Patristic Quote of the Day

When the Gospel spoke, think it was the cloud: from thence has the voice sounded out to us. Let us hear Him; that is, let us do what He says, let us hope for what He has promised.—Augustine, Serm. 29 on NT #FathersOfTheChurch

Luther Quote of the Day

Both Christians' sufferings and the world's wretchedness, tyranny, wrath, and persecution of the saints become a certain testimony of another life to come and of the last judgment of God, through which all men, good and evil, shall receive their due reward.Ser, 1544 #Lutherquotes

Luther Quote of the Day

O death...O grave... This song we sing now in reference to the Person of Christ and of those who are risen with Christ from the dead, for they have passed through and won the victory over death. —Sermon, 1545 #LutherQuotes

Patristic Quote of the Day

Moses and the Prophets spoke, and wrote; but when they poured out, they were filled from Him.—Sermon 28 on the NT Augustine #FathersOfTheChurch

Luther Quote of the Day

God suffers us to be buried in the earth and to decay in the winter, so that we may shoot forth in the summer brighter than the sun, as though the grave were not a grave but a lovely garden. Sermons, 1533 #LutherQuotes

Patristic Quote of the Day

The discourse in defense of the truth is inferior in nature and force, for the refutation of falsehood is less important than the establishment of truth. Athenagoras, On the Resurrection, #FathersOfTheChurch

Blessed Thanksgiving, all!

Semper et ubique

Vere dignum et justum est, æquum et salutáre, nos tibi semper et ubíque grátias ágere: Dómine sancte, Pater omnípotens, ætérne Deus, per Christum Dóminum nostrum...

Patristic Quote of the Day

Always to give thanks, this is a mark of a philosophic soul. Have you suffered any evil? But if you will, it is no evil. Give thanks to God, and the evil is changed into good. Say thou also as Job said, Blessed be the name of the Lord forever. —Chrys 1 Thes. 5 #FathersOfTheChurch

Luther Quote of the Day

Give us this day our daily bread. In the word 'give' we confess that it is the gift of God, and not our own creation.—Exposition, Psalm cxlvii #LutherQuotes

What’s for Thanksgiving This Year?

Well, since Cin and I have been eating carnivore, this year's feast will look a little different. David is in charge of preparing anything NOT in the category of meat, cheese, or drink.

Appetizers:

Sausage-stuffed mushrooms, topped with five year aged cheddar

Prosciutto muenster roll ups

Wild-caught Red Sockeye Salmon, Smoked

Brie, Dubliner, a few more very sharp cheeses (served with pork rinds and crackers)

Main Course:

Smoked Turkey 

Sautéed Shrimp

Scallops (bacon wrapped, I think)

Rolls

Mashed Potatoes

Cabernet or Sauvignon  Blanc 

Dessert:

Cheeses

Chocolates

Freshly ground, pour over Peruvian Coffee

Whatever pie or cheesecake or other dessert David decides to make

Apostrophizing Mary and Other Saints

I still remember at seminary a professor (may he rest in peace!) criticizing “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones” for addressing the Virgin Mary in its second stanza. And the implication was clearly that this hymn of Anglican origin (with that stanza based on an Eastern prayer), was really sub par for a Lutheran hymnal. Said stanza suffered omission in Lutheran Worship but was restored in Lutheran Service Book. And rightly so. Piepkorn pointed out many years before in a chapel homily that a hymn in Synod's first hymnal did exactly the same thing. It was #17, and in the marvelous little English version of the same (see Walther’s Hymnal) , you can read it right there in the first stanza:

O hail this brightest day of days,

All ye good Christian people!

For Christ hath come upon our ways,

So ring it from the steeple.

Of maiden pure is He the Son;

Thou, Mary, art the chosen one,

Him in thy womb to carry.

Ever was there news so great?

God's own Son from heav'n's high state

Is born the Son of Mary. 

