Pastor Robertson is right and it makes the heart terribly sad. I fear our country is not far behind. This is not about politics. Something far greater and more ominous is going on. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
And so, it has happened. It came – not as a bolt of lightning. Not as a flash of thunder. Not with a mighty roar like an earthquake. It did not come in the form of war, plague and famine. It came as the pale horse whose rider was named Death (Revelation 6:8).
God’s anger against sin can be seen in different ways, and for different purposes. Sometimes he acts directly – to correct and rebuke. Sometimes he gives us our just desserts. But the worst kind of punishment is that inflicted on the UK this past week. His greatest punishment is to give us what we say we want – autonomy. He lets us have it our way. And in the name of choice, we limit life. In the name of freedom we bind the poor, the sick and the disabled. In the name of humanity, we kill humans.
Paul told the Romans about this wrath of God. It “is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness”. It’s not as if we don’t know about God – he has made it plain to us. We have the glory of his creation – and for centuries we have had the teaching of his word.
It was that teaching upon which our society was based – with its values of equality, diversity, freedom and justice for all. But now that has all gone. Words are used, but they have no more meaning. Indeed, such is the perversity of our leaders that if the words have any meaning at all – they are the opposite of what was intended. Life has become death. Freedom has become slavery. And compassion has become cruelty. The truth of God has been exchanged for a lie. We have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity (Romans 1:18-32).
When the vote for assisted suicide (falsely called ‘assisted dying’ – it is not assisted dying, it is assisted suicide and therefore State-sponsored killing), the pagans rejoiced. Has anyone noticed how the self-styled humanists seem to have such a love affair with death? They danced, chanted and shouted for joy as though they had just won an election. And maybe they had? Their death cult has become triumphant – it is now the official doctrine of the State.
Another evidence of this cult of death and its twin, the cheapness of life, is the growth of what are termed ‘direct cremations’. Twenty per cent of funerals last year in the UK were direct cremations – that is, the body is cremated cheaply with no ceremony and no attendees. It’s much cheaper than a funeral and it’s a lot less bother.
Psychologically it allows families to just move on without having to think of the physicality or reality of death. There is no closure. I cannot help but think that such a cheap death reflects a cheap view of life. We are becoming a shallow, sick and sinful society. Dostoevsky argued those who wanted a truly great heart would experience suffering. We know better. We won’t permit suffering, so we will know nothing but superficiality – and ultimately even greater suffering.
And do not think that this is the end. It won’t stop there. The humanists have other Christian doctrines – and more humans – to kill.
This woman knows Augustine of Hippo better than most and offers a brilliant analysis of him and the new Pope. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
…I am struck by how Augustine’s episcopate offers a rich model for the Holy Father to follow. With access to a wide variety of letters and sermons, we have an excellent picture of how Augustine both taught and led as bishop. Of course, Augustine was a master homilist, effectively rewriting the rules of rhetoric to evangelize his flock. Yet, he was also a conscientious administrator; Augustine took great care to respond to the concerns of his interlocutors, tailoring these responses to the audience in question. This was not simply a matter of getting them on board with an agenda. Rather, it was a matter of pedagogy; Augustine knew that an ongoing witness to truth and love is necessary for shepherding well. For this reason, we often find him responding to hostile reactions by addressing them openly, calling his audience to the charity he strives to inhabit in the process.
All told, Augustine was remarkably transparent about his decision-making process. Throughout his communications, he blends respect for his flock with the pastoral responsibility of guiding them to greater love. Spelling out the variety of concerns he struggled to reconcile, he teaches them the difficulty of leadership and shows how he understands their needs. He gives them reasons to trust him.
Because of this transparency, we also have a good picture of what Augustine thought about what it means to be a bishop. As Pope Leo has echoed, Augustine described himself as “a Christian with [his flock], and a bishop for [them]” (Sermon 340). To be a bishop, then, is to serve as one of the faithful: as one still being remade by Christ. For this reason, Augustine’s watchword was always humility; he was convinced that a bishop could not pastor except as one forgiven, confessing his ongoing need for forgiveness.
