Archive for February, 2015
Maximos the Confessor: “How is unceasing prayer possible?”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, Patristic Pearls on February 28, 2015
“How is unceasing prayer possible? When we are singing the Psalms, when we are reading the Scriptures, when we are serving our neighbor, even then it is easy enough for the mind to wander off after irrelevant thoughts and images.
Yet the Scriptures do not require impossibilities. St. Paul himself sang the Psalms, read the Scriptures, offered his own apostolic service, and nonetheless prayed uninterruptedly.
Unceasing prayer means to have the mind always turned to God with great love, holding alive our hope in Him, having confidence in Him whatever we are doing and whatever happens to us.
That is the attitude that the Apostle had when he wrote: ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”…
Thanks to this attitude of mind, Paul prayed without ceasing. In all that he did and in all that happened to him, he kept alive his hope in God.”
– St. Maximos…
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N.T. Wright: “The first expositor of Paul’s greatest letter was an ordained travelling businesswoman.”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets on February 3, 2015
Nicholas Thomas (“Tom”) N.T. Wright (1948 – ), is the research professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He was previously the Anglican Bishop of Durham, and has taught New Testament Studies at Oxford, Cambridge and McGill Universities.
“All Christian ministry begins with the announcement that Jesus has been raised from the dead. And Jesus entrusted that task, first of all, not to Peter, James, or John, but to Mary Magdalene. Part of the point of the new creation launched at Easter was the transformation of roles and vocations: from Jews-only to worldwide, from monoglot to multilingual (think of Pentecost), and from male-only leadership to male and female together.
Within a few decades, Paul was sending greetings to friends including an “apostle” called Junia (Romans xvi, 7). He entrusted that letter to a “deacon” called Phoebe whose work was taking her to Rome. The letter-bearer would normally be the one to read it out to the recipients and explain its contents. The first expositor of Paul’s greatest letter was an ordained travelling businesswoman.”
First Thoughts 