What Is Hell Like? Does It Even Exist? NT Wright on 100 Huntley Street (HD)

Marriage in Ukrainian Catholicism

Catholic Evangelicals

QUOTE:

By our Baptism, we are called to be men and women of the Gospel who are Christian disciples by conviction rather than mere Church members by convention. Being Evangelical Catholics requires that we know the Gospel, believe the Gospel, live the Gospel, and share the Gospel with others, and becoming Evangelical Catholics is a lifelong adventure of letting go of the various counterfeit catholicisms of our time (casual, cultural, cafeteria Catholicism) by accepting the liberating truth of the Word of God and living by grace through faith in the Son of God.

Evangelical Catholicism is not meant to be a movement within the Church, still less a sect or sub-set of Catholicism; it simply a way of understanding the vocation of every Christian to be a true disciple of and faithful witness to the Lord Jesus. I offer these principles as a catechetical tool…

The Principles of Evangelical Catholicism

1. The Lord Jesus Christ is the crucified and risen Savior of all mankind, and no human person can fully understand his life or find his dignity and destiny apart from a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. It is not enough to know who Jesus is; we must know Jesus.

2. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is divine revelation, not human wisdom, and the Gospel is given to us in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition which together constitute a single divine deposit of faith transmitted authentically and authoritatively by the Bishops in full communion with the Bishop of Rome.

As an Anglo-Catholic I would reword this to say: by Bishops in full agreement with the teaching & practice of the undivided church).

We must surrender our private judgments in all matters of faith and morals to the sacred teaching authority of the Church’s Magisterium if we are to receive the whole Gospel.

(Again I would reword this to say: the dogma of the undivided church instead of magisterium)

3. The seven Sacraments of the New Covenant are divinely instituted instruments of grace given to the Church as the ordinary means of sanctification for believers. Receiving the Sacraments regularly and worthily is essential to the life of grace, and for this reason, faithful attendance at Sunday Mass every week (serious illness and necessary work aside) and regular Confession of sins are absolutely required for a life of authentic discipleship.

4. Through Word and Sacrament we are drawn by grace into a transforming union with the Lord Jesus, and having been justified by faith we are called to sanctification and equipped by the Holy Spirit for the good works of the new creation. We must, therefore, learn to live as faithful disciples and to reject whatever is contrary to the Gospel, which is the Good News of the Father’s mercy and love revealed in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

5. The sacred liturgy, through which the seven Sacraments are celebrated and the Hours of praise are prayed, makes present to us the saving mysteries of the Lord Jesus. The liturgy must therefore be celebrated in such a way that the truth of the Gospel, the beauty of sacred music, the dignity of ritual form, the solemnity of divine worship, and the fellowship of the baptized assembled to pray are kept together in organic unity.

6. Receiving the Sacraments without receiving the Gospel leads to superstition rather than living faith, and the Church must therefore take great care to ensure that those who receive the Sacraments also receive the Gospel in its integrity and entirety. Consequently, before Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, and Marriage are administered, there must be in those who request these Sacraments clear evidence of knowledge of the Gospel and a serious intention to live the Christian life.

7. Being a follower of Christ requires moving from being a Church member by convention to a Christian disciple by conviction. This transformation demands that we consciously accept the Gospel as the measure of our entire lives, rather than attempting to measure the Gospel by our experience. Personal knowledge of and devotion to Sacred Scripture is necessary for this transformation to occur through the obedience of faith, and there is no substitute for personal knowledge of the Bible. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.

8. All the baptized are sent in the Great Commission to be witnesses of Christ to others and must be equipped by the Church to teach the Gospel in word and deed. An essential dimension of true discipleship is the willingness to invite others to follow the Lord Jesus and the readiness to explain His Gospel. (Jay Scott Newman, a priest of the Diocese of Charleston)

COMMENTARY:

For obvious reasons there is a great deal of movement out of Anglicanism and into other expressions of catholicity, & Fr. Newman is one example. He was raised in the Episcopal Church, & then converted into Roman Catholicism. What is most interesting to me about these converts is the contribution they bring to the church they enter. Because they have obviously have drank from other streams, when that other drinking blossoms we all benefit. One specific benefit that we all receive from these Anglicans is their evangelical kind of Catholicism.