Perhaps most importantly for the Holy Father, Augustine modeled his idea of the bishop on the good paterfamilias. If we have a difficult time imagining what this looks like—authority, too often, appears authoritarian—Augustine reminds us that the good father is animated by charity, and that charity is borne out by its fruits. Writing in City of God that this paterfamilias leads out of a desire to serve and not to dominate, Augustine offers us a vivid portrait of the difference between a form of leadership rooted in the libido dominandi and one rooted in a spirit of service. The former takes every opportunity to rule by diktat while the latter takes every care to cultivate a community of love. Augustinian authority, then, is designed to draw out, nurture, and direct the love of persons, helping them to live together in charity. As Pope Leo well knows, Augustine thought deeply about how to do this in writing his rule for monastic communities. Needless to say, the father of any community must continually examine and purify his loves, begging God for the grace to lead with prudence and charity.
I have friends who I am quite sure are Christians who do not believe in the bodily resurrection. But the view I take of them – and they know this – is that they are very, very muddled. They would probably return the compliment.
Marcus Borg really does not believe Jesus Christ was bodily raised from the dead. But I know Marcus well: he loves Jesus and believes in him passionately. The philosophical and cultural world he has lived in has made it very, very difficult for him to believe in the bodily resurrection. I actually think that’s a major problem and it affects most of whatever else he does, and I think that it means he has all sorts of flaws as a teacher, but I don’t want to say he isn’t a Christian.
I do think, however, that churches that lose their grip on the bodily resurrection are in deep trouble and that for healthy Christian life individually and corporately, belief in the bodily resurrection is foundational.
N.T. (Tom) Wright is one of my heroes. Of all the theologians, teachers, and scholars who have had a positive impact on my spiritual and professional life as a Christian man and priest—and that list is kinda long—Wright stands at the top of the list. You can imagine, then, my shock and dismay when I read the article’s title from above. To say that I am heartbroken over this is massive understatement, especially because Wright is almost singlehandedly responsible for clearing up my own muddled (and heretical) views on Christ’s Resurrection, thinking that resulted from teachers who really didn’t believe in the bodily Resurrection of Christ because it is too unbelievable from a human perspective. The irony is palpable.
As I read the article I realized the situation is a bit more nuanced than its title would have us believe, but it is still catastrophic, nuance notwithstanding. Why? Because to believe in Christ and his saving/healing power, is to believe in his Death, Resurrection, and Ascension as I explain below. Simply put, if you take away Christ’s Resurrection, you take away every other single claim the New Testament (NT) writers made about him. No Resurrection, no Christ, no salvation for humans. Period. End of story.
Having met Bishop Wright once and having read almost everything he has published, I know that Wright has a huge and generous pastor’s heart and I appreciate greatly that he does; would that every priest and bishop have such a heart! I can also relate to his agonizing over his friend Marcus Borg, a well-known heretic who was part of the Jesus Seminar (Seminar: From the Latin semi and arse, meaning any half-assed discussion, a name that truly fit that particular “Seminar”). I have family and friends who are not Christian in any meaningful sense of the word and I fear for the eternal destiny of their souls; it is heartbreaking and an ongoing heavy burden for me. I think they are terribly misguided and foolish not to believe in Christ, and I pray daily that God will change their minds and hearts and heal them from their foolishness because I do not want to see them headed toward eternal destruction. How could I claim to love them and remain silent about their unbelief? I even pray for friends who have died without knowing and/or believing in Christ and it grieves me to the core. Yet I still ask God to be merciful to them and to remember them for good, not for judgment because I know first-hand that God is a merciful, gracious, loving, and just God and I believe in the saving and forgiving power of the Cross of Jesus Christ. There is no biblical warrant for me praying in this manner for the dead and my prayers are probably futile. But I loved them in this mortal life and because I loved them, I can do no other, futile as it might be. So to repeat, I get where Wright is coming from and like him, I believe our ultimate salvation is for God alone to decide, not us. But I also believe that salvation without a saving faith in Christ, a saving faith grounded in his Resurrection, is very unlikely, if not impossible.
That is why I have never, ever once thought that belief in the Resurrection was optional for Christians because the Resurrection is at the very heart and soul of the Christian Faith and is entirely non-negotiable. I am not the only one who thinks this way. Consider what Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church a few decades after Christ’s Death and Resurrection:
I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him.
But tell me this—since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead? For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God—for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave. But that can’t be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins.In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world (1 Corinthians 15.3-9, 12-19).
