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 Bro. "Trooper" George “Signing on for the Whole Tour” In addition to getting ready for our monthly “Catholic Faith Night,” I checked on class registrations for the courses I will be teaching next semester at Chattanooga State. One of the courses is Introductory Psychology. On the first day of class, I like to introduce the course by way of an analogy: I tell my students that Psychology is like a very large house with many rooms. Each room represents a specialized area of study and research and, that over the course of the semester’s fifteen weeks we will briefly poke our head into each room to learn something about each specialty area. If you want to learn more, you will have to take advanced courses. For many Christians, their level of spirituality is limited to a “brief tour.” I imagine that most of you have, at one time or another, taken a vacation and visited some historic sight. The Tour Guide gives you a peek into the room where some famous person slept, or wrote a novel, etc. But, you are restricted by the ropes that separate or prevent you from entering the room. And, if you’re hungry or in a hurry, you may by-pass some of what’s there. Many Christians live a spiritually constricted life. Case in point: tens of thousands of Christians will attend church for Christmas… they will peer briefly at the manger, but they will not go beyond that experience to enter into a deeper one. They will not go beyond Bethlehem to the hillsides of Galilee, or to the top of Golgotha. What I am attempting to do with our series on the Church Fathers, is to invite you to obtain a greater depth and breadth of our Catholic heritage, and remove the ropes: to provide you with something more than a quick peek into the life of the Early Church so that you will better understand the concerns, heresies, struggles, and the joy and pain of being one of those early followers of our Lord. This month, we look at some of the reasons why the Jews rejected Jesus, and how the Gospel of John, more so than the Synoptic Gospels –along with the Letters of Ignatius, addressed Jesus as the Messiah. See you Monday night. Bring a friend! --Trooper Gloria Dei Vivens Homo ("the Glory of God is the human person fully alive") from: Irenaeus, "Against Heresies" Refers to the theological principle that holds that which most gives God praise and glory is genuine human flourishing; therefore, that which promotes true human values will, at the same time, give God glory and best express God's will for humankind. |