Skip to main content

Holy Week


It is during this point in our liturgical year that we truly see the "Apocalyptic Jesus" who speaks of the end of times and the afterlife. In Matthew 16:18-20, it reads:

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

 The word "loose" here means to set free. Jesus is giving Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. And then, mysteriously, Jesus tells them all not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah. The Gospel of Matthew places and emphasis on Jewish traditions and was likely written for a community that still considered themselves to be Jewish. This passage shows us that "Jewish-ness" but also demonstrates the departure from Hebrew traditions when Jesus says, "on this rock I will build my church".

Jesus foretold the creation of his church, now 2000 years old. How has the church changed since the times of Peter and Paul? How might we re-capture some of the traditions of the early Christians? Can we achieve the same closeness as the early Christians had with Christ through scripture?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creation, Revelation, Redemption

Someone I have come to admire quite a bit is a man named Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. He is an excellent scholar and author. His website releases weekly articles called Covenant and Conversation. In one of theme, it states, " Creation is God’s relationship to the world. Revelation is God’s relationship with us. When we apply revelation to creation, the result is redemption : the world in which God’s will and ours coincide". Our theme over the past months has been "Care for Creation" and we have looked at the majesty of the created world. I enjoy the triad of this relationship by which the created world, humanity, and God come together. Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God in the gospels, and we say in all the time in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven".  Again here, we see this link between the kingdom and the will of God. How do we know what God's will is? Take a moment to pray on this. What is God...
Post a Comment
Read more

Development of Morality

*Fair warning, this post is different than our normal short articles. It is a paper that I wrote for my undergraduate degree. I hope you enjoy and perhaps think about some things that you would not have thought about otherwise* Development of Morality: Childhood and Faith Development It is not often that one hears or sees something that truly changes their outlook on life or their feelings about their purpose.   I once heard someone explain that there are resume virtues and eulogy virtues.   That is to say, that there are characteristics that people think are important in the moment, or in life, and then there are things that people will actually remember about you.   Your resume virtues are things like being organized or always being on time, but eulogy virtues are things like making people smile and helping out friends.   So how does one learn what these things are? How does one become virtuous, moral or build their conscience?   It is in childhoo...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Good Place To Start

Welcome to the Dublin Youth Blog! I have never thought of myself as a "blogger" so to speak, but here I am writing my first blog post for all of you. This is exciting for me because this will be able to be a central place where both youth and parents can come for thoughts, reflections, prayers, and updates from me. I hope that you will be able to take something from this and that it will be fruitful for us all. There are many things that I hope to be able to share with you through this blog. In my ideal world, both youth and parents would read this (maybe even together!) as a spiritual exercise each week. I know that we all have busy lives, and it seems like sometimes there isn't a place or space for God. As an exercise in being vulnerable, I will share with you that even the thought of being accountable for writing a blog each week is making me question when I will find the time to do this. I stand firm in saying that you have time for what you make time for. I u...
Post a Comment
Read more