Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, September 29, 2013 Luke 6:31-36 (2nd Sunday of Luke) Again we are reminded that God is merciful and compassionate and that we are to follow his example, but this is more than mere imitation. The imitation of God is one thing, but we are called to do more than that; we are called to become divine, not just to be merciful, but to become Mercy. The transformation
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, February 12, 2017 Imagine that you have been sentenced to seven years in a labor camp. The Church is weak, often riddled with spies, while the state proclaims that it is building a better world through its brutal efforts. Many of the laws specifically target the Church and activities within its normal life. Already in your lifetime, you have known thousands who have been executed for nothing more than faith in
By David Bentley Hart, October 2003 The word “nihilism” has a complex history in modern philosophy, but I use it in a sense largely determined by Nietzsche and Heidegger, both of whom not only diagnosed modernity as nihilism, but saw Christianity as complicit in its genesis; both it seems to me were penetratingly correct in some respects, if disastrously wrong in most, and both raised questions that we Christians ignore at our peril. Nietzsche’s case
Life in the world is based on force, on violence. The Christian has the opposite aim. Force does not belong to eternal life. No act imposed by force can save us. In community life, obedience allows us little by little to understand the psychology of other people. In learning to live with one person, we learn to live with the millions of people who are like him. In this way we enter progressively into deep
There is much mental suffering in our world. But some of it is suffering for the wrong reason because it is born out of the false expectation that we are called to take each other’s loneliness away. When our loneliness drives us away from ourselves into the arms of our companions in life, we are, in fact, driving ourselves into excruciating relationships, tiring friendships and suffocating embraces. To wait for moments or places where no
AND IF YOUR HAND CAUSES YOU TO SIN, CUT IT OFF, IT IS BETTER TO ENTER LIFE MAIMED THAN WITH TWO HANDS TO GO TO HELL . . . AND IF YOUR EYE CAUSES YOU TO SIN, PLUCK IT OUT; IT IS BETTER FOR YOU TO ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITH ONE EYE THAN WITH TWO EYES TO BE THROWN INTO HELL. —MARK 9:43ff. When you deal with blind people it dawns on you
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