I suspect that people in the 4th century were better equipped than we are to discuss points of theology. But Hilary also recognised, like Wittgenstein 1,600 years later, that words can lead thinkers astray. He took a conciliatory stance towards those who said that the Son was similar to the Father, not the same. Obviously they are not the selfsame person, though the Council of Nicaea declared they are of one substance.

Anyway, Hilary wrote in a separate book, on the Psalms, that humanity finds salvation in Christ alone, Son of God and Son of man. In assuming human nature, he has united himself with every human being: “He has become the flesh of us all.”

This insight might be useful in trying to understand the puzzling question of why Jesus underwent baptism at the hands of John the Baptist. After all, Jesus had no sins to be cleansed from. 

I think Hilary agreed with Ambrose that Jesus was baptised “because he wished, not to be cleansed, but to cleanse the waters, so that they, being purified by the flesh of Christ that knew no sin, might have the power of baptism.”

Read it all (subscription).

As I gear up for the start of Hilary term, I’m grateful for this primer on Hilary of Poitiers by ⁦@BeardyHowse⁩. Sacred Mysteries: The man who gave his name to Hilary term https://t.co/LGYEs5rM9o

— Fitzroy Morrissey (@fitzmorrissey) January 10, 2026

Eternal Father,
who at the baptism of Jesus
revealed him to be your Son,
anointing him with the Holy Spirit:
grant to us, who are born again by water and the Spirit,
that we may be faithful to our calling as your adopted children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

✨☀️ A bit of inspiration for the dark days: sunrise at York Minster. pic.twitter.com/3TXVAaGwDR

— Andy Marshall 📸 (@fotofacade) January 12, 2026

When we do come near to Jesus, let us ask ourselves this question, “Do we see more in Jesus than other people do?” for if we do, we are God’s elect taught of God, illuminated by his Spirit. We read in the Scriptures that when these wise men saw the young child they fell down and worshipped him. Other people might have come in and seen the child, and said, “Many children are as interesting as this poor woman’s babe.” Ay, but as these men looked, they saw: all eyes are not so blessed. Eyes that see are gifts from the All-seeing One. Carnal eyes are blind; but these men saw the Infinite in the infant; the Godhead gleaming through the manhood; the glory hiding beneath the swaddling bands. Undoubtedly there was a spiritual splendor about this matchless child! We read that Moses’ father and mother saw that he was a “goodly child”; they saw he was “fair unto God,” says the original. But when these elect men saw that holy thing which is called the Son of the Highest, they discovered in him a glory all unknown before. Then was his star in the ascendant to them: he became their all in all, and they worshipped with all their hearts. Have you discovered such glory in Christ? “Oh!” says one, “you are always harping upon Christ and his glory. You are a man of one idea!” Precisely so. My one idea is that he is “altogether lovely,” and that there is nothing out of heaven nor in heaven that can be compared with him even in his lowest and weakest estate. Have you ever seen as much as that in Jesus? If so, you are the Lord’s; go you, and rejoice in him. If not, pray God to open your eyes until, like the wise men, you see and worship.

Lastly, learn from these wise men that when they worshipped they did not permit it to be a mere empty-handed adoration. Ask yourself, “What shall I render unto the Lord?” Bowing before the young child, they offered “gold, frankincense and myrrh,” the best of metals and the best of spices; an offering to the King of gold; an offering to the priest of frankincense; an offering to the child of myrrh. Wise men are liberal men. Consecration is the best education. To-day it is thought to be wise to be always receiving; but the Savior said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” God judges our hearts by that which spontaneously comes from them: hence the sweet cane bought with money is acceptable to him when given freely. He doth not tax his saints or weary them with incense; but he delights to see in them that true love which cannot express itself in mere words, but must use gold and myrrh, works of love and deeds of self-denial, to be the emblems of its gratitude. Brothers, you will never get into the heart of happiness till you become unselfish and generous; you have but chewed the husks of religion which are often bitter, you have never eaten of the sweet kernel until you have felt the love of God constraining you to make sacrifice. There is nothing in the true believer’s power which he would not do for his Lord: nothing in our substance which we would not give to him, nothing in ourselves which we would not devote to his service.

