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brookstonalmanac · 3 years ago

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Events 10.17

690 – Empress Wu Zetian establishes the Zhou Dynasty of China. 1091 – London tornado of 1091: A tornado thought to be of strength T8/F4 strikes the heart of London. 1346 – The English capture King David II of Scotland at Neville's Cross and imprison him for eleven years. 1448 – An Ottoman army defeats a Hungarian army at the Second Battle of Kosovo. 1456 – The University of Greifswald is established as the second oldest university in northern Europe. 1534 – Anti-Catholic posters appear in Paris and other cities supporting Huldrych Zwingli's position on the Mass. 1558 – Poczta Polska, the Polish postal service, is founded. 1604 – Kepler's Supernova is observed in the constellation of Ophiuchus. 1610 – French king Louis XIII is crowned in Reims Cathedral. 1660 – The nine regicides who signed the death warrant of Charles I of England are hanged, drawn and quartered. 1662 – Charles II of England sells Dunkirk to Louis XIV of France for 40,000 pounds. 1713 – Great Northern War: Russia defeated Sweden in the Battle of Kostianvirta in Pälkäne. 1771 – Premiere in Milan of the opera Ascanio in Alba, composed by Mozart at age 15. 1777 – American Revolutionary War: British General John Burgoyne surrenders his army at Saratoga, New York. 1781 – American Revolutionary War: British General Charles, Earl Cornwallis surrenders at the Siege of Yorktown. 1800 – War of the Second Coalition: Britain takes control of the Dutch colony of Curaçao. 1806 – Former leader of the Haitian Revolution, Emperor Jacques I, is assassinated after an oppressive rule. 1811 – The silver deposits of Agua Amarga are discovered in Chile becoming in the following years instrumental for the Patriots to finance the Chilean War of Independence. 1814 – Eight people die in the London Beer Flood. 1860 – First The Open Championship (referred to in North America as the British Open). 1861 – Aboriginal Australians kill nineteen Europeans in the Cullin-la-ringo massacre. 1907 – Marconi begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service. 1912 – Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia declare war on the Ottoman Empire, joining Montenegro in the First Balkan War. 1919 – Leeds United F.C. founded at Salem Chapel, Holbeck after the winding up of Leeds City F.C. for making illegal payments to players during World War I 1931 – Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion. 1933 – Albert Einstein flees Nazi Germany and moves to the United States. 1940 – The body of Communist propagandist Willi Münzenberg is found in South France, starting a never-resolved mystery. 1941 – World War II: The USS Kearny becomes the first U.S. Navy vessel to be torpedoed by a U-boat. 1943 – The Burma Railway (Burma–Thailand Railway) is completed. 1943 – Nazi Holocaust in Poland: Sobibór extermination camp is closed. 1945 – A massive demonstration in Buenos Aires, Argentina, demands Juan Perón's release. 1952 – Indonesian Army elements surrounded the Merdeka Palace demanding President Sukarno disband the Provisional People's Representative Council. 1956 – The first commercial nuclear power station is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in Sellafield, England. 1961 – Directed by their chief Maurice Papon, Paris police massacre scores of Algerian protesters. 1961 – The first attempt of the apartheid analogy, by Ahmad Shukeiri,[6][7][8] it was on Oct 17, 1961. 1965 – The 1964–65 New York World's Fair closes after two years and more than 51 million attendees. 1966 – The 23rd Street Fire in New York City kills 12 firefighters. 1969 – The Caravaggio painting Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence is stolen from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. 1970 – FLQ terrorists murder Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte. 1973 – OPEC imposes an oil embargo against countries they deem to have helped Israel in the Yom Kippur War. 1977 – The hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu. The remaining hostages are later rescued. 1979 – Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1979 – The Department of Education Organization Act creates the U.S. Department of Education. 1980 – As part of the Holy See–United Kingdom relations a British monarch makes the first state visit to the Vatican. 1988 – Uganda Airlines Flight 775 crashes at Rome–Fiumicino International Airport, in Rome, Italy, killing 33 people. 1989 – The 6.9 Mw Loma Prieta earthquake shakes the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast, killing 63. 1989 – The East German Politburo votes to remove Erich Honecker from his role as General Secretary. 1991 – 1991 Rudrapur bombings by Sikh separatists, who explode two bombs, during a Ramlila Hindu celebration in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand, killing 41 people. 1992 – Having gone to the wrong house, Japanese student Yoshihiro Hattori is killed by the homeowner in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 1994 – Russian journalist Dmitry Kholodov is assassinated while investigating corruption in the armed forces. 2000 – The Hatfield rail crash leads to the collapse of Railtrack. 2001 – Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi becomes the first Israeli minister to be assassinated in a terrorist attack. 2003 – Taipei 101, a 101-floor skyscraper in Taipei, becomes the world's tallest high-rise. 2017 – Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) capture the last foothold of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Raqqa, marking the end of the Battle of Raqqa. 2018 – The recreational use of cannabis is legalized in Canada. 2018 – Kerch Polytechnic College attack in Crimea. 2019 – Drug dealers in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico force the government to back down on an arrest. 2019 – The 17 October Revolution starts in Lebanon.

#Events

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romancatholicreflections · 7 years ago

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11th September >> “Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain”” ~ Daily Reflection on Today’s Gospel Reading for Roman Catholics on Tuesday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time.

The familiar “Sermon on the Mount” that we know from Matthew 5-7 becomes in Luke’s hand the Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:12-49) from which our Gospel readings will come over the next few days.

Luke introduces the Sermon with the appointment of the apostles. The number twelve reminds us of the twelve tribes of Israel. So the appointment of the twelve was a symbolic action pointing to the restoration of Israel. Then Jesus offers his blueprint for the faith and ideals to be lived in the renewed people of God.

Here are some thoughts about Sermon on the Plain (excerpts from Luke Wayne on the Carmelite website)

The content and the context of Luke’s sermon are strikingly similar to the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew chapters 5-7. Many commentators see these passages as reporting the same event, though others note how Jesus could preach similar material on more than one occasion, so that they could well be two similar sermons spoken at different times. But the fact that both Gospels place the discourse right before the healing of the centurion seems to give much greater weight to the view that they are originally the same sermon.

The different naming comes from the fact that Matthew 5:1 describes the setting by saying, “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain,” (“Sermon on the mount”). Luke 6:17 locates the scene as, “Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place,” (thus “Sermon on the plain”). But Luke 6:12 has already said that they had been on a mountain, and thus Jesus coming down to a level place implies a hilly setting.

The Sermon on the Plain begins with a series of Beatitudes or statements of blessing. These blessings are all upon the sort of people one would tend to think least to be blessed, such as the hungry, the grieving, and those who are hated and treated ill (Luke 6:20-22). Such are told to be glad, indeed to “leap for joy,” not because the suffering itself is good, but because their reward will be great in heaven, with the encouraging reminder that the prophets themselves suffered these same things.

Luke reports these blessings more directly than Matthew does in the Sermon on the Mount (simply “you poor” rather than “the poor in spirit” and “you who hunger” rather than “those who hunger and thirst for justice,” for example). Luke also includes a contrasting list of woes on those who are well fed, laughing now, and spoken well of (Luke 6:24-26) which Matthew did not have. The overall thrust of the passage is the same. God’s blessing for those who follow Him will often mean suffering now, but glory and comfort in the Kingdom to come. Those who seek their comfort and pleasure in this life here and now may appear to be blessed, but in fact, they are to be pitied because in the age to come they will find nothing but weeping, suffering, and want.

Luke does not report Jesus’ interpretation of the law, as Matthew does in 5:17-37. He reports the Lord’s model prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) elsewhere in His gospel (Luke 11:1-4) rather than in this sermon. He does the same with Jesus’ teachings on money (Matthew 6:19-24; Luke 12:22-34) the example of asking, seeking, and knocking (Matthew 7:7-11; Luke 11:9-13) and several other such sections. Likewise, Luke reports Jesus using the example of the blind guiding the blind here (Luke 6:39), where Matthew does not, though Matthew’s gospel contains a similar teaching elsewhere (Matthew 15:14).

The Sermon on the Plain, like that on the Mount, proceeds from the Beatitudes to:

Jesus’ teaching on love and generous mercy toward enemies (Matthew 5:33-48; Luke 6:27-36).

His instructions on proper judgment (Matthew 7:1-2; Luke 6:37-38).

The example of the speck in your neighbor’s eye and the log in your own, (Matthew 7:3-5; Luke 6:41-42).

The analogy of the tree and the fruit (Matthew 7:15-20, Luke 6:43-45).

The warning about saying “Lord, Lord” and not doing what Jesus says (Matthew 7:21-23; Luke 6:46).

The closing illustration of the two foundations (Matthew 7:24-27, Luke 6:47-49).

Historically, the “Sermon on the Plain” has received less attention by commentators and theologians than the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew. But Luke’s version of this sermon brings powerful insights that Matthew’s does not, and is just as striking a presentation of Christian ideals. It has tremendous value on its own right, and in conjunction with the material in Matthew, helps us draw out a deeper and fuller understanding of Jesus’ words, which is certainly why the Spirit of God inspired the writing of both of these parallel passages.

