Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and you will inherit everlasting life. Behold, in the cross is everything, and upon your dying on the cross everything depends. There is no other way to life and to true inward peace than the way and discipline of the cross.
The current state of the Anglican Communion is tenuous. Of all the issues confronted in the church’s two millennia—persecution, war and famine, the rise and fall of nations, of economies, of political systems, of churches—why should this great expression of the Christian faith be shaken to its core over issues of sexuality?
The tradition that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute is among the most extraordinary and implausible inventions ever woven out of gospel texts. The reasoning behind the tradition followed this far-fetched course: the woman who anointed Jesus in Luke (7:36-50) was ‘a sinner’;
Building and nurturing community—relationships with common purpose and common support—is very much like planting and nurturing a garden. Just a few weeds, if not attended to, can kill what you are trying to grow. Like the weeds in a real garden, if considered alone, they are just healthy plants; in the context of the garden they are killers.
Matthew may have been clear that there are only two kinds of people in the world—the wheat and the weeds—but it is a clarity that escapes most of us, we who have encountered both kinds in ourselves, and in our neighbors, and in the world. Most of our fields are full of mixed plantings, or worse.
The best-known of the self-consecrated virgins was Macrina, sister of the two great Capadoccian fathers, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory wrote an account of her life and a philosophical dialogue purporting to record her reflections during her last days. Macrina’s desire to remain a virgin received the sympathetic support of her mother, Emilia.
Many years ago, when our children were very little, one of the girls turned to me and asked, “Will it be all right?” I wasn’t sure what the “it” referred to, but her question held a kind of cosmic significance. “Will it be all right?” I said yes, with my fingers crossed behind my back. That desire and wonder—will everything be all right?
In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, many believed that the Church of England was doomed to become extinct in the New World. . . . William White, rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, was one of the few who believed that the pattern of Christian life established in the Book of Common Prayer could have a place in the new nation.
Prayer for the Lambeth Conference, for the ACC, for the Primates, for the Congress, is increasingly needed, that in our talking together we are at the same time listening to God. I have been convinced, however, more so in recent months, that it is not enough. In particular, it was the passage we had for the epistle that has shaped my thinking.
In his explanation of this parable [of the sower], Jesus says that riches smother. They smother because they choke our hearts by the constant thoughts that they arouse. When they prevent good desires from entering our hearts, it is as if they are cutting off the intake of the breath we need to live.