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okie777

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Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi
The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays. This ancient Christian principle refers to the relationship between worship and belief. It provided a measure for developing the ancient Christian creeds and canon of scripture through the prayer texts of the Church's liturgy. More than 300 years of liturgical traditions provided the theological framework for establishing both the creeds and biblical canon. The chaos of modern churchanity will pass as the Church begins to pray once again.
Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers...
Since many have endeavored to reproduce a narrative concerning the events that have come to fulfillment among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and became ministers of the Word delivered these traditions to us, it seemed good to me also, after investigating from the beginning every tradition carefully, to compose systematically a narrative for your benefit, most excellentTheophilus , in order that you come to recognize completely the reliability concerning
the words by which you have been catechized.
The Kingdom of God is within and among you.
If you can’t understand the meaning of this parable, how will
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
We write this to make our joy complete.
you understand all the other parables?
My Background:TheConvergenceMovement

Liturgical/Sacramental

Evangelical

Charismatic


Theology

Biblical Foundation

5-fold Ministry/Government


Orthodoxy

Personal Conversion

Power of the Spirit


Universality

Evangelism & Mission

Spiritual Gifts


Liturgical Worship

Pulpit-Centered Worship

Charismatic Worship


Social Action

Personal Holiness

Kingdom


Incarnational: Theology,
History, and Sacramental

Biblical: Reformational, Pragmatic, Rational

Spiritual: Organic, Functional, Dynamic

Orthodoxy: One Bible, Two Testaments, Three Creeds, Four Councils, Five Centuries. (ie. Ongoing Incarnation of the Incarnate Word)
Catholicity: The Apostolic and Patristic Faith "believed everywhere, always, by everyone." (ie. One Lord for All Nations, Tribes, & Tongues)
[John 1: 1-14, 3:10, 6:63, 11: 49-53, 19, 20, 21]
[Genesis 22:18, 26:4, 28: 10-17, 32: 22-31, 35: 2-14]
[Romans 9-12; Ephesians 4; Acts 3: 20-21; Hebrews 6: 1-3]
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature...

Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. He went up to the temple of the LORD with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the Levites — all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the LORD. The king stood by his pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the LORD - to follow the LORD and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, and to obey the words
of the covenant written in this book.
[Apocalypse 10: 8-11]
You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
[Genesis 37, 39, 42-46, 48, 50: 18-20]
[Exodus 3; Deuteronomy 31; Hebrews]
You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.
[Exodus 1: 8-14, 10: 1-11, 10: 24-29, 12: 31-36]
[Numbers 6, 8, 11, 13, 15, 27: 12-22, 34: 50-56]
" ...When you read Paul's letters, or anyone else's writings, you must hear Me. Only when you receive your bread directly from Me will the eyes of your heart be opened... " [171]" The life of every person is in My book, and their lives are a book that will be read by all of creation for all eternity. The history of the world is the library of God's Wisdom... "[84]" My church is the book that I am writing, and the whole world is about to read it. Until now, the world has wanted to read the book that the evil one has written about My church, but soon I will release My book " [85]The Vision
[Deuteronomy; Joshua; Judges; Scrolls of Wisdom / Prophecy]
" ...I am not Mary, but I too am a mother to Jesus. I am Jerusalem above. I am your mother too because I am the mother of all who worship in Spirit and truth... Men have made many monuments to me, but I have never died. Many have tried to bring me down to earth. They have mostly been those who have sat at my feet, trying to use me. They try to bring me to earth through their own works rather than faith, which alone can establish me on the earth. You can see me as you do now because of the vision that you have. If your vision were greater I would be even more to you. You are really only seeing a little more of me than those who only see a bronze statue. I do have some in this city who have begun to see me as more than just a statue. That is why I am alive. As their vision grows I will be revealed more and more to this city... " [95]The Torch & The Sword
[John 13:23, 19:26, 21:24; 1 John 1:4; Apocalypse]
[1 John; 2 John 7; 3 John 13; 2 Corithians 3:2-6]
" ...Only when you seek to be exposed, and allow who you are in your heart to be exposed, will you walk in the light as I am in the light... " [175]" ...Everything that I am doing, I am doing in your heart. That is where the living waters flow. That is where I am. " [184]" ...The springs of life issue from the heart, not the mind. My wisdom is not just in your mind, nor just in your heart. My wisdom is the perfect union of both mind and heart. Because man was made in My image, his mind and heart can never agree apart from Me... " [63-64]" ...the true power of My words can only be seen when they are written in the hearts of My people. Living epistles are more powerful than letters written on paper or stone... " [83]The Vision
[John 13, 15, 17, 19; Galatians; John 14, 16, 20, 21]
" When they start to believe their vision in their heart, and not just their minds, I will be free from this avenue of monuments and will be raised above the palaces and castles of men. When that happens, the King will come to this city... No one can see me who does not honor the fathers and mothers. If you honor the fathers and mothers, you will give swords to the sons and the daugthers... most only see me as a monument, cold and tarnished. When people begin to see me as I am they are drawn to me like a nursing child to its mother. I too have been made to be a desire of every searching heart. The King and I are one... " [96]The Torch & The Sword
[2 Corithians 5:16; Luke 24:31; John 20:29]

