"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Today was the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest scholastic minds in the Church’s history. Despite his intellect, when he studied in Cologne his size and quiet nature earned him the nickname “The Dumb Ox”…
A very quick post today. As I mentioned before, I’m trying to read through the Bible in a year. At the moment in the plan, each day I a section from Genesis, a psalm and a section from Matthew’s Gospel. As I’ve been reading the Psalms, I noticed a curious word occasionally interspersed within the text, “Selah”:
O Lord, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me;
many are saying of me,
there is no help for him in God. Selah
But thou, O Lord, art a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cry aloud to the Lord,
and he answers me from his holy hill. Selah
I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.
I am not afraid of ten thousands of people
who have set themselves against me round about. – Psalm 3:1-6
I wasn’t sure what this meant so I did a bit of googling…
It turns out that the exact meaning of “Selah” is somewhat disputed, but Wikipedia suggests that “It is probably either a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like “stop and listen”. Selah can also be used to indicate that there is to be a musical interlude at that point in the Psalm”
If any of you have watched or listened to debates on atheism, you will have, no doubt, come across William Lane Craig. He is an analytic philosopher, Christian apologist and the driving force behind ReasonableFaith.org.
If you’ve ever heard him debate, you’ll know that he’s very clear, calm and persuasive. In fact, noted Atheist Sam Harris described him as “the one Christian apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists”.
It was therefore with great curiosity that I listened to an interview where he discusses Catholicism:
The interview was rather interesting. Catholics were praised for seeming to read the Bible more these days, and Craig spoke about Catholic liturgy in exalted terms. On the whole he was pretty positive about Catholicism, although he of course still disagrees on certain points, otherwise he wouldn’t still belong to a Protestant denomination.
In the interview he raises two objections to Catholicism. The first is a classic, Justification. When speaking about this topic, Craig fails to understand how Catholics can speak about the involvement of works in salvation, yet at the same time assert that we are justified by grace.
The other issue raised was another old favourite, the Blessed Virgin. The interviewer, Kevin Harris, tripped up early on, saying “There was a move a while back to really elevate Mary, to almost equality with Christ, co-redemtrix. I don’t think that ever got off the ground in the Catholic Church, but there was a move there…”. This is misleading on two points. Firstly, although it’s not dogma, you’ll still find that title used a lot in reference to Mary, even although it isn’t as established as other titles, such as Mother Of God. Secondly, co-redemtrix does not indicate equality with Christ, simply that Mary has a role in redemption, much in the same way a pastor who leads a person to Christ participates in that person’s redemption.
On both of these issues, Craig seems to find a gap between official Church teaching and the belief of the Catholic faithful, some of which I find understandable.
I’d invite you to have a listen. What do you think of the interview?
I know we’re out of the Christmas season now, but here’s a post by Tim Staples asking: Was Jesus born on Christmas Day?
Have you ever tried to do a novena and failed? Maybe it slipped your mind for a few days, or maybe you did remember, but only at inconvenient moments when you didn’t have the novena text with you? If what I’m describing has happened to you, then I have a suggestion for you: use Google Calendar as your prayer buddy.
When I intend to do a novena, I create a repeating event in Google Calendar to remind me. The wonderful thing about it is that you can synchronize the calendar with your cell phone so you have you’ll see the reminder wherever you are. If you include the text for the novena in the event’s description, you won’t even have to go hunting around to find the prayer for that day. Google Calendar will work with both iPhone or Android devices.
If you’re not sure how to do this in Google Calendar, here are the steps necessary to setup a novena reminder:
1. Create new event
Click at the first day when you’ll be doing the Novena. I’d suggest picking a time when you know you’ll be consistently free over the course of the nine days. Enter the name of the novena and then click the “Edit Event” link:
2. Enter event description
In the “Description” field, enter the text needed for the novena, or include a link to a website which contains the text. Then click on the checkbox next to “Repeat”:
3. Setup Repetition
Clicking on the checkbox next to “Repeat” will cause a new dialog to appear. On this dialog you can setup how this event repeats. Since we’ll be praying a Novena, set it to “Daily” repetition and to end after nine occurrences. Once this is completed, click “Done”:
4. Jesus saves… and so should you
Everything is now correctly setup, so click “Save” and you should see the sequence of reminders created.
Hope this helps. Happy praying!
It’s been a while since I’ve done a “Catholic Bucket List” item, so here’s a simple one:
Bucket List Item #7: Pray the rosary
