Sterling Porter

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Jesus locates himself in the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner (Matthew 25:31–46). That means the real test of our “orthodoxy” is not how loudly we denounce others, but whether we bear the cross in solidarity with those who suffer. Using Christ’s name to justify injustice against the vulnerable, whether religious minorities, migrants, or ideological enemies, is not fidelity to Jesus; it is opposition to him disguised as piety.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Esau came in from the field famished. The text says he saw the stew, asked for it, and traded his birthright on the spot. Then it adds the line that should haunt every reader: “thus Esau despised his birthright”. The Hebrew is bāzâh. He did not only barter. He scorned. He treated as common what God had set apart for him.

This is what most spiritual disasters look like. Not the dramatic Faustian signing in blood, but the moment when present appetite eclipses covenantal future, when relief from this hour weighs heavier than promise across generations. The rule of the belly is older than philosophy and quieter than scandal. It is the voice that whispers, what good is the inheritance if I am hungry now.

The question is not whether the appetite will speak. It will. The question is whether someone will sell the holy thing to silence it.

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

Cruciformity remains the only reliable test of ministry. Eloquence does not authenticate it, nor does platform, nor the fervor of followers, nor even the accuracy of a given word. The cross shaped into a life is what authenticates everything else, and its absence is what exposes the counterfeit. Formation is slow, hidden, and costly. Folly is fast, visible, and cheap. The difference is visible to anyone willing to look.

The recovery of wisdom in such an age will not come through the production of more content. It will come through the renewal of practices the Church has always known and mostly forgotten. These include silence held rather than filled, Scripture read slowly rather than scrolled, Eucharist received with the body present, confession offered in the company of others, and friendship kept over decades rather than follows accumulated in an afternoon. The old disciplines are not quaint. They are the only soil in which anything other than folly grows.

[Sterling Porter @PorterSterling]

@d_fitzwater

[Mark Chironna @markchironna]

One of the most dangerous conditions in ministry is when genuine gifting operates through an unformed life. The gift functions, but it functions in isolation from character, accountability, and ongoing interior transformation. Because the gift still produces visible results, it generates external validation that reinforces the very dis-integration it should be exposing. People see the fruit of the gift and assume the tree is healthy. But a gift that works through a life that doesn’t is not a sign of divine approval. It is a ticking clock.

[Sterling Porter @PorterSterling]

https://t.co/gDCH8Y0bYd