Tag Archives: Jesus

Praying with the Church 2 – Praying with Jesus: Sacred Time, Sacred Term

These are reflections on Scot McKnight‘s book, Praying with the Church, that I wrote and shared with a small circles of friends in 2006. I’ve decided to publish them here only lightly edited. Since they are four years old, they don’t necessarily reflect exactly what I would say today, but they do accurately capture my [...]
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Heaven & Earth (& Hell) 4 – Sheol

Hell, of course, is an English word. While I’ve heard some say that it’s not necessarily helpful to examine the different words that are sometimes translated “Hell”, I’ve personally found it beneficial. So I’m going to spend several posts looking at each of those words. I’m going to start with the oldest, the Hebrew Sheol. [...]
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Holy. What’s in a word?

This will be just a short post. It’s primary purpose is to urge anyone reading to go listen to Fr. Thomas Hopko’s podcast, Jesus – The Holy One of God. It’s the most recent one of his Names of Jesus podcast series, all of which are well worth the time it takes to listen to [...]
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Fallen

When I heard that Jennifer Knapp was releasing a new CD, I placed an order for it. As part of my order, I got a copy of her EP Evolving. I’ve been enjoying it for several days now. I’ve particularly enjoyed the song Fallen and, as music often does for me, it spurred the reflections [...]
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Four Hundred Texts on Love 12

43.  If a man desires something, he makes every effort to attain it. But of all things which are good and desirable the divine is incomparably the best and the most desirable. How assiduous, then, we should be in order to attain what is of its very nature good and desirable. As something of a [...]
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Four Hundred Texts on Love 10

38.  If love is long-suffering and kind (cf. 1 Cor. 13:4), a man who is contentious and malicious clearly alienates himself from love. And he who is alienated from love is alienated from God, for God is love. There are so many things we do by which we alienate ourselves from love. I doubt that [...]
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Four Hundred Texts on Love 8

30. You should know that you have been greatly benefited when you have suffered deeply because of some insult or indignity; for by means of the indignity self-esteem has been driven out of you. Here we find another distinction in patristic thought that tends to run at a tangent to modern thought. It is true [...]
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Four Hundred Texts on Love 2

2.  Dispassion engenders love, hope in God engenders dispassion, and patience and forbearance engender hope in God; these in turn are the product of complete self-control, which itself springs from fear of God. Fear of God is the result of faith in God. This text by St. Maximos revolves another idea we are prone to [...]
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Original Sin 14 – The Two Natures of Christ

Whether through the hands of another human being, in the narrative text of the Holy Scriptures, or through some sense of direct connection, it has always been Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ, who draws me toward Christianity and who keeps me circling in a whirlpool of love with Jesus at its center. But I [...]
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The Jesus Prayer, A Journey of Faith 1

For me, the Jesus Prayer stands like an icon at the center of my journey into the Christian faith. And yet, it’s an odd icon, for I prayed it for many years before I really understood that it was a distinct prayer tradition of the church. I suppose it’s fitting that what is considered the [...]
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