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entanglingbriars · 14 hours ago

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Followup to the previous ask: what spiritual benefit accrues to someone as a result of being in a minyan?

To use the analogy again, the thing you "get out of" Holy Communion if you're Catholic or Orthodox is "the remission of sins and life eternal" (to quote the Divine Liturgy), and if you're Protestant the sermon helps you understand the Bible better. So what do observant Jews hope to "get out of" being in a minyan?

So if you're performing mitzvos to get something out of them, you're kind of doing them for the wrong reason. Orthodox Jews often believe the performance of the mitzvos brings them Hashem's blessings and protection for the people and nation of Israel, and there are stories associating the Mourner's Kaddish with early release of the dead from Gehenna.

Judaism isn't transactional. Our covenant establishes obligations that remain even if God breaks his end of the deal. Here's a good illustrative story for that:

The trial [of God in the concentration camp] lasted several nights. Witnesses were heard, evidence was gathered, conclusions were drawn, all of which issued finally in a unanimous verdict: the Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, was found guilty of crimes against creation and humankind. And then, after what Wiesel describes as an "infinity of silence", the Talmudic scholar looked at the sky and said "It's time for evening prayers", and the members of the tribunal recited Maariv, the evening service.

A lot of this is about our connection to our ancestors and future generations. We do the mitzvos because our ancestors did them and because we want our children to carry on the tradition. We are just one thread in a much larger tapestry and our duty is not just to ourselves, but the tapestry as a whole.

In much the same way that a Christian is doing Christianity... if not wrong at least on a sub-optimal level merely because they fear Hell, performance of the mitzvos simply to earn Hashem's favor and blessings (or worse, simply to avoid God's punishments) is also sub-optimal. Obedience is our response to God's gracious lovingkindness to us, to our ancestors' trials and sufferings for cleaving to God, and to our desire for our children to be part of the same tradition.

A rabbi at my old synagogue liked to tell a story of a rabbi who was asked by a wealthy infertile couple to pray that they might have children. He did so and had a dream in which God told him, "Your prayer has been answered, but you have also forfeited your place in the world-to-come." His wife awoke to see him smiling. "All my life," he said, "I have wondered if I served G-d out of love or because I wanted something in return. Now I know that all my future service to G-d will be purely from my love for him."

#judaism

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queer-reporter-blog · 8 years ago

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Lavender Language and the legacy of William Leap

Bill Leap, perhaps the world’s most respected scholar in the field known as lavender linguistics, talks in a Southern drawl and cusses like a trucker’s wife.

“Let me tell you what it is, honey,” he says on a Monday afternoon from his home in Tampa, Fla. “Miss Piggy’s English is so queer.”

Leap, an emeritus professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C., is writing a book, Language Before Stonewall.

“Back in the ’20s and ’30s, there was this massive use in some social sets in gay America of French as the quintessential gay language, and that continues to the ’70s,” he says. “Honest to God, Miss Piggy spoke fluent gay English. The way she slips in these little French things, the use of ‘moi’ and the hand gesture to the bosom, this is so 1930s gay.”

In 1993, Leap created the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference, now in its 24th season. The two-day event draws about 150 attendees from all over the world and is the longest-running LGBT-studies conference in the U.S., and the only one dedicated to language issues, according to Leap. In 1993, much like today, the community squabbled over language politics, starting with what to call the field of study — queer language? Gay and lesbian language? Leap went with lavender.

“I thought, Let’s use that ancient term ‘lavender’ and let’s offend everybody,” he says. Lavender, he points out, has been associated with the occult and mysticism, with women’s power in Africa, and with forms of power in the West in the Roman Imperial Court and the Catholic Church.

“It surfaces in the 20th century with a lesbian women’s movement in England, which was marked in public by women who wore lavender-colored rhinoceros pins on their lapel,” he says.

In his current research, Leap is looking at Harlemese, the language of the Harlem Renaissance, where he cites a rich and dynamic queer presence and a manner of speaking that, while being not exclusively queer, has influenced both gay and mainstream language to this day.

“Harlem was the site for internal colonialism. Its sexual value was there for the convenience of white folks. But it had its own identity and formation in spite of the fact that white folks were intruding,” he says.

Words like “hot” and “hunk,” when describing an attractive person, came from the clubs and after-hours parties of Harlem, he says.

Around the same time, in Britain, Polari, what scholars call an anti-language, was at its peak among gay men, but the jargon would be completely unrecognizable to most English speakers today.

“Nada to vada in the larda, what a sharda,” says Paul Baker, the world’s pre-eminent Polari scholar, when asked about his favorite phrase.

Translation: What a shame, he’s got a small penis.

“I like the rhyming,” he says.

In the early 1990s, Baker stumbled upon Polari while looking for a thesis topic and soon found himself in a gay-run hotel in Brighton where the innkeepers recalled some phraseology. He talked to several old-timers in the area who helped him amass a small dictionary of words, numbering around 500 today and available on a new app called Polari, and wrote transcripts of dialogue from two popular British radio characters in the 1960s named Julian and Sandy, who spoke Polari. (Not coincidentally, the two actors playing the roles — Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick — were gay themselves.)

Polari has roots in 1600s England and is a mixture of Molly slang (Regency England men who dressed in drag and coined words like “bitch” and “trade”), thieves cant (the Elizabethan rigmarole of criminals, circus travelers, and other undesirables), East London cockney slang, and Italian brought home by sailors in the Mediterranean.

Other colorful Polari terms include: “pastry cutter” (a man’s oral sex technique), “naff” (meaning either tasteless or heterosexual), “cleaning the cage out” (cunnilingus), “tipping the ivy” (tuchus lingus), “tipping the velvet” (oral sex), “he’s got nanti pots in the cupboard” (he’s got no teeth), your “mother’s a stretcher case” (I’m exhausted), “vogue us up ducky” (light me a cigarette), and Hilda Handcuffs, Betsy Badge, and the orderly daughters (terms for the police).

“It doesn’t always have to do with secrecy and protection,” Baker says. “I think it also has to do with forming an identity as an affected group, as marking yourself as different, or maybe a bit superior in some way, a mind-set of evaluating mainstream society as somehow inferior to the Polari speaker’s point of view.”

Unsurprisingly, Morrissey was versed. The title of his album Bona Drag means “nice outfit.” In his song “Piccadilly Palare,” he sang, “So bona to vada, oh you, your lovely eek and your lovely riah.” (So nice to see you, oh you, your lovely face and your lovely hair.) And in the song “Girl Loves Me,” on his 2016 album Blackstar, David Bowie sang,

Cheena so sound, so titty up this Malchick, say

Party up moodge, nanti vellocet round on Tuesday

Real bad dizzy snatch making all the omies mad, Thursday

Popo blind to the polly in the hole by Friday

Translation:

Women, I trust you, fix up this boy, say

Make your own fun, man, no drugs around on Tuesday

Really naughty airhead, making all the men mad [on] Thursday

Don’t care about the money spent by Friday

Polari was rife with “she-ing,” an academic term that refers to the linguistic practice of feminizing people and things. She-ing appears almost universally and across centuries in gay language, from Peru to the Philippines to South Africa (where gay slang is called Gayle), to Israel (called oxtchit, derived from an Arabic word meaning “my sister”), to Soviet-era Russia. It was initially practical, enabling gay men to talk about sex and lovers in public without fear of arrest or persecution.

“You can she anybody,” Baker says. “You can she your father or the police. It’s inverting mainstream society’s values so that everybody is potentially gay and everybody is potentially feminine.”

In the West, the gay lexicon dried up after Stonewall, relatively speaking. But in Putin’s Russia, where the environment remains extremely hostile for LGBT people, the website Gay.ru, according to a paper by researcher Stephan Nance, lists a course on how to speak present-day Russian gay, a slang called goluboy — from a word related to the bluish color of a dove — presumably to help gay Russians identify one another. The site addresses readers as devachki (“girls”), discusses misgendering, and provides instruction on gay tonal inflections when saying words like “sister” (“sestraaaa!”). Gays in Putin’s Russia have also Russo-fied Western terms such as queer (“kvir”) and coming out (“kaminaut”).

In 1880s St. Petersburg, men cruising for sex with men were called “tëtki,” or “aunties.” (In polite society, they might be said to be getting up to “barskie shalosti,” or “gentlemen’s mischief.”)

Denis Provencher, department head of French and Italian at the University of Arizona, has yet to identify a similar argot as Polari or research into gay-specific slang in French, where discourse, in typical French fashion, operates as more waltz than stride. Recently, however, many of Marcel Proust’s personal correspondences came to auction at Sotheby’s and revealed he used Latin as a secret code when writing to his lovers.

“The closet is really an American social construction based on a narrative of Judeo-Christian ideology — death and resurrection,” Provencher says. “Coming out of the closet is like being reborn. In French, we are talking about living in good faith and in bad faith, being authentic in society.”

The verb assumer is used, he says, and operates beyond talking of one’s sexuality.

“When you say, ‘je m’assume,’ it means, ‘I assume my social role.’ And in France you would never come home and say, ‘Mom and Dad, I’m gay and this is my boyfriend Frank.’ You’d say, ‘This is Frank and we love each other.’ ”

Provencher’s forthcoming book, Queer Maghrebi French, looks at LGBT North Africans living in France and their relationship to language.

