When someone says 9-11 almost everyone in America will know that it refers to September 11, 2001, the day of the infamous attacks on the United States by 19 hijackers who flew two airline passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon near Washington DC, and one that crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, while it was undoubtedly bound for the Capitol or White House. 9-11 became a
We are created, we are creatures; this basic statement of faith sums up the truth that we are not self-sufficient, that we cannot find fulfillment without turning towards the unknown God who holds us in existence and calls us to himself. We must avoid static, objectifying language, as if the Creator and his creature existed side by side. Creatures exist only in God, in that creative will which is precisely what distinguishes him from his
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! Godly Meditations from America’s Founding Fathers: “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.” –George Washington “I have so much faith in the general government of the world by
Earthly existence is for man an endless suffering. Why do we bear all this? Because the Creator has come and has dwelt among us. And we now know Him personally. We are created ‘in the image and likeness of God’. When we measure the reality of our everyday life against this divine revelation, we fall into despair. Why is it so difficult to act as a Christian in the here and now? Because it is
In Christ, our consciousness expands, our life becomes unlimited. In the commandment ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself, we must understand the words ‘as thyself in this way: every man, the ‘whole Adam’, is my being. The kingdom of Christ, writes Saint Silouan, is to bear in our heart the whole universe and God the Creator Himself. When you pray, pray for each and every one. And add: ‘By their prayers, by his/her prayer, have mercy
We must have the same consciousness as Christ, who bears in Himself the whole world; this is what makes for the universality of the human person. The word of Christ does not stop; it is without limits. If, as we confess in the Creed, Christ is very God, the Savior of the universe, the Creator of the world, ‘by whom all things were made’, how can we bring our understanding of Him down to a
Christ said: ‘I am the Way’. If He is the Way, we should follow Him, not outwardly, but from within. And we must remember that on Golgotha and in Gethsemane He was confronted by the hostility of everyone. Alone. There are times, when the love of Christ touches us that we feel eternity. This cannot be understood rationally. God acts in a manner proper to Himself, which is beyond reason. We must not be too
Why are the consequences of Adam’s disobedience so disastrous? Why does spiritual life in Christ take, in this world, the tragic form of a hand-to-hand battle against death? Why is God’s creation linked to this negation, to death, to this struggle full of pain? Why does His act of creation not lead harmoniously to the fulfillment of humankind in the image of God? Why must I struggle against things which kill me without having the
Two Sexes but Only One Human Nature The author of the story of our creation teaches us that the Creator formed from the clay a man, formed from the man’s rib a woman and then, starting from the union of the two, filled the earth with their descendants. God did not create the woman from just any kind of material. He took from the man what he needed to create her. The reason? To prevent
If a rational Creator started this whole thing, then there has to be a “DNA connection,” as it were, between the One who creates and what is created. One of the many wonderful things that scientists are discovering as they compare their observations through microscopes with those through telescopes is that the pattern of the neutrons, protons, and electrons in atoms is similar to the pattern of planets, stars, and galaxies: both are in orbit
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