Sarx

WO THINGS Present themselves to me as blog-worthy, reading just the introduction to Being as Communion: 1) The first portion on Ecclesiology needs to be blogged in toto because it is so very much at variance with any American Protestant ideas about church and most American Catholic ideas about church. And yet, despite what some [...]

AINT Gregory’s community invites us to “come sing and dance to Jesus’ lead“. How? There’s ample evidence – from all corners of the Church – that someone usually wants (or even craves) to function as a gatekeeper. You, my dear reader, are either too conservative or too liberal for my taste. I refuse to host [...]

EGIN: If you wish to save your soul and win eternal life, arise from your lethargy, make the sign of the Cross and say: In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Faith comes not through pondering but through action. Not words and speculation but experience teaches [...]

HE STUFF talked about in the current reading from Clement is at once terribly important and quickly (and rightly) relegated to the background. By the 14th Century this sort of chapter becomes enshrined in the dogmatic understanding of the Eastern church, although there are hints of it in the words of the earlier fathers. Some [...]

HAT KIND of people are we? When God gives, we wish to receive, but when he begs, we refuse to give. Remember, it was Christ who said: I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. When the poor are starving, Christ too hungers. Do not neglect to improve the unhappy conditions of the [...]

HE RICH usually imagine that, if they do not physically rob the poor, they are committing no sin. But the sin of the rich consists in not sharing their wealth with the poor. In fact, the rich person who keeps all his wealth for himself is committing a form of robbery. The reason is that [...]

ATHER Victor (Memory Eternal!) shared this quote with us via the Holy Trinity Newsletter. I just found it in my blogger account (from back when I used blogger). This is eternally precious to us, because we too live ordinary lives, and the fact that the Lord lived such a life, sanctifies everything: from the difficulty, [...]

O DAY IS The beginning of the Autumn Book Club’s reading of Olivier Clement’s Roots of Christian Mysticism. Blogging with us, we have: Lee Sally Fr Gregory Fr Ernesto Fr Peter Zara Sare The full reading schedule is posted for any and all who want to read along. Please be sure and whip around to [...]

HE MOST Formative step in my spiritual journey to-date was reading a book in a class with Donald Schell at St Gregory’s Church in San Francisco (1999/2000). The book was Olivier Clement’s Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from Patristic Era with Commentary. I have quoted from it many times in these pages – and I’ve [...]

AUL May be the first one to wrestle publicly with the question of difference between Jews (and Gentiles) who accept Jesus as Messiah and specifically Jews who reject Jesus as Messiah. He is doing so in to-day’s RCL readings (for Proper 15, Year A, RCL): Just as you were once disobedient to God but have [...]