Author: Mike Aquilina

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Stop the Presses! Six “New” Augustine Sermons Found!

Adrian Murdoch (late of the blog Bread and Circuses) sends us the following press release, which my co-author Chris Bailey translated from the German. If you can read German, follow the link. There are pictures, too.

Dear Listers:

Allow me to inform you that six unknown genuine lectures of the famous early-Christian Church teacher Augustine (d. 430), bishop of Hippo Regius (which is now in Algeria), have been discovered recently in the university and research library in Erfurt by three researchers from the Austrian Academy of the Sciences, Vienna. The manuscript is more than 800 years old.

Isabella Schiller, Dorothea Weber, and Clemens Weidmann have succeeded in identifying four completely new and two until-now incompletely known lectures of the famous Church father Augustine in a medieval manuscript of the “Bibliotheca Amploniana.” The Pergament Manuscript, marked Dep. Erf. Ca. 12th 11, was written in the second half of the 12th century, probably in England, and contains, altogether, more than 70 different lectures of different late-antique and medieval theologians.

For more information:

http://www.uni-erfurt.de/presse/archiv/pressemitteilungen/2008/doc/49_08.htm

Yours sincerely,
Brigitte Pfeil

And, of course: Tolle, lege.

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Going Out in Tile

Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire is on display at McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, through June 8. The artworks exemplify the common visual language shared by Jews, pagans, and Christians.

Three spectacular mosaic panels remain from a Creation vignette section: a large fish, a dolphin, and a duck. Most of the floor has been laid out symmetrically, but not this dynamic area. In the watercolor, vines or ropes spin from the mouths of the fish and the dolphin, suggesting they have been caught and will perhaps be served, according to Jewish tradition, when the messiah comes.

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Marinade in the Maronite

The Society of St. John Chrysostom promotes ecumenical dialogue of the east-west variety. Most members belong to Orthodox or Catholic churches. I’ve had the honor of speaking twice in the lecture series of the Youngstown-Warren, Ohio Chapter.

Next up in the series is Msgr. Anthony Spinosa, rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in North Jackson, Ohio. He will speak April 1 at 7 p.m. on the subject of the Maronite divine liturgy. The talk takes place at the shrine, which is at 2759 North Lipkey Road. For information, call 330-755-5635.

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Gifts and Blessings

I keep the visitors to this blog, like the readers of my books, in my regular rounds of prayer. May God’s blessings abound for you this Easter season.

In your kindness, please consider making an Easter gift to the St. Paul Center, the apostolate very near to my heart. (You get a free CD!)

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History’s Stations

The Way of the Cross is the inevitable way of a Christian’s heart.

Indeed, it is almost impossible to imagine the Catholic Church without the devotion that goes by that name.

It goes by other names, too: “The Stations of the Cross,” “Via Crucis,” “Via Dolorosa” — or just “the stations.”

The practice has settled, for several centuries now, into brief meditations on 14 scenes from the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.

Why are Christians drawn so strongly to this devotion? Because Jesus wanted us to be. “Then He said to all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’” (Lk 9:23).

When Jesus speaks the words “if” or “unless,” Christians listen carefully. For then Our Lord is laying down the conditions of our discipleship — the prerequisites of heaven.

• • • •

The Way of the Cross developed gradually in the life of the Church. In the Roman world, the cross was a “stumbling block” (Gal 5:11). Crucifixion was a most humiliating form of execution: a man was stripped naked and suspended in a public place; he was pelted with rocks and trash and left to suffocate slowly while passersby mocked his agony.

Crucifixion was still a common occurrence during the first three centuries of Christianity, so it was not easy for believers, like St. Paul, to “boast” (Gal 6:14) of the cross. For people who had seen criminals crucified, the cross could not have been an easy thing to love.

Yet love it they did. Devotion to the cross pervades the earliest Christian writings. And the earliest records of pilgrimage show us that Christians endured great hardships — traveling thousands of miles, from France and Spain to Jerusalem — so that they could walk the streets of Jesus’ suffering: the Way of the Cross.

The Jerusalem liturgy of Holy Week memorialized the events of Jesus’ Passion. On Holy Thursday, the bishop led the procession from the Garden of Gethsemane to Calvary. The fourth-century practice is well attested by St. Cyril of Jerusalem and by Egeria, the Bordeaux Pilgrim.

After Christianity was legalized in 313 A.D., pilgrims regularly thronged Jerusalem. The Way of the Cross became one of the standard routes for pilgrims and tourists … READ MORE.