Read it all.

Epiphany scene below from the Lower Rhine which dates to the mid-12th century. The relief is now part of the collections @V_and_A #Epithany 📷 My own. pic.twitter.com/PsqN4ibFpk

— Kevin Wilbraham (@KPW1453) January 6, 2024

You may listen directly here:

Or you may download it there.

Or watch the video here:

Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, "The Nativity" (c. 1670)#Art pic.twitter.com/rh8f6g4g6G

— Campbell F. Scribner (@ScribnerUMCP) December 24, 2025

Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed–as a matter of cold, hard fact–all its cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.

The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God…who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.”

Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.

—Whistling in the Dark (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), pp. 30-31

Among all Nativity scenes in art history, I believe this one is the most beautiful✨

“The Adoration of the Child” (or “Nativity”) by Gerard van Honthorst, known in Italy as Gherardo delle Notti, painted in 1620

This masterpiece can be admired in Florence⚜️ at the Uffizi Gallery pic.twitter.com/Q286baTdh6

— Mambo Italiano (@mamboitaliano__) December 2, 2025

This mediator must represent God to humankind, and humankind to God. He must have points of contact with both God and humanity, and yet be distinguishable from them both. The central Christian idea of the incarnation, which expresses the belief that Jesus is both God and man, divine and human, portrays Jesus as the perfect mediator between God and human beings. He, and he alone, is able to redeem us and reconcile us to God.

—“I Believe”: Exploring the Apostles’ Creed (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p. 48

Giorgione’s ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ (1505/1510) pic.twitter.com/xDtoi805WA

— jacob eigengain (@jacobeigengain) January 7, 2024

His solution consisted, first, in experiencing them. The god-man suffers too, with patience. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies. The night on Golgotha is so important in the history of man only because, in its shadows, the divinity, ostensibly abandoning its traditional privileges, lived through to the end, despair included, the agony of death. Thus is explained the Lama sabachthani and the frightful doubt of Christ in agony.

–Albert Camus, Essais [Paris: Gallimard, 1965], E.T. p. 144, quoted by yours truly in the Sunday sermon

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."
– Charles Dickens pic.twitter.com/a2h1Djta2C

— gregorio catarino (@gregcatarino1) December 21, 2025

Almighty God,
whose blessed Son was circumcised
in obedience to the law for our sake
and given the Name that is above every name:
give us grace faithfully to bear his Name,
to worship him in the freedom of the Spirit,
and to proclaim him as the Saviour of the world;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

'Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.'
Psalm 30:4 pic.twitter.com/vIDHt3yqpj

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) December 23, 2025

God with us means more than God over or side by side with us, before or behind us. It means more than His divine being in even the most intimate active connection with our human being otherwise peculiar to Him. At this point, at the heart of the Christian message and in relation to the event of which it speaks, it means that God has made himself the one who fulfills his redemptive will. It means that He Himself in His own person at His own cost but also on His own initiative has become the inconceivable Yet and Nevertheless of this event, and so its clear and well-founded and legitimate, its true and holy and righteous Therefore. It means that God has become man in order as such, but in divine sovereignty, to take up our case. What takes place in the work of inconceivable mercy is, therefore, the free overruling of God, but it is not an arbitrary overlooking and ignoring, not an artificial bridging, covering over or hiding, but a real closing of the breach, gulf and abyss between God and us for which we are responsible. At the very point where we refuse and fail, offending and provoking God, making ourselves impossible before Him and in that way missing our destiny, treading under foot our dignity, forfeiting our right, losing our salvation and hopelessly compromising our creaturely being at that very point God Himself intervenes as man.

