to aid us here. You might congratulate a woman on her forthcoming baby, and the shops have cards to that effect; but medically a foetus is a clump of cells that can be removed if the bearer of the lump of cells so wishes.

So Mammon wins out. We can, as Christians rightly lament the plight of those who do not have food, shelter or safety, and we can work for their good, knowing it coincides with the good of the wider society. Nice though the fantasy of charitable giving providing for all the needs of the needy, in practice if the State does nothing then some people starve. What is wrong with the mega-rich in our Society is not that they earn too much, it is that they pay too little in tax. We have obligations as members of a State, and those do not come free. So, for all its imperfections, the British National Health Service ensures that no one is driven to bankruptcy as a result of being sick, nor are they denied the best help because they cannot afford it.

Properly viewed, taxation can be the State’s way of doing what is needed for those who need it most. Where we used to pay tithes to the Church, we pay taxes to Mammon. It is perhaps the uses to which Mammon puts those taxes that we might direct our objections.

As Christians we recognise we have a obligation to others. We have not gone down the route of those early Christians who held all goods in common, but taxation is the way that has been developed to ensure some money goes into a common coffer.

The Churches can and do work with the State in many of the areas mentioned: health; education; social services; welfare; all are spheres where we work together. As the State in the West has begun the process of withdrawal from areas where it was over extended, the Churches have tried to occupy some of those vacant spaces.  Anyone who had worked with a Foodbank or a community group knows that Christian make up a sizeable proportion of those who give their time and efforts freely.

We give freely; but do we give too freely? Do we mistake a common concern for a common motive and common ends? To what extent do we, as organised Christian groups do what any other interest group would do, namely promote our own agenda? If we don’t, then why not? Have we become frightened that we will be accused to doing what everyone else does – that is to work towards our own goals? Or have we convinced ourselves that the goals are then identical?

In the case of tax, it is Mammon who will decide where the money goes, but when it comes to areas where the Churches are putting in money derived from the faithful, the faithful might like to start behaving like shareholders and asking what value has been added to the goals of the Church by the investment made?

Mammon and God can work together well enough for the good of God’s people, but the latter demands that the Churches ensure that good is indeed promoted and beneficial. I doubt we do that often, and am sure we do not do it systematically. Perhaps we should try harder?

 

With No Free Will; An Incorruptible God Must Be The Agent of Corruption.

15 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in Blogging, Catholic Tradition, Faith

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One aspect of folks that I value is the ability to allow free dialogue, even if it doesn’t seem important, may hinder one’s argument, or a point that tends to lead in a different direction. Of course, I value this because I value the exploring of ideas to reveal truth.

Perfect Chaos is a blog run by Steven Colborne, who believes in God, maybe even the Christian God, but doesn’t believe in Free Will basically because God is in charge of everything existence. Steven posted again today about The Free Will Problem. Naturally, there are analogies that can be given to show when one is in charge they can allow free will etc. However, as I’ve continued to exhibit through Catholic thought, there is ample philosophical evidence within Catholicism that indicates a lack of free will is more or less rubbish.

In this particular blog of Steven’s I gave Augustine’s answer to Steven’s assertions that Free Will doesn’t exist, please refer to his post as well as his essay that he gives a link to in the post. I answered that in accordance with Catholic tradition that Steven fails to properly refute Augustinian Theodicy. More or less Steven doesn’t even address it, which of course the comment is a critique that Steven could use to finely tune his own thoughts on the matter–even for his own side of the argument. Unfortunately, Steven deleted my comment, so I present it here to you, reconstructed. 

Augustine’s point is rested in the Confessions Book 7:

Augustine explains his view of Free Will: ” I was absolutely certain when I willed a thing or refused to will it that it was I alone who willed or refused to will. Already I was beginning to see that therein lay the cause of my sin. I saw that what I did against my will was something done to me, rather than something I actually did. I concluded that it was not my fault, but my punishment.”

Augustine explains earlier in Book 7 how this relates to God in a fashion the resembles Anselm’s ontological argument: ”

There has never has been, nor will there be, a soul able to conceive anything better than you, who are the supreme and best good. But since it is of the utmost truth and certainty that the incorruptible is preferable to the corruptible, even as I already preferred it to be, I could now attain in thought to a being better than yourself, my God, if you were not incorruptible. Therefore, where I perceived that the incorruptible must be preferred to the corruptible, there ought I to seek you. There too, ought I to observe where itself is, that is, whence comes that corruption, by which your substance can in no way be violated. For absolutely no corruption defiles our God.”