" ...I am building My city in the hearts of men, with the hearts of men. " [159]" ...My dwelling places will only be found where all of My streams flow together into one. My builders will come from every stream, but they will work as one... My builders will have the wisdom to complete the survey before they build. Each of my houses will fit perfectly into the land where they are located... The first skill that My builders develop is the skill of surveying. They must know the land because I designed the land for My people. When you build with My wisdom, what you build will fit perfectly with the land. " [163]The Vision
[Matthew 1: 18-25; Luke 1, 2: 22-38, 4:21, 7:45, 8:21]
" ...No one can see me as I am who does not see the glory in the children. I have the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the new birth. It is the wisdom of the fathers and mothers, old and young, which the path of life follows... The new creation woman is about to be revealed, and all who see her will honor her. Neither my sons nor my daugthers can see me as I am unless they begin to look at me together, opening their hearts to what each other sees... " [96-97]The Torch & The Sword
Woman, behold thy Son.
From that hour, thedisciple tookherinto his own household.
Disciple, behold thy Mother.
BishopKallistos Ware: "I would like to share with you a patristic model, a recurrent model in the Fathers that can be summed up in the words microcosm and mediate. Human beings are a complex unity. My personhood is a single whole, but a whole that embraces many aspects. As humans we stand at the center and crossroads of the creation."
"...Standing at the crossroads, earthly yet heavenly, body yet soul, our human vocation is to reconcile and harmonize the differing levels of reality in which we participate. Our vocation is to spiritualize the material, without thereby dematerializing it. That is why reconciliation and peace are such a fundamental aspect of our personhood." Glorify God With Your Body
Aidan Hart: "God created each thing with a word, a logos spoken by the Logos Himself. Furthermore, the Fathers teach that each of these words continue within that created thing, be it rock, tree or creature. These are the logoi from the Logos. By the grace of God and our repentance, our senses are purified so that we can hear, can sense these words hidden within each created thing. Gradually we perceive that these individual words in fact form a pattern. We realize that the cosmos is in a poem of love from the Creator to us, a fragrance trailing behind the divine Lover which woos us to find Him." Transfiguring Matter
Scott Hahn:"The Christian life is seen as a priestly self-sacrificial offering, a worship in the Spirit in which each believer, beginning in baptism, participates personally in Christ’s paschal sacrifice... In other words, they are to dedicate their whole selves to God, to surrender their wills totally to the will of God." [125]"The liturgy of the new covenant, the Eucharist, forms the pattern of life for the firstborn of the new family of God. Like the liberated Israelites, they no longer serve as slaves but as sons... The offering of spiritual sacrifices is not only something that Christians do — it is of the very substance of their being; it is who they are." [126]
"In the final pages of the Apocalypse, then, the human vocation given in the first pages of Genesis is fulfilled. Before the throne of God and the Lamb, the royal sons of God are shown worshipping him, gazing upon his face with his name written upon their foreheads, and reigning forever (Rev.22:1-5). John chooses his words carefully here to evoke the Old Testament promises of God’s intimate presence to those who serve him. The word rendered 'worship' in most translations of Revelation 22:3 ...describes Adam’s original vocation as well as the purpose of the exodus and conquest." [129] Toward a Liturgical Hermeneutic
Bill Hamon:"The history of the Children of Israel was written for typological illustrations of what would happen to the Church..." [187]"...a complete Charismatic believes and practices all of the biblical truths that were maintained by the Catholics during the Dark Ages. He also believes and practices all the truths and spiritual blessings that have been restored since the days of the Reformation to the present time." [240]"...With the restoration of every new truth greater enlightenment and reality is brought concerning old truths. Nothing is lost but everything is enhanced. Any supposedly new truth that deletes, belittles, or does away with an old truth is not a truth at all..." [326]Eternal Church (v1997)
PeterWagner:"Research about the New Apostolic Reformation is just beginning. Many Christian leaders still have no idea that this movement even exists... Part of our inbred Western arrogance tends to evaluate whatever happens by using our own set of experiences and our own scale of values as the criteria. This must and will change..." [49]"Traditional church leaders begin with the present and then look to the past. New apostolic leaders begin with the future and then look to the present. Most denominations are heritage driven. Most apostolic networks are vision driven. The difference is enormous. Traditional leaders long for the past, live in the present and fear the future. New apostolic leaders appreciate the past, live in the present and long for the future." [56]ChurchQuake!
Rick Joyner:"...Even though Israel was a single nation, it was composed of different tribes, each with different callings and functions in the overall plan of God. One important lesson Israel had to learn in the wilderness was how the different tribes were to march together and function in unity. The same is true of the body of Christ...""The only identity given to the biblical church was a geographical identity. Each church was named after the city in which it was located... Never did the Lord recognize a church according to any characteristic other than its location..." [135-136]
"In the one church, there are supposed to be differences but not divisions. The church contains a unity of diversity, not a unity of conformity. If the church is to function properly, there must be different types of congregations...""Each congregation should have its own vision, but it must be a vision which fits with the rest of what the Lord is doing in His church...""True spiritual unity is based on unity of function, purpose, and love for one another... The tribes of Israel were commanded to be in unity in only two basic areas: worship and warfare... In all other areas there could be diversity..."[137-138, 140]The Journey Begins(v2006)
James W. Goll:"In 1991 I had a dream in which the Holy Spirit said to me, 'I will reveal the hidden streams of the prophetic to you.' ... I have since come to understand that the primary meaning of my dream was that the Lord would lead me into the world of the 'desert fathers' and the Christian 'mystics' of times past. These were the contemplatives who pursued the daily presence of God and of whom little or nothing has been known by the vast majority of Christians today, paticularly of us in the Protestant evangelical and charismatic wing of the Church. Shortly after I had this dream I embarked on a yearlong adventure during which I read nothing but Catholic and Orthodox literature along with my Bible..." [49]
"The inward journey is an excursion deeper and deeper into our souls toward the very center, where God dwells. One of the great 'mysteries' of the Christian faith is the truth that the infinite Creator God can abide within the spirits of His greatest creation, His people." [61]"...We are His house, His temple! In that house are 'many dwelling places,' and Jesus has already gone there to 'prepare' a place for us. He resides in the fullness of His being in the deepest recesses of our spirit, and He is preparing to receive us to Himself in that innermost place..." [62-63]
"...In the final, literal act of breaking bread, their understanding was complete, and they recognized Jesus for who He was -- the Bread of Life. Jesus had opened a repository in their hearts and filled it with His Word. Their hearts, minds, and spirits were coming into union with His Spirit. James says that we should, 'in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.' Our whole being needs to be saved: body, mind, emotions, and spirit... This is 'Christian Faith 101,' the basic foundation: Store up the Word of God in our hearts. Let Jesus feed us His Word. Then, let the wind of the Spirit blow upon His Word, and that wind will fan the flames of God's fire in our hearts. Our eyes will be opened and we will come into the knowledge of our glorious Messiah..." [215]
The Lost Art of Practicing His Presence
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
The Mystery of One Garden, Two Trees, & Earthen Vessels
As Above, So Below -- Know Thyself -- As Within, So Without
Inner Babylon Must Fall That Jerusalem Above May Descend
In & On Earth, As It Is In Heaven: All of Creation is Groaning
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations...
My Motivation:CompleteConquest / Conversion ofthe Heart
Ghandi:"Be the change that you want to see in the world"
Aidan Hart: "In Christ, man is called to lead the cosmos from being a jungle into a verdant city. But to so rule what is outside himself, he must first rule what is within himself; he must be inwardly united to God if he is to unite the world to God." Transfiguring Matter
BishopKallistos Ware: "...Jerusalem, we are told, 'is built as a city at unity with itself.' We, each one of us, must be a city at unity with ourselves. If we are to be peacemakers, we need to rediscover our inner unity. The great principle about peacemaking is from within outwards. You can’t expect peace to be imposed by governments. It’s got to come from the human heart. From within, outwards — and we might also add from heaven, earthwards.Our human vocation is to be microcosmos, microtheos — to be a mediator, to unify creation..." The Passions:
Thomas Merton"If I can unite in myself the thought and the devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russians with the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians. From that secret and unspoken unity in myself can eventually come a visible and manifest unity of all Christians. If we want to bring together what is divided, we can not do so by imposing one division upon the other or absorbing one division into the other. But if we do this, the union is not Christian. It is political, and doomed to further conflict. We must contain all divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ."[21]Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Authentic Catechesis Leads To True Knowledge of Self
" ...You are concerned that the daugthers are easily deceived. All may be deceived, but the wisdom of the women could keep you from much folly, like the folly of cutting down that tree! ... You did not plant a righteous tree in its place. Now it has sprouted again, and the power of evil within it has multiplied. You cannot just dispel the evil, but you must always fill its place with good or this will happen... The battle for this city, and many other cities has begun. " [98] " Do not fear. I too was brought to earth for the battle that is now upon us. I must be known as motherhood itself, but I must also be known as a warrior too. Do not fear. The light that is in us is greater than the darkness... " [100]The Torch & The Sword
Bishop Fulton Sheen: "There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church— which is, of course, quite a different thing." (Foreward to Radio Replies Vol. 1, page ix)AudioSeries
Scott Hahn:"We share in the divine sonship of Jesus Christ. This is the essence of salvation and the substance of Catholicism. Baptized into Christ, we are partakers of the divine nature... The Gospel, according to the Catholic Church, is more than just a legal declaration of our innocence. It's not just that we stand before God the Father looking like Jesus. We are filled with the very life of God, as much as any creature can be. We could never have achieved this ourselves.... [52]Reasons To Believe
PeterKreeft:"The Protestant Reformation began when a Catholic monk rediscovered a Catholic doctrine in a Catholic book. The monk, of course, was Luther; the doctrine was justification by faith; and the book was the Bible. One of the tragic ironies of Christian history is that the deepest split in the history of the Church, and the one that has occasioned the most persecution, hatred, and bloody wars on both sides — this split between Protestant and Catholic originated in a misunderstanding. And to this day many Catholics and many Protestants still do not realize that fact." [277]
"...It can end only when both Protestants and Catholics do the same thing today and understand what they are doing: discovering a Catholic doctrine in a Catholic book. [281]Fundamentals of the Faith
St. Agustine:"Now he is in bondage to a sign who uses, or pays homage to, any significant object without knowing what it signifies: he, on the other hand, who either uses or honors a useful sign divinely appointed, whose force and significance he understands, does not honor the sign which is seen and temporal, but that to which all such signs refer. Now such a man is spiritual and free even at the time of his bondage, when it is not yet expedient to reveal to carnal minds those signs by subjection to which their carnality is to be overcome..."On Christian Doctrine (3:9)
TimothyWare:"The Orthodox approach to religion is fundamentally a liturgical approach, which understands doctrine in the context of divine worship: it is no coincidence that the word 'Orthodoxy' should signify alike right belief and right worship, for the two things are inseperable...Orthodoxy see human beings above all else as liturgical creatures who are most truly themselves when they glorify God, and who find their perfection and self-fullfilment in worship." [266]The Orthodox Church
St. John Damascene:"Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, (Bar. 3.38) I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honouring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God." [I]
