Per Ipsum

First of all, every time you begin a good work, you must pray to Him most earnestly to bring it to perfection .   Rule of Saint Benedict    The psalmist says Unless the Lord build the house, they who build it labor in vain. (Psalm 127).   The house, the family that lives in it, the neighborhood, the city--without God's work the result is vanity. Whether I'm picking up a paintbrush, sweeping the kitchen, or trying to pen a great novel, none of it has meaning if it isn't God's work.   Benedict put his finger on the problem.  The trick is to remember to pray first.   Starting the day with a general scattergun prayer, "Bless the works of our hands," is good but specific prayer for specific work is better.    At the moment we're attempting to make a new house into a home.  Even more important, we want to create a place of comfort and joy for our grandson down the street.  If ever there was work that required God's ha...

Between the time I started my meditations on the creed and the time I finished, the Church introduced a new translation of the Roman Missal.  Instead of "We believe..." the creed as it is proclaimed at Mass now says " I believe...." The amount of consternation that caused was stunning. The super conservatives seem to think that the 1970s translation was part of a plot on the part of "progressives" to weaken the church. Ha! Take that progressives. We've gone back to the real creed. The super liberal folks seem to think that the new translation was part of a plot on the part of traditionalists to drag us back to the Council of Trent and overturn Vatican II. (Either that or a plot on the part of the hierarchy to distract us from the pedophile scandals.) Oh woe! It isn't clear to me whether the Greek text as proclaimed at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople used the plural or singular form.  The Roman Missal, however, the liturgical ver...

We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.  Amen. Nicene Constantinople Creed Aging is an interesting process.  Most of it involves letting go, letting go until things boil down to their essence.   What things do I keep? What objects to I actually need? What matters enough to spend my time on it?   When you peel away layers you come to "What is life" or "Is there life after death?"  The great good news of Christianity is, yes, there is life after death. Jesus came and took on humanity which is to say He accepted death and in doing so destroyed it.   Paul called him the "first fruits of those who are asleep," (1Corinthians 15:20).  He's the first fruits, we're the harvest. My grandson is Jewish. At his bris (aka ritual circumcision) the mohel asked about the Covenant.  "What do we promise?" We promise to obey His law. I anticipated that answer, but the next one was, "What does He promise ...

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.   Nicene-Constantinople Creed What's with acknowledge ?  The rest of the creed has been believe, believe, believe. Now we have acknowledge .  The new Roman missal actually translates it as confess .   Google translate uses  confess . The Oxford English Dictionary presents some definitions for both.   It translates confess as  -To acknowledge, own, or admit. -To acknowledge, concede, grant or admit for oneself an assertion [as true] To confess is to acknowledge.   The definitions for acknowledge shed a little more light.   To acknowledge is: -To recognize something to be what it is specified to be. -To accept the authority, validity, or legitimacy of [something]. -To accept the truth of something. It also can be defined as a legal term with which someone signs on to accept the truth of a proposition. All those apply.   It seems that  acknowledge (o...

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Nicene-Constantinople Creed. This one is a mouthful. We believe in the Church, but what do we believe about it?    It is the People of God first and foremost--the people!  It is also the Body of Christ.  That is enough to keep us up late pondering.  We, the Church are the Body of Christ, hands and feet, ears and voice, heart and mind. It is the Temple of the Holy Spirit.   The place we find the Holy Spirit. The place we encounter God. Except, the Church isn't a place.  Up until 70AD even Christians went up to the Second Temple in Jerusalem, where the God's people had been taught they would encounter Him.  Christians were gradually understanding the People of God somewhat differently and after Titus razed the whole thing, the concept of an invisible temple, with the Holy Spirit as its life and the force behind all its saving actions began to flower. But what about one holy...

He has spoken through the prophets. The Nicene-Constantinople Creed Hear the word of the Lord...listen to the instruction of our God. Isaiah 1:10 Pop "the word of the Lord" into any of the Bible search engines now ubiquitous on the Internet and you will get pages and pages of references from Genesis 15:, "the word of the Lord came to Abram, to 1Peter 1:25, "the word of the Lord remains forever and this is the word that has been proclaimed to you...." Those two references alone represent a two thousand year stretch. The prophets were not fortune tellers. They didn't divine the future or act as seers.  The prophets heard God speak and were compelled to proclaim the word of God to His people.  The content of the message was always the will of God, what He expected people to do, how He expected them to live their lives.  It still is.  John L. McKenzie SJ calls that word The Two Edged Sword. The remarkable thing is God speaks to ordinary p...

W e believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceed s from the Father and the Son.  With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.     Nicene-Constantinople Creed Spirit as concept: easy. Spirit as person: hard. An earlier post described the Holy Spirit as the loving part of the three persons that are the one God.  We have Lover, Beloved and the Love that passes between them, the act of loving, that is the Holy Spirit.  Loving personified.  It is the Holy Spirit that permeates our entire spiritual life.  The Spirit leads us to prayer and teaches us how.  The gifts of the spirit enable us to live out the life that comes to us in Christ.  Wisdom, understanding, counsel (right judgement), fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord--each one is required before we can begin to grow in virtue and exercise the life of Christ in us.  Each one is given at baptism.  Our problem is...

...and his kingdom will have no end. Nicene-Constantinople Creed This phrase seems to imply that the kingdom is already here.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  "At hand" could mean coming any moment but it could also mean we can reach out and touch it. It is right under our noses. Sometimes when I used to walk in downtown Columbus near the state capital I would think about working in the City of Man but living in the City of God.  The two coexist in space but, while the City of Man exists only in time, and that fleeting,  the City of God exists out of time and for all time. The kingdom will have no end.