Gospel
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you;
he will prepare your way.
A voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.”
John the Baptist appeared in the desert
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
People of the whole Judean countryside
and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem
were going out to him
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River
as they acknowledged their sins.
John was clothed in camel’s hair,
with a leather belt around his waist.
He fed on locusts and wild honey.
And this is what he proclaimed:
“One mightier than I is coming after me.
I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.
I have baptized you with water;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Good Morning, Menagerie.
Jesus’ cousin.
Come Holy Ghost!
Yet another proof. Prophesy of Isaiah fulfilled about John the Baptist.
Indeed. Thank you Menagerie as I was privileged to be the “reader” at Sunday mass I was struck at the readings.
Firstly the reading above which was truly prophetic.
Then St Peter telling us to be prepared for the second coming AFTER this planet is consumed by fire. Maybe my deranged Pope knows something when he tells us the “Planet is being destroyed by Mannmade global warming”
Then the gospel reading about John the Baptist surviving on locusts and wild honey
Grupen furer Claus Schwab and Bill Gates locust factory in Canada came to mind.
Then our final hymn was Our God Reigns. It hasn’t stopped raining here for weeks.
Am I too imaginative and a bad catholic?
In my prayer time yesterday, before I began, a Word came to my mind “brotherhood”.
Then, I was compelled to open Ephesians and I just laid the book open and The Lord guided me where He wanted me to go. Immediately my eyes fixed on Ephesians Chapter 4 entitled “Unity in the Body of Christ” (I do not have The Book memorized, so only through my Spirit does God direct me to act and take heed.)
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
Apostles – their role in establishing the Church. Qualifications of initial group outlined in Acts 1:21-22 “those who had been with Jesus the whole time to ascension.”
Prophets – “People to whom God made known a message for His Purpose that was appropriate to their need or situation.”
Evangelists – a title used only in Acts 21:8, Ephesians 4:11, and 2 Timothy 4:5.
I left off at starting to dig deeper into the meaning of “Evangelist” as life interrupted and called me away from my study. With the glitch to the Tree site yesterday, I am compelled to share what I have.
Brotherhood. It is what we find here in the precious Treehouse. A prayer I give to you:
“As we band together here in thought, mind, and Spirit – let us leave here refreshed and confident of the solidarity we have in each other and rooted in Christ Jesus. Let no weapon formed against us prosper and that no pestilence in day or death in darkness will ever separate us from our Eternity promised Through Christ. With JOY we march onward banded together as brothers and sisters through our Purpose-driven days until we unify together on the other side In Glory with our own ascensions.
We are made perfect by Him (Psalm 139) and we take shelter under His Wings (Psalm 91).
Joy, brothers and sisters, joy! In and Through Jesus’s Holy and Saving Name, AMEN”
If you are uncertain what your Purpose is – have no fear brothers and sisters. The Lord Will Show you in your due time. He is perfect and He made you perfectly. He does not call “the equipped” – He Equips “the called”. Do not worry, but take time, grab a journal, and hide His Word in your heart. Your Spirit Will, when your time has come and your Purpose is clear, your Spirit will return to your mind the Word as it is pertinent to each situation you encounter. Do not be afraid or concerned but lean fully into Him and have complete Trust In Him Who holds the stars and your fate in His Hands.
I am not Catholic – I am a non-denominational Christian. I was born and attended a Catholic school as a young child. This song from my history came to mind as I post this to you.
“Be not afraid. I Go before you always. Come, follow me, and I will give you rest.”
Blessings on your heads, friends, my brothers and sisters.
Blessings to you as well, JWoo.
Such a beautiful message. Just what my soul needed today. Blessings to you.💞
May you, yours, and all of our brothers and sisters in Christ feel His Peace this day and in those to come.
“These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:25-28
Those are great words, JWoo. I too am a non denominational Christian.
And the story of this season knows no denomination…..
The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, is basically a list of sayings and a few parables with no exegesis, and is a candidate for being (a/the) source of the four canonical Gospels.,
In it, there is a pithy statement:
“Jesus said: Be Wanderers!“
There is no further explanation. The command has always struck me as authentic, for what did Jesus Himself do, but wander throughout Judea to spread His message of Salvation?
