Patristic Quote of the Day

If the Lord be propitious to us, what other thing do we need?—St. Basil the Great, Letter 239

Today's Chapel Homily

Revelation 1 & 3:

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying: Fear not. I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the Keys of Death and Hades... The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts; who shuts and no one opens. Behold, I have set before you an open door which no one is able to shut.

Homily

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

An open door and a closed one. And he holds the keys to both. We sing a bit of it at Christmas tide: He is the key and He the door to blessed paradise, the angel bars the way no more, to God our praises rise, to God our praises rise!

He's the key to paradise and its door. But what is paradise? Too often we're thinking of what follows after we die. We die and then because of Jesus we go to "heaven." But that's to miss the astonishing joy of what He brings. For paradise isn't just where you go when you die. Paradise is where you live when you step through the door that He has opened and that cannot be shut. You know what that door leads? To the Father's heart. Jesus is the key that opens the door of the Father's heart and you then discover that you have been loved with a love eternal, divine, unutterable, unimaginable. You. Through Jesus you find that the Father has loved you and loves you still and will not ever cease to love you. It's a door that no one can shut. And when you know and taste that, then you see that paradise isn't merely what comes after death, paradise is living even in this world as a child who has a heavenly Father who loves him. What a difference it makes. It's the difference between how folk normally live in this world and how Jesus lived. He IS the beloved Son. He doesn't create a space in the Father for that love to reach out and adopt other children. He eternally IS that space. It's the Father's love that sends Him into the flesh and to the cross.

The cross because there's also another door. A door that is shut and no one can open. You know what he's stuffed behind that door? Take a gander! All your sins and mine and all the sins of this whole world, with all their consequences. Stuffed into that closet and then shut and no one can open. This is His cross, this the huge manifestation of His divine love for you. That His blood locks them away. Shut and sealed and locked. Stop trying to pick the lock and get back to them. They are gone. And this is a gift of His grace.

So heaven that Jesus opens to us by revealing His Father's love and locking away our sins, it's not just future. It's here and now, you can taste it already. We get this when we think of the Sacraments. But we leave it in the third article and miss the great joy of seeing it in the first.

She reached out her hand and touched the hem of His garment. Not Jesus. The hem of the garment Jesus was wearing. And He who is the open door and key to the heart of the Father, who came to lock away sin, hell, and death, Love incarnate flowed right to her and that bleeding stopped and she knew she was healed. But it was only the garment she touched. God comes in the flesh to touch His creation and His creation becomes what it could never have been apart from Him, from Emmanuel, from God with us.

Heaven not far away, paradise not just when you die, the Kingdom here and now, present for you because God's open heart became present for you in this world through Your Jesus. This creation already now is the front porch of your Father's house, and the door inside to the feast is already open and you're just waiting for the dinner bell and the family to gather and the Father's feast to begin.

What a hoot!

Just read this quip on a site that was lamenting some of the things being attributed to the Holy Spirit by the current pope:

"This Holy Spirit does things that the Holy Ghost would never do!"

Love it!

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

Obviously, then, Christ is at the same time both our King and our Priest. He is our King as He rules over us and guards and protects us against every might and power of physical as well as spiritual foes, so that no creature can harm us without His permission. He is our Priest—and this is by far the sweetest and greatest comfort for consciences—as He intercedes for us before His Father and bears the iniquities of us all as if they were His own to make us coheirs with Him of all the good things of His Father and to reconcile us to His Father.—Martin Luther, on Zechariah 6

Patristic Quote of the Day

The good man, however, neither turns his heart to wealth when he has it, nor seeks after it if he has it not. He treats what is given him as given him not for his selfish enjoyment, but for wise administration. —St. Basil the Great, Letter 236

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

Heralds of the Word must thus assume the responsibility of directing the Word to that place where they see consciences suffering the most, where they seem the most frightened.—Martin Luther on Zechariah 6

Patristic Quote of the Day

The statement that God shall be known from the mercy seat means that He will be known to His worshippers.—St. Basil the Great, Letter 235

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

It is an absolutely wonderful thing and completely beyond human understanding to know for a fact that some work pleases God.—Martin Luther, on Zechariah 4

Patristic Quote of the Day

The operations are various, and the essence simple, but we say that we know our God from His operations, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His operations come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.—St. Basil the Great, Letter 234

On the iPad again...

