The Cruciform Pattern to Reality The Gospel of Mark is the shortest gospel and likely the oldest. In many ways it is the simplest and clearest, and it cuts the hardest because it is so utterly without frills. The more that commentators have studied this gospel, the more they have found that the way in which Mark put events together is trying to say a lot about the centrality of suffering and the cross. By
Once we have become aware of our enslavement, and have passed from mere lamentation and a sense of misery into a sense of broken heartedness and poverty of spirit, our imprisonment in the land of Egypt is answered by the words of the next beatitudes: ‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted’, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’. This mourning that is the result of the discovery of
Do you think I am going to help anybody? No! Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Don’t expect me to be of help to anyone. Nor do I expect to damage anyone. If you are damaged, you did it; and if you are helped, you did it. You really did! You think people help you? They don’t. You think people support you? They don’t. There was a woman in a therapy group I was conducting
The Bible contains four lists of the names of the Twelve Disciples of Christ: Matthew 10:12, Mark 3:13, Luke 6:14 and Acts of the Apostles 1:13. They vary slightly as well as the sequence although they list Peter first, even though it was Andrew (his brother) who was called first by the Lord. It is believed that Christ selected only 12 because it was the number of the twelve sons of Jacob (the most famous
The encounter with oneself that the monks sought in silence and that they saw as a prerequisite for the encounter with God is for Evagrius Ponticus primarily a meeting with the thoughts and feelings in one’s own heart. Among the desert fathers Evagrius is considered a specialist in dealing with thoughts and passions. He experienced them himself and wrote about them again and again in his books, to share his experience with others. It was
If you don’t learn to carry your cross during your daily life, then you are losing the thousand opportunities that God creates for you at every moment so that you can become perfected as a human being. “The Gerontikon [a series of books about the lives of great elders] is full of examples of simple practices that have led many to become giants of virtue. Abba Agathon prayed to God, ‘Please, God, help me do
Don’t get rid of the pain until you’ve learned its lessons. When you hold the pain consciously and trust fully, you are in a very special liminal space. This is a great teaching moment where you have the possibility of breaking through to a deeper level of faith and consciousness. Hold the pain of being human until God transforms you through it. And then you will be an instrument of transformation for others. As an
Every human being, man or woman, according to his or her nature, is called to a degree of virility – remember the strong women of the Bible- and also, in relation to God, a degree of femininity. Progress in the spiritual life leads men as well as women to a quasi-feminine attitude in the presence of the mystery. That is why the incarnation was accomplished through a woman, who is now at the heart of
After a long period of patriarchy, women today wish to be treated as human beings in their own right, free and responsible individuals. The leaven of the Gospel is at work, setting us free at last from the old pagan structures. But because the necessary fight for social equality has so often had to be waged against men, there is now some uncertainty about woman’s true identity, what it means to be feminine. The body,
As the Jews were called by Moses to escape from the country of Egypt, to follow him in the dark night, to cross the Red Sea, so also is each individual brought into the wilderness, where a new period begins. He is free, but not yet enjoying the glory of the Promised Land, because he has taken with him, out of the land of Egypt, the soul of a slave, the habits of a slave,
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