—Church Dogmatics (IV.1) [E.T. By Geoffrey Bromiley and Thomas Torrance of the German Original] (London: T and T Clark, 1956), page 12

Nativity, 1792
Benjamin West pic.twitter.com/18q4DyMTKU

— Juan NAVARRO (@jnavarrosimon) December 20, 2024

Man’s maker was made man,
that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast;
that the Bread might hunger,
the Fountain thirst,
the Light sleep,
the Way be tired on its journey;
that the Truth might be accused of false witness,
the Teacher be beaten with whips,
the Foundation be suspended on wood;
that Strength might grow weak;
that the Healer might be wounded;
that Life might die.

– Augustine of Hippo (Sermons 191.1)

Guido Lanfranco’s ‘Midnight Mass for Christmas’ invites us into one of Malta’s most cherished festive rituals. The artist’s brushstrokes capture the soft glow of candles, the hush of village churches, and the community gathering in hopeful celebration. pic.twitter.com/U7AQkxanSR

— Heritage Malta (@heritagemalta) December 24, 2025

By stating that Jesus is “born of woman”—this Mary (as both St. Matthew and St. Luke attest)—St. Paul insists that Jesus is most emphatically human, the “firstborn of all creation. That this Mary is at the same time a virgin prevents the birth of Jesus from being reduced to what we know or can reproduce from our own experience.

Life that is unmistakably human life is before us here, a real baby from an actual mother’s womb; there is also miracle here, and mystery that cannot be brushed aside in our attempts to bring the operations of God, let alone our own lives, under our control.

The miracle of the virgin birth, maintained from the earliest times in the church and confessed in its creeds, is, in Karl Barth’s straightforward phrase, a “summons to reverence and worship….” Barth maintained that the one-sided views of those who questioned or denied that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary” are “in the last resort to be understood only as coming from dread of reverence and only as invitation to comfortable encounter with an all too near or all too far-off God.”

–Eugene Peterson in God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas ed. Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe (Massachusettes, Paraclete Press, 2007), p., 5

Merry Christmas!
(Art by E. H. Shepard) pic.twitter.com/POqS9B5dIv

— Into The Forest Dark (@ElliottBlackwe3) December 25, 2025

One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who asked it say, ‘freed’ from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or, at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals. But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all other systems in the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian. Conversely, once you have accepted that, then you will see that all other well-established Christian miracles–because, of course, there are ill-established Christian miracles; there are Christian legends just as much as there are heathen legends, or modern journalistic legends–you will see that all the well-established Christian miracles are part of it, that they all either prepare for, or exhibit, or result from the Incarnation. Just as every natural event exhibits the total character of the natural universe at a particular point and space of time; so every miracle exhibits the character of the Incarnation. Now, if one asks whether that central grand miracle in Christianity is itself probable or improbable, of course, quite clearly you cannot be applying Hume’s kind of probability. You cannot mean a probability based on statistics according to which the more often a thing has happened, the more likely it is to happen again (the more often you get indigestion from eating a certain food, the more probable it is, if you eat it again, that you again have indigestion). Certainly the Incarnation cannot be probable in that sense. It is of its very nature to have happened only once. But then it is of the very nature of the history of this world to have happened only once; and if the Incarnation happened at all, it is the central chapter of that history. It is improbable in the same way in which the whole of nature is improbable, because it is only there once, and will happen only once.

–C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Miracles (cited by yours truly in the Sunday sermon)

John Ferguson Weir – "Christmas Eve" (1865) pic.twitter.com/v4gApSMvXY

— Museum (@DailyClassicArt) December 25, 2024

‘The idea that there’s a force of love and logic behind the universe is overwhelming to start with, if you believe it. Actually, maybe even far-fetched to start with, but the idea that that same love and logic would choose to describe itself as a baby born in %$#$ and straw and poverty is genius, and brings me to my knees, literally. To me, as a poet, I am just in awe of that. It makes some sort of poetic sense. It’s the thing that makes me a believer, although it didn’t dawn on me for many years.’

