The Lost Son

Roy H. Schoeman is an incredibly insightful author - one of my favorites. He wrote Salvation is From the Jews.

The thrust of one of his arguments is built from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, Chapter 11. He points out that even though many of the Jews who lived during the time of Jesus rejected him as the Messiah, God still did not reject his people. This is something I have always agreed with but I have never been able to articulate it as well as Schoeman does. He points out that even though a stumbling block is placed in front of the Jews it is not so as to make them fall. They have been called into unbelief by God that the Gentiles might partake of their salvation, later they will be grafted back into the tree bringing yet more grace both to themselves and to the Gentiles. I really admire Mr. Schoeman because his argument for the fact is strictly scriptural and leaves practically no room for dispute, while mine has always been theological and leaves plenty of room for dispute.

The Gospel of Matthew

A vein of theology infecting the Church today makes an attempt to discern who the “real” authors of the Gospels were and when they wrote.  One of the claims is that the Gospel of Matthew, long considered to be the first Gospel (by Matthew, hence the name), was actually written after 70 AD by an author who was not a disciple of Jesus.  This claim is based on the facts that Matthew and Mark are so similar to each other that one must have been copied from the other and the inclusion of the predicted destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the Gospel of Matthew which did occur in 70 AD.

Papias, bishop of Heirapolis, who was a student of the Apostle John and a companion of Polycarp (also a student of John), wrote that Matthew was the first to record a Gospel in writing, which he did for the Israelites in the Hebrew language.  Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, wrote “Against Heresies” at the end of the Second Century.  To the best of my knowledge that has never been disputed.  In it he said:

Matthew published his gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding the church there.  After their departure Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter’s preaching.  Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by his teacher.  Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his gospel, while he was living at Ephesus in Asia.

The Oxygen Super Highway

There are myriads of arguments that successfully disprove Darwinian Evolution. There are just too many holes in the theory and it does not stand up under intense examination.

It does not stand up under any examination.

One of the basic assertions is that life originated in the water and proceeded onto land via a walking fish that mutated to walk and harvest oxygen from air instead of water. Just bringing up a theory like that draws suspicion.

Under normal atmospheric condition the air is made up of roughly 21% oxygen by volume and 0.03% carbon dioxide by volume.

The Dark Night

Christian mysticism comes to us in the writings of the saints.  It is the achievement of union with Almighty God, and its fruit is prayer and the manifestation of God to the World through His saints.

…Presently the window opened, and Brother Matthew looked out between the bars, with his clear eyes and graying beard.

“Hullo Brother,” I said.

He recognized me, glanced at the suitcase, and said, “This time you are here to stay?”

“Yes, Brother, if you will pray for me,” I said.

Brother nodded and raised his hand to close the window.  “That’s what I’ve been doing,” he said, “praying for you.”…

The Fifth Cardinal Virtue

 

An effort of the will and the grace of God are marking characteristics of cardinal virtues. Through their practice other virtues come to fruition, in fact all other virtues are dependant on the practice of the cardinal virtues. All virtues are an avenue towards God. How many times have you shown others more mercy than you would have before you ate that little piece of chocolate (the practice of brotherly love)? How many times have you turned to chocolate after a disappointing conversation (the practice of humility)? How many times have you enjoyed a piece of chocolate you had to share some with another (practice of liberality)? How many times have you turned around after realizing you forgot to buy a piece of chocolate (the practice of diligence)? How many examples must I cite? Chocolate is clearly the fifth cardinal virtue. The Spanish have known this for quite some time now. When the Jesuits were expelled in the Eighteenth Century they were allowed to bring their breviary, some clothes, chocolate and other necessities of travel.

Then Sings My Soul

The Mass is a beautiful thing. The depth of the mystery I experience grows on me continuously. It is a mystery for several reasons (and I am certain that I can not name them all). What always immediately comes to mind is that as we celebrate the Mass we transcend time so we are present at the sacrifice Jesus made on Calvary. We also make a quick journey through the history of our salvation, beginning with the fall of mankind up to the Eucharist and the reception of God’s blessings with the command to evangelize the whole world. This is not something the Roman Catholic Church just made up one day. This is the way the first Christians worshiped their God, the liturgical format was something inherited by the Church from Israel because the first Christians were all Israelites. The classical interpretation of the Song of Songs is God’s approach to Israel and Israel’s response to the advances of their God. What a perfect metaphor! Beginning with the fall of man God has been approaching mankind as a lover attempts to seduce his object of

Being Catholic III

My complete submission took a full six years, a little at a time, always a little more to go to fully embrace the traditional

teachings.  I ended up taking the advice of my sponsor and jumped in with both feet on learning Church history.  The more I learned, the more I loved it and the more I was able to give myself to the Church.  I quickly began to attend Mass at 6:00 PM every Tuesday at St. Joe’s.  I was on fire!  As soon as I could I became a lector and a Eucharistic minister.  For the next three years I helped in RCIA and I helped start a Bible study at St. Francis.  For a while I was at church every day of the week, I just couldn’t get enough of it.  My primary purpose for becoming a Eucharistic minister was to bring the Eucharist to shut-ins.  I wanted to bring it to hospitals, but there were none in my parish bounds, so I took Holy Communion to a couple total care and partial care centers.  Eventually I began to bring Holy Communion to the county pokey too, which I found to be my favorite form of service.

