"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
“One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there. We know where we belong, but we keep being pulled away in many directions, as if we were still homeless. ‘All these other things’ keep demanding our attention. They lead us so far from home that we eventually forget our true address”
– Henry Nowen, “Making All Things New”
Before we get to the subject of today’s post, I wanted to say that I can tell from the site statistics and the conversations I’ve had over the last couple of weeks that a lot of people have been reading these posts. I would like to thank everyone for taking the time out to read this Englishman’s musings on a rather delicate subject.
Additionally, I would just like to encourage everyone to give their two cents in the Comment Box at the end of each article. You don’t have to use your real name or email address if you’d prefer to remain anonymous. It’s perfectly acceptable to submit comments under the name of “Balaam’s Donkey” or with an email address of papa_francis@gmail.com…
It was my hope that publishing this series would spark some much-needed open discussion among our community. I know that conversations certainly have been going on among different groups, but I’d invite everyone to make use of the Comment Box since, if you share your perspective here, you’ll get to enlighten the entire world (wide web)!
“Hey guys, look! A new post at RestlessPilgrim.net!”
So, now that’s been said, let’s get underway with today’s subject. Today will be a short post about another potential cause for confusion in the Catholic dating scene and a reason why guys might sometimes refrain from asking out the lady folk. It is a uniquely Catholic issue, the question of “discernment”.
My friend Anh over at Mod31 has posted a reply to my series on Catholic dating. In her response she summarizes each of my posts to date(!) and adds some of her own commentary. Go read it here:
In his book The Idiot, Dostoevsky wrote that “Beauty will save the world”. The topic of beauty often comes up in Catholic blogs, especially on the sometimes controversial Bad Catholic.
In the videos below, Marc Barnes, the author of that blog gives a talk on beauty at Notre Dame University:
Last weekend we had the “Mega Mass” here in San Diego, where the Bishop celebrated the Eucharistic liturgy with approximately 600 Young Adults. Since I now only occasionally go to a Roman Rite Mass, I did find it a little strange. Among the things which now seem a little alien to me, in particular, is receiving the Eucharist from someone other than a priest.
Although I didn’t receive Communion from a priest, I received from the next best thing, the SWAT commando of Catholics, my friend Artzell. Art has a way of bringing out the uber-Catholic in me. The first time we met, we ended up having a huge argument as to which of us had the more powerful patron Saint and which of us most desired martyrdom 🙂
So anyway, to mark the occasion, I created a meme parodying the Dos Equis adverts:
The article Mega Mass Meme first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net
A very short post today. I just wanted to share a little “ah hah!” moment I had recently.
A little while back I went to vespers at an Eastern Orthodox parish. The format of the service was almost identical to that of my Eastern Catholic parish. The only real differences were alternative melodic forms and slightly different English translations.
During my visit I noticed something about the translation of one of the psalms. Several times Israel was referred to in the masculine form, “him”. This rather surprised me since I typically think of Israel as feminine, the people to whom God has espoused Himself and which, under the New Testament, flowers into the Church, the Bride of Christ.
…I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers…which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. – Jeremiah 31:32
After Vespers a few of us were talking to the priest and I raised this question. We agreed that Israel was probably referred to using the masculine gender to highlight the relationship of sonship between God and Israel:
And you [Moses] shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me”…’ – Exodus 4:22-23
Under the Old Covenant, God became Father to Israel and Israel became God’s first-born son, the elder brother among the nations, to manifest the wisdom of God and to lead the Gentiles back home.
The article Androgynous Israel? first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net
