Today is the the Feast Day of St. Christopher, the patron Saint of travellers, and St. James, the patron of the Camino De Santiago, so it seemed like an appropriate day to launch a new podcast, “The Restless Heart”. Each week on this podcast I will be sitting down with my friend Nessa to discuss some aspect of the Catholic Faith.
* If you have iTunes installed, you can click here to subscribe. Alternatively, you should be able to find us in the podcast section of the iTunes Store and Google Play. If you need to setup your podcast feed manually, our feed is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/RestlessHeartPodcast
If you have any feedback or would like to pose a question for an upcoming episode, you can always tweet us at @davidandnessa.
I’ve recently had a couple of people tell me that they like my blog because my posts are…short. Well, I guess there are worse compliments you could get! Seriously though, one of the reasons that people seem to come back to my blog is that my articles are rarely very long and therefore easily readable during a short coffee break.
In light of this, I’m going to start doing something new. I’m now going to try and post a “Quick Apology” most weeks. These will be articles on apologetics, but they will be short and snappy. The goal is to help readers better defend their faith by consuming bite-sized posts.
I’ve often found that when I’ve been called to give an account for my faith (1 Peter 3:15), I am rarely granted much time to give a response. There isn’t time to offer a thorough explanation or refutation. Instead, I have to give an “elevator pitch”, a short 30 second response. That is how these posts will be structured. I will present an objection to the Catholic Faith and then give an extremely short response designed to answer the objection and open up the conversation to further dialogue.
In my next post I’ll respond to the objection given by some to calling Mary “Mother of God”…
I went to Vigil Mass last night and we were up late afterwards celebrating with the new members of the Church.
As a result, I didn’t get to Byzantine Liturgy this morning, which meant that I missed out on hearing St. John Chrysostom’s Pascal Homily. For those of you that don’t know, in the Byzantine Church, this Fourth Century homily is read by the priest at the Liturgy every Easter Day.
Since I didn’t get to hear it today, I decided to read it myself and put it up here for you all to enjoy. Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!
Yesterday, we began a guest post series from the author of SystematicChristianity.org, Matthew Grivich, on the subject of on-line Catholic dating…
In yesterday’s post, I outlined the advantages and disadvantages to online dating. Today I would like to give my suggestions as to how to use Catholic dating sites most effectively.
It has been well-known for some time that written exchanges between demons may, on occasion, be intercepted. A well-known collection of such communications was previously compiled and made available to the public back in the 1940’s. A new series of writings has recently come into my own possession. How this came about is not important, but I will be publishing them here over the coming months.
If you are familiar with the previously-released correspondence between Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood, you will no doubt recognize the author’s name on these new letters. They were penned by Screwtape’s “friend”, Slubgob, the head of Hell’s Training College for Demons.
In the years since the publishing of Screwtape’s letters, things in Hell have changed somewhat. Following some “anonymous” complaints about the operation of the Training College, the institution’s study program has received something of shake up. Would-be tempters are now sent “into the field” as part of their final year of training. Under the watchful eye of an experienced Tempter, the students are now assigned a “patient”, a human to tempt, in order to put into practice what they have learnt in the classroom. If a demon is successful, and secures the soul in his charge, he then qualifies for graduation and attains the sought-after rank of “Junior Tempter”. The letters which will be published here are Slubgob’s instructions to such a trainee, the undergraduate tempter named “Bogwash”.
The collection of Screwtape’s letters was prefixed with a warning and I would like to repeat that same warning here. Please remember that Satan has always been a liar and a deceiver. Likewise, not everything Slubgob says is true, even from his own twisted, upside-down perspective. Even demons are susceptible to self-deception and they can often be blinded by their hate of all that is good, true and beautiful.
This week is Holy Week and as the LifeTeen band isn’t playing this weekend, it means I can spend Easter at my favourite church, an Eastern Rite (Byzantine) Catholic parish near to where I live. Alleluia!…well, almost 😉
One of the things I love about the Byzantine Rite is the standard set of greetings and responses which take place during the year. For example, when I first attended the parish I got there very early on in the morning and heard the priest greet a parishioner with the exclamation: “Glory to Jesus Christ!”, to which the parishioner responded “Glory forever!”. This seems to me like a wonderful way to begin any conversation! 🙂
These responses change throughout the liturgical year. At “Nativity” (Christmas) it becomes:
“Christ is born!” “Glorify Him!”
We will shortly be entering the “Pascha” (Easter) season when it will change to:
“Christ is Risen!” “Indeed He is Risen!”
And at certain blessings, such as at the end of Great Vespers or at the Kiss of Peace:
“Christ is among us!” “He is and will be!”
These all seem wonderful ways of proclaiming the faith! Glory to Jesus Christ…
