"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Last night I gave a talk for The Goretti Group. This was a variation on a talk I gave at the Southern Kansas Young Adult Conference.
Is there life before marriage? (Download)
I’ve written a couple of articles for the Goretti Group in the past which you might like to read: Dear Miss Lawrence and “I waited until my wedding night to lose my virginity and I wish I hadn’t”.
Welcome to Episode 2! In today’s show we tackle the tricky and sensitive subject of non-Catholic dating, the situation where a Catholic is considering dating someone who is not in full communion with the Catholic
Episode 2: Non-Catholic Dating (Download)
— Notes —
* For those of you who would like to dig deeper into this topic, you can find a two-part series I wrote earlier on the subject.
* If you have any feedback or would like to pose a question for an upcoming episode, you can always tweet us at @davidandnessa.
If you have iTunes installed, you can click here to launch iTunes and 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 may be found here.
I have finally returned to a manuscript I wrote last year for a book on leading Bible Study. Each chapter begins with a quotation from a Saint or Church document which praises God’s Word or exhorts the faithful to the reading of Scripture. Today’s post will function as a notepad for all the quotations I’ve found…
Is there a quotation you love which I have omitted? Please share it in the Comments!
For we learned the plan of our salvation from no others than from those through whom the gospel came to us. They first preached it abroad, and then later by the will of God handed it down to us in Writings, to be the foundation and pillar of our faith
– St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3.1.1 (2nd Century)
One must therefore portray the meaning of the sacred writings in a threefold way upon one’s own soul, so that the simple person may be edified by what we may call the flesh of the scripture, …the obvious interpretation; while the one who has made some progress may be edified by its soul, as it were; and the one who is perfect… may be edified by the spiritual law, which has “a shadow of the good things to come” (cf. Rom. 7:14). For just as the human being consists of body, soul and spirit, so in the same way does the scripture, which has been prepared by God to be given for humanity’s salvation.
– Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles 4.11 (3rd Century)
Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ
– St. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah (4th Century)
When we pray, we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us
– St. Jerome (4th Century)
“Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you”
– St. Jerome, Letter XXII to Eustochium, 25 (4th Century)
“Read assiduously and learn as much as you can. Let sleep find you holding your Bible, and when your head nods let it be resting on the sacred Page”
– St. Jerome (4th Century)
“Scripture is of all things most sufficient for us.”
– Saint Athanasius, Father and Doctor of the Church (4th Century)
“These books are the fountains of salvation, so that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the oracles contained in them”
-Saint Athanasius, Father and Doctor of the Church, Letter 39.6 (4th Century)
“Reading the Scriptures is a great safeguard against sin”
– St. Epiphanius (4th Century)
“…we speak to Him when we pray; we hear Him when we read the divine saying.”
– St. Ambrose of Milan, On the Duties of Ministers I, 20,88: PL l6,50 (4th Century)
“Let the Word of God come; let it enter the Church; let it become a consuming fire, burning the hay and stubble, and consuming whatever is worldly”
– St. Ambrose of Milan (4th Century)
“The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books, but that we should engrave them upon our hearts”
– St. John Chrysostom (4th Century)
“It is not possible, I say not possible, ever to exhaust the mind of the Scriptures. It is a well which has no bottom”
– St. John Chrysostom (4th Century)
“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself”
– St. Augustine, Father and Doctor of the Church (4th Century)
“He will find there in much greater abundance things that are to be found nowhere else, but can be learnt only in the wonderful sublimity and wonderful simplicity of the Scriptures”
– St. Augustine, Father and Doctor of the Church, De Doctr. Christ. 2,42,63 (4th Century)
“The New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is unveiled in the New”
– St. Augustine, Father and Doctor of the Church (4th Century)
“When you begin to read or listen to the Holy Scriptures, pray to God thus: “Lord Jesus Christ, open the ears and eyes of my heart so that I may hear Thy words and understand them, and may fulfill Thy will”
– St. Ephraim the Syrian (4th Century)
We won’t normally be posting more than one episode a week, but here is the first full episode of the Restless Heart podcast. In today’s show we talk about an important figure in the Early Church known as St. Justin Martyr and look at what he had to say about Mass in 2nd Century Rome.
Episode 1: Worshipping with St. Justin (Download)
— Notes —
* If this subject interests you, you might be interested in watching a longer presentation I have given on the subject of worship in the Early Church.
* If you have any feedback or would like to pose a question for an upcoming episode, you can always tweet us at @davidandnessa.
If you have iTunes installed, you can click here to launch iTunes and 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 may be found here.
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.
Restless Heart – Pilot (Download)
— Show Notes —
* 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.
As I was driving in to work today, I was listening to Episode 26 of Trending with Don and Timmerie.
One of the news items being discussed by the hosts referred to my country of origin and I thought it would be worth briefly sharing here. The news item in question referred to a study by David Paton and Liam Wright and published in the Journal of Health Economics.
Back in the 1990s, Britain had some of the highest teen pregnancy rates, so the government responded with a rigorous sex education plan costing four hundred and fifty-four million pounds. The plan was implemented, free contraception was handed out… but it it did little to reduce the occurrences of teen pregnancy.
However, in 2008 things changed. Due to the economic downturn, the funding for the sex education initiatives were cut. Some of the schools chose to continue the programmes, while others dropped them due to lack of funding. It might surprise some to find out that in the geographical areas where the programmes no longer functioned, there was a distinct drop in the number of teenage pregnancies and abortions (up to 40%), while it was business-as-usual in the areas where the programmes continued.
Perhaps contraception isn’t the panacea we were promised…
Cardinal Newman famously said that “…to go deep into history is to cease to be Protestant”. I couldn’t help but think of this quotation when a friend of mine sent me a screenshot of the Church of England Twitter account, remembering the “Reformation Martyrs” St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher. While I can appreciate the ecumenical good-will which no doubt motivated the tweet, the history of these two men renders this tweet exceptionally odd.
Both Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were Catholics who were executed by King Henry VIII. They were killed because they opposed the King’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, his marriage to Anne Boleyn and the break from Rome which this remarriage necessitated. It is therefore more than a little strange for the Church of England to hold in high regard two men who shed their blood in opposing the creation of their own institution!
On a personal note, when I lived in London, the gym which I attended was very close to the location of their execution on Tower Hill, so I would quite often pray the Divine Office on that martyrdom site.
It has been said that shortly before Bishop Fisher’s execution, he opened St. John’s Gospel and read the following:
“Eternal life is this: to know You, the only true God, and Him Whom You have sent, Jesus Christ. I have given You glory on earth by finishing the work You gave me to do. Do You now, Father, give me glory at Your side”
– John 17:3-5
After closing the book, the good bishop commented “There is enough learning in that to last me the rest of my life”. St. More and St. Fisher, pray for us.