In Arab societies, “the harem is this enclosed space that we think of as a feminine space. The harem is also the house of the father. So if you’ve ‘come out of the harem,’ you’ve come out of the patriarchy. Young North African men use the harem as an analogy of the closet. There’s also this analogy of dropping the veil. Women who drop the veil in Western society are seen as sexually progressive,” he says. “You also get these strange narratives where men talk about wandering through the city looking for sex, but they’re also wandering toward Mecca as well.”

While vocabulary might be the most fun part of lavender linguistics for the layperson, scholars are concerned with aspects such as tone, inflection, and gesturing, as well as the political and cultural implications of language — how the press write about LGBT issues, for example, or how queer people communicate with each other privately and at work, or how gay language is learned.

“All this talk about assimilation and acceptance still requires a certain kind of conformity, and, despite your group that’s all in favor of the heteronormative, many same-sex-identified persons are not comfortable with that mold,” Leap says. “And so you’ve got to let off some frustration. You’ve got to let off a certain amount of steam and anger. And talking gay is one way of doing that.”

That raucous gay tongue of yore perseveres most strongly in American drag culture, and, for word lovers today, it might be the only bright spot of innovation. The film Paris Is Burning centers entirely on the lexicon of 1980s drag balls, where terms like “realness,” “house,” “mother,” and “shade” flash on-screen and move the narrative. (Those terms are so mainstream now that, in May, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign accused the Democratic National Committee of “throwing shade.”)

“[The participants on RuPaul’s Drag Race] have quite a clever use and attitude toward slang. There’s a celebration of language and a joy and a humor which feels like a successor to Polari,” says Baker. “Even though it’s American.”

Online, where most evolution in the lavender lexicon occurs today, one might say there’s a bit less joy.

“It’s more utilitarian and based around hookup culture when you’re typing away on Grindr,” Baker says. “Shorter phrases that have more to do with sexual things. Gay people on the Internet don’t want to come off as funny or showing these rather creative uses of language. They want to show themselves as being as masculine as possible. There’s a sort of performance there.”

That performance, like she-ing before, crosses the East/West divide. On hookup apps in Russia, you’re bound to see users protesting “bez korony.” That means “without a crown,” or, in gayspeak, not a queen.

Interview and arcticle by Out Magazine via: https://www.out.com/out-exclusives/2016/8/17/lavender-linguistics-queer-way-speak

#queer #out

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dmmowers · 8 years ago

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The God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead

Two years ago, just prior to Trinity Sunday, Entertainment Weekly ran an article with author George R.R. Martin. Martin's book series A Song of Fire and Ice Saga have been used as the basis for the HBO smash-hit TV series Game of Thrones. In the fantasy world of Game of Thrones, an evil religion, the Faith Militant, "violently punishes any perceived sin and is led by a mysterious and manipulative man called the "High Sparrow." Martin told EW that The Sparrows were based on the medieval Roman Catholic church. The Sparrows worship a God called "The Seven", which Martin says is "one God with seven aspects." He went on to say: "In Catholicism, you have three aspects [to one God]: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. I remember as a kid, I was always confused by that. 'So there are three gods?' No, one god, but with three aspects. I was still confused: 'So he's his own father and his own son?'"

George Martin is confused about what the Catholic Church, and all Christian churches, teach about the Trinity. He's not alone. It's a little mind-blowing, actually, that there is so much confusion about the Trinity in the church, seeing that Trinity is the name we give to the God we worship. You would think that if people were clear on anything it would be the nature of the God we worship Sunday by Sunday. But in my experience with mainline Protestants, especially in our beloved Episcopal Church, this is far from the case. This is ironic because so many people are used to thinking of the Episcopal Church as the thinking person's church, the church where you don't have to check your brain at the door as you come in. And yet, my experience is that many people in our church have little patience for complex theological topics like the Trinity, especially if it's not apparent that those topics, like the Trinity, have any immediate practical application. What that means is that we don't teach or think about the Trinity enough, and it also means that we do not worship the Trinity enough.

There is a persistent myth about the doctrine of the Trinity that I've heard in every place I've served. The myth is this: "Christians can't ever understand the doctrine of the Trinity. That is a myth: the doctrine of the Trinity -- what the church says about God -- is actually pretty simple. We can understand the doctrine just fine with a little patience and some good teaching. But we can't ever understand the God the doctrine points to in any kind of full sense. We know that the God of the Bible is the creator of the world, is best revealed to humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, and is made present to believers today in the work of the Holy Spirit. The Bible tells us of the character and mission of this God. That's quite a lot, but it doesn't come close to even scratching the surface of what God is like, because God is so unlike us. We do know some about God, because the Triune God is a God who wants to be known by people, and so God reveals his nature to us in Jesus. We can know him truly, but we can never know him fully. But it's the beauty of God, the beauty of the divine reality, that is beyond understanding, not the doctrine of the Trinity. So what do Christians mean when we say that we are Trinitarian? Do we mean, like George Martin thought, that our God is one God with three aspects? When Jesus tells his disciples in today's reading to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you, does he mean that we are worshiping one God with three aspects.

To George Martin, the answer is a simple no. We don't worship one God with three aspects. That's an ancient mistake called modalism that the Church has called heresy since the third century. But then, what's the whole point about the Trinity? Why are we Trinitarian?

The first thing that Christians mean when they worship the Trinity is that the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is the same God who had previously led the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt (R. Jenson). The God who raised Jesus from the dead is the same God who chose the people of Israel. When Jesus goes to the mountain in Galilee to give his disciples their final instructions, he mirrors the God who gave Israel the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Just as the God of Israel gave the law to Moses, now Jesus goes up onto a mountain in Galilee to give his followers their final instructions. It's not Mount Sinai, it's a mountain in Galilee; but the image is clearly there. The disciples are to do what they are being commanded to do, just as Israel was to have followed the Law that Moses had given on Sinai.

But before Jesus gave them instructions, his disciples saw him on the mountain. They saw him and they worshiped him, and this gives us the second thing that Christians mean when we say that we are Trinitarian: Jesus Christ is worthy of worship in the same way that the God of Israel is worthy of worship. For the Jews of the New Testament, there was a name for giving worship to a created human being, and that name was idolatry. Another name was blasphemy. To ascribe honor and loyalty and allegiance to another person in the same way that Israel ascribed honor and loyalty and allegiance to God was worthy of death. And yet, here in Matthew's gospel, written just one generation after the death of Jesus, we see the story of Jesus' Jewish disciples worshiping Jesus on a mountainside. They clearly don't think that they are committing idolatry or demeaning the name of God. No, instead, they have come to believe that Jesus is God in the same way that the God of Israel is God. In other words, when Jesus begins his instructions to them in our gospel today by saying, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me," no one laughs. None of the disciples thinks that Jesus is giving them alternative facts. They have come to believe that even though Jesus is a human being, he is not a created human being like they are. The opening of the Gospel of John puts this most clearly, where it calls Jesus the "Word" and says, "In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not even one thing came into being." In the beginning was Jesus. Jesus was with God and Jesus was God. All things were created through Jesus, and without Jesus not even one thing came into being. So when the disciples worshiped him, they weren't committing idolatry, because Jesus was God in the same way that the God of Israel was God.

Once Jesus had finished giving them his instructions, he promised the disciples that he would be with them always, to the very end of the age. This leads us to the third thing that Christians mean when we say that we worship the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is God in the same way that the God of Israel and Jesus Christ are God. As we've heard over the last few Sundays, just after Jesus gave his disciples these instructions, he ascended into heaven. In other words, he went away. And yet here he is promising that he will be with his disciples that he will be with them always, to the end of the age. This seems like fake news. Jesus is clearly gone; he's not with his disciples always. But on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes to the disciples to give them power to be Jesus' witnesses. The Holy Spirit is what Jesus is promising his disciples, and the presence of the Holy Spirit means that Jesus is with us always, and the Holy Spirit is worthy of worship in the same way that the God of Israel and Jesus Christ are worthy of worship.

This brings us to the fourth thing we mean when we say that we worship the Trinity. It's impossible to make an analogy to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. This is not for lack of trying. There are analogies about eggs, about steam, water and ice, St. Patrick's analogy about three-leaf clovers. You sometimes even see illustrations of the Trinity - interlocking triangles [see if there are any in the sanctuary]. But here's the thing: the best thing we could do with any of these analogies is to forget them. All of them assume that the trouble with the Trinity is that it's a mathematical problem: how can God be one and three at the same time? But the Trinity is not a math problem: the difficulty with the Trinity is not how God can be one and three at the same time. The difficulty with the Trinity is that the God to which it points is utterly mysterious, is utterly incomprehensible.

Finally, the fifth thing that the church means when it says that it is Trinitarian is that we know God only because God has come to meet with us. We worship the Trinity because the Church has found it to be the only way to worship God based on the way God has shown himself to us. God is utterly mysterious, utterly incomprehensible, and yet in his mercy God shows himself to his disciples in Jesus, and gives himself to all who worship him to this very day in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Even though God is beyond our comprehension, what we do know about God is because God gives himself to us to be known. He is a God who wants us to truly know him, even if we cannot fully know him. This is a God who wants us to know him.