...I have indeed replaced the laptop entirely with my iPad Pro. I love how this has simplified my working environment (which I carry with me most anywhere). It's also been a lot of fun figuring out the odd thing that I didn't know how to do on the iPad. For example: one thing was image manipulation: I had an image at a certain resolution but needed it to be at a lesser resolution. For the life of me, I couldn't figure this out. The solution of course was to ask google (isn't that the solution to everything these days?), and lo and behold: there are websites that do this for free. Just upload the image and choose the desired resolution and save the resulting image. Voila! Painless and free. I've found this actually to be a bit of a pattern—not just the google thing, of course THAT is a pattern—but the stuff that you can do on the web with three or four clicks to remedy problems. Working with PDFs also is like that.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

Those people who intend to interpret Moses have here an opportunity to reflect, from which they should learn that in the entire building and construction of the Mosaic tabernacle the Lord meant nothing else than what happens in the world through the ministry of the Word.—Martin Luther on Zechariah 4

Patristic Quote of the Day

Let them dismiss, therefore, these questions of dialectics and examine the truth, not with mischievous exactness but with reverence. The judgment of our mind is given us for the understanding of the truth.—St. Basil the Great, Letter 233

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

On the day of His suffering He bore all our sins, as Isaiah writes (cf. Is. 53:4): “He Himself carried our sins.” You see, through and in the crucified Christ, God took away the sin of the whole world. In this way the prophet indicates that true Priest finally will come to take away the sin of His people and to free them from their sins. This finally will be the true sacrifice, of which the priesthood of Joshua, the high priest of the Law, was incapable. He further declares that this will happen in a single day.—Martin Luther on Zechariah 3

Patristic Quote of the Day

I am sure that a work done by one or two pious men is not done without the cooperation of the Holy Spirit. For when nothing merely human is put before us, when holy men are moved to action with no thought of their own personal gratification, and with the sole object of pleasing God, it is plain that it is the Lord Who is directing their hearts.—St. Basil the Great, Letter 229

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

This genuine joy is incredible when we realize that with our weakness we are overcoming the tremendous power of Satan.—Martin Luther, On Zecharaiah 2

Patristic Quote of the Day

I confess what I have received, that the Paraclete is ranked with Father and Son, and not numbered with created beings. We have made profession of our faith in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and we are baptized in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Wherefore we never separate the Spirit from conjunction with the Father and the Son. For our mind, enlightened by the Spirit, looks at the Son, and in Him, as in an image, beholds the Father.—St. Basil the Great, Letter 226

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

The faith of the Church now is identical with what it was in the Apostolic time, but the relation of identity does not preclude growth - it only excludes changes of identity. That faith must always be its essential self - whether as a babe receiving milk, or as a man enjoying strong meat. In a word, the advances are wrought, not by change in the Church's faith, but by the perpetual activity of that faith, a faith which because it is incapable of change itself, assimilates more and more to it the consciousness of the Church, her system of doctrine, her language, and her life.—Charles P. Krauth, Conservative Reformation, p. 270 [Had he been reading his Basil???]

Patristic Quote of the Day

The teaching about God which I had received as a boy from my blessed mother and my grandmother Macrina, I have ever held with increased conviction. On my coming to ripe years of reason I did not shift my opinions from one to another, but carried out the principles delivered to me by my parents. Just as the seed when it grows is first tiny and then gets bigger but always preserves its identity, not changed in kind though gradually perfected in growth, so I reckon the same doctrine to have grown in my case through gradually advancing stages. What I hold now has not replaced what I held at the beginning.—St. Basil the Great, Letter 223

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

Because these are ministers of the Word, they fight not with their own strength but with the Word. Their fighting capability appears insignificant, their weapons very weak. Yet with that very Word, which the world sees as some ridiculous fiction, they cause the greatest and most powerful kingdoms to flee from us. They cause us to pity them rather than to fear them and to grieve because they are so vainly wasting their wrath and indignation.—Martin Luther, On Zechariah 2

Patristic Quote of the Day

I beseech you, then, to cling to one another, as you are doing and as you will do. I beseech you who are entrusted with the care of souls to keep each and all together, and to cherish them like beloved children. I beseech the people to continue to show you the respect and honour due to fathers, that in the goodly order of your Church you may keep your strength and the foundation of your faith in Christ; that God's name may be glorified and the good gift of love increase and abound.—St. Basil the Great, Letter 222.