The Good Word

Are you hedging your bets Paul in Philippians imprisoned perhaps awaiting death by judicial decree is all in Throughout the letter joyous in tone and content Paul is clear that the life he has chosen as a follower of Jesus is not a life that that he lives with reservations or qualms Paul wi

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Jerome probably the greatest biblical scholar of the Patristic period and a Doctor of the Church Jerome was skilled in translation and is responsible for much of the translation of the Latin Bible that came to be known as the Vulgate He was conversant with the tran

Here rsquo s how his first biographer Thomas of Celano records the encounter of St Francis of Assisi with the crucifix now famous but then hanging forlorn in the crumbling Umbrian church of San Damiano He write that Francis was walking one day by the church of San Damiano which was abandoned

As an introduction to the hymn in which Paul describes Christ rsquo s self- emptying he pleads with the Philippians to change their minds that is not to shift positions on a particular issue but to alter transform and recondition the way in which they relate to one another If then there is an

Charles Sumner was a man of vision The senator from Massachusetts knew that slavery was wrong He devoted his fiery oratory to denouncing the profound evil it represented but Charles Sumner lacked a virtue I would call suppleness What is that It rsquo s a combination of the classical virtues It

Deacon Tom Cornell a longtime friend of the magazine and a member of the Catholic Worker sends this homily from from St Mary rsquo s Church in Marlboro N Y He preached on September 18 the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time Today rsquo s Gospel reading is not a recommendation for the reform of labo

Previously on this blog I have written about the Common English Bible translation and the Conservative Bible Project though I have not connected the two in nbsp any way At the Better Bibles Blog which is dedicated to improving Bible translations Wayne Leman has written about claims that the Comm

Jesus told his disciples this parable ldquo The Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage he sent them into his vineyard Going out about nine o rsquo clock he saw others standing idle in the m

There was an interesting post at Scot McNight rsquo s Jesus Creed blog on September 14 2011 dealing with ldquo universalism rdquo in the New Testament nbsp Basically McNight wanted to know why the texts speaking of ldquo all rdquo finding salvation in Christ were not taken as seriously as tho

What will you do when the rapture comes If you aren rsquo t a fundamentalist Christian one who reads the Bible literally you rsquo re probably not preparing to be seized by Christ and taken up into heaven before closing tribulations fall upon the world Of course if the novelist Tom Perotta is