There is a certain kind of fullness in these Evangelical Catholics that is not always visible in other expressions of Christianity.

Notice the motivation for presenting the gospel: no human person can fully understand his life or find his dignity and destiny apart from a personal relationship with the Lord.

Notice the basis doctrine: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition which together constitute a single divine deposit of faith.

Notice the methodology: Through Word and Sacrament we are drawn by grace into a transforming union with the Lord Jesus.

And finally notice the charge: Being a follower of Christ requires moving from being a Church member by convention to a Christian disciple by conviction.

May the Lord bless His church with many more evangelical Catholics!

Pentecost 2010

There are many things that are quite puzzling about Christianity to those on the outside looking in. This is especially true when we refer to the classic and historic Christianity that we practice in the Anglican-Catholic tradition. We do strange things like process while carrying books, crosses, & incense; we light candles, and all of this while our clergy & altar servers dress as if we were already in the heavens. If this were not enough, we say words that were written thousands of years ago, & we sing songs that span the 2000 (to 3500) year history of the church. And we even celebrate days on a calendar that no one in our country seems to know anything about.

Today, is Pentecost Sunday, & it is a day that belongs to another rhythm of time; a rhythm that can best be described as the by ebb & flow of God’s redemption. This feast day goes back to even before the birth of Christianity; it has its origins in the 15^th century BC, when it was given the Hebrew name, the “festival of weeks.”

We are told about the institution of this feast in the book of Leviticus, 23: 9-16. This feast day had several redemptive events related to it:

1^st, it marked the end of the gathering of the harvest season, thus this day was intended to be a the day of the in-gathering- symbolizing the ultimate harvest.

2^nd, this feast day marked the day that the Israelites received the Ten Commandments from God. The table of commandments served as the constitution of Israel, the day of Pentecost marked the birthday of Israel.

3^rd, it also marked fifty days after the Passover, that day when the angel of death passed over all of the Israelite homes that were covered by the blood of a lamb, bringing life out of death.

So, as you can see, this day of Pentecost was filled with layers of meaning: understanding this, the Greek translators of the Old Testament emphasized the time of the event in their naming of the feast. Since it occurs 50 days after the Passover they called the feast “Pentecost,” which literally means ‘fiftieth”. Nevertheless, it was not until the event recorded in Acts chapter 2, that we find the full meaning of Pentecost revealed. There we find the true gathering of God’s gifts, the people from the entire known world; the formation of the new Israel of God, the church, and the gift of life, the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit coming to dwell inside of humans. The picture painted nearly 1500 years earlier took on flesh. From this day forward there would be a new race of god-men walking the earth. No longer merely sons of Adam, but now sons of God.( Fr. Carlos Miranda, an excerpt from the Homily for Pentecost, 2010)

Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue:

Pictured (L-R) are: Fr. Timothy Matkin, Fr. Ron Drummond, Metropolitan Jonah (OCA), Fr. Christopher Cantrell, Bishop Jack Iker, Fr. Chuck Hough, Fr. Joseph Fester (OCA), and Fr. John Jordan.

Local meeting to be followed by national conference:

The dialogue committee for our diocese and the Orthodox Church in America’s Diocese of the South met Friday, April 9, in the library of St. Vincent's Cathedral School in Bedford.

It was agreed to hold a joint clergy conference sometime in the fall, focusing on theological developments in the Western Church compared with those that took place in the Eastern Church prior to the great division that was formalized in 1054. The group also discussed how to involve laity in our dialogue, and some interest was expressed in forming a chapter of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius in order to facilitate this.

The first meeting of the national dialogue group between the ACNA and the OCA will be held in Dallas on April 22 and 23. Our diocese will be represented by Dean Ryan Reed of St. Vincent's Cathedral.

Are you saved?

Blesed Feast of Ascension

Below is an ancient hymn of the church, arranged by the Taize community. It is beleived to date back to the 9th Century; in it we have the fullness of the apostolic tradition regarding the Holy Spirit translated into language and form that speaks to us today.

Have a blessed feast!