Sunday, January 04, 2009

The Epiphany of the Lord


In England we celebrate this feast today.
A quick thought: compare the pro-Christ Magi who follow the star, with the anti-Christ Herod who uses scripture to discover the whereabouts of the infant.
The Magi come to worship, the anti-Christ Herod comes to destroy.
Do we build up faith through our devotion or come to destroy it by giving scandal?
Are we pro-Christ, or anti-Christ?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This evidently refers, Father, to your homily at Friday's Mass.

The Johannine definition of an antichrist is: one who rejects the credentials of Jesus as God or as the Messiah and King of Israel.

There are many people who claim to base their lives on the teachings of Jesus, yet they do not accept Him as the Divine Teacher. They must, then, receive His teachings according to some critical norm of their own (or someone else's) making.

Those who do accept Jesus's divine credentials can be expected to be personally truthful. If they are in error they are more likely than not to be invincibly ignorant of the fact.

One conspicuous tell-tale sign of a spirit of antichrist within the Church is, I suggest, the determination to present Modernist tenets as Catholic Truth. Father Faber said that this is "the sins of sins, the most loathsome thing which God looks down upon in this malignant world."

The Pauline figure of the Man of Sin is the most perfect manifestation of the spirit of antichrist, the closest Satan can come to effecting an incarnation.

Paul's context seems to be that je will be an historical figure who will appear on the scene when the Last Judgement is imminent, and will serve as an instrument by which Christ will separate the goats from the sheep.

gemoftheocean said...

:-D Gold, Frankincense, myrrh, and a nifty diaper bag, who knew?

PeterHWright said...

Well, they must do what they like with the novus ordo calendar, but I'm sticking to the old Roman calendar. No celebration of the Epiphany, and no Magi in the crib, until Tuesday 6 January !

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