Being Catholic II

For several reasons, mostly my hedonistic life style and my disgust with President Clinton, I decided to leave the Navy after only five years instead of twenty.  My life was about to change dramatically.  I moved to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada!  I started to work in civil engineering and land surveying.  I felt like I found a really good job at a small but very good firm – Alpha Engineering.  Right at the end of my enlistment in the Navy I had just about as much fun as I could handle and had to look for more civilized ways to spend my time.  It was the Lenten Season of 2000 and I started to feel convicted by the Holy Spirit to tithe.  So, I decided I better find a church I can belong to so I can fulfill the wishes of the Lord.  At that time my mom was finishing RCIA.  She and my dad decided to return to church and my dad wanted to return to the faith he grew up with.  I had been to church with them several times (when ever I would visit for the weekend, they lived about 150 mile away from me), but I never really considered the Catholic Church in my search for a congregation to be a part of.  I was certain I would join a Baptist church.

Flight Into Egypt

 

There has always been an image in my mind of St. Joseph leading a donkey which bears the Blessed Virgin carrying the Baby Jesus on a long walk through the wilderness to a tiny Egyptian village in the middle of the desert to wait out the storm of King Herod’s wrath. I never found that fully satisfying though. There are only two references to the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt that I am aware of in Holy Scripture and I can not ever recall hearing any Catholic theologian speak extensively on the issue. In essence the trip is in an intellectual and historical black out for me, but none the less interesting.

Being Catholic I

My dad was born into a devoted Roman Catholic family.  He grew up as an altar boy and the whole nine yards.  My mom grew up as a devoted Southern Baptist.  After they got married my dad became a Southern Baptist and that is the church I was baptized in.  I still remember that night clearly.  It was late in the evening when we arrive at church.  I went upstairs to a changing room where I was given a white gown to put on.  There was a woman there with the hand full of us getting baptized.  I wondered what she was doing there.  She looked as old as dirt to me, who knows, she may have been only in her Forty’s.  But why didn’t she get baptized at the right time?  Doesn’t everyone do it when they’re five?  At the appointed time we were all ushered to the top of the stairs above the baptismal pool and we were called down one at a time.  The preacher asked me if I wanted to be baptized, which confused me. 

Lightbringers – The Emissaries of Jahbulon

There is a video posted on the internet called “Lightbringers – The Emissaries of Jahbulon” which puts out fallacious information. It can be found here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7447140689352016786. Whatever it says about Freemasonry is really of no consequence to me. My contention is its attempt to connect the Freemasons to the Templar Knights. There is no supporting evidence to lead to such a conclusion; in fact the verdict of history would show the opposite.

There are three main claims by the producers of this video to connect the Freemasons to the Templar Knights. It claims several knights escaped arrest and fled to Scotland, continued to practice “secret rites,” then founded the order of Freemasonry in Scotland. Only one claim is true – several knights and sargeants did escape to Scotland because their nobles were strong supporters of the Order of the Templar Knights.

Why Rome?

The phrase “in the fullness of time” is something worth pondering. As my knowledge and understanding of history has grown so has my consideration of  just what in “the fullness of time” means.

 The first real revolutionary change was when I began to learn more about Alexandria, Egypt. I thought about the implication the city had on the time Jesus’ birth. The major change was that I began to pay much more attention to the geopolitical situation and factoring it into God’s plan for the world.

In the past year and a half I read a tremendous amount about Rome, just for general knowledge at first, but later for more specific reasons. I have always liked Rome for several reasons.

Blessed Charles the Great

I read a book called A Natural History of Latin by Tore Janson.  One of the people it made me think about was Charlemagne.  Of course the author spoke a lot about him, thus I thought about him.  As the Romans expanded their empire and took over administration of the Mediterranean area Latin became the common language for the entire western empire.  Business, government and schools were all conducted in Latin and an increasing amount of soldiers were being settled in conquered lands.  Because of these things Latin edged out the local languages in the western part of the empire.  When the Roman West dissolved into smaller independent states at the end of the Fifth Century every province except Britton spoke Latin.  As the various German tribes took control from each other they spoke different languages but ruled over Latin speaking peoples and, just as in China we saw the Sinicism of conquerors, the Germans adopted the Roman language as their own.  As time went on the language changed and adapted to local dialects, thus Spanish, Italian and French were born.  We can even see evidence of the change before the fall of the west, we know that Latin began to become Italian in the spoken language even though written Latin held on to the classical rules in the early part of the Fifth Century.  The public schools continued to be conducted in Classical Latin through their decline and collapse in the Seventh Century.  The learning institutions did not disappear in the Church though, which continued to use Classical Latin.