And all of yesterdays thoughts on the nature of sacrifice kinda go poop today! Try this for today's saintly look on life:
"Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God".
Suriviors of the CH1 course under Henry Sefton at Aberdeen Uni will, of course, recognise the words of Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr. One can admire the heroic courage and all that, but really the sheer strangeness of the mindset that could write that passage has always made me feel that the very early Christian saints were working in a very different place to me. Jesus could pray "Not my will but yours be done" in the Garden, whilst desperately wanting the cup of suffering to pass but these folks were almost going"Bring on the Agony!" That makes them very difficult to identify with. Some saints speak to us, very directly other swe can admire from a distance without truly feeling connected to them or their particular witness. This said, I realise I might feel very differently about this were I living in a situation where persecution is a daily reality. So saintly diversity is a good thing in a calendar!
"Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God".
Suriviors of the CH1 course under Henry Sefton at Aberdeen Uni will, of course, recognise the words of Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr. One can admire the heroic courage and all that, but really the sheer strangeness of the mindset that could write that passage has always made me feel that the very early Christian saints were working in a very different place to me. Jesus could pray "Not my will but yours be done" in the Garden, whilst desperately wanting the cup of suffering to pass but these folks were almost going"Bring on the Agony!" That makes them very difficult to identify with. Some saints speak to us, very directly other swe can admire from a distance without truly feeling connected to them or their particular witness. This said, I realise I might feel very differently about this were I living in a situation where persecution is a daily reality. So saintly diversity is a good thing in a calendar!
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