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

Courage

Some of you have mentioned before that it can be hard to share our faith with our friends who do not practice a religion. Perhaps being Christian is something they would make fun of, or something that would make us seem different. I, too, have found myself in these situations, where it feels like we have to hide who we are. But what would true courage be? Though it can seem impossible, our friends might be more accepting than we first think, and perhaps we can change their stereotypes of what being Christian is. This is a form of evangelizing too: to teach others what Jesus taught us. The quote in the photo is by Brene Brown. If you have a chance, I recommend reading some of her work. Here is a link to one of her TedTalks where she discusses vulnerability and shame:   https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability/transcript?language=en
Post a Comment
Read more

Faith Development in a Secular World

Everyone experiences faith differently in their lives. It can be unfair to proclaim one's faith as stronger or more serious than another person's since everyone's relationship with God is different. James Fowler wrote about how faith develops throughout our lives and I had the pleasure of reading a lot of his work during my undergraduate degree. I found a graphic that summarizes his stages of faith development to save you four years of intensive study: When we are very young, our idea of faith is quite limited. We copy the things that our parents do, but according to Fowler, we do not really have an understanding of spiritual concepts just yet. Jumping to adolescence, one can see that in the struggle that teens have to form their own identities, they question religious values of their parents and communities. This is a normal part of growing up. We do this in many aspects of our lives, so it would be kind of strange if no teens questions the religious beliefs of t...
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