Good morning! Well, I'm still "on the road" as they say, though it's not a road trip, it's waiting for the earliest flight I could get back to Fort Myers. I'm tempted to look at this as a huge inconvenience, but you don't need me to tell you that's not how I should see - how God wants me to see it.
First of all, we are very grateful that the hurricane missed us (this time), but now it was someone else's turn to get hit, so we remember in prayer those whose lives are disrupted. I don't actually know if there were fatalities, but I assume there were, and so we pray for the souls of the dead, and for the spiritual health of those left behind to grieve.
There's also a chance that the delay might give me an opportunity to visit a cousin in the hospital today (not really sure yet) but that could be the silver lining here. Time will tell.
I don't know why it's so hard to keep the proper perspective at all times, but it seems to be part of the (fallen) human condition that this is the case. I think I'm much better at this than I was as a younger man, and I can tell you that it's only through prayer that I have become better at seeing the hand of God in everyday things, and submitting to the will of God, even when I don't know what that is. And when I say "it's only through prayer," this is quite apart from whether any individual prayers were answered the way I had hoped, but it has everything to do with the effect of prayer itself - regular and deep prayer - on my spirit. Which only reinforces my conviction that the goal and purpose of prayer is primarily our sanctification and salvation, and we simply do not mature spiritually without it, and without making it a commitment in our lives.
Today - just for today - let's try to see inconveniences as opportunities to "recalculate" (like the GPS navigation) our intentions and expectations for the day. Perhaps what seems like an inconvenience is an opportunity to course correct back toward the will of God.
Here's a short (about a minute) video I took going around the Holy Column in the church of Santa Prassede. This is the column that Jesus was tied to when he was scourged by Pontius Pilate. They don't always have the barrier down, so you usually don't get to see it from all the way around. I wanted to get video of the whole thing all the way around because I ran across a note in an ancient document that said that those who made a pilgrimage (at that time to the Holy Land, since it was still in Jerusalem) could visit the Holy Column, and could see marks left from the hands of Jesus where he gripped it as he was being whipped. I assume that this is pious legend, but I figured since the column has that dark & light marble, maybe there's a place where the dark parts look like hands. I did not see it, but if you do, let me know!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
Here is our next set of texts - as we get into John chapter 6, we first encounter Jesus feeding the multitudes - in this case 5,000 families!
Now, as you know, there is also an account o Jesus feeding 4,000, and so you may also know that some scholars might speculate that these are just different versions of the same story that circulated and were handed down orally, until they were written down. Even the fact that both stories occur in the same gospel would not stop that kind of speculation. So I thought the first question I would have to ask was whether the Church fathers thought this was one event or two - BUT (and you see where this is going) I forgot that Jesus himself makes reference to two separate events (in Matthew 16 and in Mark 8) so there is no question for the Church fathers - these are two separate events. So it seems that Jesus performed this sign (miracle) of the feeding of the multitudes on two occasions. It's not just one event told two different ways, and it's also ...
My voice was still recovering from a bad cold, so not sounding my best, but this was a great conversation about pilgrimage, for the Jubilee year - more of this coming in other interviews! (FYI, I think I was the third of three guests that day, so you will have to fast forward to find me)
It seems that one way or another we need to talk about different kinds, or different levels of heresy. What I have been calling heresy vs. heterodoxy, others call heresy on fundamental doctrines vs. heresy on less fundamental doctrines. In other words, Heresy with a capital H (over fundamental doctrines like the Trinity and christology) are the kinds of heresies that move one outside the boundaries of what Christianity is, and that's because the very definition of Christianity is defined according to these fundamental doctrines. To refuse to sign the Creed at the Council of Nicaea in 325, or the Council of Constantinople in 381 - and indeed to reject any of the contents of the Creed today - means that a person is NOT a Christian.
So are the non-chalcedonians, such as the miaphysites (including St. Gregory of Narek, and today's Coptic Christians) - are they heretics? Well, like it is with a lot of things, that depends on your definition of heresy. If you include in your definition of ...