So when we say that we worship a Trinitarian God, we don't mean that we don't know the difference between one and three. We don't mean that there is one God with different parts. We mean that the God who lead the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt is the God who raised Jesus from the dead, is the God we meet in Jesus Christ, is the God we experience in the presence of the Holy Spirit, and that God is all of those at the same time. We mean that each of those persons is worthy of our worship. We mean that the Trinity is present with us, active in this world, to bring Jesus to us. We mean that God is still at work to show himself to us and to our world.

And when we say that the Triune God is still at work to show himself to people in our world, we don't mean only the nice, kind, Godly people that have their lives together with their beautiful house and their beautiful wife and their 2.5 children and their white picket fence. This God is a God who comes to show himself to the disreputable. Disreputable like those first disciples. Jesus originally chose 12 disciples because there had been 12 tribes in the people of Israel in the Old Testament, and like Moses on Mount Sinai, Jesus was making a statement that his chosen people would be a new Israel, a new chosen people of God. It was a perfect image, a reference back to the Old Testament. But by the time Jesus gives his disciples these instructions, there are only 11 disciples. Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus and killed himself, and so when Jesus calls these 11 to go and make disciples of all nations, to baptize people in the Triune name, he's not calling the perfect, pristine number of disciples. These 11 are incomplete; they are fragile. Suicide and betrayal have taken their toll. This is how Jesus always calls his disciples. He doesn't call the perfect. He doesn't call just church leaders, or just pastors like me, or people who have everything together. He calls fragile people. He calls people who remember loved ones who have killed themselves and whose lives are marked ever after by the absence of that person. He calls people who have been betrayed, who have had relationships broken that they thought would last forever. He calls people who are the betrayers, the people who let down everyone they loved. He even calls the doubters, even the doubters who saw that he had risen from the dead. Those 11 worshiped him on the mountain, our passage said, but some doubted. These are the kinds of people that Jesus commissions to make disciples: fragile, incomplete people, preoccupied with our own worries, carrying our own wounds, who live someplace between worship and doubt. People who deeply want to believe that the Trinity really is at work in our world to make it new, but who see terrorists running people over on London Bridge and can't help but doubt.

For those people, and for all of us who worship here on Trinity Sunday, the Triune God calls us, not to do more outreach or undertake more causes or even to care better for each other, but simply to worship. To give this God who comes to meet with us the honor and loyalty and allegiance that he is due in this Mass, and to be sent forth into the world to make all of lives a worshipful act for the name of this Triune God. As we do so, may these words of Jesus always echo in our ear:

All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Amen.

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colascriptura · 8 years ago

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A tale of 2 churches

Today I was at my 3rd Tridentine Mass. The sermon though was more hardcore than normal (and these things are usually pretty hardcore).

Summary:

"Hell! Fire! Brimstone! Amoris Laetitia? Fuck the Pope! Long live the Pope!"

To wit:

Father ____ launched into a direct attack on communion for the adulterous. He said that the true mercy was to withhold communion in such cases; for if a person longs for communion with God, how much more pained will they be in Hell, where they are denied it forever. Give them, then, a taste of exile from God and let them repent while they can; this is the true mercy.

More than this, he suggested that -- on current trends -- the Church would itself end up being sacrificed, becoming a sort of wasteland; he drew an analogy to the historic destruction of Israel millenia ago. He obliquely suggested that the very highest of our priests (you know the guy) was deeply involved in making this sacrifice. Our duty as faithful Catholics is to offer neither hatred nor disobedience. The patience of the faithful during such trials is pleasing to God.

Suffice to say it was the most TradCat thing ever. And awesome, of course. You don't get this at Novus Ordo.

Regardless, I increasingly see Christianity as a tree of many branches, which bear various types of fruit, most of it good. I think we need both the fire-and-brimstone stuff and the love-your-neighbour stuff (which I've not had yet from TradCat sermons).

So (after lunch) I ended the afternoon at an Anglican evensong; actually it was more Catholic than I expected, with a Confiteor and everything. And no Qur'an readings nor Freemasonry in evidence. Perhaps Anglicanism still has its soul.

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dailyofficereadings · 5 years ago

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Daily Office Readings June 30, 2020

Psalm 120-127

Psalm 120

Prayer for Deliverance from Slanderers

A Song of Ascents.

1 In my distress I cry to the Lord, that he may answer me: 2 “Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue.”

3 What shall be given to you? And what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue? 4 A warrior’s sharp arrows, with glowing coals of the broom tree!

5 Woe is me, that I am an alien in Meshech, that I must live among the tents of Kedar. 6 Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. 7 I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war.

Psalm 121

Assurance of God’s Protection

A Song of Ascents.

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? 2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. 4 He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. 6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. 8 The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.

Psalm 122

Song of Praise and Prayer for Jerusalem

A Song of Ascents. Of David.

1 I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” 2 Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.

3 Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together. 4 To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord. 5 For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David.

6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May they prosper who love you. 7 Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.” 8 For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, “Peace be within you.” 9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.

Psalm 123

Supplication for Mercy

A Song of Ascents.

1 To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! 2 As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.

3 Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. 4 Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.

Psalm 124

Thanksgiving for Israel’s Deliverance

A Song of Ascents. Of David.

1 If it had not been the Lord who was on our side —let Israel now say— 2 if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us, 3 then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; 4 then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; 5 then over us would have gone the raging waters.

6 Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. 7 We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.

8 Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 125

The Security of God’s People

A Song of Ascents.

1 Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. 2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, from this time on and forevermore. 3 For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, so that the righteous might not stretch out their hands to do wrong. 4 Do good, O Lord, to those who are good, and to those who are upright in their hearts. 5 But those who turn aside to their own crooked ways the Lord will lead away with evildoers. Peace be upon Israel!

Psalm 126

A Harvest of Joy

A Song of Ascents.

1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,[a] we were like those who dream. 2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” 3 The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.

4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb. 5 May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. 6 Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

Psalm 127

God’s Blessings in the Home

A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon.

1 Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. 2 It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.[b]

3 Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth. 5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Footnotes:

Psalm 126:1 Or brought back those who returned to Zion

Psalm 127:2 Or for he provides for his beloved during sleep

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Numbers 22:21-38

21 So Balaam got up in the morning, saddled his donkey, and went with the officials of Moab.

Balaam, the Donkey, and the Angel

22 God’s anger was kindled because he was going, and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary. Now he was riding on the donkey, and his two servants were with him. 23 The donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with a drawn sword in his hand; so the donkey turned off the road, and went into the field; and Balaam struck the donkey, to turn it back onto the road. 24 Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow path between the vineyards, with a wall on either side. 25 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it scraped against the wall, and scraped Balaam’s foot against the wall; so he struck it again. 26 Then the angel of the Lord went ahead, and stood in a narrow place, where there was no way to turn either to the right or to the left. 27 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it lay down under Balaam; and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he struck the donkey with his staff. 28 Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and it said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” 29 Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you have made a fool of me! I wish I had a sword in my hand! I would kill you right now!” 30 But the donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your donkey, which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I been in the habit of treating you this way?” And he said, “No.”

31 Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed down, falling on his face. 32 The angel of the Lord said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? I have come out as an adversary, because your way is perverse[a] before me. 33 The donkey saw me, and turned away from me these three times. If it had not turned away from me, surely just now I would have killed you and let it live.” 34 Then Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, “I have sinned, for I did not know that you were standing in the road to oppose me. Now therefore, if it is displeasing to you, I will return home.” 35 The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, “Go with the men; but speak only what I tell you to speak.” So Balaam went on with the officials of Balak.

36 When Balak heard that Balaam had come, he went out to meet him at Ir-moab, on the boundary formed by the Arnon, at the farthest point of the boundary. 37 Balak said to Balaam, “Did I not send to summon you? Why did you not come to me? Am I not able to honor you?” 38 Balaam said to Balak, “I have come to you now, but do I have power to say just anything? The word God puts in my mouth, that is what I must say.”

Footnotes:

Numbers 22:32 Meaning of Heb uncertain

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

Romans 7:1-12

An Analogy from Marriage

7 Do you not know, brothers and sisters[a]—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only during that person’s lifetime? 2 Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.

4 In the same way, my friends,[b] you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.

The Law and Sin

7 What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived 10 and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.

