Good Thing He Doesn't Have Opposable Thumbs

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The Ochlophobist on Word Power

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"The degeneration of language that we now see is the sad putting on of appearances by demons still trembling in fear because of the word of the Theotokos spoken in accordance with the Word she accepted and bore. They have every reason to fear now, for in their pursuit of the flatteries and fabrications of Nothing their potential victims need only bend the neck and utter from the heart a "be it unto me" and the whole game is over - even in metal shops, and classrooms, and sales meetings, and Lord knows where else.

"God, who energetically seems to make occasion for irony, appears rather intent on expressing salvation in the most seemingly impossible situations. In fact, as St. Paul makes clear and as many of us have experienced, the greater the degree of realized need, the greater the degree of our potential clarity in seeing grace. Thus in Christ's new order, the order of Nativity, when things get worse, there is all the more power in what is better. Flattery abounds, but in such a context the icon of a real word spoken or written only serves to bear a greater witness."

- Owen White

Christfits

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Christfits -

(Christian misfits)

pronounced like "misfits"

1. Social misfits who find refuge in the Church

2. People whose Christianity puts them at odds with the world

Both definitions can be true of one person, but they are not always.

There is a stigma attached to people in the first category, but there should not be. You don't have to be a misfit in order to enter the Church, but the Church certainly welcomes all repentant sinners, misfits or otherwise.

Yes, if you want to be a stickler, all Christians are misfits. Discipleship does at times create "a person whose behavior or attitude sets them apart from others in an uncomfortably conspicuous way."

Helen Rittelmeyer on Ubiquitous Intellectual Paucity

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"There's a long-running thread in Southern literature that suggests "Can Meritocracy Prevail?" is not a question that Dalmia can ask and expect to get a sensible answer. William Styron, William Faulkner, and Thomas Wolfe all wrote about disillusioned young Southerners who headed northward in hopes of finding a place with more appreciation for book-learning (Lie Down in Darkness, The Sound and the Fury, and Of Time and the River), and all three came to the same conclusion: Harvard and Yale are primarily capitals of New England culture, not capitals of academic learning, and New England doesn't actually care about academic learning any more than the South does. The elite New England way of speaking sounds intellectual, but at the end of the day the resemblance is superficial. The fact that Ivy League graduates all talk like professors doesn't indicate real erudition any more than the fact that Southern politicians all talk like Baptist preachers speaks to their individual piety."

- Helen Rittelmeyer, Yale student

The Struggle With Sin

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It used to annoy me to no end when people would talk about yielding to temptation as their “struggling with sin.” It often seemed to me that they were like a man who is lying in bed sick. The nurse comes in with the appropriate medicine, hands him the pills and a cup of water, and stands there waiting for the sick man to ingest the meds. If the man refuses the medication and continues to expose himself to the things that make him sick, could he really say that he is “struggling with his sickness?”

So it is with the life of following Christ and walking in the Spirit. There is medicine in the Church. There are soul doctors to offer that medicine to sinners. The question is, will we take the “medicine of immortality,” the Holy Eucharist? Will we live the life of prayer, feeding on the Word, doing good works and engaging in holy conversation?

I do not want to make anything sound like a walk in the park. Life is hard. Sin is very present, and temptations are around every corner. Struggling with temptation is a very real part of life here below. I hope that you know that you are not alone both in the struggles and in the path to victory.

Fr. Stephen Freeman wrote much more effectually on temptation this week. Below is one passage from his meditation. Go read it all.

“I am also quite sympathetic to larger matters that make the struggle all the more difficult. To struggle against sin when one is beset with depression is close to impossible - the depression itself takes all our energy for the struggle.”

Ralph Wood on Tree-Hugging

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"As readers we are able to experience Treebeard at two levels: On the one hand, he is patently an aesthetic invention, a fictional creature. Both Chesterton and Tolkien constantly draw attention to the created character of their work, reminding us that it belongs to secondary and not primarily reality: it is a constructed thing to be enjoyed as such. Yet having encountered this fantastic tree with human features, readers can no longer look upon real trees as mere objects meant only for our manipulation. On the contrary, we can now envision all trees as analogical actualities, as transcendent symbols that participate in the reality that they signify, as having likenesses to us despite their differences from us, and thus as linking natural things with both human and divine things—and perhaps also with things demonic. It is not a long leap, for instance, from Treebeard to the trees in the Garden of Eden ...

"Unlike much modern art that revels in the macabre and the bizarre—self-referential, solipsistic, nihilistic—the fantastical work of these two Catholics is not such a sorry project. Chesterton and Tolkien have not autonomously invented their own imaginative worlds so much as they have reordered the existing world in accordance with their fundamentally Aristotelian/Thomistic perception of it. Their common conviction is that everything has its own entelechy, its own end within itself that pushes it toward completion and fulfillment within a larger, indeed a final telos."

- Ralph Wood "The Catholic Fantastic of Chesterton and Tolkien"

Epiphany

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I was talking about Epiphany with a friend late Saturday night and decided to go back and read what I had previously written about this feast. While I have not written anything new for the Sunday Lectionary readings in a while, I thought I might include links to my posts from 2006 and 2007.

2006 - Christ (Unexpectedly) Revealed

2007 - Light and Darkness

Thomas Torrance

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My favorite theologian died last month (Dec. 2).

Read a eulogy about him.

Read a bio about him.

I can't tell you how many times I wrote the initials TFT while in seminary. JK hearts TFT, grieves our loss and rejoices that the great man is now present with our Lord.

New Year's Resolutions

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Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.