Things to do in London
I will be going to London later this year. In preparation for that, I decided to compile a list of my favourite things to do in my home country’s capital city…
Tag: featured
Travel Log: Keeping it weird in Portland
Today I’m in Oregon for Oktoberfest and it reminded me that I never wrote about my trip here last month. After a week on retreat at Mount Angel, I spent the weekend in Portland:
I got to visit the famous Powells, a three-story bookstore covering an entire city block. I was so proud of myself, I managed to leave without buying anything – quite an achievement!
I spent most of Saturday morning visiting the extensive Saturday market down by the waterfront.
I also took an “Underground” walking tour of the city where I heard about some of the rather quirky history of Oregon’s most well-known city.
During our tour we went past one Portland’s iconic locations, Voodoo Donuts. The lines outside were crazy, with people waiting over an hour just to get a donut! During the tour we heard the story of how the business began. It turns out that a club owner created donuts which he said were hang-over cures. He could say this because the sugar frosting was replaced with crushed-up aspirins and the jam filling with pepto-bismol! The government discovered what he was doing and freaked out because he was putting drugs in the food he was selling. Rather than letting it sink his business, he then used the media storm as free advertising. He switched to making the kind of delicious sugar-filled treats they sell today and people flocked to buy them!
Finally, while in Portland I went to Mass at the Grotto on the outskirts to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption. I returned the following day to spend some quiet time in the grotto grounds:
What the Q?
“Q” is the name given by theologians and historians to the hypothetical document which would account for the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but which are not found in Mark:
Although I think the existence of the Q source is a distinct possibility, I’ll admit that I’ve grown very weary with all the modern scholarship which takes its existence as Gospel (so to speak) and who seem to enjoy developing more and more elaborate theories concerning its existence.
Given this, I simply have to share the following quotation which Joseph Heschmeyer put up a quotation on Facebook yesterday:
“I must admit, though, that the affirmation of Q’s existence comes close to exhausting my ability to believe in hypothetical entities. I find myself increasingly skeptical as more refined and detailed theories about Q’s extent, wording, community, geographical setting, stages of tradition and redaction, and coherent theology are proposed. I cannot help thinking that biblical scholarship would be greatly advanced if every morning all exegetes would repeat as a mantra:
“Q is a hypothetical document whose exact extension, wording, originating community, strata, and stages of redaction cannot be known.” This daily devotion might save us flights of fancy that are destined, in my view, to end in skepticism.”
– J.P. Meier, “A Marginal Jew: Mentor, Message, and Miracles”
Sunday Lectionary: Holy Trinity Sunday
Fairly terse notes today, I’m afraid…
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: June 3, 2012
Last week we celebrated the Feast of Pentecost and this week we have another great celebration: Trinity Sunday. The Holy Trinity is one of the central truths of the Christian faith, declaring that there is only one God and in that Godhead there are three persons: Father, Son and Spirit.
The truth of the Trinity was something which was revealed by Christ, although there are hints found in the Old Testament. For example, the use of the first person, plural pronouns found in the Creation account:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. – Genesis 1:26–27
Some Fathers also saw a hint of the Trinity in the call of the angels before God’s throne:
I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robefilled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” – Isaiah 6:3
Although revealed in the New Testament, the word “Trinity” is not found in Sacred Scripture. However, the word “Trinity” does describe the truth which is found in Scripture. The word is first used to describe God in the third century by Tertullian (although the word first makes its appearance in Christian theology in 170 AD through the writings of Theophilus of Antioch).
At every Mass we confess the truth of the Trinity in the Nicene Creed when we confess that Christ is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance (homoousios) with the Father”.
This Trinity is one God from Whom, through Whom, and in Whom all things exist – St. Augustine
What is the difference between the born and unborn?
As I mentioned yesterday, to mark the March For Life, this week I’m going to be posting a series of articles exclusively on the subject of abortion.
Today I’d like to outlining the two main stages I pass through when discussing the subject of abortion with those who are pro-choice.
Read more
The Pattern of Abortion Discussion online
Over the last month or so, I have been involved in quite a few online discussions about abortion and I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect upon a few of the interactions as several of them involved strange arguments and bewildering claims…
Read moreA jealous God?
The other day, I received a question via Facebook from a friend asking about a passage she had read in the Old Testament. Her query related to a turn of phrase used in the Book of Exodus where God describes Himself as a “jealous God” (Exodus 20:4-6). What did it mean? Why would God ever be “jealous”? Surely jealousy is always a bad thing?