–Bono as quoted in Cathleen Falsani, The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), p.10

'He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word'
Hebrews 1: 3 pic.twitter.com/RsLwFLF6gq

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) December 24, 2025

..[Jesus of Nazareth] was not a kind of demon pretending to be human; he was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be “like God”–he was God.

Now, this is not just a pious commonplace: it is not a commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death he [God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

—Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,1949), page 4 (with special thanks to blog reader and friend WW)

The Nativity #Nativity
BL Yates Thompson 2; The Ottobeuren Collectar'; Germany, S. (Ottobeuren); 12th century; f.57v@BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/mrNGISDFqq

— Ennius (@red_loeb) December 24, 2025

The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps down that led the Son of God to the cross of Calvary, and we do not understand it till we see it in this context…the taking of manhood by the Son is set before us in a way which shows us how we should ever view it–not simply as a marvel of nature, but rather as a wonder of grace.

–J. I. Packer, Knowing God, (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press; 20th Anniversary ed.), p.42

Hark the Herald Angels sing glory to the new-born King; pray for peace on earth and goodwill to all.

Christmas Blessings from all at York Minster. pic.twitter.com/bRvVNdnTkD

— York Minster (@York_Minster) December 25, 2025

“The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man– that the second person of the Godhead became the ‘second man’ (1 Cor. 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that He took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as He was human.

Here are two mysteries for the price of one—the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus.It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. ‘The Word became flesh’ (John 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.

And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.”

–J I Packer, Knowing God, cited by yours truly in last Sunday’s sermon

Its #ChristmasDay , so here is the Saint Columba Altarpiece (or Adoration of the Kings) by Rogier van der Weyden, 1450s. pic.twitter.com/FnoVMUJclk

— Dr Stephen Donnachie (@SteveDonnachie) December 25, 2025

“[Jesus of Nazareth] was not a kind of demon pretending to be human; he was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be ‘like God’—he was God.

“Now, this is not just a pious commonplace: it is not a commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he [God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.”

—Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1949), page 4 (with special thanks to blog reader and friend WW)

Dorothy L Sayers died on December 17th 1957. In the second of a two part series, we look at her successful career as a detective story author and her turn to theology in the last two decades of her life.https://t.co/BaAlhRdLQ2

— Orwell Society (@Orwell_Society) December 17, 2025

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware has captured the essential character of this [iconoclast vs. iconodules] dispute:

‘The struggle was not merely a conflict between two conceptions of Christian art. Deeper issues were involved: the character of Christ’s human nature, the Christian attitude towards matter, the true meaning of Christian redemption…the iconoclastic controversy is closely linked to the earlier disputes about Christ’s person. It was not merely a controversy about religious art, but about the Incarnation, about human salvation, about the salvation of the entire material cosmos.’

Although the above is true, it should be clarified that the rhetoric in the beginning of the dispute did not have an overtly Christological character and did not touch on these matters. Sebastian Brock and others have gone so far as to argue that the entire controversy did not bear any relation to Christology; rather the political element was paramount. In contrast, Joan Hussey adopts a more balanced view and argues persuasively that: ‘the Christological argument for and against icons was not really developed until the eighth century and then not in the opening stages of the conflict’.9 Given the Christological focus of his defence of icons, John’s role can therefore be seen as particularly important, connecting the dispute with the previous Christological controversies and with a long tradition of the semiotic of image/prototype far beyond the language of the Councils, especially if we take into account his possible lack of access to the
proceedings of the fifth and sixth Ecumenical Councils when he was writing his treatises. He thus played an indispensable role in the stabilization of the Orthodox faith for the following centuries. He saw iconological theology and practice as bound tightly with Orthodox Christology. The importance of his theology of images does not lie primarily in its originality; rather, as the recipient and active conduit of the preceding philosophical and theological tradition, he systematically re-exposed and drew attention to new dimensions of the philosophical and theological heritage he had been bequeathed; it is in this sense that he should be credited with originality and innovation. John’s work must therefore be viewed in the context of the theological appeal to ‘tradition’ evident in contemporary and earlier patristic writings, for example in the works of St. Maximos the Confessor. This is encapsulated in the phrase ‘I will say nothing of my own’ (‘ρω˜ μòν οδε´ν’) which is both an expression of monastic humility and a manifestation of a strong belief in the intellectual and spiritual legacy of the previous Christian centuries that continued to develop.