Footnotes:

Romans 7:1 Gk brothers

Romans 7:4 Gk brothers

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

Matthew 21:23-32

The Authority of Jesus Questioned

23 When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” 24 Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

The Parable of the Two Sons

28 “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ 29 He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. 30 The father[a] went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

Footnotes:

Matthew 21:30 Gk He

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

#June 30 #2020

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

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Tiny Love Stories: ‘His Shirtless Picture Caught My Eye’

A Shaft of Light

We were 7-year-olds without siblings, living in adjacent Montreal apartments that shared a bathroom light shaft. Margaret had curly, ruddy-brown hair and glasses, and we simply liked each other. As soon as our parentally approved time together ended, we would run to our respective bathrooms, stand on our respective toilet seats and chatter through the windows until called away. Eventually, her family moved out and mine left Canada. Sixty-two years later, I see: That light shaft was our social medium, those windows our screens, in our analog love story. — Dov Midalia

Before Tinder and Grindr

His shirtless picture caught my eye. “Me on my solo pilgrimage to Israel,” Todd typed. “Sorry if it’s risqué.” He’s cute, I thought. I was Catholic but drawn to this modest yet adventurous Jewish man. I had tried blind dates, New York City gay bars, even personal ads. In 2000, AOL chat rooms were a new way of socializing. Long before Tinder and Grindr, online hookups sounded illicit. So for years we lied to friends and family about how we met. Two decades and two children later, we’re proud that he, “HeartofBklyn,” found a connection with me, “GymRat.” — Steve Majors

The Youngest Legal Scholar

Without family near or money to spare, I brought my newborn with me to law school, placing her on my lap during class. Jane’s presence may have distracted other students, but it also brought them joy. (Without a dose of humanity, civil procedure can be rather dry.) Jane never cried — neither in class nor as I wrote papers late into the night, waiting for my medical resident husband to come home. Now, my daughter thinks my lawyer job is boring, but her quiet patience made it all possible. — Kate Vaughan

When Bonds Don’t Break

Marrying Pankaj wasn’t easy. We both lived in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand but belonged to different castes. Despite our parents’ opposition, we married. Eleven years into our marriage, I got terribly sick with dengue fever. As my weight dropped and my organs failed, I felt defeated, unable to fight further. Then, in the midst of my exhausted, blurred consciousness, I heard Pankaj’s voice: “Listen, you’re not going anywhere. I’m not letting you go. Do you get it?” I blinked and lived on. — Shikha Tiwari

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/tiny-love-stories-his-shirtless-picture-caught-my-eye/

#Life style

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cactusnotes · 5 years ago

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The Trinity

The Trinity is a confusing but important focus for Christians. There are several topics to cover: Need of Trinity, Christ’s divinity, Christ’s pre-existence, Christ’s relationship with God, the Origin of the Holy Spirit and Filioque Controversy.

There is a need for the doctrine of the Trinity, though it is a difficult concept to grapple. The Trinity is one God, of three distinct, equal persons in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all fully God- coexisting, coeternal and coequal. This is and extra, for we cannot understand what is and intra, the true nature of the Trinity, merely what we see in the definition.

The mystery of the Trinity is central to Christianity- “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith.” (CCC). It is necessary based on biblical grounds- “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One.” (Mk 12:29), “thine is but one God” (Cor 8) showing one God, but other sections showing the others to be God also- “The Word was God...the Word became flesh” (John 1) and “the Spirit of God hovered over the waters” (Gen 1). The Trinity is also important as it justifies worship of Jesus, and his death, it is a model for Christians as God is a community, and it connects the transcendent God to earth.

There are several ideas surrounding the Trinity in attempt to strengthen understanding of it. The economic trinity expressed the ad extra roles of the Trinity- to create, to save, to guide- for the immanent trinity is too difficult to grasp, and is ad extra, though some argue they are the same. “The Word (role, economic) was God (nature, immanent)”. Augustine champions this- for via ‘natural theology’, we see that we learn about God himself from his roles, indicating the two are the same.

The Orthodox Church reject this, saying the ad extra is being confused with the ad intra. Augustine also chirps on about the love analogy and mind analogy- will, understanding and remembering- all fully the mind yet distinct, and both functions and concepts in themselves. Augustine finally translated the hypostases and ousia analogy, using the analogy of a gold ring, key, and chain. Three forms- hypostases- of one substance- ouisa. Augustine, however, translated forms to ‘persons’, more problematic, more separate, though incorporated into the Nicene Creed.

There’s a lot of fact and fiction around the Trinity. What’s fiction is these heresies. Tritheism is three Gods. Modalism is a form shifting, indistinct God. Arianism is the belief that Jesus is merely the perfect creature. Adoptionism is the concept that Jesus was ‘adopted’ as son after his baptism. These are not correct. The nature and identity of Christ are determined in the issue of divinity and pre-existence. There is indeed evidence to show Christ is divine- “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25), and existed before he was made flesh- “In the beginning was the Word”. Their relationship is also co-equal and co-eternal. “I and the Father are one” (Jn 14:10), “He who has seen me, has seen the Father” (Jn 14:19), “He was with God in the beginning.” (Jn 1:1).

The origin of the Holy Spirit is another concern. Filioque is “and from the Son”. Western Church said that the Son also sent the Spirit, while the Eastern Church argues saying that undermines creator God’s power, and makes them non-equal, which goes against the Trinity. The Catholics added this to the Creed without asking permission from the Orthodox Church, and the two were in discourse as Orthodox lands were trashed by Catholics in the crusades. Maximus the Confessor complained that the Catholics meant ‘through’ the son, not ‘from’ him, but discourse continued after the change in 589 CE. This was agreed upon recently, that this is what was meant, and they were uncondemned in each other’s eyes. That’s the Filioque Controversy.

#Religion and Philosophy / Cactus #Religion / Cactus #Concepts and Life / Cactus #God #trinity

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newsnigeria · 6 years ago

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Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/the-waves-of-time/

The Waves of Time

by Jimmie Moglia

That all the world is a stage and all men and women merely players is a familiar and generally accepted proposition. But many, prompted by curiosity and helped by new information previously unknown or uneasily available, would like to know more about the play they are the unwitting players thereof.

Which transforms the frame of mind of the curious into that of a historian. In turn, this exposes him to the immediate problem of interpretation. Interpretation of the historical facts themselves, often accompanied by a likely change of his worldview, following the discovery of new facts. For historians themselves can modify their views, when forced by the train of circumstances.

Here is an example. Friedrich Meinecke was an eminent German historian, with an unusually long life span, during which a series of revolutionary and extraordinary changes affected the fortunes of Germany. His books reflect four different Meinecke(s), each the spokesman of different times, and each speaking through one of his major works.

In his first, “World Citizenship and the Nation State,” published in 1907, Meinecke sees the embodiment of German national ideals in Bismarck’s Reich. And like many 19th and 20th century thinkers, he identifies nationalism with the highest form of universalism.

Here is dramatic evidence of the revolution of the times. In the parlance of current Western European & American elites, nationalism, rather than a higher form of universalism, is labeled as ‘fascism’ or ‘racism’. And since the characterization is ludicrous, a new word has been coined, ‘populism’, to demean and disgrace the idea.

In his second book, “The Idea of the Raison d’Etat,” (published in 1925), Meinecke speaks with the divided and bewildered mind of an observer of the Weimar Republic – where the world of politics has become an arena of unresolved conflict between the reason-of-state and morality. Morality, of itself, seems external to politics, but in the last resort it affects the life and security of any state. For morality is written in the human heart, even of those who hold it in contempt.

To frame the issues in today’s terms, since the end, in the 1950s, of the “Legion of Decency” act in American Cinema,” Hollywood’s productions have set the standard, planted the roots and sowed the of seeds of shame and iniquity, in just about all domains of collective and personal behavior.

In the Weimar Republic, as we know, it was the state of universal degradation, promoted, inculcated and imposed upon Germany after her defeat in WW1, that prompted the birth and growth of National Socialism.

In his “Development of Historicism” (published in 1936), Meinecke laments the idea of a certain view of history, which seems to recognize that whatever is, is right.

In our days, examples of this ‘historicism’ are many, from the totally unbelievable official explanation of 9/11, to the physical destruction of the Middle East, the ongoing farce in Ukraine, the grotesque Russophobia, the idea that Western European and North-American states can exist without borders, and so on.

Finally, in 1946, after seeing his country defeated and leveled to the ground, he published “The German Catastrophe,” where he exposes the belief that history is at the mercy of blind and inexorable forces.

That the times we live-in weigh on our thoughts and judgment is as obvious as saying that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun. Nevertheless, our individual evolving point of view also influences the selection of the facts needed to produce an acceptable explanation of causes and effects, or of causes and defects as the case may be.

That is, the historian and the facts of history are necessary to one another. For a historian without his facts is futile; and facts without a historian are dead and meaningless.

Finally – and I hope the strenuous reader will forgive the long preamble, though I hope there is method in the meandering – not all facts are historical. History begins when the historian selects certain facts and declares them endowed with historical value.

But the distinction between historical and unhistorical facts is not rigid or constant. Any fact may become historical, once its relevance and significance is recognized. If so, that fact generates its own historical wave, whose effects may be felt after a long time and with enormous power, unimaginable when the fact occurred.

In nature an analogy is the tsunami, where, at the point of origin, the waves are only about 3 feet high. But travelling at incredible speed across incredible distances, they finally release their apocalyptic energy on touching land.

As someone ‘curious about history’ and not a professional historian, I experienced a change of outlook on historical events when the United States declared war on Iraq and destroyed it. For I knew the country well and I could personally attest that all that was said about Iraq by the organs of mass persuasion, was false. And while accepting the inherent murkiness of politics, I could not reconcile myself to the idea that the two Bushes, one of whom is dead, could be some of the lyingest knaves in Christendom.

