Undusted Texts

My wife and I were praying the Hours recently, and the reading of Psalm 109 (110) was proscribed.  "The Lord says to my lord: 'Sit at my right hand...'"  The light of grace has made it abundantly clear to Christians of all times, beginning with the Apostles and Evangelists themselves, that this psalm relates to Christ's "Divine Begetting from the Father and His coming in the flesh" (St. Athanasius).  Thus its announcement of Jesus the Messiah is quoted frequently in the New Testament.  With the light of the Spirit, the key message of most of the verses of this psalm are clearly evident, yet the last line is still "deeply enigmatic," as Pope Benedict XVI admitted.  My wife encountered this enigma and asked me for clarification on this text. "He will drink from the brook by the way; therefore he will lift up his head."  These words come following the description of Jesus' victorious kingship, how He executes judgment and shatters...

The Church has a devotion to those great men and women who went before them in the faith, teaching the Gospel fervently and helping others to deepen their living of the true Christian life.  In the Eastern Church, the title "our holy and God-bearing Fathers" is used for the great saints of the past.  In this series (which I will hopefully not give up on, as I have with some of my past series), I hope to introduce members of the Western Church to some of the great saints venerated in the Eastern Church and explain how powerful their memory is for the Eastern Church.  The first saint I will discuss is St. Makarios the Great. St. Makarios (Macarius) the Great (295-392), also known as St. Makarios the Egyptian, St. Macarius the Spirit-Bearer, and the Lamp of the Desert, was a disciple of St. Anthony the Great, the first monastic.  His name means "blessed" in Greek, and it was chosen because his birth was such a blessing to his infertile parents, fittingly named Ab...