The glaring problem in a Christian argument against Free Will, or for that matter the argument for God is that for God to be God, He must be a perfect being. Naturally, this fits into Aquinas’ model in the Summa Theologica:

“Now God is the first principle, not material, but in the order of efficient cause, which must be most perfect. For just as matter, as such, is merely potential, an agent, as such, is in the state of actuality. Hence, the first active principle must needs be most actual, and therefore most perfect; for a thing is perfect in proportion to its state of actuality, because we call that perfect which lacks nothing of the mode of its perfection.”

So, as I challenged Steven, for God to be perfect, He must be without corruption or He simply wouldn’t be God. If there is no Free Will, then God would have to be responsible for evil, one would have to assert and defend those evils such as theft, rape, death, any violence, natural disasters would need to be part of God’s perfection and not corruptions in the world to argue that Free Will doesn’t exist because God would be responsible for all of these actions and they could not take away from His perfection.

Sadly, again, Steven deleted my comment which was simply a good nature criticism that I had seen lacking in his essay. As my second response was also deleted after I noticed he deleted my initial comment, I decided to bring my critique to the general readership of the blogosphere.

Lost in Translation…

27 Tuesday Feb 2018

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My parish has its scripture studies usually during the week which is frequented by the retired folks in the parish community. However, as I have a rotating day off during the week, today my day off fell during one of those scripture studies. The scriptural course is one that covers every book of the Bible in a synopsis format more or less picking out important bits or pieces within the text. The topic for today was Exodus and Numbers, as many readers here know, which is a great interest to me.

To be honest, I am a bit disappointed with the lack of catechesis during the study; more or less the study simply focused on the Exodus being a narrative account. It didn’t take into account really any theological or historical exegesis of the scripture. So, I sat there and watched the video, the priest came in for the discussion time; I remained silent. One gentleman finally brought up a particular passage in Numbers 14:18:

18 ‘The Lord is slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love,
forgiving iniquity and transgression,
but by no means clearing the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
to the third and the fourth generation.’

The gentleman asked if we sin does God punish our children for our sins. Of course, some gave some decent answers such as our children’s future is affected by our actions in the present, but a good portion of the group took a more eschatological approach that our sins damned, in a manner of speaking, our children. At the point, I was just shaking my head and I finally said, “I think we have to examine Hebrews 10 in which the writer states the Jesus’ sacrifice is the once and for all sacrifice for our sins.”

12 But when Christ[e] had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” 13 and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
I was met with blank stares in which I interpreted as skeptical faces.

But since I had the floor at this point, I opened up about the philosophical aspects of Exodus Chapter 3 and the Cosmological arguments connection with the revelation of God’s name and entering the debate of Christianity within the societal interest such as those like Justin Martyr did with Greek philosophy.

After all of this, to make a long story short, a gentleman answered, “I have a far simpler faith than that.” In truth, I envied his sentiment, but at the same time, I knew for myself, as a relatively young man, the sentiment has not been a winning sentiment for my generation and younger for the faith.

I keep thinking to myself, “The faith of a child…The faith of a child…” I fear the secular has made such sentiments foolish to most. In the end, I eventually just said, “I start with the historical claim of the Resurrection and move backward.”

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A return to arms

09 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in Blogging, Faith, Lent, Politics

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newman_john_everett_millaisThere has been much else to occupy my time this last eighteen months, and, as explained in my last posting here, the press of business in my new vocation has been such that it would have been unfair to my university to have offered it less than 100% of my time. But evenings and week-ends still exist, and as we approach Lent, I want to use some of that time to return to the themes of this blog.

At its best it has offered a voice not heard elsewhere. It has been too reactionary for the liberals, and not reactionary enough for the reactionaries. I don’t take that as a sign that the positions taken here are, therefore, in some way ‘right’, but simply that they are a voice worth the speaking.