To be sure, we live today in an age of Wandering the Spiritual Deserts of Modernism, Atheism, and Totalitarianism, an Unholy Trinity unable to bring true happiness to anyone, even – or especially – to its adherents and purveyors.
For have you ever seen and heard the angry, twisted, agitated, and perpetually unhappy faces of e.g. Greta Thunberg, George Soros, Adam Schiff, The Biden Family, and many others of their ilk?
And if they do seem to smile or laugh, it is invariably the smile or laugh of the sadist, deriving an ephemeral pleasure from inflicting pain upon and wielding power over the rest of us.
And so we wander, we must wander, throughout our contemporary deserts, but we must not wander aimlessly in despair.
We must “be wanderers” who are living the best lives possible, and are thereby spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ to everyone dying in our deserts of The Unholy Trinity.
Typo? Be Wonderers.
I Wonder as I Wander …
Love this song….it’s so beautiful.🕊💕
it brings back memories of my sister who sang this.
She is gone now…but I can still hear it in my mind how beautifully she sang this song.
It sounds like your sister was a very special person.
Yes, she was….thank you 🕊
That works too! 🙂
But…not a mistake! 🙂
There’s much that can be said about issues of problematic canonical issues related to latter-day “finds, but here’s this for starters:
https://www.newsmax.com/JerryNewcombe/gospel-gospels/2016/08/31/id/746140/
“Liberal scholars seem to swoon over the “Gospel of Thomas” — which was written perhaps as early as 150 AD, long after the biblical Thomas had died. I find it ironic that politically correct Bible scholars, like Elaine Pagels of Princeton or Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina, who show up on TV specials about Jesus, talk about the “Gospel of Thomas” as if it’s more important than the biblical Gospels.
“Yet look at how it ends: (114) Simeon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
“That’s sexist, to put it mildly. Its overall point does not fit the Judeo-Christian view that God made man (humanity) in his image-male and female he made them. Or the evidence from the true Gospels that Jesus allowed women to play a critical, positive role in his mission. But it does fit the strange Gnostic worldview, which was anti-creation, anti-matter, and anti-law. I suppose many of today’s Gnostics are really just selective Gnostics.”
“What’s more, many of these Nag Hammadi texts are essentially “word salad,” to use a phrase from Dr. Paul L. Maier, an excellent scholar on Jesus and the Gospels. These statements just don’t make sense. They are gibberish.
“No wonder the early Church rejected them. Here’s a statement from the “Gospel of Philip” (again, not written by Philip): “God is a dyer. As the good dyes, which are called ‘true,’ dissolve with the things dyed in them, so it is with those whom God has dyed. Since his dyes are immortal, they become immortal by means of his colors. Now God dips what he dips in water.” (James M. Robinson, editor, The Nag Hammadi Library, p. 146).
“The Gospel of the Egyptians III, 2 and IV,2,” has even more meaninglessness, if that were possible: “Domedon Doxomedon came forth, the aeon of the aeons…..iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu eee eeeeeeeeeee aaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa oooooooooooo ooooooooooo.” (The Nag Hammadi Library, p. 210).
“These are actual quotes from the Nag Hammadi texts of the Gnostic scriptures.”
“There’s much that can be said about issues of problematic canonical issues related to latter-day “finds, but here’s this for starters…”
And this is not the place for a debate on the issue of non-canonical or extra-canonical religious writings.
I simply used the quotation for two reasons: I think the command “Be Wanderers” is authentic, even though other things in the Gospel of Thomas might not be.
And – even if it is not authentic – the command plugs into a theme found in the canonical Gospels, namely, that Jesus, as I mentioned above, did indeed wander to spread His Word to as many people as he could, Jews and Gentiles.
So, whoever wrote the Gospel of Thomas and included “Jesus said: ‘Be Wanderers!‘ “, the saying is valuable as a point of meditation.
Yet, you didn’t merely say that there might be some merit to being a wanderer / wonderer / whatever. You literally posted something and tied it to the four canonical Gospel accounts in a way that may appear to provide grounds to challenge their provenance as recognized in the early church councils, specifically by pointing to a particular 20th century find of the so-called “gospel of Thomas”. Bear in mind how the early church council specifically dealt with contemporaneous nonscriptural heretical writings.