Saint Paul pulls no punches and makes no bones about this matter: Belief in the Resurrection is not optional for Christians. No Resurrection, no Christian Faith, no forgiveness of sins, no conquering of Death, no hope for a future bodily existence living in the direct Presence of God the Father in his new world, the new heavens and earth (see, e.g., Revelation 21.1-8). Elsewhere Saint Paul demonstrated that he too had a huge and generous pastoral heart and cared about the welfare of his people (see, e.g., here). But in Saint Paul’s view their welfare demanded that they believe the Faith once delivered to the saints by the apostles who had been eyewitnesses to Christ’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. If Christ isn’t raised, then his Death on the Cross did not take care of our sins and reconcile us to God once and for all, and if we are not reconciled to God then we have no hope and chance of living with him forever because our God is a Holy and just God who cannot allow any kind of sin (or sinner) to be in his Presence, and for our own good—who in his/her right mind would want to live with Evil forever? The stakes couldn’t be higher and by claiming that a belief in the Resurrection is optional for his friend (and therefore others like him), Wright is sadly prevaricating about this Truth out of a misguided sense of love, loyalty, and friendship for his wayward friend. I cannot imagine Saint Paul ever doing such a thing under any circumstance. That did not seem to deter Wright from quoting Saint Paul in Romans 10.9 in defending his opinion about Borg and Borg’s rejection of Christ’s Resurrection: “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” But this is cherry picking Saint Paul’s entire body of work and is quite uncharacteristic of Wright as a theologian and scholar. Moreover, if one does not believe in bodily resurrection, one cannot really believe that Christ was raised from the dead as Saint Paul and countless orthodox Christians have understood resurrection.
Borg, of course, didn’t believe in the bodily Resurrection of Christ, mistakenly believing that Christ was raised in some spiritual sense. This isn’t a new way of thinking. It’s a heresy that has been with us in various forms from almost the beginning. But as Wright brilliantly explains and defends in his books, The Resurrection of the Son of God and Surprised by Hope (a book of which I keep extra copies on hand to give to others who struggle with their faith and/or the Resurrection), resurrection for the first Christians (and ever since) meant and means bodily resurrection. We see this belief manifesting itself in the gospel writers’ narrative of Christ’s Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. Here, for example, is Saint Luke recounting a scene from the Last Supper:
Then [Jesus] took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves.For I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come.” (Luke 22.17-18).
If resurrection means some kind of continuing spiritual existence in a disembodied state as Borg and the other Platonists/heretics believe (and I used to think before I truly understood the nature of resurrection and the New Testament’s proclamation of the new creation), how will Jesus and his followers be able to drink wine and eat bread together? Does not compute. No, as Wright and others have brilliantly defended, Christ’s Resurrection points to the promise of God’s new creation, the new heavens and earth, a new bodily form of existence. God had to become human in Jesus to deal with the sins of the body, body being defined as body, mind, and spirit—the whole human package—not just our physical bodies. We see the NT writers affirm this in various places (cf. Luke 24.35-43). Consider, for example, this from the writer of the letter to the Hebrews:
14 Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. 15 Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying (Hebrews 2.14-15).
Our first ancestors sinned in the body, in their flesh and blood, in their body and mind and spirit—the whole human package—the way God created them and us, and were expelled from Paradise, from living in God’s direct Presence, the very definition of Paradise (Genesis 3). And because they had sinned in the body, Christ had to take on a human body to deal with and conquer Sin for all time. Saint Paul likewise affirms this when he wrote to the Church at Rome:
Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Romans 8.1-8).
Did you catch that? On the cross, God condemned our sin in the flesh (body), not Jesus the Son, so that God would not have to condemn us as we rightfully deserve; hence, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ (Romans 8.1). In other words, Christ bore the terrible brunt of God’s wrath and anger on all human sin willingly and in cooperation with the Father to spare us individually from having to bear that wrath forever in Hell. The body is important to God because we are important to God as creatures who bear his Image. And so God rescued the body as well as our souls because humans are comprised of body and soul, not just soul or not just body. This has been the consistent story of Scripture from beginning to end. None of this would be true if Christ were not raised from the dead as Saint Paul asserts above. The Resurrection validated Christ’s saving Death for us.
Moreover, without the bodily Resurrection of Christ, his Ascension becomes nonsensical. If Christ were nothing but a disembodied spirit, his body would not need to ascend into heaven, into God’s realm. But from the very beginning the Church has proclaimed that Christ’s resurrected body has gone to be with the Father in heaven, not just his spirit. Again, no Resurrection, no Ascension, no promised new creation, no Christian Faith.