This practice of speaking to saints and angels in the hymns and liturgy is actually characteristic of a worship where the heavenly host and the earthly chorus constitutes a single liturgical choir. Thus, in the Psalter, “Praise Him, all His hosts!” Thus, in the Benedicite Omnia Opera: “You spirits and souls of the righteous, bless the Lord!” (LSB 931:11).  Or the lovely Advent hymn on the Angelic Salutation: “The Angel Gabriel,” “Most highly favored lady, gloria!”

Note that in the hymn cited from Walther's hymnal ALL ye good Christian people are summoned to hail the arrival of God in the flesh - whether they are breathing still or not is irrelevant! If they are the Lord's people, they are living and praising Him still! See Psalm 115. The praise does not die on the lips of God’s people, and so in the liturgy the calling out to all creation to join together in the praise of Him whose love brought Him to Virgin womb, manger, cross, and crown!

In the category of fascinating...

...in the medieval West, December 24th was kept as the commemoration of Sts. Adam and Eve. Loehe still observed it this day in his almanac. And often on this day in the years before the Reformation, there was a pageant that enacted the story of the fall. An evergreen would be decorated with apples to symbolize the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Later, white wafers were even hung upon the tree to symbolize the fruit of another Tree, the Tree of the Cross, on which Jesus would give Himself as the Bread of Life (origin of the Slovak oplatki?). What have we here?

Meet the ancestor of today’s Christmas tree.

St. Paul’s in years past, used to have two Christmas trees in front. One decorated in red, and one in white, both to symbolize the same reality, how the old Adam and Eve brought in death and how the new Adam and Eve (St. Paul, of course, confesses Christ as the new Adam; Irenaeus already saw Mary as a new Eve) restored and surpassed all that our first ancestors lost.

LSB moved the commemoration of Adam and Eve to the 19th of December (maybe under the influence of the Orthodox who observe the Ancestors of Christ on the Sunday before Christmas?), but the connection with Christmas is still close and remains.

Luther Quote of the Day

For if you are a Christian you know that your Lord Christ has risen from the dead and cannot die again and death has no power over Him: and that is why it has no power over you.—Sermon on Trinity 6, 1544 #LutherQuotes

Patristic Quote of the Day

And for this cause by reason of one who fell and brought all into death, there was sent One without sin, Who should bring unto life, by delivering them from sin, all that believe in Him.—Augustine, To the Catechumens on the Creed, par. 2 #FathersOfTheChurch

Patristic Quote of the Day

We were brought low, became mortal, were filled with fears, with errors: this by desert of sin: with which desert and guilt is every man born.—Augustine, To the Catechumens on the Creed, 2 #FathersOfTheChurch

Luther Quote of the Day

For it is the way of the devil, where he cannot overcome a heart with suffering and sorrow, to beset it continuously, and so that it is too much and too long for the patience and it appears as though it would never end, so that at last it makes the person weak and weary and robs him of courage, and the hope of overcoming the enemy.—Sermon on Trinity 24, 1544 #LutherQuotes

The gods of the nations are...

1 Cor. 10:20 "what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons." 

Whence this idea, St. Paul? Consider:

LXX 95 (our 96):5 "ὅτι πάντες οἱ θεοὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν δαιμόνια ὁ δὲ κύριος τοὺς οὐρανοὺς ἐποίησεν" 

Tipped off to this from the Vulgate, which reproduces it faithfully: Quoniam omnes dii Genitum daemonia: Dominus autem coelos fecit." 

All the gods of the gentiles are demons (Gk, Lat.) but the Lord made the heavens. 

Luther Quote of the Day

Therefore death is a wholesome thing to all who believe in Christ, for all that is born of Adam death brings to decay and dust, that Christ alone may abide in us.—Seven Penitential Psalms, 1517 #LutherQuotes

Patristic Quote of the Day

This is the reason why the mind cannot be comprehended even by itself, because in it is the image of God.—To the Catechumens on the Creed, par. 2 #FathersOfTheChurch