You see what great strength and divine zeal are given to those who venerate the images of the saints with faith and a pure conscience. Therefore, brethren, let us take our stand on the rock of the faith, and on the tradition of the Church, neither removing the boundaries laid down by our holy fathers of old, (Prov. 22.28) nor listening to those who would introduce innovation and destroy the economy of the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of God. If any man is to have his foolish way, in a short time the whole Organisation of the Church will be reduced to nothing. Brethren and beloved children of the Church do not put your mother to shame, do not rend her to pieces." [III]Apologia -- Holy Images
Vladmir Lossky: "All the development of the dogmatic battles which the Church has waged down the centuries appears to us... as dominated by the constant preoccupation which the Church has had to safeguard, at each moment of her history, for all Christians, the possibility of attaining to the fullness of the mystical union.
So the Church struggled against the gnostics in defence of this same idea of deification as the universal end: 'God became man that men might become gods'. She affirmed, against the Arians, the dogma of the consubstantial Trinity; for it is the Word, the Logos, who opens to us the way to union with the Godhead; and if the incarnate Word has not the same substance with the Father, if he be not truly God, our deification is impossible. The Church condemned the Nestorians that she might overthrow the middle wall of partition, whereby, in the person of Christ himself, they would have separated God from man. She rose up against the Apollinarians and Monophysites to show that, since the fullness of true human nature has been assumed by the Word, it is our whole humanity that must enter into union with God. She warred with the Monothelites because, apart from the union of the two wills, divine and human, there could be no attaining to deification -- 'God created man by his will alone, but He cannot save him without the co-operation of the Human will.' The Church emerged triumphant from the iconoclastic controversy, affirming the possibility of the expression through a material medium of the divine realities -- symbol and pledge of our sanctification.
The main preoccupation, the issue at stake, in the questions which successfully arise respecting the Holy Spirit, grace and the Church herself... is always the possibility, the manner or the means of our union with God. All the history of Christian dogma unfolds itself about this mystical center..."Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church( 9-10 )
Short Excerpts taken from The Old Is New Again
Steven Covington:"...mystagogy was adapted to Christianity. It allowed bishops to initiate larger numbers of converts 'into the mysteries' while still offering the deeply personal experience of Christ that had been the hallmark of Christian conversion..."
"The renowned mystagogues Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Theodore of Mopsuestia stressed an initiation based first in an experience of Christ through the 'mysteries' (---). The experience was followed by an intense period of catechesis explaining for the neophyte Christians everything they had just encountered in the rituals of exorcism, baptism, chrism, and Eucharist..."
"The Church Fathers did not view mystagogy as simply an initiation to the sacraments but an initiation through the sacraments. The initiation rituals conveyed a reality through which the catechumens would become invested in the life of Christ by experiencing him..." [] "The mystagogues introduced heavy doses of typology into their baptismal homilies to show that the events in which the neophytes were participating were foreshadowed in the Old Testament then ordained in the New Testament..."
"...mystagogy was also a way of learning to live as Christ. The fourth-century bishops used mystagogical theology to call the new Christians to a radical conversion of life, a new state of consciousness that caused the neophytes to examine everything with the eyes and mind of Christ..."
Short Excerpts taken from Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology
Gordon Lathrop:"The Gospel of Mark is not a full cosmology. Rather, the book involves, as at least part of its concern, a significant reorientation of Plato’s work. This reorientation takes the 'likely story' ofTimaeus and deals with it as a 'broken myth.' Such breaking receives the terms of the myth and its power to evoke and describe our experience of the world... And in this broken myth, Bartimaeus and the hole in the heavens function as broken symbols: the philosopher is blind and then a candidate for baptism; the perfect sphere is torn as the triune mercy of God is made known on the earth. These symbols evoke the whole myth, and that account is seen as broken, in need, now referring beyond itself."[ 34-35 ]
"The biblical business, time and again, seems to be to propose a hole in these systems or to reverse their values while still using their strengths, to turn or re-aim their words toward another purpose. The biblical concern seems to be to break these systems before the encounter with God and to fill biblical liturgy with just that encounter..." [ 39 ]"Time and again a diversity of cosmologies are received into the biblical tradition. Then, by the addition of a few elements, by the juxtaposition of a contrary text, by a mimesis and reversal of values, by a tear or a hole, these cosmologies are re-aimed, reoriented. And time and again, this reorientation has a liturgical expression... The New Testament carries this general biblical pattern of reinterpretation yet further, with christological and trinitarian purpose. When the reinterpretation has to do with cosmology, a liturgical expression frequently lies close at hand..." [ 42-43 ]
"For these gospel books, just as the story of Exodus 3, the activity of God takes place in the midst of the actual places and circumstances of this world. As these books were read in the assembly, the community would have heard stories read to proclaim the work of the risen Christ in its midst, exactly as Mark's Gospel seems to have intended. In these books, the risen Christ is perceived to be none other than the historical Jesus of the stories, indeed, the historically crucified Jesus, encounterable now..." [130] "It is no wonder, then, that the three Gospels written after Mark all add an image of the Christian assembly at the end of their books, as the locus of the appearance of the Risen One..." [132] "But these final stories were not told in order to make the hearers wish they had been there too. Rather, in each case, the stories at the end of the Gospels characterize the actual continuing life of the assemblies that knew this book..." [133]
Short Excerpts taken from Letter & Spirit
Scott Hahn:"For both Jews and Christians, the scriptural texts, though historical in character, are not merely records of past events. The scriptures are intended to sweep the worshipper into their action. Liturgy is the privileged place of this 'actualization' of God’s word, because the liturgy itself is formed from the scriptures and by the scriptures. Scriptures is, in this sense, for liturgy." [35]
"The Hebrew scriptures describe many covenants, some human, some divine… We may mention, for example, the divine covenants with creation, with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, and with David. Each successive covenant was really a renewal of the primeval 'cosmic covenant.' But each, in succession, extended membership in God’s family to a greater degree of people: what was first given to a couple was then extended to a household, then a tribe, then a nation, and finally a kingdom. And with each successive covenant came a re-templing, a re-appropriation of the scriptures—A renewed law and renewed order of worship." [59]
"Scriptures leads its reader, or hearer, to a theophany—and, more than a theophany, a participation in the divine nature (---), a communion with the holy. For, according to biblical religion, God alone is holy (---), but he deigns to share his nature with his chosen people. Through this communion they become his holy people." [168]
"God’s holy ones, his saints, are not just good citizens and upright people. They are set apart for coming into the divine presence and meditating that presence... God has poured himself into his people. This life he gives is life-giving; and, as such, it must be either passed on or extinguished. This is the story of Anthony of Egypt and of the early martyrs—indeed, it is the story of all the saints. They participated in the divine nature; and godlike, they gave their lives in love." [171]
Short Excerpts taken from Letter & Spirit: Reading Salvation
Sofia Cavalletti: "...When we speak about 'memorial' in the liturgy, we find ourselves using the same terms we used when speaking about typology with regards to the reading of Scripture. Memorial and typology each annul the distance between historical events, causing them to converge into the 'eternal present' of a manifestation of salvation and of God's love which encompasses the whole of history. Typology makes the listening to the Word today capable of creating a link with past history and what is still the object of hope, trying to discover the 'golden thread' of the plan of God which unites events into a single history. The memorial makes it possible to live today the salvation already realized in the events of the past and projected towards the eschatological completion, awaited now in hope and prayer." [85]
Jeremy Driscoll: "...This Mystery includes the power of the Word of God in every moment to be received anew as an actual communication of salvation. Every proclamation of the Word in the liturgy is a moment irreducibly new: the event of Christ (---) becomes the event of the assembly that here and now hears this Word. The Word proclaimed in liturgy is not some pale reflection or residue of the event proclaimed there. It is the whole reality to which the words bear testimony made present" [91]"The exodus of Israel out of Egypt is the 'exodus' of Jesus from this world to his Father, and every believer discovers in penetrating the meaning of the Scriptures that he or she too is living this one and only exodus. The many events of the Scriptures are parts of the one event: Jesus Christ, and him crucified and risen in his Church, in each believer. This is the one and only center of the Scriptures..." [92]
Scott Hahn: "Recognition of this biblical worldview has important hermeneutical implications. The interpreter of the Bible enters into a dialouge with a book that is itself an exegetical dialouge--a complex and highly cohesive interpretive web in which later texts can only be understood in relation to ones that came earlier. In order to read the texts as they are written the exegete needs to acknowledge the authors' deep-seated belief in both the divine economy and in the typological expression of that economy. This is the teaching that the Scriptures themselves attribute to Christ. Words and deeds found in the Law, the prophets, and the Psalms, are signs that find fulfillment in him..." [ 133 ]
Short Excerpts taken from Letter &Spirit: Authority of Mystery
Mary Healy: "Who could have ever imagined, for instance, that the Ark of the Covenant before which David danced for joy prefigured an infinitely more intimate dwelling place for God among his people, Mary the Ark of the New Covenant in whose womb his very flesh was enclosed, and before whom John the Baptist leaped for joy before his birth? Who could have fathomed that Eve's creation from the rib of the sleeping Adam would foreshadow the Bride of the New Adam, the Church, born from the pierced side in the sleep of death? Who could have guessed that Joseph's betrayal by his brothers, which ultimately led to his saving them from famine as prime minister of Egypt, would anticipate Christ's rejection by his own 'brothers,' which led to his saving them from eternal death through the gift of the bread of life? These examples, found already in the New Testament's use of the Old Testament and then developed in the writings of the Church Fathers, could be multiplied indefinitely." [36]
David Fagerberg: "There are not two liturgies, one on earth and one in heaven. There is one liturgy, on earth and in heaven. The liturgy of the Church is the heavenly liturgy as it is practiced on earth, and it is crucial to restore this eschatological dimension to our practice of liturgy. In the liturgy we do what the angels do, namely, lose ourselves in a joy that erupts in praise. St. John Chyrsostom said that joy issues when the lover receives the beloved. In that case, the liturgy issues when the Church receives her beloved. The liturgy is our trysting place with God. According to the dictionary, a tryst is 'an agreement, as between lovers, to meet at a certain time and place.' Exactly! God, our Divine Lover, has agreed to meet us on holy ground for communion and from that encounter with the Father through the risen Christ, the Holy Spirit creates 'theologian souls.'" [57-58]"Becoming a theologian-soul means being further conformed to the God-man. We are to become an icon of the icon of God..." [67]
Short Excerpts taken fromThe Spirit ofthe Liturgy
CardinalRatzinger:"The centering of all history in Christ is both the liturgical transmission of that history and the expression of a new experience of time, in which past, present, and future make contact, because they have been inserted into the presence of the risen Lord...
...Perhaps the most telling episode of all is that of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Their hearts are transformed, so that, through the outward events of Scripture, they can discern its inward center, from which everything comes and which everything tends: the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. ...they experience in reverse fashion what happened to Adam and Eve when they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: their eyes are opened. Now they no longer see just the externals but the reality that is not apparent to their senses yet shines through their senses: it is the Lord, now alive in a new way.
...The Incarnation means, in the first place, that the invisible God enters into the visible world, so that we, who are bound to matter, can know Him. In this sense, the way to the Incarnation was already being prepared in all that God said and did in history for man's salvation. But this descent of God is intended to draw us into a movement of ascent. The Incarnation is aimed at man's transformation through the Cross and to the new corporeality of the Resurrection. God seeks us where we are, not so that we stay there, but so that we may come to be where He is, so that we may get beyond ourselves..."Adoremus: The Question of Images