As it is universally accepted, the US destroyed Iraq to satisfy Israel’s ambitions. And given that curiosity is the mother of explanation, I took up the doubtful challenge of locating the original historical fact, the trigger and the source of the wave-of-time, which eventually led to the Iraqi Armageddon and beyond.

In this and similar instances, opinion reigns supreme. Other ‘curious about history’ may choose another episode or fact, and with good reason. But sometimes, lesser-known events, singularly representative of the reality and culture of an era, can offer a perspective different from the conventional and usual narratives.

In the instance, I pinpoint the source of the topic wave-of-time in Napoleon’s emancipation of the Jews in France, following the French Revolution.

Actually, already in 1791, in the midst of the Revolution, the National Assembly had granted Jews full citizenship. It was hoped that, by so doing, Jews would stop acting like a separate nation within France. But soon there were complaints that the Jews were stuck in their old ways, particularly in Alsace and Lorraine, where their majority lived. Their ‘old ways’ referred to usury, or, as we would say today ‘financial engineering’, or ‘banking shenanigans’.

The situation remained fluid and uncertain till Napoleon, converted from a servant of the Republic into an Emperor, convened, in 1807, what he called the Great Sanhedrin, to resolve the controversial issues arisen from the emancipation. The Great Sanhedrin refers to the governing body of the Jewish community, notably during the Roman Empire.

To a council of 71 Jewish leaders and rabbis, Napoleon posed 12 questions about their laws and customs. Some questions were amusing �� for example, were Jews allowed to have more than one wife? The main issue, however, was whether Jews born in France, and now treated by law as citizens, would regard France as their country. They answered that there was nothing inherent in their religion preventing the full integration of the Jewish community into French life. This was enough to confirm their full recognition and emancipation, along with an obligation to take up French names.

Perhaps Napoleon ignored that if a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, a Shylock, by any other name would still call for his pound of flesh.

In fact, there was immediate widespread opposition to the move, in French-ruled Europe and in France itself. Even one of Napoleon’s famous generals, Francois Christophe de Kellerman, whose name is inscribed in the Arc de Triomphe, recommended strongly that the Jews be prohibited from dealing in commerce.

With easy hindsight, Napoleon, like all who like to anticipate futurity and exalt possibility to certainty, might or should have avoided this adventure, so linked to chance. For, in this and other similar instances, disappointment must always be proportionate to the breath of the original hopes.

The pressure became so intense that soon Napoleon restricted the terms of emancipation, via the so-called “Infamous Decree” of 1808. The decree annulled, reduced or postponed all debts with Jews, and imposed a ten-year ban on any kind of Jewish money-lending activity.

As an aside, the official public face of a notable politician or ruler, often conflicts with his private persona, as seen in his diaries or confidential papers. In a letter to his brother Jérome Napoleon, dated 6 March 1808, Napoleon writes, “I have undertaken to reform the Jews, but I have not endeavored to draw more of them into my realm. Far from that, I have avoided doing anything which could show any esteem for the most despicable of mankind.”

“Give me ten thousand eyes, and I will fill them with prophetic tears” – said Cassandra predicting the fall of Troy. The most Cassandra-like admonition given to Napoleon came from his uncle, Cardinal Fesh, who told him, “Sire, by giving the Jews equality as Catholics, you wish for the end of the world to come.”

But the onrush of events, including Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, inaugurated a new era. When an atheistic ideology, molded in the Age of Enlightenment, and strengthened by the impact of the French Revolution, took hold and spread at large throughout Europe.

For the 19th century saw an upsurge of anti-clerical movements and ideologies in the Western world. This is not a wholesale defense of organized religion. Nevertheless, religion also acts as a bulwark of the moral law. And irrespective of specific customs or ceremonies, religion – without disrespect – is metaphysics for the people, an intelligible intimation of eternity, an unthreatening glimpse of the infinity, a psychological safeguard from the despair of mortality.

In this context, it is not accidental that the rebirth of Russia, earlier ravaged, debased and plundered by the dissolvers of the Soviet Union, has seen the resurgence of her religion, which was dormant but never died.

Compare this with America, with her enforced and compulsive secularization, the banning of religion in schools and the prohibition of public display of religious symbols.

But I digress. Let’s return to the subject at hand. After 1815, Jewish supremacy, especially in the banking field, asserted itself in Europe, spearheaded by the ubiquitous House of the Rothschilds. In the second part of the century, England even had a Jewish Prime Minister, Disraeli.

During that time, with a pronouncement that today seems impossible, the Vatican declared that any country that abolishes the Christian religion will be run by Jews.

It’s worth transcribing an extract from a 1890 issue of “Civilta’ Cattolica,” the key media organ of the Jesuits and the Vatican,

“The XIXth century will end, in Europe, leaving her in the throngs of a very sad issue, of which the XXth century will feel consequences so calamitous, as to induce her (Europe) to drastically deal with it. We refer to the improperly-called “Semitic Question,” that more accurately should be called “Judaic Question” – which is connected via an intimate link, to the economic, moral, political and religious conditions of Europe.

How fervid at present and how much this question perturbs the major nations, is manifest by the common cry against the invasion by Jews in all spheres of public and social life; by the leagues formed to slow its advance in France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Russia, Rumania and elsewhere. By the calls for action in various Parliaments – by the large number of newspaper articles, books and pamphlets that are constantly printed, all showing the need to stem the growth of this plague, and to combat it, showing evidence of its very pernicious consequences….

Naively, some try to show that the ”Judaic Question” is the result of a (Christian) hatred of the (Judaic) religion or sect. Mosaism (read ‘religion inspired by Moses) in itself could not be an argument for hatred…. for it was the antecedent of Christianity… But for centuries Judaism has turned its back on Mosaism, exchanging it with the Talmud, quintessence of that pharisaism, many times blasted by Christ…. And although Talmudism is an integral element of the Jewish question, we cannot say that (Talmudism) is all that relevant to it (Judaic question). For in Talmudism the Christian nations detest not so much the theological part, almost reduced to insignificance, but the moral one, that contradicts the elementary principles of natural ethics…. “

Incidentally, and as another aside, it is customary to describe the roots of European culture as “Judeo-Christian.” Many contend that a better description would be the “Greek-Christian” tradition, as certain important tenets of Christianity are actually derived from Plato. For example, he suggested that a trinity of forces shapes the cosmos and he struggled with the idea of a Being, purely incorporeal, executing a perfect model of the universe and molding with his hand what was but a rude chaos of random forces.

As an explanation, or at least a theory, Plato considered the divine nature of the universe under three modifications. There was indeed a first cause, the Reason or Logos, the soul of the universe, along with three subdivisions.

Readers may recall the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” where ‘word’ is an imperfect and narrow translation of the Greek ‘logos.’ For one of the meanings of ‘logos’ is indeed ‘word’, but not with sense that we usually attribute to it. A better translation could possibly be, “In the beginning was the Reason of the Universe.”

Plato conceived of 3 original principles, incorporated in the Logos, different, but linked to each other by a mysterious generation.

The important point is that the mystical and mysterious concept of the Trinity is the Christian rendering of Plato’s idea. The Trinity may still remain mysterious, but at least the mind can understand a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit, better than Plato’s more symbolic rendering.

Back to the main subject. During the early XXth century three events, distinct but important affected the wave-of-time begun with Napoleon.

One was the establishment of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 1913 – at first in America but now practically extended and enforced worldwide.

In fairness to its founders and all subsequent members, it should really have been called the ‘Jewish Anti Defamation League.’ Though by astutely avoiding the qualifying adjective, ‘ADL’ suggests impartiality, thus evading suspicion among the majority of the gentiles, who rarely or superficially follow the details of political events and institutions.

The actual purpose of the now ubiquitous and wealthy ADL was and is to aggressively prevent any criticism of Zionism and Israel, by crushing the critics, destroying their career, often depriving them of a livelihood and even removing them from the Congress or the Senate.

Observers may have noticed that when the Prime Minister of Israel addresses a US joint session of Senate and Congress, he routinely receives a record number of standing ovations. And, after an ovation, no one wants to be the first to sit down – presumably but also probably – for fear of being suspected of weaker Pro-Zionist sentiments.

Readers familiar with the Communist world will easily detect the stunning similarities between the new-speak of Communist Eastern Europe and ADL’s new-speak and thought-crime – in America but also in Europe and the English-speaking world at large.

As an example, in December 2018, the owner of a pleasant yet unostentatious house in the Italian provincial city of Aosta, installed a metal gate at the end of his driveway. The gate carried a decorative wrought-iron winged eagle, reminiscent of a National Socialist emblem, though without a swastika or other disturbing symbols.

But it was enough for a rabbi in Turin, 100 km away (and presumably a member of a local ADL chapter), to have a judge issue a search warrant and dispatch the Italian police to execute it against the shocked, bewildered and disbelieving house-dweller.

The police carried a thorough search of the premises, removed his computer, various personal effects and books from his library. In the end all the ‘incriminating’ evidence they found – besides the eagle on the gate – consisted of some books about the history of WW2.