To then appeal to this not being a place for debate after just dropping this in a thread that featured a posting of scripture as its content is quite something, especially since what was posted in reply served as an answer to evidently problematic and speculative assertion that may happen to essentially serve as an opener to going beyond what makes up recognized and authentic canonical Scripture.
And again, this wasn’t posted saying “hey, somebody had some wise sayings way back when”; this came specifically with a focus on its place as potential sourcing of the four canonical Gospel accounts. This does not seem like a small thing, not by a long shot, and the reply seems fit and proper for this space for those who might not know some of this relevant context.
Good grief: re-read the opening statement, which was designed to stop people from bewailing the source! If you did not want to pay attention to something based upon a non-canonical source, then you should have stopped reading immediately!
I do not challenge the Four Canonical Gospels in any manner! Good grief!
…and is a candidate for being (a/the) source of the four canonical Gospels.
^this. a/the
Confusion.
Some German hypothesized that there was an original source used by the Gospel writers. The German word for source starts with a q, so that is what they call it Q. And they hypothesized that it was a collection of Jesus’ sayings.
Then along comes this collection of Jesus’ sayings. In Coptic. Translated from Syriac. Dated around 340 AD.
But, they have some papyri, in Greek, dated between 130 to 250 AD. That are part of this collection. But the wordings vary. And the papyri mix up several different sayings.
So the race is on. Can they find a way to date the gospels late enough, and these sayings early enough that they can claim these sayings are Q?
BTW. They are online. http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html
Glancing at them, there is very slight overlap. Definitely not a source for the Gospels.
Sometimes these researchers can be such idiots.
Ah. I know about q, but I did not understand this connection and what you explained. Thank you.
Authentic by whom? Christ or one of His Apostles?
The liberal scholars you refer to were indoctrinated on works by author Joseph Campbell, who included the Gnostic gospel of Thomas in his writings and labeled them as Christian canon (decades ago, I got into it with an undergrad professor who downgraded a paper on one of Campbell’s writings because I “clearly did not know the Bible”; the head of his department was better versed and my grade was corrected). Iranaeus’ “Against Heresies” takes on the gnostic heresies (Irenaeus learned under Polycarp [Bishop of Smyrna, to whom was sent one of the copies of Revelation and specifically one of the epistles from Christ, Rev. 2:8-11], who learned under the Apostle John).
The Gnostics removed verses they disliked, and wrote books adding doctrine they wanted added. Irenaeus is definitely worth reading.
Jiggery-Pokery with the translation(s) is rampant; deliberately!
this is our earthly home and we are just passing through. please keep us in Your will.
I will trash your political comments. Go do it elsewhere.
The peace of God allows us to look at others through heaven’s eyes and help guide the world to see God’s here and not-yet here kingdom. Peace from God, biblical peace, allows us to trust in God’s promises (Proverbs 3:5), through restful, tranquil faith, despite the dark, scary world around us.
As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:
A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him’.
— Luke 3:4
Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus
The Total Message, In One Opening Line:
“……I have baptized you with water;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Amen.
Amen 🕊
‘O Come, Emmanuel’
Violinist Maurice Sklar plays while Claire Phann (Dean of Academic Affairs at University of the Holy Land) explans the background and meaning of the song. (Separate video with Maurice Sklar playing the violin at St. Ann’s Church in the Old City of Jerusalem.)
https://www2.cbn.com/news/israel/o-come-emmanuel-and-second-advent-jesus-christ
Thank you for sharing this beautiful commentary.
The Anglican Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent, from the Book of Common Prayer:
“Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.”
As always, Scripture gives me such hope. Thank you, Menagerie, and may God bless you and yours.
Menagerie, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your posts. The Thanksgiving post with St. Basil’s words had a deep effect on me, and I have been practicing as often as I think of it, to apply those admonishments. Those words exemplify in living color what I encountered in a different faith practice, a teaching about “practicing the presence of the Lord”, which to me means the same thing as “walking with Jesus”.
Appreciating you all!
Thank You LORD!
Bishop Barron’s Homily is timely.
My 12-year-old son was baptized this morning at church . It was such an incredible moment! I have never been more proud of him!
Praise The Lord Judy! Blessing in Jesus! 12 years old and the becoming of a man of Christ!
Thank you Menagerie.
Thank you Sundance.
Thank you LORD!