Sola Scriptura



Scripture (Photo credit: Bob Jenkin)

From Devin Rose’s book, If Protestantism is True

If Protestantism is true, then there is no infallible interpreter of the Scriptures and thus no interpreter can be accepted as authoritative. God did inspire the Scriptures to be without error, but He did not provide an authoritative, infallible interpreter for the inerrant Scriptures, leaving us with only conflicting, error-prone opinions of people. The Scriptures must therefore be deemed to be sufficiently clear for most people on all important matters of the faith. Since, even between the founders of Protestantism, no accord could be reached on what Jesus meant at the Last Supper, then the proper meaning of “body” and “blood” must simply not be significant, and the Reformers were quibbling over trifles.

 This, generally, is the issue that brought me into the Church: amid all the conflicting interpretations of the Bible, how do you know who's right? How, in fact, can there be so much difference among Christians on what the Bible says?  It became an impossible issue to get around, and I tried!

The Desert Fathers, Sunday, June 24, 2012, St. John Climacus



English: St. John Climacus Русский: Иоанн Лествичник. Фрагмент новгородской иконы «Иоанн Лествичник, Георгий и Власий». Государственный Русский музей, Санкт-Петербург, Россия. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Repentance is the renewal of baptism. Repentance is a contract with God for a second life. A penitent is a buyer of humility. Repentance is constant distrust of bodily comfort. Repentance is self-condemning reflection, and carefree self-care. Repentance is the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair. A penitent is an undisgraced convict. Repentance is reconciliation with the Lord by the practice of good deeds contrary to the sins. Repentance is purification of conscience. Repentance is the voluntary endurance of all afflictions. A penitent is the
inflicter of his own punishments. Repentance is a mighty persecution of the stomach, and a striking of the soul into vigorous awareness.  

St. John Climacus

Friday Florilegia, Friday, June 22, 2012



First page of the Gospel of Mark, by Sargis Pitsak, a Medieval Armenian scribe and miniaturist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A lengthy reading,  next Sunday’s Gospel.

Gospel Mk 5:21-43

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat
to the other side,
a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea.
One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward.
Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying,
"My daughter is at the point of death.
Please, come lay your hands on her
that she may get well and live."
He went off with him,
and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him.

There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years.
She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors
and had spent all that she had.
Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.
She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd
and touched his cloak.
She said, "If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured."
Immediately her flow of blood dried up.
She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him,
turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who has touched my clothes?"
But his disciples said to Jesus,
"You see how the crowd is pressing upon you,
and yet you ask, 'Who touched me?'"
And he looked around to see who had done it.
The woman, realizing what had happened to her,
approached in fear and trembling.
She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.
He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has saved you.
Go in peace and be cured of your affliction."

While he was still speaking,
people from the synagogue official's house arrived and said,
"Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?"
Disregarding the message that was reported,
Jesus said to the synagogue official,
"Do not be afraid; just have faith."
He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside
except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.
When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official,
he caught sight of a commotion,
people weeping and wailing loudly.
So he went in and said to them,
"Why this commotion and weeping?
The child is not dead but asleep."
And they ridiculed him.
Then he put them all out.
He took along the child's father and mother
and those who were with him
and entered the room where the child was.
He took the child by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum,"
which means, "Little girl, I say to you, arise!"
The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around.
At that they were utterly astounded.
He gave strict orders that no one should know this
and said that she should be given something to eat.

Monastic Tradition, June 21, 2012



The grave of Thomas Merton. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Only a true sense of monastic tradition can preserve sanity and peace in monasteries.” Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

This is true because, with this sense of tradition, monks know what kind of life they are trying to live. This is no less true in relation to the Tradition of the Church; without it we do not know how to live as Christians; we would be continuously "reinventing the wheel," always rediscovering, or inventing out of whole cloth, the Christian life. All the while we'd risk getting further from the Truth, thereby losing our sanity.

A Word on Wednesday, Wednesday, June 20, 2012,St Toribio



Happy St. Turibius Day! (Photo credit: A.Currell)

Christ said, "I am the Truth"; he did not say "I am the custom." -- St. Toribio

A Ray of Sun

A ray of sun has found a cat.

A very sensible comment from the Editors of National Review on Obama’s immigration move.

This executive order would, therefore, be entirely unacceptable even if it represented good policy. But it does not. Congress has been correct to reject earlier attempts at this sort of limited amnesty, and the American public is correct to remain generally skeptical of amnesty proposals. The amnesty proponents will of course point to any number of cases in which a young person is facing a painful situation through no fault of his own, and one would have to have a heart as hard as coffin nails not to sympathize, but the fact is that it was not the people of the United States who put these young people in legal jeopardy — it was their parents. Without first ensuring effective enforcement at the border and at the workplace, any step toward normalizing the status of those here in violation of the law invites more of the same abuse and disorder.