My Interests

Biblical Cosmology

I'd like to meet:


Ideally, I would love to meet anyone that has something of value to say, discuss, or impart. I am paticularly interested in communicating with those who have a deep abiding love for God, the whole House of Israel, the multitudes that dwell in darkness, and all things Sacred / Divine.

Short Excerpts taken fromBehold The Pierced One
CardinalRatzinger: "As far as I have been able to ascertain, it was above all the language of the Song of Songs which was the determining factor in the development of medieval mysticism... The Fathers, like the great theologians and men of prayer of the Middle Ages, saw the impassioned language of this love song as expressing the theme of God's love for the Church and the soul and also that of man's response. Words such as these were thus fitted to integrate all the passion of human love into man's relationship with God..." [61]

"The task of the heart is self-preservation, holding together what is its own. The pierced Heart of Jesus has also truly 'overturned' (---) this definition. This Heart is not concerned with self-preservation but with self-surrender. It saves the world by opening itself. The collapse of the opened Heart is the content of the Easter mystery. The Heart saves, indeed, but it saves by giving itself away. Thus, in the Heart of Jesus, the center of Christianity is set before us. It expresses everything, all that is genuinely new and revolutionary in the New Covenant. This Heart calls to our heart. It invites us to step forth out of the futile attempt of self-preservation and, by joining in the task of love, by handing ourselves over to him and with him, to discover the fullness of love which alone is eternity and which alone sustains the world." [69]

Short Excerpts taken fromGodIsLove
PopeBenedictXVI: "...God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation—the Logos, primordial reason—is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love. Eros is thus supremely ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to become one with agape. We can thus see how the reception of the Song of Songs in the canon of sacred Scripture was soon explained by the idea that these love songs ultimately describe God's relation to man and man's relation to God. Thus the Song of Songs became, both in Christian and Jewish literature, a source of mystical knowledge and experience, an expression of the essence of biblical faith: that man can indeed enter into union with God—his primordial aspiration..." [10]

"Jesus gave this act of oblation an enduring presence through his institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. He anticipated his death and resurrection by giving his disciples, in the bread and wine, his very self, his body and blood as the new manna (---). The ancient world had dimly perceived that man's real food—what truly nourishes him as man—is ultimately the Logos, eternal wisdom: this same Logos now truly becomes food for us—as love. The Eucharist draws us into Jesus' act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving..." [13]

"...Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become 'one body', completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbour are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself..." [14]

The Word of the Lord: Cairo, Egypt -- September 1982

"I will change the understanding and expression of Christianity in the whole earth in one generation"

Changing the understanding: speaks of the way unbelievers will perceive the Church. Today, much of the unbelieving world sees the Church as boring, irrelevant and non-threatening.

Changing the expression: speaks of the way the Church expresses its life together as a people of prayer walking outSermon on the Mount lifestyles under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

Four heart standards in which the End-Time Church is to function:1. Night and Day Prayer: A spirit of prayer in the life of the Church.
2. Holiness of Heart: Sermon on the Mount lifestyles; Mt. 5-7
3. Extravagant Giving to the Poor: Live simple to give more...
4. Prevailing Faith: Walking in the Prophetic Spirit...Change: brings conflict because it requires new ideas with new people in positions of influence. (Catch theVision& Pursue the Reality)

Short Excerpts of My Favorite Papal Encyclicals
Pope John Paul II: "...It is urgent to rediscover and to set forth once more the authentic reality of the Christian faith, which is not simply a set of propositions to be accepted with intellectual assent. Rather, faith is a lived knowledge of Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out. A word, in any event, is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is put into practice. Faith is a decision involving one's whole existence. It is an encounter, a dialogue, a communion of love and of life between the believer and Jesus Christ, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6). It entails an act of trusting abandonment to Christ, which enables us to live as he lived (cf. Gal 2:20), in profound love of God and of our brothers and sisters."The Splendor of Truth (88)

"'All human beings desire to know', and truth is the proper object of this desire. Everyday life shows how concerned each of us is to discover for ourselves, beyond mere opinions, how things really are. Within visible creation, man is the only creature who not only is capable of knowing but who knows that he knows, and is therefore interested in the real truth of what he perceives. People cannot be genuinely indifferent to the question of whether what they know is true or not....It is essential, therefore, that the values chosen and pursued in one's life be true, because only true values can lead people to realize themselves fully, allowing them to be true to their nature. The truth of these values is to be found not by turning in on oneself but by opening oneself to apprehend that truth even at levels which transcend the person. This is an essential condition for us to become ourselves and to grow as mature, adult persons." Faith & Reason (25)

"Peoples everywhere, open the doors to Christ! His Gospel in no way detracts from man's freedom, from the respect that is owed to every culture and to whatever is good in each religion. By accepting Christ, you open yourselves to the definitive Word of God, to the One in whom God has made himself fully known and has shown us the path to himself."
"It is necessary to keep these two truths together, namely, the real possibility of salvation in Christ for all mankind and the necessity of the Church for salvation. Both these truths help us to understand the one mystery of salvation, so that we can come to know God's mercy and our own responsibility. Salvation, which always remains a gift of the Holy Spirit, requires man's cooperation, both to save himself and to save others"
"The universality of salvation means that it is granted not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church. Since salvation is offered to all, it must be made concretely available to all."
Mission of the Redeemer (3, 9, & 10)

Ecumenical Dialogue & Concerns:
ECT/TheChurch's Commitment
Bishop BC Butler:"Let us not fear that truth might endanger truth"

Vladmir Lossky: "...since the cleavage between East and West only dates from the middle of the eleventh century, all that is prior to this date constitutes a common and indivisible treasure for both parts of divided Christendom. The Orthodox Church would not be what it is if it had not St. Cyprian, St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great. No more could the Roman Catholic Church do without St. Athanasius, St. Basil or St. Cyril of Alexandria..." Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church(Pg. 12 )

Pope John Paul II: "The unity of all divided humanity is the will of God. For this reason he sent his Son, so that by dying and rising for us he might bestow on us the Spirit of love. On the eve of his sacrifice on the Cross, Jesus himself prayed to the Father for his disciples and for all those who believe in him, that they might be one, a living communion. This is the basis not only of the duty, but also of the responsibility before God and his plan, which falls to those who through Baptism become members of the Body of Christ, a Body in which the fullness of reconciliation and communion must be made present."That TheyMay Be One (6)

"The Church, in Christ, is like a sacrament--a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men.' The Church's first purpose is to be the sacrament of the inner union of men with God. Because men's communion with one another is rooted in that union with God, the Church is also the sacrament of the unity of the human race. In her, this unity is already begun, since she gathers men ‘from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues'; at the same time, the Church is the ‘sign and instrument' of the full realization of the unity yet to come."

"As sacrament, the Church is Christ's instrument. 'She is taken up by him also as the instrument for the salvation of all,' 'the universal sacrament of salvation,' by which Christ is 'at once manifesting and actualizing the mystery of God's love for men.'The Church 'is the visible plan of God's love for humanity,' because God desires 'that the whole human race may become one People of God, form one Body of Christ, and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit.'CatholicCatechism (775, 776)

CDF: "Therefore, in connection with the unicity and universality of the salvific mediation of Jesus Christ, the unicity of the Church founded by him must be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith. Just as there is one Christ, so there exists a single body of Christ, a single Bride of Christ..."

"The lack of unity among Christians is certainly a wound for the Church; not in the sense that she is deprived of her unity, but 'in that it hinders the complete fulfilment of her universality in history'”Dominus Iesus(IV)

"Christ 'established here on earth' only one Church and instituted it as a 'visible and spiritual community', that from its beginning and throughout the centuries has always existed and will always exist, and in which alone are found all the elements that Christ himself instituted..."

"It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them. Nevertheless, the word 'subsists' can only be attributed to the Catholic Church alone precisely because it refers to the mark of unity that we profess in the symbols of the faith..."Responses...(Q2)

Adapted from Rav A. I. Kook & quoted from the Yakar website.

"There are those who sing the song of their own lives, and in themselves find full spiritual satisfaction.

There are others who sing the song of their people. They leave the circle of individual selfhood because they find it without sufficient breadth. They attach themselves with a gentle love to the whole community of Israel.

There are others who reach towards more distant realms, and go beyond the boundary of Israel to sing the song of humankind. Their spirit extends to the wider vistas of humanity.

Then there are those who rise towards higher horizons, linking themselves with all existence, with all Gods creatures, with all worlds. They sing their song with all of them. Tradition says that they who sing a portion of song each day are assured a share in the world to come.

And then there are those who rise with all these songs in one ensemble. The song of the self, the song of the people, the song of humanity, the song of the world all merge in them at all times in every hour."

Music:

Vertical & Intercessory Worship With The Word

Television:

ThePrayerRoom;GodTV;TBN;EWTN;FamilyLand;CatholicTV;OrthodoxT V;PresenceTV;GodTube;CatholicTelevision;

Books:

Typology, Mystagogy, & The Word Who Gives Himself As The Bread of Eternal Life.

Heroes:

The God-Man (Un)Veiled In Scripture & Revealed In Us
Do Not Love The World ~ 13 Minutes
Open Their Eyes To See You ~ 32 Minutes
Your Word Is Spirit & Life ~ 34 Minutes
Words Of Your Mouth ~ 52 Minutes
Body, Soul, & Spirit - Rain ~ 84 Minutes
Harp & Bowl Intercessory WorshipResources:IHOP-KC: PrayerPodcast; Voice; ThreeMacs; CRHOP; Hephzibah; 7Thunders; IHOP-ATL; NightWatch; IntercessorsArise;
Worship:IHOP-KC; PropheticWorshipRadio;Soaking; FireOnTheAltar; UneditedWorship; TheNightWatch;
Viewing Life From The Center Of DualityApocatastasis: NewAdvent; Wikipedia; .org; PreteristArchive; TentMaker; ScholarsCorner; RomanCatholicism; SaviorOfTheWorld; WhatTheHellIsHell; GospelOfInclusion;Pantelism; BibleTruths;
Kingdom: KingdomBibleStudies; Sigler; GodFire; HouseOfTheLord; NewBeginning; Arise; GodsKingdom; ThirdDay; TreeOfLifeOK; Typology: LetterAndSpirit; TypeAntiType; Symposia; NAAL;
One - Holy - Catholic - ApostolicPatristic: CORUNUM; NewAdvent; Monachos; CCEL; MariaLectrix; MikeAquilina; BiblicalGuild; TextExcavation; GregoryOfNyssa; RTforum; WiseSayings; WikiQuotes;
Vatican:Compendium of the Catechism;
Dominus Iesus: Unicity & Salvific Universality;Jesus Christ: The Bearer Of The Water of Life;
Communion & Stewardship: Human Persons;
Memory & Reconciliation: Faults of the Past;
The Jewish People & Their Sacred Scriptures;
Compendium: Social Doctrine of the Church;
Resources:PapalEncyclicals; Vatican2Voice; USCCB: NAB, Daily Readings, & Catechism SalvationHistory; LetterAndSpirit; ENTER; CatholicAudio; ScriptureCatholic; EWTN; Faith; CatholicPrimer; SecondExodus; SecondSpring; CatholicConvert; Adoremus; LumenGentleman; CatholicPreaching; Roman Observer; Envoy; CatholicAnswers; TheVeil; CircleOfPrayer;
Theology of the Body:.org; .net; .com;Catechesis by Pope John Paul II;PhatMass; Audio Lectures; Excellent Notes; CrossRoads; ChristendomAwake;SpiritualityANDSexuality;
Highly Recommended BooksGeorge Maloney:Singers Of The New Song;The Mystery of Christ In You;
The Undreamed Has Happened;
Abiding In The Indwelling Trinity;
Rick Joyner:The Vision: The Quest & The Call;The Torch & The Sword;
Forerunner:OneThing;Pursuit ofthe Holy;
The Rewardsof Fasting;Passion For Jesus; The Seven Longingsof the Human Heart;
Stephen E. Fowl:Interpretation of Scripture:
"From the time of John Cassian, the Church subscribed to a theory of the fourfold sense of scripture... This hermeneutical device made it possible for the Church to pray directly and without qualification even a troubling Psalm like 137. After all, Jerusalem was not merely a city in the Middle East, it was, according to the allegorical sense, the Church; according to the tropological sense, the faithful soul; and according to the anagogical sense, the center of God's new creation. The Psalm became a lament of those who long for the establishment of God's future kingdom and who are trapped in this disordered and troubled world, which with all its delights is still not their home. They seek an abiding city elsewhere. The imprecations against the Edomites and the Babylonians are transmuted into condemnations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. If you grant the fourfold sense of scripture, David sings like a Christian." [29-30]
Peter Leithart:Ascent to Love
"Medieval writers interpreted the Bible through the grid of the 'fourfold sense' of Scripture... The theory is that each story, event, person, or institution in Scripture can be interpreted in four different senses… [] …Without denying the historicity of any of the events recounted in Scripture, medieval writers also insisted that Scripture has a richness and fullness of meaning; not a bare record of historical events. Everything in Scripture points forward(---) and upward (---); it speaks not only of the universe as a whole, the macrocosm (---), but also of the human soul, the microcosm (---)." [21-23]
James Jordan: Through New Eyes
"The Greek word typos refers to an image impressed onto something else, for instance, wax. It is the word used in Scripture for the imprint of God’s heavenly pattern on the earth, and thus it is absolutely fundamental to a Biblical worldview."
"Because all men are made in the image of God, all men bear His imprint. Every man is, thus, in one sense a type of every other man. More importantly, church leaders are to be types or models for kingdom citizens (---). In terms of a topological view of history, the kingdom of men in the Old Covenant was a type of the New Covenant (---), and the first Adam was a type of the Last… [] …the early Church Fathers regarded typology as central to their understanding of the Scriptures. It enabled them to answer both their Jewish and their Gnostic critics..." [56 & 57]
Paul Murry:Drinking In The Word
"Dominican preaching is sometimes described, and for good reason, as doctrinal since it delights in pondering and proclaiming the mysteries of Creation, Incarnation, Redemption and Resurrection. But the manner in which Dominican preachers, like Catherine and Thomas, speak about imbibing the wine of the mystery of Christ, alerts us to the fact that real 'knowing' is always accompanied by a certain amazement. The wine of truth which Christ gives us to drink is also a wine of astonishment..."
"The medieval Dominicans, being not only celebrants of grace but also defenders of nature, clearly loved the image of drinking and drunkenness because it gave them a vivid way of speaking about preaching – about the need, first, to become 'drunk' on the Word, and then about the effects of that encounter with God : the ecstasy of self-forgetfulness..."
Timothy Radcliffe:The Promise of Life
"So too we are transformed by immersion in the Word of God, addressed to us. We do not read the Word so as to seek information. We ponder it, study it, meditate on it, live with it, eat and drink it..."
"The exodus from the Egypt of self-obsession is a moment of ecstasy. We are liberated from the dark and cramped little world of the ego. Like Miriam after the crossing of the Red Sea we will surely be exuberant. We exult in having entered the wide open spaces of God's friendship. David danced wildly before the ark; Mary exulted in the Lord, and the marvellous things he had done for her. The prayer of the preacher should surely be exultant, ecstatic. We are called 'To praise, to bless, to preach'. When the psalms say 'Let us sing a new song to the Lord', then let us do so! Dominic was exuberant in his prayer He used his whole body, stretching out his arms, lying on the ground, genuflecting and making a lot of noise. The whole body is saved by grace and so prays..."
Scott Hahn:Ordinary Work, Extraordinary...
"...Jesus lived the common priesthood that God intended for Adam -- and for all of us on earth. In this, as in everything, He is our model. But He is more than that. In baptism and Holy Communion, He is united with us. So we not only imitate Him; we participate in His life. He works in us, and we work in Him. We offer our work, as a priestly offering, a redemptive sacrifice, for the sake of our family members, neighbors, coworkers, and friends. And with Christ, we create the world anew, with our labors and our prayers." [31]
"...God is our Father. We are His children in Christ Jesus, the eternal Son; thus, gathered together around His table, the Church is the family of God on earth, as the Trinity is the Family of God in heaven... All families on earth are images of divinity, and they are domestic churches." [95]"...Our sexuality comes from God and returns to Him by way of a Christian couple's sacrificial offering -- their complete gift of self, the gift of their entire lives, given to one another and to God." [99]"God designed family life to draw us gradually out of ourselves, out of our selfishness, as we learn to make greater and more loving sacrifices for the sake of others..." [100]
Stratford Caldecott:Liturgy and Trinity
"It was Pope John Paul II who set the Church on the road to an adequate anthropology of the liturgy... According to the Pope’s 'nuptial anthropology', marriage partners are not merely turned towards one another in a dualistic relationship: they are also open towards a third, towards the child which expresses the unity of both in one flesh..."
"...a faculty that transcends yet at the same time unifies feeling and thought, body and soul, sensation and rationality. It is the kind of intelligence that sees the meaning in things, that reads them as symbols - symbols, not of something else, but of themselves as they stand in God..."
"...This kind of knowledge is justly called sobria ebrietas (---) because it is ecstatic, rapturous, although at the same time measured, ordered, dignified. It is an encounter with the Other which takes the heart out of itself and places it in another centre, which is ultimately the very centre of being, where all things are received from God."
"All of this is implicit in the liturgy, the school where we learn this drunken sobriety, this intelligence of the heart. Its ABC is the language of natural symbols, such as water, light, oil and the gestures of the body, which the liturgy employs to speak of the sacramental mysteries unfolding within it..."
TimothyWare:The Orthodox Church
"Just as each person is made according to the image of the Trinitarian God, so the Church as a whole is an icon of God the Trinity, reproducing on earth the mystery of unity in diversity. In the Trinity the three are one God, yet each is fully personal; in the Church a multitude of human persons is united in one, yet each preserves her or his personal diversity unimpaired..." [240]
"Worship, for the Orthodox Church, is nothing else than 'heaven on earth'. The Holy Liturgy is something that embraces two worlds at once, for both in heaven and on earth the liturgy is one and the same -- one altar, one sacrifice, one presence... [265] "The icons which fill the church serve as a point of meeting between heaven and earth. As each local congregation prays Sunday by Sunday, surrounded by the figures of Christ, the angels, and the saints, these visible images remind the faithful unceasingly of the invisible presence of the whole company of heaven at the Liturgy. The faithful can feel that the walls of the church open out upon eternity, and they are helped to realize that their Liturgy on earth is one and the same with the great Liturgy of heaven. The multitudinous icons express visibly the sense of 'heaven on earth'." [271-272]
"In most of the sacraments the Church takes material things - water, bread, wine, oil - and makes them a vehicle of the Spirit. In this way the sacraments look back to the Incarnation, when Christ took material flesh and made it a vehicle of the Spirit; and they look forward to, or rather they anticipate, the apocatastasis and the final redemption of matter at the Last Day. Orthodoxy rejects any attempt to diminish the materiality of the sacraments. The human person is to be seen in holistic terms, as an integral unity of soul and body, an so the sacramental worship in which we humans participate should involve to the full our bodies along with our minds." [274-275]
Collected Works: Vol 1: The Inner Kingdom
"All living is a kind of dying: we are dying all the time. But in this daily experience of dying, each death is followed by a new birth: all dying is also a kind of living. Life and death are not opposites, mutually exclusive, but they are intertwined. The whole of our human existence is a mixture of mortality and resurrection: 'dying, and behold we live' (2 Cor 6:9) Our earthly journey is an unceasing passover, a constant crossing over through death into new life. Between our initial birth and our eventual death, the whole course of our existence is made up of a series of lesser deaths and births. Every time we fall asleep at night, it is a foretaste of death; every time we wake up again next morning, it is as if we had risen from the dead..." [27]
"For Christians, the constantly repeated pattern of death-resurrection within our own lives is given fuller meaning by the life, death and Resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. Our own story is to be understood in the light of His story... Our little deaths and resurrections are joined across history to His definitive death and Resurrection, our little passovers are taken up and reaffirmed in His great passover..." [29]
"The hesychast, in the true sense of the word, is not someone who has journeyed outwardly into the desert, but someone who has embarked upon the journey inwards into his own heart; not someone who cuts himself off physically from others, shutting the door of his cell, but someone who 'returns into himself,' shutting the door of his mind. 'He came to himself,' it is said of the prodigal son (Lk 15:17); and this is what the hesychast also does. As St Basil puts it, he returns to himself; and having so returned inwards, he ascends to God..." [93]
"Prayer, it was said, is a 'laying aside of thoughts,' a return from multiplicity to unity. Now when we first make a serious effort to pray inwardly, standing before God with the mind in the heart, immediately we become conscious of our inward disintegration -- of our powerlessness to concentrate ourselves in the present moment, in the kairos... This lack of concentration, this inability to be here and now with the whole of our being, is one of the most tragic consequences of the Fall..." [99]
"St Isaac the Syrian says that it is better to acquire purity of heart than to convert whole nations of heathen from error. Not that he despises the works of the apostolate; he means merely that unless and until we have gained some measure of inner silence, it is improbable that we will succeed in converting anybody to anything..." [110]
Todd Dennis: HybridPreterism-Idealism
"Like the work of the cross of Christ, what is a corporate reality in the eternal state must be applied to each individually in time..."
"If we can contemplate what the personal imagery of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ means, besides just one man coming back to life
(---), then we begin to see what spiritual reality that event signified, and how it all points straight into the deepest part of our hearts. Approaching the cross of Christ from a purely natural mindset, however, cannot help but yield a lower view of just what was accomplished then. Likewise, the fall of natural Israel in AD70, which has been given as an banner to bespeak the same reality -- only this time using national imagery -- should be approached with the same view towards internal realities."
"...By removing that prophetic imagery which speaks of our walk in Christ into the very distant past, we are left looking outward for revelation, as opposed to inward. The lessons of the Word which are meant for today, are limited to time and place, and restricted to the past. The Word of God is indeed written TO us.. and not just FOR us. It is meant to be deeply internalized, and taken to refer to our day.. not that now-extinct world leading up to the fall of the temple in Jerusalem in the historical year 70."
Bishop Fulton Sheen: Calvary & The Mass
"The figures at the Cross were symbols of all who crucify. We were there in our representatives. What we are doing now tothe Mystical Christ, they were doing in our names to the historical Christ. If we are envious of the good, we were therein the Scribes and Pharisees. If we are fearful of losing some temporal advantage by embracing Divine Truth and Love, wewere there in Pilate. If we trust in material forces and seek to conquer through the world instead of through the spirit,we were there in Herod. And so the story goes on for the typical sins of the world. They all blind us to the fact that He is God. There was therefore a kind of inevitability about the Crucifixion. Men who were free to sin were also free to crucify."
"We were there then during that Crucifixion. The drama was already completed as far as the vision of Christ was concerned, but it had not yet been unfolded to all men and all places and all times. If a motion picture reel, for example, were conscious of itself, it would know the drama from beginning to end, but the spectators in the theater would not know it until they had seen it unrolled upon the screen. In like manner, our Lord on the Cross saw His eternal mind, the whole drama of history, the story of each individual soul, and how later on it would react to His Crucifixion; but though He saw all, we could not know how we would react to the Cross until we were unrolled upon the screen of time. We were not conscious of being present there on Calvary that day, but He was conscious of our presence. Today we know the role we played in the theater of Calvary, by the way we live and act now in the theater of the twentieth century." [6]
Our Lord does not suffer alone on the Cross; He suffers with us. That is why He united the sacrifice of the thief with His own. It is this St. Paul means when he says that we should fill up those things that are wanting to the sufferings of Christ. This does not mean our Lord on the cross did not suffer all He could. It means rather that the physical, historical Christ suffered all He could in His own human nature, but that the Mystical Christ, which is Christ and us, has not suffered to our fullness... [11]
"...Go back in your mind's eye to a Mass, to any Mass which was celebrated in the first centuries of the Church, before civilization became completely financial and economic. If we went to the Holy Sacrifice in the early Church, we would have brought to the altar each morning some bread and some wine. The priest would have used one piece of that unleavened bread and some of that wine for the sacrifice of the Mass. The rest would have been put aside, blessed, and distributed to the poor.
Today we do not bring bread and wine. We bring its equivalent; we bring that which buys bread and wine.Hence the offertory collection. Why do we bring bread and wine or its equivalent to the Mass? We bring bread and wine because these two things, of all things in nature, most represent the substance of life. Wheat is as the very marrow of the ground, and the grapes its very blood, both of which give us the body and blood of life. In bringing those two things, which give us life, nourish us, we are equivalently bringing ourselves to the Sacrifice of the Mass.
We are therefore present at each and every Mass under the appearance of bread and wine, which stand as symbols of our body and blood. We are not passive spectators as we might be watching a spectacle in a theater, but we are co-offering our Mass with Christ. If any picture adequately describes our role in this drama it is this: There is a great cross before us on which is stretched the great Host, Christ. Round about the hill of Calvary are our small crosses on which we, the small hosts, are to be offered. When our Lord goes to His Cross we go to our little crosses, and offer ourselves in union with Him, as a clean oblation to the heavenly Father.
At that moment we literally fulfill to the smallest detail the Savior’s command: Take up your cross daily and follow Me. In doing so, He is not asking us to do anything He has not already done Himself. Nor is it any excuse to say: 'I am a poor unworthy host.' So was the thief. Note that there were two attitudes in the soul of that thief, both of which made him acceptable to our Lord. The first was the recognition of the fact that He deserved what He was suffering, but that the sinless Christ did not deserve His Cross; in other words, he was penitent. The second was faith in Him whom men rejected, but whom the thief recognized as the very King of Kings. " [12]
God & War - The Crucifixion
"The crucifixion on Good Friday is not only something that happened 1900 years ago, it is something that is happening now as the Cross is erected in our midst today. From a spiritual point of view there are no national causes; there is only the conflict of those who crucify Christ and those who are crucified with Him. Consider first how Christ is made to suffer today by those who crucify: Pilate and the executioners."
