When I bought my first copy of the Bible, the King James version, it was to the Old Testament that I was drawn, with its maniacal, punitive God, that dealt out to His long-suffering humanity punishments that had me drop-jawed in disbelief at the very depth of their vengefulness. I had a burgeoning interest in violent literature coupled with an unnamed sense of the divinity in things and, in my early twenties, the Old Testament spoke to that part of me that railed and hissed and spat at the world. I believed in God, but I also believed that God was malign and if the Old Testament was testament to anything, it was testament to that. Evil seemed to live so close to the surface of existence within it, you could smell its mad breath, see the yellow smoke curl from its many pages, hear the blood-curdling moans of despair. It was a wonderful, terrible book and it was sacred scripture.

But you grow up. You do. You mellow out. Buds of compassion push through the cracks in the black and bitter soil. Your rage ceases to need a name. You no longer find comfort watching a whacked-out God tormenting a wretched humanity as you learn to forgive yourself and the world. That God of Old begins to transmute in your heart, base metals become silver and gold, and you warm to the world.

From the introduction of Nick Cave for The Gospel According to Mark, Canongate Books, 1998.

Fun Facts. 100% verified.

"The greatest tragedies," Heidegger wrote, "are football games that end in a tie."

In many Victorian-era productions of Hamlet, the ghost of Old Hamlet would give a five minute speech about posture.

Kiwis were first marketed as "fuzz nuggets".

LeBron James sued an Ohio newspaper for referring to his family as "LeSpawn James".

Among clergy, The Gospel of Saint Mark is often called “The Wet Willie of Christ”.

All Part of the Plan

Photo by Tom Geerts on Unsplash

Reading: Hebrews 10:32-39 / Gospel: Mark 4:26-34

Jesus was a Jew and so were the earliest disciples of Jesus. But the historical truth is that the earliest Christian churches were successful, not really among the Jews in Israel, but among the so-called Gentiles—the non-Jews, in the lands to the East of the Mediterranean.

Among the earliest of Christ’s missionaries, like St. Paul, this was of deep concern. For example, in his letter to the Romans, St. Paul spends an entire three chapters, chapters nine to eleven, explaining how this success of the Gospel and the birth of the Church among the Gentiles was all part of the plan of God.

St. Paul sees the success of the mission to the Gentiles as eventually leading to the conversion of the Jewish people, as a sort of circling around; a going the long ways around things since they had been hard of heart and for the most part rejected Jesus as the Messiah. So, through the conversion of the Gentiles, St. Paul believed the Jews would eventually be converted.

In any case, the early Christian churches were mostly made up of Gentile, or non-Jewish converts. This is the concern that shows up in the Gospel reading from St. Mark’s Gospel today. The parables in today’s reading are about the unexpected success of the Gentile mission in the churches where the Gospel was written.

For St. Mark, this growth, which we could even call a great and plentiful growth, of the Gentile mission is and must be none other than the plan of God to restore the original unity of humanity: Jews with Gentiles, men with women, masters with slaves.

St. Mark tells us that this restoration of unity was at the heart of Jesus’ mission and was the primary reason His opponents wanted Him crucified.

Fox's Book of Martyrs

https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/foxs-book-of-martyrs/ Edited by William Byron Forbush This is a book that will never die — one of the great English classics. . . . Reprinted here in its most complete form, it brings to life the days when “a noble army, men and boys, the matron and the maid,” “climbed the steep ascent of heaven, ‘mid peril, toil, and pain.” “After the Bible itself, no…

View On WordPress

Also it’s still St. Paddy’s where I am so the Irishman himself ☘️

the most annoying person you know is about to start their annual re-reading of the raven cycle

is that all? that’s all there is

is that all? that’s all there is

is that all? that’s all there is

is that all? that’s all there is

brb going feral from the implications

Piazetta San Marco in Moonlight by Friedrich Paul Nerly

The Menu (2022) dir. Mark Mylod

Luscious gold & silver foils for this modern obi depicting the Basilica di San Marco on St Mark's Square in Serenissima Venice (poke @mafaldinablabla 🦁)

Eddie wants to be suave one time and tries to push Steve onto the bed only to aim so badly that his boyfriend bounces off the edge of the mattress and hits the floor.

