Is modern Israel the heir of the promises and covenant God made with ancient Israel?
This is the second installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”
This story is not meant for six-year-olds, but it is meant for us, though we should hardly handle it.

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As I peer back over the years between the me-then and the me-now, I see one striking similarity. I am always a man who forgets who he really is, because I’m always focused on becoming the man I want others to think I am.
Which makes the question of prudence worth asking again: given the recent and strong Catholic attempts to defend a broad religious liberty, why all the implicit and explicit swipes at their potential Protestant allies?
In Sunday morning Bible study, our class is reading 1st Peter. This week was chapter 3 and I’ve always had a challenge with the imagery there. I’m talking about the way Peter brings Noah into the picture and connects it to Christian suffering.
I sin more in thirty minutes than those of the “victorious Christian life” supposedly sin in thirty years.
Leviticus, far from being an esoteric relic from Israel's past, is a Gospel book of the church. It teaches of God's holiness, His love, His sacraments, His worship. It is a book we desperately need to recover. But, yes, it is hard to understand, especially why there is all this focus on sacrifice.
The thing is, not only is fixing our past impossible; who’s to say we wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes? In fact, who’s to say we wouldn’t make matters even worse?
In the pageant of Easter Week, Maundy Thursday speaks about the last time Jesus ate with his Disciples and how He washed their feet in preparation for participating in the Passover meal (John 13).
A couple of weeks ago I ordered pizza for dinner. I didn’t pray, “Lord, give me pizza.” I called the store. The pizza did not drop down from heaven at my doorstep like manna from heaven.
I am lord of all I eat. I lord it over meat, potatoes, pecan pie. I make those foods serve my body, transforming them into me. But it is not so with the meal of Jesus.
What we confess concerning a corpse confesses much about how deep, or how shallow, is our understanding of the importance of the incarnation of Jesus, his death, and his (as well as our own) resurrection.
I say I was dead before Jesus called me, but actually, I was worse off than that. Imagine a corpse who is at war with life, who is an enemy of the Life-giver. That was me.
“There’s my beautiful mermaid!” Those were the words spoken by my husband the other morning as he approached me while I waited by our car in the parking lot of the Y.