"Judas still roams the world in the person of all those who were baptized to Christ and called to be one with Him, but who have fallen away from their high destiny by 'selling out.' In the catalogue of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism you will find those who in their youth were signed with the sign of the Cross, sealed with the seal of salvation, and then like Judas bargained away their Christian heritage for thirty pieces of silver from the coffers of a transitory political power..."
"Pilate too still lives. He lives in all those teachers and jurists who deny an absolute; who feel that right and wrong are only points of view; who flatter themselves on their broadmindedness as they allow the mob to choose between Barrabas and Christ; who have a feeling that possibly Christ is the Son of God, but who would not assert it lest they lose favor with Caesar; who, when they are brought face to face unequivocally with Divine Truth, ask the same question asked by Pilate: 'What is Truth?' and then turn their back on it. Put the Creed therefore in the present tense: 'Christ is suffering under Pontius Pilate.'"
"The executioners still walk the earth: brutal, blind forces, which ignore the Divine, take orders from higher-ups, persecute the Christ in His Church and His Apostles, profane His Eucharistic Presence, nail His Mystical Body to a tree and then, with the calmness of their ancestors beneath Calvary, shake dice, 'sit and watch,' while before them is being re-enacted the tremendous drama of the world..."
Corey Russell:Pursuit of the Holy
"There is a more serious problem than the abortions, than the murders, than the immorality, than the drug and alcohol additions: it is the lack of the knowledge of God. And this lack of knowledge is rampant in our churches, from the pulpit to the pews. The number one hindrance to knowing God is knowing about God. It is more poisonous than we can ever imagine. When we think we know God, we become settled in a false complacency. We think we know something of God, when in reality we don't know anything at all. We are worshiping our idea of God instead of God Himself." [37-38]
"The fear of the Lord exposes our false ideas of a god made in our own image, instead of the reality of the eternal, living God. Whether we admit it or not, most of us have created a God that suits us--we select the passages that we like from the Bible and disregard those we don't; we choose to discuss spiritual matters with only those people who will agree with us and tell us what we want to hear; we readily accept the mercy, forgiveness and grace of God, but convince ourselves that God's call to holiness, righteous living and self-sacrifice doesn't apply to us. The fear of the Lord is the cure for our false views of God. [118]
"All over the earth right now, people are giving themselves to lifestyles of prayer, fasting and digesting the Word of God for the purpose of that Word becoming flesh in them. Being refined in the hidden place strips them of their titles, their reputations and their entitlements, and causes them to confront their spiritual barreness, the arguments and lies that constitute their shallow knowledge of God. Then they begin to enter into the true knowledge of God..." [137]
Dwayne Roberts:One Thing
"...The human heart was made to be exhilarated, and it is all about the Man sitting on His throne--the One who has captivated eternity. Whenever human eyes have seen Him, they have been captivated over and over again."
"A heart that is not fascinated or won over will pursue anything to be moved, therefore making it ripe for the seeds of compromise to be planted. This can lead to a heart divided in pursuit, prohibiting someone from being able to sustain anything in a wholehearted way. When compromise begins to set in, you no longer have the energy to continue your first priority and your first pursuit. Ultimately, you find yourself in the same boat as the church of Laodicea" [83]
***Quotation of Mark 14:4-9 NKJV***
"Jesus was using Mary's heart as the model of desire and devotion. He lifted her up as the example. He said, This is what I am calling you to do. This is the model of devotion and love--a heart that is willing to give up everything and lay it at the feet of God. She is the model of the life we are called to lead." [89]
Mike Bickle:Encountering the God of Light
"...There is an invitation to partake in the undeniable glory that surrounds and evades from God Himself. He deliberately clothes Himself in mystery to induce the hungry to search Him out..."
"The Almighty, all encompassing God of the Ages wants to be found. He desires to be known, to be discovered, and to see his children overwhelmed by His beauty... The Father created within us a deep hunger for beauty; it is one of the longings grafted into the walls of our hearts that He alone can fill."
"...Perhaps as we are encircled by the revelation of what God looks like we will begin to see ourselves as God sees us; set apart vessels, image bearers of Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit..."
The Fire of God in Holy Romance
"Lovesick, captured people live differently. This holy lovesickness is serious, and it's implications will create a massive disruption wherever the lovesick Bride goes. Your lovesickness for the Bridegroom and your identity as the Bride will drive you into activities that will enrage others. You will disturb the status quo. You will threaten religion. Why? Because lovesick people cannot be bribed or bought off..."
The Rewards of Fasting
"God has designed us so that when we give ourselves to Him by fasting and reading the Word, our capacity to receive more of Him increases. No other dimension in the grace of God opens wide the deepest places of our beings like fasting and filling our hearts with the Scriptures that emphasize the truths of Jesus as our Bridegroom. Fasting serves as a catalyst to increase the depth and the measure to which we receive from the Lord..."
"One of the primary purposes of the Bridegroom fast is to cause our hearts to move in love and longing for God. We do not fast in an attempt to make God pay attention to us, but to fully enter into the affection and presence of God that is already ours in Christ. It is not to move His heart but to move our own. Our hearts are prone to dullness and lethargy, and if we don't deliberately confront that dullness, we become hardened without realizing it. The Bridegroom fast tenderizes our hearts so dullness is diminished and we are able to experience the affections of God in greater measure. Our hearts become tender and our desire is nurtured as we experience the pleasures of knowing Him." [41]
The Seven Longingsof the Human Heart
1 The Longing to Be Enjoyed by God
2 The Longing for Fascination
3 The Longing for Beauty
4 The Longing for Greatness
5 The Longing for Intimacy Without Shame
6 The Longing to Be Wholehearted
7 The Longing to Make a Deep & Lasting Impact
"If you receive anything from this book, let it be this: life in Christ was never intended to be lived as a besieged soul. It is not a life of just getting by, trying to hang on until the end. While we do look forward to the return of Christ, we also live with the truth that He is alive and His Spirit is within us now. There is a river of superior pleasure designed to be a fountain of life in our inner man if we say yes to it and drink from it vigorously." (Pg. 148)
"Your longings, if you let them, will be what draw you into the Divine. Like separate streams, each of these seven longings is an escort into the eternal ocean of God's fiery affections. There is nothing more beautiful than when all your longings unite as one holy, raging river of yearning that drives you to God..." [151]
St. Ignatius:Epistle to the Ephesians
"...as being stones (1 Peter 2:5) of the temple of the Father, prepared for the building of God the Father, and drawn up on high by the instrument of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, (John 12:32) making use of the Holy Spirit as a rope, while your faith was the means by which you ascended, and your love the way which led up to God. You, therefore, as well as all your fellow-travellers, are God-bearers, temple-bearers, Christ-bearers, bearers of holiness, adorned in all respects with the commandments of Jesus Christ, in whom also I exult that I have been thought worthy, by means of this Epistle, to converse and rejoice with you, because with respect to your Christian life ye love nothing but God only."
St. Athanasius:Incarnation of theWord
"But for the searching or the Scriptures and true knowledge of them, an honourable life is needed, and a pure soul, and that virtue which is according to Christ; so that the intellect guiding its path by it, may be able to attain what it desires, and to comprehend it, in so far as it is accessible to human nature to learn concerning the Word of God. For without a pure mind and a modelling of the life after the saints, a man could not possibly comprehend the words of the saints..." (57:1-3)
St. Gregory of Nazianzus:Orations:
"...Let us offer ourselves, the possession most precious to God, and most fitting; let us give back to the Image what is made after the Image. Let us recognize our Dignity; let us honour our Archetype; let us know the power of the Mystery, and for what Christ died. Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. Let us become God's for His sake, since He for ours became Man. He assumed the worse that He might give us the better; He became poor that we through His poverty might be rich; He took upon Him the form of a servant that we might receive back our liberty...(1:4-5)
"...This is the purpose for us of God, Who for us was made man and became poor, to raise our flesh, and recover His image, and remodel man, that we might all be made one in Christ, who was perfectly made in all of us all that He Himself is..."(7:23)

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Books: George Maloney -- Orthodox Mysticism

These are among the few books that I feel comfortable recommending today considering the things that I have known and/or experienced in my many journies within and outside of Churchanity in search of ...
Posted by okie777 on Thu, 15 Feb 2007 05:09:00 PST