Theodore Bender

I enjoy gardening along with playing the piano and violin | Ciro's Classic Champion | Catholic Extremist🇻🇦

[Theodore Bender @T_Bender34]

https://t.co/bTsWW56yzk

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Friends, happy Easter! Many of you probably know that I’ve spent much of my life reading philosophers and spiritual writers—Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Anselm, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel. What all those figures have in common is a kind of calm, musing detachment as they talk about high ideas. Well, there’s all of that—and then there’s the Gospel, the “Good News.” Yes, the Gospels have inspired philosophers and spiritual teachers, but at their heart, they’re not abstracted philosophical musing; they’re the urgent conveying of news. Something happened—and I need you to know about it!

[Mr. Confident. @CEOofConfidence]

Христос Воскресе!
Christ is Risen!
May God bless you all!

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

“God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.” —An ancient Holy Saturday homily

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Friends, today is Holy Thursday, the beginning of the Sacred Triduum, the holiest days of our liturgical calendar. This evening, priests will wash the feet of congregants as Christ did for his disciples and we will celebrate Mass for the final time until Easter.

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Friends, in today’s Gospel (Luke 1:26–38), the angel Gabriel appears to Mary and announces that she will conceive the Messiah. Mary, understandably surprised, asks, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” to which the angel replies, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” 

The virginity of the mother of Christ is fitting for a number of reasons. First, it indicates, as clearly as possible, that God is involved in the coming to be of Jesus. Though human cooperation, at both the physical and moral level, is required, the Incarnation would not have happened without a gracious divine initiative. 

Further, it signals that the Incarnation involves not simply a revolution in the moral and spiritual order but an entirely new creation. Just as Adam, on the biblical telling, is made through the direct causality of God, so the New Adam is made “de novo”, and not in the ordinary course. 

Finally, the virginity of Mary is a sign of the purity and completeness of her devotion to God, making her a fit vessel for the divine Messiah. She becomes mother in the physical order, though she is given utterly over to God; she is, as classical Christian piety would have it, spouse of the Holy Spirit. All of this, one might argue, is summed up in the greeting that the angel gives Mary at the Annunciation, the most sublime offered to any human being in the biblical tradition: kecharitomene, “full of grace.”

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Friends, we come to the holy season of Lent. Pascal said that most of us go through life diverting and distracting ourselves so that we don’t come to terms with the big questions: God, meaning, purpose, eternal life. The Gospel for this week, Luke’s marvelous account of the temptation of Jesus, invites us to wrestle with three questions in particular.

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Friends, in our Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent (Luke 4:1–13), Luke gives us the story of the temptation in the desert. At every point in the Gospels, we are meant to identify with Jesus. God became man that man might become God. We participate in him and thereby learn what a godly life is like.

Jesus has just been baptized; he has just learned his deepest identity and mission. And now he confronts—as we all must—the great temptations. What precisely is entailed in being the beloved Son of God?

First, the tempter urges him to use his divine power to satisfy his bodily desires, which Jesus dismisses with a word. Having failed at his first attempt, the devil shifts to perhaps the greatest of the temptations: power. Power is extremely seductive. Many would gladly eschew material things or attention or fame in order to get it. Jesus’ great answer in Matthew’s account of this story is “Away with you, Satan!” To seek power is to serve Satan—it is stated that bluntly.

Finally, the devil plays a subtler game—he tempts Jesus to manipulate his Father, encouraging him to jump from the temple and let angels save him. It is the temptation faced by Adam and Eve in the garden: deciding how and when God will act.

[Catholic Sat @CatholicSat]

Today is Candlemas, 40 Days after Christmas, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of Our Lord.

[Jeb Bush @JebBush]

It’s over. We are back.

[Crusader of Christ ⚔️ @Defendthewest17]

A new frontier of American exceptionalism is just on the horizon,and it begins with you today. Vote!

[Crown of Immortality @CrownsEternal]

Rejoice, Barbie, seeing you are so great that over sea and land you flap your wings, and your name is widely known in Hell!.

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

Friends, it’s hard to imagine anything more offensive than some of the behavior of the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” which I think can only be described as an anti-Catholic hate group.

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

People in the Middle Ages knew the earth was round, as you can see from this 900 year old drawing.

So where did the myth come from that Medieval people thought the earth was flat?

Well, it was once an important part of America's national identity...

[RAW EGG NATIONALIST @Babygravy9]

GM, fellow monarchists.

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

All gender transition surgeries should be banned, no matter the age of the patient. It should not be legal for doctors to perform this kind of Frankenstein butchery on anyone. This should not be a controversial position.

[iamyesyouareno @iamyesyouareno]

We were kings.

[The Catholic Traveler @MountainButorac]

Happy Saint Valentine’s Day. Here’s his skull.