Curiously, the event leading to the founding of the ADL had nothing to do with defamation and all to do with the sexual assault and murder of Mary Phagan, a 13-year old girl in Atlanta, Georgia. Mary worked for the National Pencil Company, and in May 1913 went to her place of work to collect her $1.20 earnings from the company superintendent Leo Frank. She was never seen again. Her body was later found in the basement of the company, mutilated, bruised and with her undergarments torn off. She had been strangled and Frank was the most likely suspect.

At the trial, Frank pleaded innocent and declared himself a victim of hate. But after a thorough investigation, Frank was found guilty. That is when Adolf Kraus, president of the Jewish-American order of B’nai B’rith founded the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Its charter reads:

“The immediate object of the league is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.”

Sometime later the outgoing governor of Georgia commuted the sentence from death by hanging to life imprisonment. But the leaders of the town were enraged by what they rated a corruption of justice. They dragged Frank from the courthouse and hanged him.

Ever since, Leo Frank is viewed by the ADL as a kind of patron saint; a man whose death serves as a reminder of the depths of depravity to which men can sink when in the grip of xenophobic hatred.

Today, as universally acknowledged, the ADL is the lay arm of the Zionist inquisition and a patently obvious instrument for censorship and the abolition of free speech.

The second momentous event I referred to was the publishing of the so-called Scofield Reference Bible. Which is a Bible annotated by Cyrus Scofield, a man of questionable background though an able manipulator of souls and money.

Scofield and his Bible are responsible for the birth and expansion of Christian Zionism. If there was ever a contradiction in terms, Christian Zionism is one. It created a class of unpaid and obedient political eunuchs at the service of the Zionist state.

Specific and central to Christian Zionist belief is Skofield’s comment on Genesis 12:3 (the words in Italics are the comment). ‘I will bless them that bless thee.’ In fulfillment closely related to the next clause, ‘And curse him that curseth thee.’ Wonderfully fulfilled in the history of the dispersion. It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted the Jew—well with those who have protected him. The future will still more remarkably prove this principle.”

Though a struggling born-again preacher, Scofield became a member of the exclusive New York ‘s Lotus Club, where he was befriended by the Wall Street lawyer Samuel Untermeyer. Untermeyer was instrumental in having Scofield’s annotated bible published.

In Scofield’s biography, written by Joseph Canfield, we read that Scofield’s theology was “most helpful in getting Fundamentalist Christians to back the international interest in one of Untermeyer’s projects—the Zionist Movement.”

Israel holds the Christian Zionists in utter contempt. The Talmud considers Christ a heretic boiling in excrement for eternity, and his mother a whore. Jehovah allows goys to exist so as to be like donkeys in the service of the chosen people.

But according to Fundamentalist preaching, at some unspecified time in the future, there will be what they call a ‘rapture,’ during which the Messiah will return to earth and all Jews will convert to Christianity.

If Fundamentalism were played on a stage it would be condemned as improbable fiction. Even Greek-Roman paganism contains more truth than Fundamentalism and its absurd ‘dispensations,’ as they define their ranting.

For the extravagance of the Grecian mythology proclaimed clearly that the inquirer, instead of being scandalized or satisfied with the literal sense, should diligently explore the occult wisdom, which had been disguised, by the prudence of antiquity, under the mask of myth and the display of follies practiced by the quizzical dynasty of the Olympian Gods.

The Fundamentalists are a large congregation. Israel supplies their leaders with money, endowments and private planes, while feeding and securing their lavish lifestyle.

The third event, whose momentousness and importance is gradually being recognized, was Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s launching of the plan for the creation of the European Union, with extraordinary, new and revolutionary characteristics.

He was the son of the Austrian Ambassador to Japan, Heinrich Coudenhove-Kalergi, who was also a great friend of Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.

In the 1920s Heinrich’s son, Richard Kalergi, published a few books, the most important of which is “Praktischer Idealismus,” never, as far as I know, printed in English. The book is important because what Kalergi prophesied, promoted and predicted about the fate of Europe is occurring under our own eyes.

Kalergi envisioned a unified Europe, invaded by Africans, who would miscegenate with Europeans, creating a new negroid population, similar in appearance to the characters depicted on the inside walls of Egyptians pyramids and tombs. Ruling over them would be a class of “the best of the Jews” some of whom would intermarry with the best of the European nobility.

In his autobiography Kalergi states that when his book was printed, it came to the attention of the Jewish banker Schiff, who along with the American Jewish banker Warburg generously financed him to carry out his plan. From then on Kalergi would undertake a massive lobbying operation, which – temporarily halted during WW2 – was restarted immediately afterwards.

An Italian history professor, Matteo Simonetti, has published a very interesting book, titled “Kalergi, La Prossima Scomparsa Degli Europei” (Kalergi, The Forthcoming Disappearance of the Europeans) – available at Amazon. In his book, Prof. Simonetti included the most critical pages of Praktischer Idealismus translated from the German. What transpires is even worse than the disappearance of the Europeans.

I quote directly from the translation. At pages 21-22-23 of Praktischer Idealismus we find that “the future race, negroid-caucasian will be composed by people without character, without scruples, weak in their will, without respect (for one another) and untrustworthy. The new race will replace the multiplicity of people with a multiplicity of individuals.”

As for the ruling Jews, Kalergi describes them as “close in blood”, whose “strength of character and sharpness of spirit” predestines them to become “the race of (the new) Europe’s spiritual leaders,“ the “carriers of the nobility of spirit,”…. endowed of superior intelligence, a race of lords (Herrenrasse)… the chosen people (pages 28, 33, 49-51 in the original German book).

But it gets worse. The only free marital union will apply to “the most noble of men and women.” Inferior men and women will mate with their societal equivalent. The “erotic style” of the lower classes will be casual mating. Only the upper classes will enjoy the free formation of families.

The new cultivated nobility of the future will emerge from the divine laws of erotic eugenics. “It is here, in social eugenism, where the new nobility will achieve its historical mission of excellence” (pages 55-57).

The new miscegenated race of the lower classes will live in “factory-cities,” where the factory will be the new “cathedral of work”, the center and object of devotion of the new race of miscegenated goys (page 110).

As for the elimination of genders, Kalergi hints at the formation of a Brave-New-World society. “Today men of both sexes (sic) command political and economic power. The emancipation of woman is but the triumph of the feminine man over the real feminine woman. With the emancipation, the feminine sex is mobilized for a technical war and regimented into the army of labor.” (page 119)

As for democracy, Kalergi says it is an instrument to be discarded, as soon as the new Jewish nobility will be established and in charge. (page 36).

In summary, there we have it – the predicted apocalyptic end of the tsunami – helped and driven by the ADL (at work to criminalize free speech), the fundamentalists (a docile army of spiritual eunuchs in the service of Israel), and the Kalergi Plan (a Europe of Negroids ruled over by Jews).

As universally acknowledged, Jewish elites and politicians are at the forefront of the push for illegal immigration and the abolition of borders, worldwide.

And the Left, deprived of its reference class, the proletariat, has made of the migrants a sort of fig leaf to prove that they still side with the weak. Indeed, migrants are the new proletariat, because their identity (or consciousness thereof) is not here, but elsewhere. But the original inhabitants of the poorer districts of Europe and elsewhere have the right not to be uprooted from their customs by a culturally heterogeneous immigration. The migrants do not reside in London’s Chelsea, New York’s Upper East Side or the posh districts of other cities. Nor they steal the jobs of bank managers and corporate directors.

The chosen elites have decided that people are ugly, dirty, bad and xenophobic because they do not want to accept migrants by the millions. But it is the people who bear the weight of immigration and the loss of manual work.

During the latter years of neo-liberalism and turbo-capitalism, the cultural devaluation of labor has been possible thanks to the reserve army made up of migrants. It is logical that the chosen elites favor immigration. It frees them from relocating in the cesspits of despair, by bringing cesspits and despair to the ugly and xenophobic locals, along with the prospect of a Kalergi-type future.

We cannot know precisely how far the wave-of-time, traced back to Napoleon, has travelled towards its end. For the laws of probability, true in general, fail in the details. But given the essentially unchallenged progress of the wave, I doubt whether the collective consciousness of the European peoples will wake up and prompt them to react effectively in self-defense.

Until historically recently, the Catholic Church provided protection. It preached and prohibited violence against the chosen people, but expected them not to corrupt the culture of the host nation. And she gave them the option of conversion. By converting to Christianity, all true or pretended forms of discrimination would be instantly removed.

But the Catholic Church has lost power and unity. In recent Catholic pronouncements, it is even stated that Jews no longer need to convert to be “saved.” And in current religious ceremonies the brethren are invited to “pray for our elder brothers in the Abrahamic religion.”

Therefore, given that time comes stealing by night and day, I must reluctantly observe that the very shortness of time and the failure of hope will tinge with a deeper shade of brown the evening of our current historical times, and the last act of the play performed on the current historical stage.

The Waves of Time

#IRAQ #U.S.A

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dailybiblelessons · 7 years ago

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Our Bible Lessons for November 1 to 7

What's ahead in the Bible readings

November 1 to November 7, 2018 The Twenty-third Week After Pentecost The Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time*

Bible Review: The Modern English Version

The most important thing you need to know about the Modern English Version (MEV) is that it is a revision of the Authorized Version, usually called the King James Version (KJV). It incorporates modern English vernacular. This translation started as an effort by military chaplains to provide an update to the KJV, so that troops could better understand it. Military chaplains got others who were not chaplains involved in the work; eventually, the target audience changed to the entire English-speaking world. It follows the principle of formal equivalence, which means being as literal as possible using proper grammar and syntax.

