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4:46am |
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
New blog post: December 18 – Philoxenus from the Ascetic Discourse http://tinyurl.com/3qyp9v
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4:51am |
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
New blog post: December 19 – Philoxenus from the Ascetic Discourse http://tinyurl.com/3kwbxt
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10:52am |
Shared 3 links on Google Reader. (Show Details)
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12:16pm |
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
New blog post: Sufjan Steven’s new project http://tinyurl.com/4mv4cm
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12:16pm |
Updated status on Facebook.
Deacon New blog post: Sufjan Steven’s new project http://tinyurl.com/4mv4cm.
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12:37pm |
Scrobbled 47 songs on Last.fm. (Show Details)
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12:38pm |
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
New blog post: Drop your other shoe http://tinyurl.com/4nguwm
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12:38pm |
Updated status on Facebook.
Deacon New blog post: Drop your other shoe http://tinyurl.com/4nguwm.
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…people, and many, many Christians. From Huw Raphael: More like this…
One of our issues, drawing on Huw’s citation of a quote on the vast differences between God and humanity, is that we think of ourselves as the mouse in the fable of the Lion and the Mouse. We think that we can somehow return the King’s favor, that the King just might need us, not for His reasons, but to save Him. Our overwrought sense of confidence leads us down paths we shouldn’t tread. We stop relying on Him and His word, and rely on what we devise — because God needs us to make things right. In our imperfection we go to instinct — our natural instinct being the creation of barriers.
I recently read Fr. Ray Blake’s Pelagianism: I hate it. In it he states:
Pelagianism denies the action of Grace in the world, man is saved by his own goodness and efforts, rather than by God.
It is what we do, rather than what God does that matters, therefore the value of the sacraments is the psychological effect they have in our lives, rather than the direct intervention of God. It denies the power of Grace…: Pelagians above all would deny the role of the Holy Spirit, of His act of sanctification. Wherever there is attempt to place man at the heart of the faith, there we should expect to find Pelagianism.
Pelagianism expects Man to be strong rather God’s grace to be powerful. Catholicism, or as we could call it, mainstream Christianity, acknowledges mankind is weak and wholly dependant on those things God gives him…
Yep, and me too. Pelagianism means we are the deciders. When I look at my Church, the PNCC, I see the Church that believes in the overwhelming power of God, given through the gift of sanctifying grace. Believing that we must say: ‘To whom shall the power of the sacraments be denied?’
When we receive the gifts of God, through the sacraments, we face God’s power to change even the hardest of hearts. Grace moves in and reorients us. When a Church believes that; the barriers are broken down. Whatever our positions may be, our stands, we are whittled down and we are drawn closer to the people we should be. God makes change happen. That change is for everyone. In Him we are made more human, more genuine, and the headstrong, Pelagian mouse in us dies. We learn our need, for God, and for each other. We learn, as Huw says, that Christ takes us beyond [division].
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20).
By now almost everyone has heard of the Iraqi shoe throwing incident. The day after the incident I came arcoss an article through Christian NewsWire: Iraqi Christians Remain Under Siege
A press release issued last week from the USCIRF states: “Although there has been some reduction in violence in Iraq since the Commission’s last report on the country in May 2007, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom remains seriously concerned about severe violations of religious freedom there. The situation is dire for Iraq’s smallest religious minorities, including ChaldoAssyrian Christians, other Christians, Sabean Mandaeans, and Yazidis, who face a threat to their very existence in the country.
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Although it is difficult to state how many Iraqi Christians are in the country, the number in 2003, prior to the fall of Saddam Hussein, was around 550,000. Violence targeting Christians has caused many to leave the country. Church leaders in Iraq conservatively estimate that almost 75,000 Christians live outside Iraq in Syria, Jordan or in the West and that another 75,000 have fled to northern Iraq. That means less than 400,000 Christians remain in mainland Iraq. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has estimated that at least 2 million Iraqis have fled the country since 2003 and another 2 million are displaced inside the country, mostly in northern Iraq.
Some say that in the past few years almost 500 Iraqi Christians, including pastors and priests, have been murdered because of their faith. Even more Christians have been killed in attacks, fighting or kidnapping for money. Approximately 2,000 families (a total of 10,000 Christians) fled the northern city of Mosul two months ago due to terrorism. The violence resulted in an estimated 25 to 40 Christian deaths. Hundreds remain homeless…
My first thought was — shouldn’t they be the ones throwing shoes? As I reflected on that I thought, no, they have dropped the other shoe (Matthew 5:39). In witness to Christ they travel shoeless, as He did. They are rejected, and without aid, except from Christians and others who are of good will. They are the new martyrs and confessors. For all of our President’s professed Christian certainty, he has cast these sheep before wolves.
Caesar never understood those who would not throw shoes, slap faces, or take an eye-for-an-eye. So let’s reflect on what is essential in our witness. It is those who rely on God, not on shoes, or weapons, or the works of men. Our vindication is from God.
I’m listening to Welcome to the Welcome Wagon, a recording of folksy gospel music by the Rev. Vito Aiuto and his wife Monique, produced by Sufjan Stevens. I found it through Ben Myers of Faith and Theology. It is really nice, meditative, uplifting, challenging, some of the things you need for reflection.
Now the death which is of sin brought in the death which is of nature, and with the dissolution of the one, the other was brought to nought, and those who did not die aforetime died in very truth, but those, who of their own freewill put to death in them the man of lusts in this death, dissolved the death of the natural man; therefore it is well that we should die before our death, that we may also live before our life. For where the death of the will goeth first, the death which is of nature is dissolved, and where the death which is of nature is dissolved aforetime by the dominion of freewill before we come into life, the man who dieth is alive; and because these cessations and renewings happen unto us aforetime in all ways, it is seemly for us first of all to uproot wickedness, and then to lay in ourselves the foundation of the edifice of virtues, in order that the rock may receive our foundation, as it is written, and that on a sure stone may be our building, even as it is said. And in this respect we should be like unto the physicians of [our] nature who, until they have removed and cleansed the matter from the sore, do not lay [upon it] the plaster which buildeth up and maketh to grow the living flesh; and so must it be with us also when we have uprooted the matter of the lust of the belly, and have made accusations against its filthy and loathsome forms.
And now let us shew in our discourse the benefit of abstinence, and let us exhort disciples with profitable doctrine to lay hold in their souls upon this endurance which, although it is imagined to be laden with labours, is nevertheless the birth-pang which giveth us birth into the experience of the blessings of Christ. — On Abstinence.