Happy Hanukkah!

This is for our friends in Israel and the IDF.

Happy Hanukkah

Go for it, Bibi.

God bless,

LSP

Jesus Isn't Your Imaginary Friend

Here's a helpful message for Advent. Maybe you think Jesus is some kind of imaginary buddy, in your mind. Well He's not.

At some point in our history, we began to attribute a merely mental reality to anything that was not an object and reduced the importance of objects to what they could contribute to our mental reality. We live in a sea of psychology. Things, we believe, are only what we think they are. My “relationship” with you means nothing more than the set of inner experiences and dispositions I have towards you. In many ways, a very good version of “virtual reality” is just as good as “reality” itself.

You can read the whole thing here. And while we're at it, let's have Hagia Sophia back.

Maybe you think I'm kidding about that last bit.

LSP 

Advent

Advent's here, when we look to the past for the first coming of Christ, when the Word was made Flesh, and to the future, when He will come to judge the quick and the dead and the world by fire. Also to the present, as Our Lord arrives daily to His faithful people.

So let's get serious by way of this quote from FJH:

"The old world is destroyed and a soulless world takes its place. Art is subsumed within the abstract because there is nothing concrete worth portraying. Music becomes discordant or banal for lack of spiritual harmony. Theatre devotes itself to the absurd and television to a perpetual portrayal of sexual relationships that produce neither children nor lasting friendship. No longer believing he is made in the image of God, Western man is suffering from an identity crisis he is unable to resolve. He is being persecuted by an uncontrollable ideology of his own making."

I'll leave you to draw the correlation with John the Baptist's call.

God bless,

LSP

Hitchens Is Dead

Everyone knows that Christopher Hitchens has died. He was an outstanding writer, drinker, smoker and contributing editor to Vanity Fair. VF gushed this morning:

"Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor."

Hitchens, unlike his brother, didn't believe in God. Now he will find out. 

I'll say a prayer for his soul.

Dies irae, but remember Farrer's words, Advent is a time when "judgement runs out into mercy."

LSP