One feature that I find helpful is naming the parallel passage just below the title of a section. A slight disadvantage of this approach is that it requires a title whenever there is a parallel passage, even if one isn't necessary for us to understand what follows. As always, remember that the title is not part of the text, and was added by editors to help us. This translation is usually the source of the parallel passages included in our daily readings. A relatively unusual feature is that pronouns referring to God or Jesus are always capitalized. This can be helpful at times when it isn't clear to whom the pronoun refers. References to books of the Bible in footnotes and when parallel passages are named use abbreviations for book names. For example, Mt for Matthew and Lk for Luke.

The books are in the usual order. It does not include the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books.

There is an interesting but incomplete history of English language Bibles included in the introduction, starting with William Tyndale's translation. It is incomplete because it does not mention the Revised Standard Version (RSV), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), or any of the many translations by Catholic scholars. It does have a very complete description of the development of the KJV.

Here is our Sunday Gospel Lesson from the MEV: The Great Commandment Mt 22:34-40; Lk 10:25-28

One of the scribes came near and heard them reasoning together. Perceiving that Jesus had answered them well, he asked Him, “Which of the is the first commandment of all?”

Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, is one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’¹ This is the first commandment. The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’² There is no commandment greater than these.”

The scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, that there is God, and there is no other but Him. To love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask Him any question.

¹30 Dt 6:4-5 ²31 Lev 19:18 (MEV)

Previous Bible reviews covering the NET Bible, the Message, and The Inclusive Bible, and the Amplified Bible are here.

If you decide to purchase the Modern English Version, please consider using one of these links, so your purchase will benefit The Lectionary Company: Modern English Version Bible Thinline Reference $17.07 Modern English Version Economy Bible $2.99 Modern English Version Bible Personal Size Large Print $24.97 The prices above are as of October 27. You can search for other editions of the MEV at this link: Modern English Version

This week's illustration

The image this week is of the Good Samaritan with the man who was beaten on the road. He is at the inn, and the inn keeper is helping him to bring the injured man inside. It is a reminder to me first, that actions are greater than words, and second that help can come from unexpected quarters.

Theme of this week's lessons

Our readings this week nearly all have a theme of love. The key reading from the complementary Hebrew Scriptures comes on Sunday when we read the beginning of the Shema prayer from Deuteronomy:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

You can find the rest of the Shema here.

Gospel Lessons

Our Gospel lesson for Sunday a scribe asks Jesus which commandment is the greatest, and Jesus quotes from the passage above and adds "and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." The scribe replies

“Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, that there is God, and there is no other but Him. To love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength and to love one's neighbor as oneself is much more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” (MEV)

Of course, there is always the question of who is my neighbor. Jesus answers this in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is our Saturday Gospel reading. We are so used to the idea of the Samaritan as a good and righteous person that most of us don't understand the ways in which Jesus' hearers would have thought of the Samaritan. The Samaritans rejected a view of salvation history centered on Jerusalem, and their religious life centered on a temple on Mt. Gerizim, rather than on the Jerusalem temple. An analogy might be Christians and Muslems. We worship the same God, but in quite different ways, and there is unfortunately enmity between us. So it was between Jews and Samaritans.

In our third Gospel reading, on Wednesday, Jesus tells us to love one another. So our three Gospel readings tell us to love God, our neighbors in the broadest sense, and one another. Think this week about who is your neighbor in the sense of the Good Samaritan parable.

Psalms

I want to share some perspective on verse five of the complementary Psalm 51, which we read during the time of reflection. “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me,” reads the verse. Here is what the New Interpreter's Bible commentary has to say:

It is not intended to suggest that sin is transmitted biologically or that sexuality is sinful by definition. Rather, it conveys the inevitability of human fallibility. In each human life, in each human situation, sin is pervasive. We are born into it, and we cannot escape it. While sin is a matter of individual decision, it also has a corporate dimension that affects us, despite our best intentions and decisions.

Here is the good news:

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

God forgives us. Thanks be to God.

Our semi-continuous psalm during the time of preparation reminds us that God graciously lifts up those who are bowed down.

Epistle Lessons

In our Friday Epistle, Paul reminds us that our God is the God of both Jews and Gentiles. Gentiles, of course, means everyone who is not Jewish. Paul also reminds us that Jesus has paid for our sins by his blood. In our Sunday Epistle from Hebrews, we are reminded of this: if the blood of goats and bulls sanctifies those who have been defiled, much more Christ's blood brings us redemption. In our Monday Epistle lesson, Paul urges the Romans (and us) to live peaceably with all, and reminds us that love is the fulfilling of the law.

Complementary Hebrew Scripture

Our Wednesday Hebrew Scripture reading has the prophet Micah reminding us what God requires of us: to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. See the discussion above for our Sunday Hebrew Scripture.

There one lesson where some context might be helpful. The Saturday Hebrew Scripture is about what happens when an Israelite is unable to celebrate Passover. The answer is that you do it later, at a time specified in the reading. This actually fits with the rest of our readings, because it is about the importance of returning the love that God has shown us by freeing the Israelites from their Egyptian bondage.

Semi-continuous Hebrew Scripture

This week we are reading about Ruth and Naomi, a pair of women bonded as mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Ruth, a Maobite, sticks with Naomi, a woman from Judah, as they return to Naomi's homeland. There Ruth takes some pretty forward actions, which are ultimately rewarded with marriage to a relative of Naomi's. I especially note how Ruth shares what she gets by gleaning in the fields with Naomi, sustaining them both until Ruth's marriage. We will finish up our lessons about Ruth next week in our Thursday through Sunday lessons.

Thank you for all that you do but to bring about justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. Mike Gilbertson

Spread the Word

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Summary and a link for each day

Thursday to Sunday Psalms Complementary Psalm 119:1-8 Seeking God with all our hearts Semi-continuous Psalm 146 God lifts those who are bowed down.

Thursday: Preparation for the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Exodus 22:1-15 Laws about restitution Semi-continuous Ruth 1:18-22 Ruth the Maobite and Naomi the Judean return to Judah after both are widowed. Both Hebrews 9:1-12 The ritual of the sanctuary: Christ has entered into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

Friday: Preparation for the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Leviticus 19:32-37 You shall fear God. You shall treat aliens as part of your community, for you were aliens in Egypt. Semi-continuous Ruth 2:1-9 Ruth meets Boaz. Both Romans 3:21-31 God is God of both Jews and Gentiles. Christ, through his blood, has atoned for our sins.

Saturday: Preparation for the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Numbers 9:9-14 All should keep the Passover. You have one law for the resident alien and the native. Semi-continuous Ruth 2:10-14 Boaz protects Ruth. Both Luke 10:25-37 Jesus, through the parable of the Good Samaritan, defines who a neighbor is.

The Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Deuteronomy 6:1-9 The Great Commandment; The Shema Semi-continuous Ruth 1:1-18 Ruth remains with Naomi. Both Hebrews 9:11-14 If the blood of goats and bulls sanctifies those who have been defiled, how much more will Christ's blood bring us redemption. Both Mark 12:28-34 Jesus, asked which commandment is the greatest, answers, "The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."

Monday to Wednesday Psalms Complementary Psalm 51 I have sinned against you. Create in me a clean heart. Semi-continuous Psalm 18:20-30 It is you who light my lamp. God lights my darkness.

Monday: Reflection on the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Deuteronomy 6:10-25 When you enter the land that God has promised you, do not put God to the test. Semi-continuous Ruth 2:15-23 Ruth gleans in Boaz' fields during the wheat and barley harvests. Naomi says that Boaz is a close relative. Both Romans 12:17-21; 13:8-10 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. The law is summed up in this word: love your neighbor as yourself.

Tuesday: Reflection on the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Deuteronomy 28:58-29:1 The cost of disobedience Semi-continuous Ruth 3:1-7 Ruth and Boaz are at the threshing floor at night. Both Acts 7:17-29 Stephen, speaking before the Sanhedrin, recounts Moses' early years.

Wednesday: Reflection on the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Micah 6:1-8 Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. Semi-continuous Ruth 3:3-8 Boaz is startled by Ruth's presence on the threshing floor. Both John 13:31-35 Jesus says, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another."

The links become active on the designated day at 3:05 a.m. eastern time.

*Denominations have different ways of designating the weeks during the year, so your church may refer to this week by a different name or number or both. Regardless of the name or number, the readings are the same. Here is an explanation: Calendar Explanation

Selections from Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings, copyright © 1995 by the Consultation on Common Texts. Unless otherwise indicated, Bible text is from The New Revised Standard Version, (NRSV) copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All right reserved. The Sunday Gospel is taken from The Holy Bible Modern English Version (MEV), copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Image credit: The Good Samaritan by Rembrandt, via cs.m.wikipedia. This is a public domain image.

#Modern English Version review #Great commandment

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