Read it all.

Happy feast day of St John Damascene. The last church father, defender of icons and highly influential on the scholastics pic.twitter.com/XVvRzg9bik

— Henri of Flanders (@MiltAnselm) December 4, 2025

You may listen directly here:

Or you may download it there.

Am I a soldier of the cross,
A follower of the Lamb,
And shall I fear to own His cause,
Or blush to speak His Name?
Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize,
And sailed through bloody seas?

Are there no foes for me to face*?
Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend to grace,
To help me on to God?

Sure I must fight, if I would reign;
Increase my courage, Lord.
I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain,
Supported by Thy Word.

Thy saints in all this glorious war
Shall conquer, though they die;
They see the triumph from afar,
By faith they bring it nigh.**

When that illustrious day shall rise,
And all Thy armies shine
In robes of victory through skies,
The glory shall be Thine.

#OTD November 25, 1748:
Isaac Watts dies at Stoke Newington, England. Often called the father of English hymnody, he wrote nearly 600 hymns. Many became enduring classics, including “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “Joy to the World,” “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun,” “At… pic.twitter.com/blC485LAwT

— ☧ Today in Christian History (@HistoricalRook) November 25, 2025

But I am besides my purpose when I fall to bewail the cold affection which we bear towards that whereby we should be saved, my purpose being only to set down what the ground of salvation is. The doctrine of the Gospel proposeth salvation as the end, and doth it not teach the way of attaining thereunto? Yes, the damsel possessed with a spirit of divination spake the truth: “These men are the servants of the most high God who show unto us the way of salvation” [Acts 16:17] — “a new and living way which Christ hath prepared for us through the veil, that is, his flesh,” [Heb 10:20] salvation purchased by the death of Christ.

–Learned Discourse on Justification (my emphasis)

"…the design of his Sermons (as indeed of all his Discourses) was to shew Reasons for what he spake; and with these Reasons, such a kind of Rhetorick, as did rather convince and perswade, than frighten men into piety."

Izaak Walton on Richard Hooker pic.twitter.com/BvMO2i1NEB

— laudablePractice (@cath_cov) November 3, 2023

When students in my Old Testament courses contrast the allegedly messy world of the first testament with the allegedly simple, straightforward teachings of Jesus, I know for sure they haven’t read the New Testament lately. When we read the Gospels, not least Jesus’ parables, we discover him saying all sorts of bizarre, borderline offensive things.

Keith Bodner is here to help relieve our confusion. His new book, Exploring the Financial Parables of Jesus: The Economy of Grace and the Generosity of God, gives a tour of God’s “economy of grace” by focusing on “parables with a financial edge.” Indeed, Bodner suggests these parables provide “an excellent point of entry into the larger biblical story.”

Along the way, as Bodner invites us to learn from the parables, he also offers guidance on immersing ourselves in them as readers. The book thus inspires readers to engage a genre of biblical literature Bodner playfully dubs the “TikTok of the New Testament,” while equipping them with tools to engage it well.

Read it all.

Keith Bodner’s new book, “Exploring the Financial Parables of Jesus,” gives a tour of God’s “economy of grace” by focusing on “parables with a financial edge.”https://t.co/Ex1SSlyh5S

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) September 16, 2025

A bird flew out at the break of day
From the nest where it had curled,
And ere the eve the bird had set
Fear on the kings of the world.

The first tree it lit upon
Was green with leaves unshed;
The second tree it lit upon
Was red with apples red;

The third tree it lit upon
Was barren and was brown,
Save for a dead man nailed thereon
On a hill above a town.
That night the kings of the earth were gay
And filled the cup and can;
Last night the kings of the earth were chill
For dread of a naked man.