And after the apostles had died, the Church has consistently maintained this Resurrection hope and faith (and not without a struggle!). Hear Irenaeus, a spiritual grandson of the apostles:
If our flesh is not saved, then the Lord has not redeemed us with his blood, the eucharistic chalice does not make us sharers in his blood, and the bread we break does not make us sharers in his body. There can be no blood without veins, flesh and the rest of the human substance, and this the Word of God actually became: it was with his own blood that he redeemed us. As the Apostle says: “In him, through his blood, we have been redeemed, our sins have been forgiven.” (Read more.)
Consider also the Creeds of the Church, statements of faith that sprang in part from the various heresies that threatened the Church’s teaching about resurrection and new creation. In the Apostles’ Creed, the creed usually recited at Christian funerals, we affirm explicitly the “resurrection of the body” as we do implicitly in the Nicene Creed (“we look forward to the resurrection of the dead”). Again, as the NT writers, the Apostles, the Church, and Wright himself all maintain, when we are talking resurrection we are talking about bodies. Creation matters to God because God created it and us to be good, not for evil and rebellion, and God has promised to restore his good but corrupted and cursed creation one day. That’s the overarching story of Holy Scripture.
I have already gone on longer than I intended, but this matter is critically important. The Church and world need Christian leaders to be clear and bold in their thinking, teaching, and preaching about the Faith because it is the Story of God’s power to save us from Sin and Death by intervening on our behalf personally in the man Jesus Christ. We have suffered too long from muddled and heretical Christian teachers who really don’t believe their own Story, the Story of Christ and God’s plan of salvation as laid out in the Old and New Testaments. This has led to Christians becoming timid in (and often dismissive of) their faith because they have been taught a watered down, toothless, and false version of the Christian Faith, and we certainly don’t need one of the best of the Christian thinkers heretofore to be giving damaging mixed and muddled messages like he did in the above interview, well-intentioned as it might be. The Resurrection is absolutely critical to having a saving faith in Christ. It is what makes Christianity the only real game in town. Without it, we are lost and without hope. With it, we have the hope and promise of the fulfillment of God’s promise to finally and completely deal with the problems of Evil and Sin, problems that inevitably lead to our death and destruction without God’s intervention on our behalf in and through Christ. I pray and hope Bishop Wright will recant this nonsense and repent of this grave error. Resurrection—bodily resurrection—is not an optional belief for Christians. I pray and hope he will once again speak boldly and clearly about Christ’s Death and Resurrection. Otherwise he ceases to be a credible witness to Christ and that would be a true shame and loss for the Church. Lord have mercy.
For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
A fascinating article, proving again that the Christian Faith is based on history, not fiction. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
A historian believes he’s found the location of Jesus Christ’s first miracle – and has newfound evidence to back it up.
Scripture gives limited details about Jesus’ first miracle, which is said to have taken place at Cana. The Gospel of John states that Jesus turned water into wine during a wedding in the village.
“Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons,” the gospel states. “Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water,’ so they filled them to the brim.”
The passage continues, “Then he told them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.’ They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine.”
The prevailing theory states that Kafr Kanna, an Israeli town in the Galilee, was the true location of Cana. Pilgrims have long venerated the site, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1914.
A timely and good article (the first sentence is especially troubling). I am blessed with multiple good friends and can attest to the truth of this article. If you are a man reading this and are lonely, it’s time for you to reconsider your thinking about male friendship. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
“No one really knows me.” Two-thirds of American men aged 18–23 agreed with this statement in a 2023 report titled “State of American Men.”
The male loneliness epidemic has been written about almost ad nauseam, and for good reason: “The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day,” wrote the U.S. surgeon general in 2023.
Is the church helping or hurting this trend? Samuel James recently observed that evangelical women’s groups tend to be described with words like “encouragement” and “fellowship” while men’s groups are often described with words like “accountability” and “sharpening.” The implicit assumption: Women need friends, but men need monitoring and correction. Sounds fun.
Is male connection only a means or an end? Is friendship for men merely instrumental? Or is it something good to be enjoyed in and of itself?
I read the following in a a recent email and can attest to all of it (unfortunately) from first-hand experience. As the letter states, sometimes divorce is unavoidable, but it should always be the measure of last resort. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
Many of our supporters know first-hand that some marriages break down despite everyone’s best efforts. Yet the overall picture remains clear and sobering. Adult children of divorce often describe the lasting tug-of-war of living between two homes and the emotional fall-out that follows them into their own relationships. Large-scale studies reach the same conclusion: Dr Jane Anderson’s review of almost thirty years of data found that, on average, children of divorced parents fare worse in physical health, emotional wellbeing and school performance than those whose parents stay married – even when the marriage is imperfect.
