Posted on 06/13/2010 12:16:24 PM PDT by markomalley
.- Thousands of pilgrims and faithful gathered at noon Sunday in St. Peters Square to pray the Angelus with the Holy Father. Before the prayer, he said that the fruits of the recently ended Year for Priests could never be measured, but are already visible and will continue to be ever more so.
The priest is a gift from the heart of Christ, a gift for the Church and for the world. From the heart of the Son of God, overflowing with love, all the goods of the Church spring forth, proclaimed Pope Benedict XVI. One of those goods is the vocations of those men who, conquered by the Lord Jesus, leave everything behind to dedicate themselves completely to the Christian community, following the example of the Good Shepherd.
The Holy Father described the priest as having been formed by the same charity of Christ, that love which compelled him to give his life for his friends and to forgive his enemies.
Therefore, he continued, priests are the primary builders of the civilization of love.
Benedict XVI exhorted priests to always seek the intercession of St. John Marie Vianney, whose prayer, the Act of Love, was prayed frequently during the Year for Priests, and continues to fuel our dialogue with God.
The pontiff also spoke about the close of the Year for Priests, which took place this past week and culminated with the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He emphasized the unforgettable days in the presence of more than 15,000 priests from around the world.
The feast of the Sacred Heart is traditionally a day of priestly holiness, but this time it was especially so, Benedict XVI remarked.
Pope Benedict concluded his comments by noting that, in contemplating history, one observes so many pages of authentic social and spiritual renewal which have been written by the decisive contribution of Catholic priests. These were inspired only by their passion for the Gospel and for mankind, for his true civil and religious freedom.
So many initiatives that promote the entire human being have begun with the intuition of a priestly heart, he exclaimed.
The Pope then prayed the Angelus, greeted those present in various languages, and imparted his apostolic blessing.
That, too, is accepted by some on faith. :)
I've got to go, great to leave laughing. :)
The early Christians were taught the faith by the epistles which were written during the time immediately after Christ's death,and are therefore contemporary to the beginning of the new church. Paul was selected to be the Catechist of the new church
Actually the gospels are Old Testament because they were written about a time when the Law was still in effect and before the declaration of the new testament and the death and resurrection of Christ .
They tell of the life of Jesus and that He kept the law perfectly for us..
Well, I think is just a natural response, at least for me, to provide various examples proving the contrary when it is asserted that Christ is a created being. I acknowledge this approach could appear to some as an imbalance in presentation. I assure you that any apparent imbalance is due more to my inability to state exhaustive truth in a post than it is to any denial of the truth of any part of Scripture, the voluntary subordination of Christ included.
Jesus is quoted as saying that he is "I am"; he also claims to be the "other" lord in Psalm 100:1, which to a Greek unfamiliar with Judaism may seem perfectly believable, especially given that the LXX addressed both Lords with the same word (kyrios), unlike Hebrew which leaves no doubt the first Lord is the Lord God (Yahveh) and the second one is not divine (because that word is never used as a divine title).
I have to say something about this one. The fact that the Hebrew word YHWH does not appear in the Greek Scriptures is not dispositive of the issue because the equivalent titles, passages and attributes of YHWH are quoted and directly applied to Christ by the Apostles.
Man is an icon of God, according to the Bible, and with the Holy Spirit supposedly indwelling the believer, all the fullness of deity is in him bodily too! So what's the difference, except that Jesus, according to Paul, was the first to be transformed that way, hence the "firstborn of all creatures"!
I feel I should say something in response to this, too. One major difference, as far as I can tell, is that no believer is ever said to have pre-existed in essence (huparcho) in the form (morphi-not schema) of God prior to emptying himself and taking the form of a bond-servant.
All these verbal acrobatics are an English necessity to attempt to express without going into deceptive language the meaning of the original languages.
I agree.
The Bible is believed on faith. That is its "proof." This book has been 'cooked' numerous times for the past 2,000 years and subjected to innumerable rationalizations, alterations, redactions, additions and deletions, to make it appear "harmonized" and without contradiction. Apparently, the "harmonization" continues to mimick the prevailing doctirne of the editors.
