‘...[T]he study fo the Fathers offered a new approach to the mystery of Christian salvation, as it is contained in the word of Scripture and the living tradition of the Church: a way largely free of the rigid intellectual confines of the scholasticism of twentieth-century theological manuals, more self-consciously rooted in biblical proclamation and liturgical practice and more optimistic about the possibilities of a direct, experiential union of the human subject with the | infinite god. … [T]he Catholic rediscovery of patristic literature in the late 1930s ... even for those whose later work would be more in systematic or dogmatic theology … serious study of the Fathers was a decisive force in freeing their thought, early in their careers, for fresh ways of conceiving and formulating the heart of the Catholic tradition.’[1]
Sunday, 16 June 2013
Saturday, 15 June 2013
Making God possible
Disciples are those who, sitting at the feet of Christ,
God’s incarnate & living Word, learn to live in love of God and neighbour,
and who in the grace of the Spirit help others to do likewise. Discipleship is
about the people we become when we have an encounter with the living God, and
what we do as a response to make that kind of transformation possible the lives
of others.[1]
To be transformed in discipleship is also to
make God possible in our encounter with others.[2]
[1] N.B. There’s
a dimension of discovery and joyful sharing the riches found: Matthew 13.44:
‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found
and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that
field’.
[2] On the idea priesthood is
about ‘making God possible’, cf. Allan Billings, Making God Possible: The Task of Ordained Ministry Present and Future,
SPCK, 2010.
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Prayer: Light from light...
‘Anyone who enters this sphere of radiance
will become luminous with the same light. Our contemplation of the divine love-mysteries
in Christ’ means that we too must be “light from light” and so be able to
illuminate others’.[1]
Welcome Seattle School of Theology & Psychology
“The
Son of God became man so that we might become god.”
Athanasius of Alexandria (295-373) De incarnatione. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B)—i.e., Christ became what we are
that we might become what he is, that we might become children of God because
He is the Son of God.
Ian McEwan: an impossible world?
Ian McEwan, Saturday (London: Vintage, 2006), p. 172.
“No longer tired, Henry comes away from the
wall where he’s been leaning, and walks into the middle of the dark auditorium,
towards the great engine of sound. He lets it engulf him. There are these rare
moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they've ever found
before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or
technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as
friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of
our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything you
have to others, but lose nothing of yourself. Out in the real world there exist
detailed plans, visionary projects for peaceable realms, all conflicts resolved,
happiness for everyone, for ever — mirages for which people are prepared to die
and kill. Christ’s kingdom on earth, the workers’ paradise, the ideal Islamic
state. But only in music, and only on rare occasions, does the curtain actually
lift on this dream of community, and it’s tantalisingly conjured, before fading
away with the last notes.”[1]
Cf. contextualised in the Eucharistic in
Timothy Radcliffe OP, Why God To Church?
The Drama of the Eucharist (New York: Continuum, 2008), p. 63.
Timothy Radcliffe: Why go to church?
“Why go to church? What is the point? We go
to receive a gift, a share in God’s life through faith, hope and charity. God
gives himself discreetly, quietly, and often without any dramatic experiences.
Grace works the patient transformation of our lives. The Eucharist is a
dramatic re-enactment of the story of our lives, of what it means to be a human
being made for God. … I am trying to spot ways in which [Eucharistic worship]
engages our lives so that we can be open to receive the gift of grace – not
just when we are in church, but all the time. … I am trying to put my finger on
the pulse of the drama, and see how it is the drama of every human life....”[1]
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