Category: Catholicism

You say goodbye and I say halo…

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It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about icons….

Today I was at the Divine Liturgy with a small contingent from Good Shepherd and it prompted me to write a post explaining the letters which often appear on Christ’s halo:

In iconography, the halos of angels and Saints are typically filled with gold. In icons of Christ, however, there is also a cross superimposed upon the halo. In the icon above, known as the “Pantokrator” (“Almighty”) , you can clearly see this. Only three arms of the cross are visible, each symbolizing a member of the Trinity. Now, at the edge of each arm is a Greek letter:

Ό = The letter “omicron”

ώ = The letter “omega”
Ν = The letter “nu”

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Change and Constancy

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The other day Phil sent me a link to the following video:

It reminded me of something I vaguely remembered hearing on a martial arts documentary when I was a child.  I can’t remember the exact words. I think the narrator was talking about Buddhist monks when he said something like:

“When on pilgrimage, the monks continually move, in the hope that, by being in constant motion and change, they will be able to discern what is eternal”

I may be misremembering the words or have them out of context, but I would say that the above statement does ring true for me. Having done some travelling I have noticed that in moving around you do tend to notice, not only the differences between peoples and cultures, but also their similarities.

Maybe we’re not as different as we think.

World Youth Day

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Most of my American friends have now returned from World Youth Day, so I thought I would write a quick entry welcoming them back! Hi guys… 🙂

It’s entirely possible that some people reading this blog have never heard of World Youth Day. Well, it was started back in 1985 by Pope John Paul II and, every two or three years, is marked by a week-long international event. It is for this reason that last week the Pope and 1.5 million Catholics gathered together in Madrid:

If you’d like to read a personal account of the week by an English pilgrim, I’d invite you to check our Hannah’s write-up over at Transformed In Christ.

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Favourite People: Vic Scaravilli

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Today I wanted to advertise another website, Catholic Digital Studio.

Catholic Digital Studio has quite a lot of great resources, but I particularly wanted to draw your attention to the materials produced by Vic Scaravilli. Vic has done a load of talks on a variety of topics which include:

The Basic Gospel Message / Basics of Catholic Faith
Catholic study of Paul’s letter to the Romans
Protestant-Catholic dialog

Some of his talks are available as audio,

I always enjoy watching Vic teach. I particularly like the fact that he takes a big stick with him to class. hmmm….now there’s an idea… 😀

Biblical Language

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I was looking through my brower’s bookmarks and came across this nice little post from Aggie Catholics which lists some of the popular phrases which come from the Bible. Here are some of my favourites:

“Living off the fat of the land” – Genesis 45:17-18
“Can a leopard change his spots?” – Jeremiah 13:23
“Eat, drink, and be merry” – Ecclesiastes 8:15
“The root of the matter” – Job 19:28
“Apple of my eye” – Deuteronomy 2:10 / Zechariah 2:8
“Twinkling of an eye” – 1 Corinthians 15:52
“A fly in the ointment” – Ecclesiastes 10:1
“Bite the dust” – Psalms 72: 9
“By the skin of our teeth” – Job 19:20

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