Lent is among the least understood, most misappropriated seasons of the liturgical year, which is really saying something when you consider what’s become of...
Pastors and theologians are searching for options for sacramental celebration while under social distancing regulations. Some proposals, such as “virtual Communion,” further perpetuate the individualistic tendencies that pervade American Christianity by obscuring the ecclesial contours of the sacrament.
Rather than acting as a signpost to the strange new world of Scripture, the sermon all-too-often obstructs our view of the Bible’s terrain. We have lost sight of the strange; our pews remain fixed in the familiar.
In the world that Augustine and Aquinas inhabited, created things and human institutions were interconnected with heavenly realities, knit together in Christ in whom “all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). We seem not to inhabit this world.
A key contribution of Henri de Lubac is his argument against "pure nature," the notion that we could conceive of human nature independent of its created end and goal. But creation is never independent from her creator.
