A disembodied faith cannot serve the culture
Ecclesia Christi Midweek
Homilies
Father Brendan argues that the struggle to understand hylomorphism even among the Christian faithful jeopardizes the importance of the body—and the faith—in our culture.
Witness
How do you see Christ alive in our Archdiocese? Ecclesia Christi wants to hear from you! Witness pieces of 2,000 words or less can be submitted for review to ecclesiachristibaltimore@gmail.com.
Catholic 301
Register now to join us in person for the full year of Catholic 301 courses. This month, Father Brendan will cover Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Love Alone is Credible. Previous Catholic 301 recordings are posted each week under the “Podcast” tab.
Upcoming Events
At the Cathedral on Monday, November 14, Dr. Frederick Bauerschmidt, Professor of Theology at Loyola University of Maryland, will present a lecture entitled The Cosmic Spheres and the Heavenly Rose: Dante Imagines Paradise. The lecture begins at 7pm in the Parish Center.
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I see what you are getting at, and it is crucial to our lives as Christians - of "left" and "right" persuasions. Jesus, of course, well understood your point or would not have spent his life physically AND spiritually healing others. He understood that in some ways what we refer to as body can constrain what a person can do. It is finite and the time it has to act is finite. He also spoke optimally in parables and paradox to each being - that is, the unifying principle of the flesh that we can recognize and touch, that moves and eats. As a unifying principle (eigenfunction ?), a being is more than the sum of the parts of the flesh at any given time, but is circumscribed by the time of death. In order to be saved (to become eternal ?), a being must be "born again from above", by which I think Jesus meant that a being must come into harmony with the unifying principle of ALL God's created beings. Jesus was here to exemplify the Unifying Principle (the Father?) and to urge us to follow His example, to understand (digest) His incarnate actions, and to behave according to the Beatitudes. Those who became eternal (loved Him and acted in concert with Him) - His true disciples - were able to recognize and touch His immortalized body after His death. And we can rightly believe that we will be so resurrected and united with our loved ones after our deaths - according to the capacities for love that we have built by the time of our deaths.