Extracts from Christian Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Christian Literature’
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Christian Literature’
The birth of Jesus Christ fundamentally changed the relationship between mankind and the angels.
Elfric of Eynsham reminds us that when God’s Son took flesh and was born from the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, he conferred an honour on all human bodies and indeed all creation. After the Nativity, even the angels changed their dealings with us, out of respect for what happened on that night in the inn.
Cuthbert would not go to King Ecgfrith, so King Ecgfrith and his entire court had to go to Cuthbert.
Sometime after 676, Cuthbert left his monastery on Lindisfarne and retired to the nearby island of Inner Farne, with thousands of seabirds for company. His quiet retirement was to be short-lived, however, as he discovered following a rare trip down the coast to Coquet Island to counsel Elfled, the King’s sister, about the royal succession.
Christ’s cross promises to take away the fear of Judgment Day.
In ‘The Dream of the Rood’, Cynewulf (possibly the 8th century bishop of Lindisfarne) imagines the Cross of Christ finding voice and recounting the experiences that great Friday. Here, the Cross speaks of the Day of Judgment and the comfort and assurance the very thought of it brings to mankind even at that late hour.
Abbot Elfric explains the significance of Christ’s miracle at Cana.
St John tells us that at Cana in Galilee, the host of a wedding ran out of wine in the middle of the happy feast. Jesus and his mother were among the guests, and Mary prevailed on Jesus to change water into wine; and as tenth-century English abbot Elfric explained, Jesus hid a message in his miracle.
The more that pioneering engineer George Stephenson understood of the world around him, the more his sense of wonder grew.
Many Victorian scientists rebelled against the Church, at that time dominated by a colourless Calvinism that stifled wonder and mistrusted enthusiasm. But in private, many retained a powerful sense of the reality of God through wondering at his creation, as railway pioneer George Stephenson did.
Abbot Elfric unpacks the meaning of the gifts of the Three Wise Men.
In Anglo-Saxon England, January 6th was named the Epiphany, referring to the showing forth of Christ’s divinity. On this day, Abbot Elfric tells us, the English Church celebrated chiefly the Baptism of Christ, but also the Wedding at Cana, and the visit of the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem.