Today's Wisdom

Those who do not pass from the experience of the cross to the truth of the resurrection condemn themselves to despair! For we cannot encounter God without first crucifying our narrow notions of a god who reflects only our own understanding of omnipotence and power
Pope Francis

Monday, September 11, 2017

Selected Books by Scholars

I have read a few books by a number of scholars:
1. Christianity -  The First Three Thousand Years (over a 1000 pages), by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University;  2010...
2. The Essential Pope Benedict XVI, by John Thornton and Susan Varenne; 2007...
3.  Man and the Mystery of Time, (Original in French, translated to Arabic) by Henri Boulad, S.J.; 1995...

Today, I wish to only reflect upon Fr. Henri Boulad's book...This is decidedly the work of a giant and an encyclopedia since he is able to cram so much information with meditation in a small book. He offers a reply to question after question on the meaning of time...He quotes the philosopher Henri Simon "Man is an animal that has memory so he can plan...think, and feel sorry... He is then able to bring the past to the present in his consciousness..." And comments on it: "Memory in Man is a sign of the distance between him and his self...  When I speak of things in the past, I put a distance between them and the present in which I live. La Fontaine tells us 'The ant stores its food in Summer for Winter by instinct.' Man is the only animal that fears, worries and  hopes...Modern Man knows his history more accurately than in any earlier age.". I agree with Fr. Boulad - Today we have technology such as the Internet that allows us to search the world using Google.
Henri Boulad writes "Rather than feeling sorry for my sins of the past, it is better that I rebuild my self in the same way that the car company rebuilds cars from broken material". This can be done with the help of the grace of God that we seek! God loves everyone. In my own opinion, the entire creation is an act of love that reflects the eternal love of the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father in the binding power of the Holy Spirit.
Fr. Boulad mentions the time when St. John wrote his Gospel three generations after the Resurrection of Christ - This is when the theological thought started to grow in the Christian community. "The mystery of Christ appeared in a new light...and has been understood in a deeper sense...If we search the history of Israel, we find that God refused to reveal his name - This means that God refuses to be bound in a word...God is the living One...He reveals himself in history".
In my thought taken from the Church, Christ is the center of history. He revealed the Father. He is love that died on the cross to restore life to humanity, and rose from the dead to justify Christian witness...
One more comment, Fr. Boulad mentions Maurice Zundel as a thinker. Maurice Zundel wrote that God knelt before Man - when Christ washed the feet of the Apostles on the night before he was crucified.
May the Lord grant us all his peace.

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"Behold I make all things new." (Revelation 21:5)







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