Tag: Preach
Wise Words on Wednesday: Preach with hands and lips
For those of you who are disappointed that the St. Francis saying is apocryphal…
“We must preach to the poor with our hands before we preach with our lips”
– St. Peter Claver
Eastern Icons and the Gospel of Thomas?
If you ever visit an Eastern Catholic or Eastern Orthodox parish, you’ll find them adorned with many icons and, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, these icons are dense with meaning.
At one point last year I brought a friend to my parish and we spent some time looking at the icons. He noticed that in the icons of the four Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), each of them is holding a book, symbolic of the Gospel attributed him. He then noticed the icon of St. Thomas and asked a question which caught me off-guard:
“Is the scroll he’s holding a reference to the ‘Gospel of Thomas’?”
I had never considered that association before! You see, the “Gospel of Thomas” is a non-Canonical work from the mid 2nd Century and was rejected by the Catholic Church. Bishop Eusebius from 3rd Century described it as “the fictions of heretics”. Given all that, it’s rather unlikely that the scroll in Thomas’ hand in a Catholic Church is a reference to a heretical work of antiquity!
So…what does the scroll in the Apostle’s hand represent? In Eastern iconography, a scroll represents holy wisdom and indicates that the person preached and held the rank of apostle.
Friday Frivolity: How to get through a checkpoint quickly…
This is the fastest way to get through a checkbox…and is kinda genius!
Happy Feast of St. Francis
For more thoughts on this, please see my post The Excuses We Make.
Also go check out Brandon Vogt’s Catholic Speakers List…
Sunday Lectionary: Going up?
In addition to being the Seventh Sunday in Easter, this Sunday is also Ascension Sunday. This has been an insanely busy week – sorry I didn’t get this posted earlier.
Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord: 20th May, 2012
This Sunday we hear a glorious mystery! The Second Glorious Mystery to be precise! Yes, this Sunday we celebrate Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven.
In recent weeks, life among the Apostles had been, to put it mildly, a bit rocky (and not “rocky” in the good, “Peter” kind of way). In fact, things had been pretty awful. The Master had been betrayed, beaten and then killed on a cross. Dark times.
But then, something happened… He rose from the dead! For several weeks He had been appearing to His disciples! Life was good again! But then…what?…He left?
Huh? Things were finally starting to look up! Why did He leave? Did the Lord abandon His Church?