Not God's Puppet

Photo by Evan Fitzer on Unsplash

Gospel: Mark 3:31-35 Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church | USCCB

In this same chapter from the Gospel of St. Mark beginning on Verse 20, we hear that because of all the wonderful healings that Jesus has been doing, the crowds of people following Him are getting larger and larger and following Him everywhere. Verse 20 says that “He came home, and such a large crowd gathered (presumably they came into the house Jesus was staying in) that they made it impossible for Jesus and his disciples even to eat.” When Jesus’ relatives heard this, they said “He is out of His mind” so “they set out to seize Him”.

Then followed the brief confrontation with the scribes during which Jesus spoke about an everlasting sin. Having put the scribes in their place, Jesus then seems to more or less ignore his mother and relatives – or does He? Jesus did not leave what He was doing, which was, teaching his disciples and ministering to the crowd which St. Mark tells us had followed Him to the house where He was staying in order to go and see His mother Mary and those referred to as His brothers and sisters, which were most likely other close relatives as we’ve come to understand from other past explanations because Jesus did not have siblings.

Instead, Jesus sent a message declaring He now had a new family, the family of His disciples and those who listened to His word, lived that word and therefore did God’s will.

It must have been very difficult for His family, especially for Mary to hear that message. Jesus was not going to be managed or to be controlled. Jesus’ family had to learn to let Him go to fulfill God’s will for His life. It is a lesson for us to learn in relation to others, especially those we love.

We feel we know what is best for them and we want them to respond to what we think they should do in the way that they should do it. Often, we forget that God, that Jesus does not treat us that way because He respects our intelligence and our freedom to choose and to act.

Remember when Jesus came upon the blind man, Jesus asked the blind man a question. But—it was not that Jesus did not already know exactly the answer to His own question. Jesus knows the question and the answer before it is even asked and before we even think an answer to any imaginable question. But HE wants us to be ready, to come to the point of realizing that we need His healing, His forgiveness, that the time has come to receive the glory of His mercy, the glory of His power. Mark 10:50-52 tells us “Throwing off his cloak, Bartimaeus jumped up and came to Jesus. “What do you want Me to do for you?” Jesus asked. “Master,” said the blind man, “ Master, I want to see.” “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the way.…”. Yes, Jesus knows what we need. And HE wants us to be the ones to see that we need it. Otherwise, we would be no more than puppets. But we are not God's puppets, we are free to decide. That is what it means to have free will.

If we were not free to decide when to feel sorry for our sins for example, we would be no more than miserable puppets. How awful and inappropriate would it be for example to be at one of the celebrations with which we mark our human existence like a birthday, a wedding, a Baptism and for God to suddenly decide that you need to right then and there feel deep sorrow and regret for your sins and at such a joyous moment, for God to decide that you need to feel deep misery. NO, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven…a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…a time to seek, and a time to lose…a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Eclesiastes 3:1-8) and Jesus waits for us to be ready to come Him, He trusts that we will make the right choice.

That is the learning we have to come to terms with when it comes to our loved ones, to acknowledge our powerlessness over them and let them go to make their own mistakes. This can be painful because we don’t want them to suffer, especially for parents.

The Virgin Mary, I’m sure would not have hesitated to carry the Cross for Jesus as she did not hesitate to carry Him in her womb, but it was not God’s will for Mary to carry the Cross. God’s will was for Mary to carry Him in her womb and be the Mother of God and later it was Jesus’ will for her to become our mother.

God’s will was for Jesus to carry the sin of Adam and Eve, the sin of pride, arrogance, disobedience, opening the gates of heaven for us and with His ascension carrying us, the human race into heaven, but in the process, He had to die for our sake so that all this might be accomplished. This was God's will and purpose for Him.

What is your purpose. Your purpose is to carry your cross, however heavy or however light. But you will never be alone. Believe in Him. He promised, "I will be with you always, even to the end of time." (Mt. 28:20)