That's a rather bleak picture you're painting, my FRiend. In my view, without the remarkable plethora of N.T. manuscript evidence unparalleled in classic literature, we wouldn't even think of having a discussion about alterations, redactions, additions and deletions. If the Gospel were engraved on a dime, as the saying goes, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
For a Book that is supposedly perspicuous, that even a 5-yearold can understand [sic], it sure is laborious and requires endless hyperbolic exegetical explanations by multiglot PhD intellectuals who can selectively stitch together any "official truth" to their liking.
Amazing then, isn't it, the number of major doctrines of Christianity universally agreed upon by Christians of every stripe, not the least of which, the Deity of Christ?
Thank you for the discussion.
Cordially,
“Little do they know” is right. This has the makings of monstrous proportions. The Jews have spent 50 years defending their homeland, fighting haters all around them and securing Jerusalem. And Rome thinks they are ISRAEL? hmmmm...this can’t end well..for Rome..
I dont think I said I listen to people what kraft wrote, I think I said I listen to people that read the bible..
There is, brethren, one God, the knowledge of whom we gain from the Holy Scriptures, and from no other source. For just as a man if he wishes to be skilled in the wisdom of this world, will find himself unable to get at it in any other way than by mastering the dogmas of philosophers, so all of us who wish to practise piety will be unable to learn its practice from any other quarter than the oracles of God. Whatever things then the Holy Scriptures declare, at these let us look; and whatsoever things they teach these let us learn." (Against the Heresy of One Noetus, 9)
Athanasius wrote:
"Vainly then do they run about with the pretext that they have demanded Councils for the faith's sake; for divine Scripture is sufficient above all things; but if a Council be needed on the point, there are the proceedings of the Fathers, for the Nicene Bishops did not neglect this matter, but stated the doctrines so exactly, that persons reading their words honestly, cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in divine Scripture" (De Synodis, 6)
Cyril of Jerusalem wrote:
"For concerning the divine and sacred Mysteries of the Faith, we ought not to deliver even the most casual remark without the Holy Scriptures: nor be drawn aside by mere probabilities and the artifices of argument. Do not then believe me because I tell thee these things, unless thou receive from the Holy Scriptures the proof of what is set forth: for this salvation, which is of our faith, is not by ingenious reasonings, but by proof from the Holy Scriptures." (Lecture 4:17)
Even if nobody had advocated sola scriptura before the Reformation, the truth would remain the truth. The scriptures are the only apostolic material we have today. As such, they're the voice of the apostles, and they speak louder than all other traditions.
Yes and no.. It testifies to itself.. and as archeological digs go on the history as recorded comes about as truth as did the prophesies .. Ie..the temple destroyed in 70 AD
This "salvation by faith" thing is exactly why I find wrong to call Protestants "Christians". To me, Christ is completely the opposite of evil. Christ is LOVE in its purest sense, and in human form. Any religion that DEMANDS faith in its God when the world is obviously an ambiguous mess is part of the problem, and not the solution.
With people following all sorts of different religions based on who they born to, and where they were born, a God that would punish them could be nothing other than evil. This is not Christ or Christianity. LOVE would not punish those that can't see black and white in a world of gray.
Faith based religions are about as far away as you can get from Christ. My skin crawls at even the idea of Jesus Christ punishing the soul of some little girl raised in the Hindu faith that did't believe in him. It just goes against everything Christ taught. Protestants are not Christians. They can't be. What they believe is the opposite of what Christ taught.
Paul teaches there is no such thing prior to Christ. None is righteous, he says, not one.
That is not what I find when I look at the etymology of the word, "paradise". It is used in the Septuagint, and it had entered the Hebrew and Aramaic:
Paradise is a Persian word that is generally identified with the Garden of Eden or with Heaven. Originally meaning a walled garden or royal hunting grounds, the term entered Jewish (and eventually Christian) beliefs as a Greek translation for the Garden of Eden in the Septuagint. It is sometimes also identified with the bosom of Abraham, the abode of the righteous dead awaiting Judgment Day. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a penitent criminal crucified alongside him that they will be together when the Earth is restored to paradise.
