In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body but is not of the body.
Be sure, the psalmist tells us in Psalm 98, God is coming. Somehow, someway, God is coming to judge the earth, and that includes each one of us. And God comes again and again, in a variety of ways and times, to guide us and refine us.
We give you thanks, Holy Father,
For your holy name which you
have caused to dwell in our hearts,
And for the knowledge and faith and immortality
Which you have made known to us
‘Ite missa est,’ chanted the tall, olive-skinned priest; from the distinguished congregation came the response, ‘Deo Gratias.’ Echoing throughout not only the already old church of St Martin, Canterbury, but soon to ring out throughout England.
Bede seems to have two major purposes in writing his History. . . . First of all, he is desirous of writing The Ecclesiastical History of the English People just as his title indicates, and this involves such concerns as chronological development, comprehensive treatment, fairness, accuracy, and attention to sources and to details that have usually been the objective goals and characteristics of good historians, but always under the subjective influence of his own perspectives and within the limitations under which he worked.
John, who especially brings out the working of spiritual causes in the Gospel, preserves this prayer of the Lord for the apostles that all the others passed over. Notice how he prayed, namely, “Holy Father, keep them in your name. . . . While I was with them, I kept them in your name: those whom you gave me I have kept.”
Constrained by the love of Christ, that love which induced him to humble himself even to the agonies and the death of the cross to rescue us from unutterable woe, we are to prove our faithfulness by a deep and abiding interest for the spiritual welfare of our fellow beings. God has commanded—and he who has tasted and knows that the Lord is gracious, will delight to fulfil his will.
The ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven does not separate him from us; rather, it involves us with him in the same destiny and the same way. For though he left the world, he did not leave his human nature. There is humanity in heaven now.
As the Resurrection of the Lord was a cause of rejoicing for us in the Paschal liturgy, so his Ascension into heaven is a matter of present delight for us. We recall and rightly venerate that day when our lowly nature was carried in Christ above all the hosts of heaven, over all the angelic orders and beyond the height of all powers, to the seat of God the Father.
The scholars and teachers Charlemagne brought to Aachen provide some clues about the various locales in which early medieval learning had survived. . . . Charlemagne brought an Anglo-Saxon, Alcuin of York, to Aachen after meeting him in Italy in 781.