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The Lord of Time & Space

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tardisA few days ago I received this email:

Any chance you could write about miracles that involve time (if there are any). There are miracles of all types it seems, but I’ve never heard of a miracle that involved some manipulation of time. Just curious if perhaps you had.

The first example I thought was from the Book of Joshua where one reading of the text (Joshua 10) would suggest that time stood still while the Israelites won the battle.

The other example I thought of was that of “bilocation”. In miracles of bilocation, a person is seen in two different places at the same time. In fact, the patron Saint of this blog, St. Drogo, was reported to have bilocated.

The final miracle I thought of was the Eucharist since, through the words of consecration, the sacrifice of Jesus is made present on our altars.

These were the only three examples I could think of though. I guess the problem with miracles concerning time is that they’re kinda hard to keep track of!

Can anyone think of any other examples of miracles concerning time?

Register for free one-day young adult retreat in San Diego!

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Registration is now open for the “Restless” Retreat. This is a free, one day retreat at St. Catherine Laboure on Saturday, April 14th:
SPC

The theme of the retreat is being taken from St. Augustine’s famous line, “You made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts will wander restless until we rest in you”. I swear I did not pick the retreat theme… 🙂

We will have speakers including Jamie Cleaton and Timmerie Millington.

Lunch will be provided. Did I mention this was free?

Husbands, *love* your wives

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Before we leave the Easter season,  I wanted to share with you something that stood out for me during the last days of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday. It was a slightly odd thing for me, being that it was the subject of marriage….

crown

How did I manage to get to the subject of “marriage” from the Easter celebrations? Well, what was running through my mind throughout the Easter liturgy was the last part of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians:

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” – Ephesians 5:21-27

Now, without a doubt, this is a passage that has been abused over the years.  It has certainly been used for the subjugation of women and the preservation of tyrannical husbands. In response to this, many have rejected the entire passage out of hand. I don’t think either of these two positions is acceptable, since both reactions ignore the passage’s context and miss the important imagery being used by Paul.

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The Epistle of Joy – Episode #17 (Video)

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Continuing on with Chapter 4, Paul discusses “contentment”…

I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me; you were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I complain of want; for I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me. – Philippians 4:10-13

Here’s what I had to say:

For an audio-only version of this video, please click here.

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Speaking of suffering

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Yesterday I shared a quotation on the subject of suffering from a book I recently finished, Jesus Among Other gods by Ravi Zacharias.

In that post, we saw that even to talk about good and evil we need an objective moral law, something which is rather difficult to explain while denying the existence of an eternal, transcendent God.

Today I’d like to offer a few more quotations from Zacharias’ book. For those of us who are involved in apologetics (which is, of course, every Christian!), he reminds us of a truth which we must keep forever at the front of our mind when speaking about the very difficult subject of pain and suffering.

How does a good God allow so much suffering? Immediately we enter into a very serious dilemma. How do you respond to the intellectual side of the question without losing the existential side of it? How do you answer…[those who are suffering] without drowning it all in philosophy?

– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods

Suffering is not simply a theoretical idea or only a subject for clever philosophical arguments, it is a very real reality with which people must live and it is a topic which is deeply emotionally charged.

Those who feel the pain… often shudder at how theoretical philosophical answers are. We do not like to work through the intellectual side of the question because we do not see where logic and philosophy fit into the problem of pain. If you have just buried a son or a daughter, or have witnessed brutality firsthand, this portion of the argument may bring more anger than comfort. Who wants logic when the heart is broken? Who wants a physiological treatise on the calcium component of the bone when the shoulder has come out of its socket? At such a time we are looking for comfort. We want a painkiller.

– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods

The solution to this problem is to balance delicately the intellectual and the emotional, speaking to both and neglecting neither:

We must not allow the anguish of the heart to bypass the reason of the mind. The explanation [of pain] must meet both the intellectual and the emotion demands of the question. Answering the questions of the mind while ignoring shredded emotions seems heartless. Binding the emotional wounds while ignoring the struggle of the intellect seems mindless. 

– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods

When my Dad died earlier this year, I didn’t want a dry philosophy lesson. I wanted people to grieve with me, but who were ready to talk when the time came to grapple intellectually and spiritually with what had happened.

The Great Divorce: Chapter 13

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Summary

The Dwarf struggles against joy. It “was not the meeting [the ghost] had pictured; he would not accept it”. He tugs at the chain and the Tragedian acts offended, saying, “It is fortunate that you give yourself no concern about my fate. Otherwise you might be sorry afterwards to think that you had driven me back to Hell”. The Lady replies “Dear, no one sends you back. Here is all joy. Everything bids you stay”. Saying this does no good –  the Tragedian says he still has some self-respect and the dwarf starts to shrink.