If he speak two more words,’ they said,
The slave is more than the free;
If he speak three more words,’ they said,
The stars are under the sea.’

Said the King of the East to the King of the West,
I wot his frown was set,
Lo, let us slay him and make him as dung,
It is well that the world forget.’

Said the King of the West to the King of the East,
I wot his smile was dread,
Nay, let us slay him and make him a god,
It is well that our god be dead.’

They set the young man on a hill,
They nailed him to a rod;
And there in darkness and in blood
They made themselves a god.

And the mightiest word was left unsaid,
And the world had never a mark,
And the strongest man of the sons of men
Went dumb into the dark.

Then hymns and harps of praise they brought,
Incense and gold and myrrh,
And they thronged above the seraphim,
The poor dead carpenter.

Thou art the prince of all,’ they sang,
Ocean and earth and air.’
Then the bird flew on to the cruel cross,
And hid in the dead man’s hair.

Thou art the son of the world.’ they cried, `
Speak if our prayers be heard.’
And the brown bird stirred in the dead man’s hair
And it seemed that the dead man stirred.

Then a shriek went up like the world’s last cry
From all nations under heaven,
And a master fell before a slave
And begged to be forgiven.

They cowered, for dread in his wakened eyes
The ancient wrath to see;
And a bird flew out of the dead Christ’s hair,
And lit on a lemon tree.

–G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights."

—G. K. Chesterton pic.twitter.com/k3Jsh7MgbJ

— G. K. Chesterton (@GKCdaily) January 23, 2021

From here:

No other word in all our vocabulary is more expressive of the message of Christ than the word “resurrection.” At Calvary the little band of disciples watched their Lord Jesus die, and they saw His broken body taken from the cross. Earlier, one of them had betrayed Him for 30 pieces of silver. Another had cursed and had sworn that he never knew Him. Most of them, turning and running for their lives, had forsaken Him. When Jesus’ body was placed in the tomb and the stone was rolled against it, it seemed that this was the end of all their hopes.

Then came Easter morning, and the midnight of despair was turned into glorious dawning. It was the resurrection of all their hopes.

But Calvary does not tell the whole story. Jesus died for all our sins, but the Bible says that Jesus “was raised again for our justification.”(9)

Several years ago I talked with Chancellor Adenauer, of Germany, and he asked me, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is alive?”

I replied, “Yes, I do.”

He said, “So do I. If Jesus Christ is not alive, then I see no hope for the world. It is the fact of the resurrection that gives me hope for the future.” As he spoke those words, his eyes lighted up.

Indeed, the resurrection of Christ is the only hope of the world: “If Christ be not risen, then our hopes and dreams and faith are in vain.”(10) “The resurrection of Christ is the only hope of the world.”

But Christ is alive. And because He is alive, that makes all the difference in the world. In His resurrection evil has been defeated, Satan has been defeated, death has lost its sting, love has conquered hate, God has accepted the atoning work of Christ on the cross, and all of creation bursts forth in a new song. Because Christ is alive, we can face death with confidence.

Resurrection of Christ (c. 1700), by Noël Coypel pic.twitter.com/N5zAGOP8rs

— Classical Art (@SeekAfterBeauty) April 20, 2025

Christ himself pointed out the benefit of his sufferings and resurrection when he said to the women in Mt 28, 10 – “Fear not: go tell my brethren that they depart into Galilee, and there shall they see me.” These are the very first words they heard from Christ after his resurrection from the dead, by which he confirmed all the former utterances and loving deeds he showed them, namely, that his resurrection avails in our behalf who believe, so that he therefore anticipates and calls Christians his brethren, who believe it, and yet they do not, like the apostles, witness his resurrection.

The risen Christ waits not until we ask or call on him to become his brethren. Do we here speak of merit, by which we deserve anything? What did the apostles merit? Peter denied his Lord three times; the other disciples all fled from him; they tarried with him like a rabbit does with its young. He should have called them deserters, yea, betrayers, reprobates, anything but brethren. Therefore this word is sent to them through the women out of pure grace and mercy, as the apostles at the time keenly experienced, and we experience also, when we are mired fast in our sins, temptations and condemnation.

