A journal of byzantine digressionS
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Typology
As Typology is such an important tool for understanding the Bible – in fact, the Bible is meaningless without it – it can seem odd that it’s largely unknown outside of the Orthodox and Catholic churches. For 1,000 years Typology was really the primary tool used to understand the scriptures, but today the twin errors…
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Lent’s Here. Let’s talk food.
+JMJ+ BBC Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet is one of my most favourite things, right after whiskers on kittens and Atmospheric River Events on roses. They travel the UK looking for regional specialties and sharing cooking advice. Most of the members of the panel are from some part of the UK (I think), but they…
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You’re Not From Jerusalem, Are You?
+JMJ+ When I moved here in 1997, I was told that I would have to have been here for 6 months before anyone would believe I was staying. Until I hit six months, even with a job, I was just a tourist. In no time at all, it was evident that there were a lot…
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No More Angry Hermits!
+JMJ+ The Church’s story is filled with hermit saints: St Mary of Egypt, my personal favorite among them, but St Mary Magdalen, St Jerome, St Anthony, St Simon, St Seraphim praying in the woods, St Julian and her cat… so many many more. They went away to pray, to encounter God, to find their souls…
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Coming Clean on Sheep and Goats
+JMJ+ I’ve heard this sermon so many times. I’ve preached this sermon at least once or twice. I want to call bullshit. Or Sheepshit. The text is Matthew 25:31–46 and you can click through to read the whole thing, although here are the preces: Jesus says at the Last Judgement God will divide us as a farmer does…
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Things that trip us up
+JMJ+ In today’s epistle, the Love Chapter from 1st Corinthians, Paul says: If I give away everything I own,and if I hand my body over so that I may boast,but do not have love, I gain nothing. Through several accidents of tradition and translation, some folks today say that all of Christianity can be boiled down…
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A Daily Act of Consecration to the Holy Family
Please note: what follows is not an officially approved devotion in any way. If you find it useful, amen. If you feel it needs correction please let me know. HOLY FAMILY OF NAZARETH, hear the prayers of a prodigal son. I have sinned before heaven and against you. Take me as one of your hired…
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The Three Christmas Gospels
+JMJ+ There are three masses on Christmas. In fact this has been the case in the West since at least the 7th Century when Pope Gregory mentions it (see below). Each Mass has its own readings and its own prayers. Recently some friends and I, being Church Geeks, were comparing missals and became quite happy…
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A Child’s Christmas in Wurtsboro
IT BEGINS when, prompted by the Wurtsboro Village council and “borrowing” a truck from his employer, the electric company, my grandfather puts up the village lights. Driving slowly through town in a cherry picker, Grandpa puts up the aged white candles, the green wreaths, the red lighted garlands. Snow has fallen. Trees have been placed…
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The Christmas Proclamation
+JMJ+ This text gets read at Prime this morning in the Extraordinary Form of the Office. There is no Prime in the Little Office of Paul VI (let the Reader Understand), so it doesn’t get read mostly, although it gets plopped in a la carte in where it might go sometimes. December 25th anno Domini…
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O Virgin
+JMJ+ O Virgo virginum, quomodo fiet istud? Quia nec primam similem visa es nec habere sequentem. Filiae Ierusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis. O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? For neither before was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me?…
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O Emmanuel
+JMJ+ O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, expectatio gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster. O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the one awaited by the gentiles, and their Savior: come to save us, Lord our God. Once in royal Davids city, Stood a lowly cattle shed, Where a mother laid…
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O King
+JMJ+O Rex Gentium,et desideratus earum,lapisque angularis,qui facis utraque unum:veni, et salva hominem,quem de limo formasti. O King of the Nations,and the one they desired,keystone,who makes both peoples one,come and save mankind,whom you shaped from the mud. There is this curious article by Philip Turner that showed up in First Things a few years ago and…
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The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper So the shortest day came, and the year died,And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white worldCame people singing, dancing,To drive the dark away. They lighted candles in the winter trees;They hung their homes with evergreen;They burned beseeching fires all night longTo keep the year alive, And when the new year’s sunshine…
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O Oriens
+JMJ+ O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.O Dawn, splendor of eternal light, and sun of justice, come, and shine on those seated in darkness, and in the shadow of death. This verse gets sung at sunset on the Longest Night of the Year. Light is…
Orthoparadoxy 