[hellagross]

[dreamyvixen]

nidaros cathedral in trondheim, norway

[transchildofgod]

[psalms-and-spells]

“Why would God allow terrible people into heaven just because they are a Christian? I can’t get behind that.”

1. This thought process is the reason I’m a universalist because Gods Radical forgiveness and love isn’t radical if it’s based on worship and belief.

2. Yes. If you live in the west you live in a very Christianized society so it doesn’t show as much, but genuinely the idea that the afterlife is not some ‘point system’ or something that you have to ‘work for’ is radical. That’s what was compelling about Christianity to many early believers. It’s called RADICAL forgiveness. It doesn’t need to be palatable to you because it’s radical for a reason. If it was easy to agree with then it wouldn’t be radical.

[beguines]

Annelies Zijderveld, "Blessed is he who comes in the name"

[speakthewordonly]

[rustyrosary]

Icon of Jesus Christ in a small prayer chamber in Arminia

[cruciform-solidarity]

This refusal to participate in the civic machinery of juris- prudential violence was one of the most distinctive marks of the early Christian movement, and an object of scorn on the part of pagan observers. The witness of the earliest Christian writers of the post-apostolic age confirms this. St. Justin Martyr asserted that a Christian would rather die than take a life, even in the case of a legal sentence of death. According to the The Apostolic Tradition, traditionally attributed to Hippolytus of Rome, no one intending to become a soldier could be received into the Church, while those who were already under arms at the time of their conversion were forbidden to carry out even a properly pronounced order of execution. Arnobius clearly stated that Christians were not allowed to impose the death penalty at all, even when it was perfectly just. Athenagoras stated that the killing even of those guilty of capital offenses must be repugnant to Christians, as they are obliged to view all killing of humans as a pollution of the soul.

For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church

[gayleviticus]

Its a real shame that sinful has essentially come to mean 'full culpable and worthy of punishment' bc i think it also severely diminishes our ability to make a theological account of how sin recruits people to be complicit in their own destruction. if its sinful to hurt others, then its sinful to hurt yourself, because you matter just as much as anyone else. but you cant even really bring the sin language into that general vicinity bc of the constant stigmatising use of sinful to mean 'you need to be punished for doing this' rather than 'we are suffering from distortions and corruption and can act in ways that worsen this'.

[tinyuglyworld]

Fragment of art depicting Saint Anne, 8th-9th century C.E., discovered in Faras, Sudan

Inscription reads: "Anna, mother of the mother of God." x

[thurifer-at-heart]

A Seeker's Prayer – St. Anselm of Canterbury

O my God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you. You are my God and you are my all, yet I have never seen you. You have made me and remade me, you have bestowed on me all the good things I possess; still I do not know you. I have not yet done that for which I was made; teach me to seek you. I cannot seek you unless you teach me, or find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in my desire, let me desire you in my seeking. Let me find you by loving you, let me love you when I find you. Amen.

[eesirachs]

How is Judas doing?

forgiven, returned to the child of nazareth, no longer in that lonely field

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

God's love for the biggest sinner is greater than the love of the holiest man for God.

Fr. Arsenie Boca

[logoslesbian]

eucharistic prayer C for july and august yesssssss my favorite

[mystics-cathedral]

i think there’s a beauty to be found in ordinary time

we often see ordinary time as “boring” as opposed to lent or easter

but during ordinary time, Jesus, the son of God, was doing normal things just like what you and me do

Did he talk walks and with joke with his disciples between preaching? Did he ever visit Our Lady and check up on her? Did he cook with his disciples and pray with them?

think about it. there’s beauty in knowing that

[set-apart-path]

I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud

and your sins like mist;

return to me, for I have redeemed you.

Isaiah 44:22

[divinum-pacis]

The traditions of the Catholic community in Yunnan province are a mixture of Buddhist and Christian practices. The Cizhong Church embodies this amalgamation: painted Buddhist lotuses spiral around the balustrades, while Tibetan yin and yang symbols panel the ceiling.

Their prayers and their Bible were originally written in Latin but were translated by French and Swiss fathers into Tibetan — and written phoenetically in Chinese characters. Outside, church attendants light round after round of firecrackers to announce the official beginning of mass.

Photo by Amy Cheng/NPR

Text by Emily Feng/NPR