These are words full of all comfort that Christ receives desperate villains as you and I are and calls us his brethren. Is Christ really our brother, then I would like to know what we can be in need of? Just as it is among natural brothers, so is it also here. Brothers according to the flesh enjoy the same possessions, have the same father, the one inheritance, otherwise they would not be brothers: so we enjoy with Christ the same possessions, and have in common with him one Father and one inheritance, which never decreases by being distributed, as other inheritances do; but it ever grows larger and larger; for it is a spiritual inheritance. But an earthly inheritance decreases when distributed among many persons. He who has a part of this spiritual inheritance, has it all.

Read it all.

Resurrection day #EasterSunday
BL Add MS 19352; Theodore Psalter; 1066 CE; Eastern Mediterranean (Constantinople); f.146 @BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/5PUDFv3Ols

— Ennius (@red_loeb) April 20, 2025

Ascension theology turns at this point to the Eucharist, for in celebrating the eucharist the church professes to know how the divine presents itself in our time, and how the question of faithfulness is posed. Eucharistically, the church acknowledges that Jesus has heard and has answered the upward call; that, like Moses, he has ascended into that impenetrable cloud overhanging the mountain. Down below, rumours of glory emanate from the elders, but the master himself is nowhere to be seen. He is no longer with his people in the same way he used to be. Yet he is with them, in the Spirit.

–Douglas Farrow, Ascension Theology (New York: T and T Clark, 2011), p. 64

The Ascension, Ford Maddox Brown, c. 1844 pic.twitter.com/jTHHHU0dKR

— Solas (@solas_na_greine) October 27, 2024

So, how can we learn to live as wide-awake people, as Easter people? Here I have some bracing suggestion to make. I have to believe that many churches simply throw Easter away year by year; and I want to plead that we rethink how we do it so as to help each other, as a church and as individuals, to live what we profess.

For a start, consider Easter Day itself…Easter is about the wild delight of God’s creative power—…we ought to shout Alleluias instead of murmuring them; we should light every candle in the building instead of only some; we should give every man, woman, child, cat, dog, and mouse in the place a candle to hold; we should have a real bonfire; and we should splash water about as we renew our baptismal vows…It’s about the real Jesus coming out of the real tomb and getting God’s real new creation under way.

But my biggest problem starts on Easter Monday. I regard it as absurd and unjustifiable that we should spend forty days keeping Lent, pondering what it means, preaching about self-denial, being at least a little gloomy, and then bringing it all to a peak with Holy Week, which in turn climaxes in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday…and then, after a rather odd Holy Saturday, we have a single day of celebration.

…Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom?

…we should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. This is our greatest festival. Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins…

…if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up….Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative…. The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. …if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might bring something of Easter into your innermost life. It might help you wake up in a whole new way. And that’s what Easter is all about.”

—Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperCollins, 2008) pp. 255-257

Resurrection, 1510 #northernrenaissance #durer https://t.co/xaNvV2Dtzx pic.twitter.com/otZ5Az0E1F

— Albrecht Dürer (@artistdurer) September 7, 2022

The silence: deafening. Broken only by an excruciating groan from the protesting joints of a wooden chair as one of those seated shifts their weight.

No one speaks. But volumes are communicated as ashamed, bloodshot and guilt-ridden eyes meet across the room and quickly withdraw.

Suddenly, a familiar voice, clear and strong, declares, “Peace be with you.”

As if the roof were ripped off the house and the noon day sun flooded the room so their hearts were engulfed in joy.

In one glorious moment their inconsolable sorrow was unexpectantly turned to inexpressible exultation.

Read it all.