Tony Rucinski Director of Supporter Strategy Coalition for Marriage (C4M)
Well said, Reverend Robertson. Thank you for saying what needed to be said. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
Dear Bishop Budde,
That was some sermon you preached this week! Philip Pullman, the noted atheist author, loved it and suggested you should be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Alastair Campbell, he of ‘we don’t do God’ fame, declared that you should be made person of the year. He cited you as a prime example of someone ‘speaking truth to power’. Does it not make you feel a little uncomfortable that those who don’t believe in God think that your sermon was the best thing since the Communist Manifesto?
As a fellow preacher I thought your delivery was perfect. Clear, well enunciated and with the right tone – like an angel of light. I loved the theme of unity and indeed much of how you expanded that in the 15 minutes you had. But perhaps you will allow me, a poor Presbyterian minister who doesn’t have the kind of pulpit to the powerful that you have, to also speak truth to your power?
You are in a powerful position. You belong to what has long been one of the most elitist denominations in the USA – the ultimate WASP church. You are a bishop in a prestigious cathedral, and you get to preach to presidents. (You preach to presidents about the poor, I preach to the poor about presidents). I would hope that both of us would preach Christ, and not our own politics – after all that is what we are paid to do.
I found it more than a little ironic that for 12 minutes and 30 seconds you spoke about unity and then, turning to the newly installed President, you addressed him in such partisan and political terms, that you contradicted and negated what went before.
Perhaps there is a role for such political comment (some might call it prophetic) but I suspect not at a service which is supposed to be about national unity, and at the end of a sermon which warned us about doing precisely that. I think you knew what you were doing. Every word of your sermon was carefully crafted. It is more than a little disingenuous to make a plea for unity and then issue what amounted to a personal political attack on the President. The result was – as you must have seen on X and in the rest of the media – that you again polarised the country you said you were seeking to unify. As you stated, “there isn’t much to be said for our prayers (or sermons may I add) if we act in ways which deepen the divisions amongst us”.
In the days when few people had calendars, it was customary at the Liturgy on Epiphany to proclaim the date of Easter for the coming year, along with other major feasts that hinge on the date of Easter. We honor that custom here at Mark 4:9.
“Dear brothers and sisters, the glory of the Lord has shone upon us and shall ever be manifest among us, until the day of his return.
“Let us recall the year’s central feast, the Easter Triduum of the Lord: His last supper, his crucifixion, his burial, and his rising, celebrated between the evening of the 17th day of April and the evening of the 19th day of April, Easter Sunday being on the 20st day of April. Each Easter—as on each Sunday—the Holy Church makes present the great and saving deed by which Christ has forever conquered sin and death.
“From Easter are reckoned all the days we keep holy. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, will occur on the 5th day of Day. Pentecost, the joyful conclusion of the season of Easter, will be celebrated on the 8th day of June. And this year the First Sunday of Advent will be on the 30th day of November.
“To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, Lord of time and history, be endless praise, forever and ever. Amen.”
A good piece for those with ears to hear. Merry Christmas!
How do We Know Where Jesus Was Born?
We do, in fact, know where Jesus Christ was born. The textual, archeological and historical record is pretty conclusive.
The New Testament tells us Jesus was born in the little village of Bethlehem in Judea about six miles from Jerusalem.
If you visit Bethlehem today the centerpiece of the town is the ancient Church of the Nativity, controlled by the Greek Orthodox Church and for many decades in a ruinous state, it has been carefully restored and is now in the best condition it has been in for a very long time.
As you make your way down the South aisle you enter a couple of chapels that lead through an arch and down an ancient stairway down to the lower level. This lower level is the grotto–the cave that is the spot of the birth of Jesus Christ. On the floor is a metal star that marks the very spot and pilgrims kneel to kiss the place of the birth of the Son of God.
