welcome students of fall 2018

Added on by Matthew Sutton.

Greetings and Salutations, Students of Fall 2018!

If you're taking my HON 1050C course - Perspectives on Christianity: A Catholic Approach, please clicky here.

If you’re taking my THE 1000C course - Perspectives on Christianity: A Catholic Approach, please clicky here

You're the cat's pajamas.

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new book manuscript - god alone

Added on by Matthew Sutton.

Good news. I just submitted my next book maunscript - God Alone: Meditations on Holy Saturday, Mercy, and Compassion. I'm so excited for you all to read it. 93,000 words of goodness.

Here's a few lines from the Preface:

This book is about compassion — true, authentic compassion. The book comes most immediately out of my involvement with a religious movement called Heart’s Home who have used the spirituality of Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) and Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) to serve the poorest of the poor through offering their compassionate presence. ... I believe that God alone has loved us to the utmost extent and God alone can save us. This book in eleven chapters seeks to make a complete sketch of a compassionate theology of Holy Saturday in which one theological moment will be used to interpret the most important aspects of Christianity with the hope that this theology makes Christianity relevant to you. Or, put differently, you will come to know the compassionate presence of Jesus Christ in your life.

The book will be available through Fortress Press, who published my previous book. We will have some work to do to bring it to you as soon as possible, but please keep praying and following here for news about when it is available. I can't wait for you to read it!

Prayer for Perseverance

Added on by Matthew Sutton.

Lord our God give your children ready perseverance and loving care. You know all too well what we are like, moved by your goodness when it comes to us unexpectedly, dismayed by your severity when it reveals itself to us with its demands. When we live through happy or hard days Lord, we think of you, seeing what comes from you but in the monotony of every day, we grow lukewarm, we forget you, we keep you far from our thoughts and from our action as if we needed you only on the eventful days, as if we wanted to have you at our disposal.

We beg you, change this. Let us turn back while there is time, act decisively, tear out our tepidity, replace it with fire, cold or with both at once. Only allow your spirit to blow on us. Destroy everything that is not yours and let us think no thought whose center is not you so that by this destruction we are compelled to a livelier love. We do not demand of this love that it be painful or delightful only that it be yours forever. Lord, give us the grace to offer you again and again what you have given us. Only in this way will we unprofitable servants not remain fruitless. Bless your love in us so that it may yield the fruits that you desire.

Amen.

prayer from Adrienne von Speyr - more at adriennevonspeyr.net

one light

Added on by Matthew Sutton.

five stars - no stars = one light

When has our culture started to star people as products?

We can discern many ways toward our new culture's doom, but that people whose hearts, lives, and educations are poured out to other people could be evaluated as stars (ratemy...com) must only be the work of our downfall and not our progress. As a humanity striving for the true, good, and beautiful, we must measure ourselves to the true, good, and beautiful itself.

My heart aches because humanity gave Jesus five absent stars in the five deadly wounds - left hand, right hand, left and right feet, sacred head, and his sacred heart.

And this is the good news - within these wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).

Every Zero will bow to the One. In the darkness of his zero, we are made One with the light of his love. The world says you are zero, the Lord of Light says your are One with the One, the Infinite One, the Beacon of Light, the Beacon of the One. You are not alone you have been redeemed into the One.

You are not alone, you are one with the ONE.