"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Today’s post might be a little controversial, but I survived the dating series, so I figure I may as well 🙂
I’ve recently been catching up on my Catholic Stuff You Should know backlog. I’ve just finished listening to the podcast episode entitled, Yoga: Is it okay?
The other day I received an email from a reader who had spoken to a non-Catholic with a rather rare point-of-view, and who asked for helpful suggestions when speaking to him…
During a discussion about the Saints, the Protestant in question made the following statement:
“…no one is in Heaven except Jesus, Enoch, and Elijah.”
This sort of theological position is rarely held by those in mainstream Protestantism, but how might we respond to this?
In January there was the annual “March For Life” in Washington DC. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go this year, but thanks to Facebook, I got to defend life in a different way, through Facebook. Many of my pro-life friends posted about the March on Facebook, and these posts were not without their detractors…
As I browsed my newsfeed, one objection which was made repeatedly was some variation of the following:
“The fetus is a potential life”
Is this true? How might we respond to this statement?
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When you hear people speaking about the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, you will often hear the terms “Israelite”, “Hebrew” and “Jew” used interchangeably. However, strictly speaking, these terms are not identical.
An Israelite is simply anyone who is a descendant of the Patriarch Jacob. In Genesis 32:28, after wrestling a mysterious man, Jacob is given a new name, “Israel”, which literally means “He who strives with God”.
If you recall, Jacob/Israel had twelve sons. These would later form the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. Well, eleven of these sons took great umbrage at their brother Joseph, so they sold him into slavery (those of you with siblings will understand this). Years later, Joseph rose to power in Egypt and, after being reconciled with his family, brought them all to Egypt.
The family of Israel flourished in Egypt for some time until a new Pharaoh rose to power who forced them all into slavery. It is at this time that Moses is called by God to rescue his people and lead them out of Egypt. It is during the period of the Exodus that the term Hebrew is used to refer to the population.
Once the people return to Israel, they enjoy a period of prosperity. However, eventually there is a split in the Kingdom between the northern and southern Kingdom. The Southern Kingdom was known as “Judah” and the inhabitants of that area known as Jews. Both the northern and southern kingdoms are conquered and people exiled. After the exile, the term “Jew” is used to refer to any of the Israelites who were left.
I hope that this explanation of terms and recap of Salvation History is helpful!
Manvotional (Download)
“Hero Down” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
The unaccompanied MP3 is available here.
Over the last year and a half of blogging I’ve pretty much restricted myself to theological issues. However, today I’ve decided to take my life into my own hands and finally start to address a question that I’ve often heard among my female friends: “Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”
So, as you may have noticed, posts have once again started to appear here at Restless Pilgrim. After several grueling months, my project at work is now basically done.
I was meant to be on vacation this week, but I’ve been dragged back to my project, albeit half-time. As a result, the posts here thus far have been of the simple, short variety.
However, the good news is that I’m slowly chipping away at some longer, more substantial posts (to be tagged as featured). I’m hoping that some of these articles will be ready to post sometime next week.
There’s a lot of changes coming, both in my “real” life and also here on this blog. I’m really looking forward to sharing with you what’s there on the horizon…