When the Lady tells the Dwarf to not “let it talk like that“, the “Tragedian caught her words greedily as a dog catches a bone”, complaining that she always had to be “sheltered”. The Lady explains that wasn’t what she meant, rather that she wanted him to “stop acting… He is killing you. Let go of that chain. Even now”.

Sarah tells Frank to stop “using…other people’s pity, in the wrong way…”. She explains that “Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it…can be used for a kind of blackmailing… [to] hold joy up to ransom”. This is something he did ever since he was a child. She asks him “Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenceless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed?” She explains that “you can no longer communicate your wretchedness… Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light”.

The Dwarf and the chain having disappeared, for the first time the Lady addresses the Tragedian, asking who he is and where Frank has gone. She invites him to stay, but the Tragedian vanishes. The lady returns to her retenue who begin to sing a song: “The Happy Trinity is her home: nothing can trouble her joy…”

After departing, Lewis asks his teacher: “Is it really tolerable that she should be untouched by his misery, even his self-made misery?”. MacDonald asks him if he would prefer it if “he still had the power of tormenting her”. He talks about “The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned… to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy… that Hell should be able to veto Heaven… Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever… the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves”.

Lewis says he finds it horrible to say that pity must someday die. His teacher distinguishes between the action which will last forever and passion of pity which will come to the end. He says that the passion of pity “draws men to concede what should not be conceded” whereas the action “changes darkness into light and evil into good”. However, “we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice”.

Lewis once again asks why the Spirits don’t go down into Hell to rescue the damned. Going down on his knees and using a blade of grass as a pointer, MacDonald points to a tiny crack, saying, “…through a crack no bigger than that ye certainly came…”. The idea that the infinitely empty Grey Town is down in a little crack blows his mind, but Lewis now realizes that the Lady couldn’t even fit into Hell. MacDonald concurs that “Hell could not open its mouth wide enough”. Referring to Jesus, MacDonald says that “Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell…” Lewis asks if He ever will descend again, but MacDonald explains that time doesn’t work that way, but assures Lewis that “There is no spirit in prison to Whom He did not preach”.

Lewis asks MacDonald about his Universalist beliefs, but MacDonald says “it’s ill talking of such questions…because all answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time…the choice of ways is before you… But if ye are trying to leap on into eternity… then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see…something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all…[but] every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom”

Questions

Q1. Why does the ghost resist joy? What does the Tragedian threaten? How does the Lady respond?

Q2. What did the Tragedian hold love hostage? What does MacDonald say about pity?

Q3. How does the Lady respond to the Ghost’s disappearance? Why is Lewis troubled by her reaction?

Q4. What does Lewis find out about Hell from MacDonald? Why couldn’t the lady go there?

Q5. What does MacDonald say about time, freedom and predestination?

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Book Announcement!

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Today I’d like to share with you something I’m going to be working on during my sabbatical. For the longest time, my bucket list has contained an entry which reads “Write a book and get it published”. I think it’s finally time to cross off that entry…

Typwriter

The Need and the Vision

I’ve been involved with different Bible Study groups, both in the USA and back in England, for about ten years. During this time, I’ve searched for a book to help guide me in leading these different groups. Unfortunately, that book doesn’t appear to exist! In the Protestant world, I’ve found books which help with basic Biblical exegesis and personal reading, but nothing substantial on leading a group study. In the Catholic world, there are even slimmer pickings. In light of this, over the next couple of months I’m going to be writing the book that I wish I had read a decade ago!

This book is going to lead the reader through the entire process of running a Bible Study, from beginning to end. My goal is to make this book extremely practical, coving all the nitty-gritty details of setting up and running a group. It will guide the reader through a typical Bible Study meeting, providing lots of handy hints as to how to nurture the discussion and avoid common pitfalls. In the appendices I hope to have all kinds of usual material, including a modified version of my commentary on Philippians. It is my hope that, even with no prior experience, once somebody has this book in his hands he will have everything he needs to start a successful Bible Study in his parish.

You’re Involved too!

As a reader of Restless Pilgrim, this involves you! I will be blogging about the book over the coming months and asking for your feedback. This begins today! I’m currently trying to come up with a working title for this book. Please help me choose it by voting below:

I’d also like to choose a tag line or subtitle for the book:

I’m really excited about this and I’d love to hear your thoughts! What would you look for in a book like this? Is there a particular issue related to Bible study groups which you’d particularly like to see addressed?

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