Etymology
The word "paradise" entered English from the French "paradis", inherited from the Latin "paradisus", which came from Greek παραδεισος (royal garden).[1] The Greek word came from the Persian Avestan word "pairidaêza-" (an Eastern Old Iranian language) = "walled enclosure",[2] which is a compound of pairi- (= "around") (a cognate of Greek περί peri-) and -diz (= "to create, make"), a cognate of English "dough".
An associated word is the Sanskrit word paradēsha = "foreign country" or "supreme country" from Sanskrit para = "beyond" (Greek περα perā) and dēsha = "land, country".
The word also entered Semitic languages: Akkadian pardesu, Arabic firdaws (فردوس), Aramaic pardaysa פרדס, פרדסא, and Hebrew pardes.
http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Paradise__________________
The Encyclopedia Mikrait lists pardes as one of the Persian words that entered into Biblical Hebrew. It appears three times in the Tanach: Shir HaShirim 4:13, Kohelet 2:5, and Nechemiah 2:8. In these cases it has the general meaning of "orchard", compared to the specific sense in Greek of fenced off areas belonging to the king.
Kutscher points out that most of the Persian words that entered Hebrew at that time were related to governance, and therefore pardes probably originally was borrowed from the word referring to the parks or gardens of the king.
On the other hand, Ben Yehuda mentions that the word pardesu was borrowed from Persian to Late Babylonian (Kaddari also mentions Akkadian), and perhaps from here pardes entered Biblical Hebrew
http://www.balashon.com/2007/12/pardes-and-paradise.html
To suppose that Jesus should have answered the thief's plea with some sort of extended theolgolical lecture on Heaven and Hell, the intermediate state, the resurrection of he dead, the Kingdom of God, etc., especially when enormous effort was required just to breathe while being crucified doesn't make any sense. Whatever the extent of the thief's knowledge and/or beliefs about these topics he did understand enough to say, "remember me", which shows that he believed that Jesus would live and rule. Maybe he saw the sign over Jesus' head and believed it. Who knows what the extent of his theological knowledge was?
Even though we don't know in which language it was uttered, there is nothing implausible about Jesus' use of this particular word in Luke's account of it. I think it takes a leap of faith greater than that of the thief's to conclude that the whole thing never happened and is a ficticious story based on a word you think would not have been acceptable or plausible for Jesus to use, because the word was in use at the time.
Cordially,
Ah, yes. Some pigs are more equal than other pigs.
Your contradictions disprove your theory. Christ either indwells a man or He doesn't. There is nothing in Scripture that says Christ indwells one of His sheep 20% every other Tuesday and 40% every Saturday, excluding bank holidays and Canadian Labor Day...
That's just more of Rome's contrivance to fill the gap between the Bible and its manifold doctrines of men.
Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise”.
To the thief, paradise probably would have indicated a garden like place.
When Christ taught, there was no Christian scripture written. What He taught is the Holy Tradition. Several decades later, some of it was written down and became, in combination with the Old Testament, the Holy Scripture that Catholics know, and you guys don't.
For examples of traditions of men, look at the Protestant theological fantasies.
St. Thomas angelic doctor, pray for us.
Yes. It is, in particular, about inferior works that get burned off prior to the salvation of the faithful man. That is what the Purgatory is.
Christ taught St. dismas that he, Dismas, will be back to the state of his original parents prior to the fall. That would be instantly understandable to anyone in 1c Palestine; but apparently it takes a 21c you, infected with modernist trash-thought about the Bible, much longer.
First of all,Of course I believe the Scriptures are inspired,I don't accept protestant interpretations as inspired when they disagree with Church teaching
Secondly, my point is that TRADITIONS came first,so I'm not denying Christ's teaching.
The Apostles followed what Christ said before it was WRITTEN-They Did WRITE first and act later,thus tradition came first
Correction.
“”They Did WRITE first and act later,thus tradition came”” first
should say...
They Did NOT WRITE first and act later,thus tradition came first
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