I love the Feast of the Assumption. The readings for the day include a dragon ready to devour the son of the sun-clothed Queen of Heaven. And then there is the magnificat, the Virgin Mary’s hymn of thanksgiving and praise: “My soul doth magnify the Lord; and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior.” … Continue Reading »
“Yeah, right” is the way my the more irenic of my Evangelical friends react to the Immaculate Conception, the feast day of which (a holy day of obligation) we celebrate on Wednesday. A few will go so far as to say something like “Whatever floats your boat,” while others react with something like horror or disgust. Very few, in my experience, has a very good idea of the dogma to which they’re reacting… . . Continue Reading »
As a small contribution to ecumenical understanding, on this sixtieth anniversary of the promulgation of the doctrine of the Assumption in Munificentissimus Deus, here is a section from my book Discovering Mary explaining what the pope said in defining it. It is, let me stress, only a “just . . . . Continue Reading »
I fear I may have missed some of the beauty of Advent. I missed the lessons from two pregnant cousins as they reveal for us the blessing of a joyful expectation—lessons from the pregnancy narratives. We are at a decided advantage over Elizabeth and Mary… . Continue Reading »
Like Mary, we ought to submit to God’s sovereignty and go where he leads. Continue Reading »
As I may have mentioned earlier, I grew up with Catholics on my mother’s side and the Church of Christ on my father’s side. Not exactly a recipe for happy relations. For the record, the Catholics were more gracious about it. I found the tension painful, difficult, and . . . . Continue Reading »
The project known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together is now in its thirteenth year following its initial statement, “The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium,” with much-discussed statements on salvation, Scripture, and the Communion of Saints. The group is currently engaged in . . . . Continue Reading »
It is time for evangelicals to recover a fully biblical appreciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the history of salvation—and to do so precisely as evangelicals. The question, of course, is how to do that. Can the evangelical reengagement with the wider Christian tradition . . . . Continue Reading »
A Methodist friend of mine has always been puzzled by the emphasis Catholics place upon ready-made prayers. She considers recourse to the Hail Mary to be little more than prayer on autopilot, the rote droning of words learned and memorized as children. How, she wonders, can it possibly produce an . . . . Continue Reading »
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