There is much to be gloomy about. I do not suffer from what has been called ‘Trump derangement syndrome”, which is common in the circles in which I usually move. I am a fan neither of the man, nor his style, nor, in so far as he has them and I understand them (both great caveats) of his policies; but nor do I see him as a species of anti-Christ for those who need one. If he is anything, he is a symptom of a political system where the insiders had long given the impression that they regarded the mass of the population as ‘deplorable’; Mrs Clinton simply said what had, until then, been unsaid. I take rather a similar view on Brexit. Give the electorate the impression you regard them as uneducated idiots and then give them the chance to vote in a way that allows them to give you a kicking, and then express surprise. It could only happen in a democracy where the ties that bind are already loosening.

That is my main worry. Whatever it is fashionable to believe, the basic values on which Western Civilization were founded we Christian ones; explicitly so. We believe in the value of each individual not because of some abstract theory of “rights” – that came later – but because each individual is a child of God; it is that sense, and that sense alone in which we are “equal”. It is that sense alone which matters. It matters because it means we never can, nor should, instrumentalise the human person. Whether it is turning people into cogs in a machine in work-setting, or killing the unborn or the elderly for being “useless”, Christianity rightly rejects such an approach to the human person. The princes of this world, under any system of government or economic system, have a tendency to do this, and one of the great gifts of Christianity is to have rebuked them for it. It is unclear who will do this in the absence of a Christian presence.

There is a deep irony in a leading Catholic Churchman appearing to tell us that China is an exemplar of Catholic Social teaching. One of my colleagues has said all that needs to be said on this egregious nonsense here.  To use his words:

Catholic social teaching demands freedom of conscience, freedom of association and the protection of life from conception until natural death. These are not optional extras and nor are they part of the moral teaching of the Church outside its social teaching. These aspects of the Church’s social teaching are fundamental because they have an impact on education, healthcare and the whole structure of political and civil society as well as on economic and social relationships.

That is true of Christian social teaching; there is nothing in that with which Archbishop William Temple and Anglicans of his hue would have disagreed.

We live in a world where on all sides these freedoms are being questioned in the name of identity politics. The idea, once risible, that one should be able to call for another to be silenced because they offended you, is now commonplace. For some of us, this was where we feared that laws prohibiting certain types of speech might lead. There is no satisfaction in having been proven right.

In a Society where people have been schooled to think that truth is relative, it is only natural that individual feeling should have become elevated into the standard by which to judge others. There is not truth, except that all truth is relative, says modern man and (naturally) woman. But for the Christian that cannot be true. There is a Truth, and it is a person, not a concept. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Light, and we cannot (though we often do) relativise that.

We are all sinners. We are all children of God. We are all fallen. In Him all can rise. The old Adam (and if you must, Eve) is rampant in us all. We all of  us do not what we will, but what we often do not will. For this there is but one remedy: Christ Jesus. He reaches out to each of us where we are. each of us comes to Him as we have the Grace so to do.

As the clouds lower over us, amidst th’encircling gloom, as the Blessed John Henry put it, we have but on Kindly Light. Let us pray that He illuminates our hearts, mind and spirit, in the Lent that approaches.

The First Letter of John (No Podcast This Week)

09 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in Bible, Faith

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I apologize due to the upcoming American holiday of Veteran’s Day; there will be no podcast for I was mandated for overtime work this morning. However, I will like to post the introduction of the First Letter of John. In prayer, this morning, I was reading it in a form of Lectio Divina, something called to me to do so, and I couldn’t help but reflect on how beautiful this letter is to the faithful.

The First Letter of John

1 ¶* That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—2 the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship† with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4 ¶ And we are writing this that our joy may be complete.

God Is Light

5 ¶ This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness‡ at all. 6 ¶ If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth; 7 ¶ but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 ¶ If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Christ Is Our Advocate

2 ¶ My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2 ¶ and he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 ¶ And by this we may be sure that we know him, if we keep his commandments.§ 4 ¶ He who says “I know him” but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; 5 ¶ but whoever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is perfected. By this we may be sure that we are in him: 6 ¶ he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

A New Commandment

7 ¶ Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. 8 ¶ Yet I am writing you a new commandment, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. 9 He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness still. 10 ¶ He who loves his brother abides in the light, and in it there is no cause for stumbling. 11 But he who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

12 I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his sake. 13 ¶ I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the Evil One. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. 14 I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the Evil One.

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever.

1.The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 1 Jn 1:1–2:17.