Carl Heinrich Bloch,
The Resurrection, c.1881 pic.twitter.com/N2AYyMPnom

— Solas (@solas_na_greine) December 17, 2024

The lady on the phone had seen my number in the musician section of the local classifieds. She asked if I could fill in as a drummer for the worship team the upcoming Sunday. I thought, Why not? I guess I should do something good.

I expected it to feel unbearably awkward to step back inside a church after all those years, but I was surprised at how the worship team welcomed me without judgment or pretense and how natural it felt to be there. One Sunday became two, then three, and soon I was a part of the regular rotation.

After a time, one of the guys, Seth, invited me over for dinner at his house. I accepted, half expecting him to back out. But when I showed up, he and his wife, Jayme, served me a meal and even had a cold beer ready. That was not what I was expecting. We spent the evening talking and laughing.

They invited me back the next week and the week after that, until these dinners became a weekly ritual. There was no agenda, no pressure—just warm hospitality.

One evening, Seth said, “How about after dinner we talk about what makes you angry about Christianity?”

Oh, I was all in on this. I had a lot of rage and was ready to share it.

He patiently listened as I vented all my frustrations—the hypocrisy of Christians, the failures of pastors, and the shallow faith I’d seen in others. To my surprise, he wasn’t defensive. He nodded and said, “I share some of your concerns. I think Jesus does too.”

Sometimes he’d pull out his Bible and ask me to read a section of the Gospels, asking, “What do you think Jesus would say about this?”

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"But my desire to join this crew did not start by reading Mein Kampf. What drew me was the things the group offered: a sense of strength and inclusion in something greater than myself. The belonging, no matter how flawed, came first. Ideology followed.

Years later, a different…

— InterVarsity Press (@ivpress) May 16, 2025

What links them together so that, all the same, they are the history of a single being, dying, dead and now rising again? A single world meaning, which has passed away and gone, to acquire new, eternal reality, presence and future in God? This is a problem of theological logic; perhaps it is the problem that the theologians have never attended to and that, if it were taken seriously, would threaten to throw into confusion all our beautiful Archimedean drawings on paper. And yet it is what is called the Logos tou staurou, the word and the message of the Cross, by Paul, who, in Corinth, renounces all other worldly and divine wisdom because God himself “will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever. . . . Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? . . . I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Risen too, of course, the “firstfruits of the dead”. Yes, he, he is the continuity for which we have been looking, the connecting thread linking ruin and rising, which does not break even in death and hell. He it is who walks along paths that are no paths, leaving no trace behind, through hell, hell which has no exit, no time, no being; and by the miracle from above he is rescued from the abyss, the profound depths, to save his brothers in Adam along with him.

And now there is something like a bridge over this rift: on the basis of the grace of the Resurrection there is the Church’s faith, the faith of Mary; there is the prayer at the grave, the faithful watching and waiting. It is a lightly built bridge, and yet it suffices to carry us. What it spans, however, is not some indifferent medium but the void of everlasting death. Nor can we compare the two sides as if from some higher vantage point; we cannot bring the two together in some rational, logical context by using some method, some process of thought, some logic: for the one side is that of death in God-forsakenness, and the other is that of eternal life. So we have no alternative but to trust in him, knowing, as we walk across the bridge, that he built it. Because of his grace we have been spared the absolute abyss, and yet, as we proceed across the bridge, we are actually walking alongside it, this most momentous of all transformations; we do not observe it, but can only be seized and pulled into it, to be transformed from dead people into resurrected people. May the sign of this transformation be found on our Janus destiny. May its mark be branded on each of our works, those that come to an end inexplicably and those that, inexplicably, are resurrected through grace. Their two faces can never meet; they can never behold each other, and we can never link up the two ends because the rope across the chasm is too short. So we must put it into God’s hand: only his fingers can join our broken parts into a whole.

Read it all.

'Rise heart; thy Lord is risen…
I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought'st thy sweets along with thee'
(Herbert)
🤍🤍🤍Happy Easter!🤍🤍🤍#Easter2025 pic.twitter.com/d8Xz66d83P

— Beatrice Groves (@beatricegroves1) April 20, 2025