I pray to God that he will raise up teachers and preachers in his Church today who take Advent seriously again. From Common Worship, Times and Seasons, p. 33
Advent is a season of expectation and preparation, as the Church prepares to celebrate the coming (adventus) of Christ in his incarnation, and also looks ahead to his final advent as judge at the end of time.The readings and liturgies not only direct us toward Christ’s birth, they also challenge the modern reluctance to confront the theme of divine judgment:
Every eye shall now behold him robed in dreadful majesty. (Charles Wesley)
The Four Last Things – Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell – have been traditional themes for Advent meditation.The characteristic note of Advent is therefore expectation, rather than penitence, although the character of the season is easily colored by an analogy with Lent.The anticipation of Christmas under commercial pressure has also made it harder to sustain the appropriate sense of alert watchfulness, but the fundamental Advent prayer remains ‘Maranatha’ – ‘Our Lord, come’ (1 Corinthians 16.22). Church decorations are simple and spare, and purple is the traditional liturgical color. In the northern hemisphere, the Advent season falls at the darkest time of the year, and the natural symbols of darkness and light are powerfully at work throughout Advent and Christmas.The lighting of candles on an Advent wreath was imported into Britain from northern Europe in the nineteenth century, and is now a common practice… The Third Sunday of Advent was observed in medieval times as a splash of color in the restrained atmosphere of Advent (Gaudete or ‘Rose Sunday’), and the last days of Advent were marked by the sequence of Great ‘O’ Antiphons, which continue to inspire modern Advent hymns and meditations.
After the death and resurrection of Christ, both the Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem made efforts to obscure the Holy Sepulchre, Christ’s tomb in the garden near the site of His crucifixion. The earth had been mounded up over the site, and pagan temples had been built on top of it. The Cross on which Christ had died had been hidden (tradition said) by the Jewish authorities somewhere in the vicinity. According to tradition, first mentioned by Saint Cyril of Jerusalem in 348, Saint Helena, nearing the end of her life, decided under divine inspiration to travel to Jerusalem in 326 to excavate the Holy Sepulchre and attempt to locate the True Cross. A Jew by the name of Judas, aware of the tradition concerning the hiding of the Cross, led those excavating the Holy Sepulchre to the spot in which it was hidden. Three crosses were found on the spot. According to one tradition, the inscription Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”) remained attached to the True Cross. According to a more common tradition, however, the inscription was missing, and Saint Helena and Saint Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, assuming that one was the True Cross and the other two belonged to the thieves crucified alongside Christ, devised an experiment to determine which was the True Cross. In one version of the latter tradition, the three crosses were taken to a woman who was near death; when she touched the True Cross, she was healed. In another, the body of a dead man was brought to the place where the three crosses were found, and laid upon each cross. The True Cross restored the dead man to life. In celebration of the discovery of the Holy Cross, Constantine ordered the construction of churches at the site of the Holy Sepulchre and on Mount Calvary. Those churches were dedicated on September 13 and 14, 335, and shortly thereafter the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross began to be celebrated on the latter date. The feast slowly spread from Jerusalem to other churches, until, by the year 720, the celebration was universal. In the early seventh century, the Persians conquered Jerusalem, and the Persian king Khosrau II captured the True Cross and took it back to Persia. After Khosrau’s defeat by Emperor Heraclius II, Khosrau’s own son had him assassinated in 628 and returned the True Cross to Heraclius. In 629, Heraclius, having initially taken the True Cross to Constantinople, decided to restore it to Jerusalem. Tradition says that he carried the Cross on his own back, but when he attempted to enter the church on Mount Calvary, a strange force stopped him. Patriarch Zacharias of Jerusalem, seeing the emperor struggling, advised him to take off his royal robes and crown and to dress in a penitential robe instead. As soon as Heraclius took Zacharias’ advice, he was able to carry the True Cross into the church. For some centuries, a second feast, the Invention of the Cross, was celebrated on May 3 in the Roman and Gallican churches, following a tradition that marked that date as the day on which Saint Helena discovered the True Cross. In Jerusalem, however, the finding of the Cross was celebrated from the beginning on September 14.
During the reign of Constantine, first Roman Emperor to profess the Christian faith, his mother Helena went to Israel and there undertook to find the places especially significant to Christians. (She was helped in this by the fact that in their destructions around 135, the Romans had built pagan shrines over many of these sites.) Having located, close together, what she believed to be the sites of the Crucifixion and of the Burial (at locations that modern archaeologists think may be correct), she then had built over them the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was dedicated on 14 September 335. It has become a day for recognizing the Cross (in a festal atmosphere that would be inappropriate on Good Friday) as a symbol of triumph, as a sign of Christ’s victory over death, and a reminder of His promise, “And when I am lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.” (John 12:32)
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