Recounts the story of the author?s journey from athletic achievement and physical strength as a two-time all-state quarterback, to surviving a harrowing motorcycle accident that left him fighting for his life ... and permanently paralyzed from the waist down. From his darkest hour to the realization of a new life lived in God?s light, Tragic Blessing is told with honesty and insight.
Recounts the story of the author?s journey from athletic achievement and physical strength as a two-time all-state quarterback, to surviving a harrowing motorcycle accident that left him fighting for his life ... and permanently paralyzed from the waist down. From his darkest hour to the realization of a new life lived in God?s light, Tragic Blessing is told with honesty and insight.
What happens when you have God's blessing nailed down, and then without warning an evil intruder rips everything apart? I had a corner on the good life. Driven by my material appetite, strategically balanced by religion, I desperately played both sides. Comfortable in a good marriage, with two kids, and a home situated on a small horse farm, I was truly blessed. Everything changed in an instant with the discovery of a lump, but some things changed in ways I could never have imagined. By probing the joy and heartache of the past in the redemptive light of precious promises kept, this narrative paints a picture of beauty defiled unfolding to startling beauty revealed. You're invited on a journey of discovery that may change the way you think about blessing. A story of praise and healing, though not in the popular sense; it's a drama of marital love and faithfulness that prevails against great odds." Rev. Sherwin (Chic) Broersma, D. Min., Retired RCA Pastor "Mark's journey into death leads you beyond the struggle to a hallowed place of surrender. You will be both encouraged and equipped through this book." Sarah Schieber, singer, songwriter, author, speaker "Find hope in the midst of deep grief and loss. Take and read!" Rev. Keith A. Derrick, Dir. of Journey, Center for Learning at Western Theological Seminary
Tragic Consequences was written for Americans who are concerned about the cultural decline they see all around them, people who watch the nightly news and ask themselves, “What is happening to our country?” It seems we have become a nation of people who are offended by everything but sin. What is happening to our country is simple to explain but sad observe: We are seeing what a culture of sin can do to a country. It is a culture of darkness and depravity, a culture lacking in moral restraint, and a culture where life has little value. When a nation rejects God and accepts sin, the lurid stories carried on nightly news programs are the inevitable result. Within the problem is the solution. Biblical morality reestablished in America by an uprising of God's people standing for righteousness will bring God's forgiveness and our healing.
In this discerning study of the relationship of the tragic vision to the Hebrew, W. Lee Humphreys suggests various ways in which Israel confronted the power of the tragic vision at certain points in its tradition. Humphreys demonstrates how Òtragedy,Ó the literary genre, and Òthe tragic visionÓ maintain a delicate but vital balance between fate and law. In conclusion, he contends that the tragic vision finds fullest expression at points of radical dislocation in human history. At these times, the essential questions of existence are reopened, rehearsed, and relived as the tragic vision questions all previous answers and dogmatic claims to the meaning of life.
Despite the pervasive early Christian repudiation of pagan theatrical art, especially prior to Constantine, this monograph demonstrates the increasing attention of late-ancient Christian authors to the genre of tragedy as a basis to explore the complexities of human finitude, suffering, and mortality in relation to the wisdom, justice, and providence of God. The book argues that various Christian writers, particularly in the post-Constantinian era, were keenly devoted to the mimesis, or imaginative re-presentation, of the tragic dimension of creaturely existence more than with simply mimicking the poetics of the classical Greek and Roman tragedians. It analyses a whole array of hermeneutical, literary, and rhetorical manifestations of “tragical mimesis” in early Christian writing, which, capitalizing on the elements of tragedy already perceptible in biblical revelation, aspired to deepen and edify Christian engagement with multiform evil and with the extreme vicissitudes of historical existence. Early Christian tragical mimetics included not only interpreting (and often amplifying) the Bible's own tragedies for contemporary audiences, but also developing models of the Christian self as a tragic self, revamping the Christian moral conscience as a tragical conscience, and cultivating a distinctively Christian tragical pathos. The study culminates in an extended consideration of the theological intelligence and accountability of “tragical vision” and tragical mimesis in early Christian literary culture, and the unique role of the theological virtue of hope in its repertoire of tragical emotions.
Being Catholic. Are you: • A cradle Catholic born into the faith and a regular participant in Sunday Worship yet unable to defend your faith? • A lukewarm, pew Catholic going through the motions? • An inactive Catholic, believing but barely attending Mass except for Easter and Christmas, weddings and funerals? • A Fallen Away Catholic, angry at the Church for a slight, real or otherwise? • A Catholic who has left the Church to enter into another religious affiliation because Mass was boring? • A new Catholic, wondering if you fully understand what you have professed? • Thinking about becoming Catholic but not sure if you can accept or live with what the Church teaches? • An intentional Catholic, openly living and sharing the joy, doctrine and dogma of the Church that has endured for centuries. There are over a billion Catholics in the world. How many Catholics actually live and love their faith may be in question but those who are intentionally Catholic are united every day in the struggle to live and understand the teachings and traditions instilled in this universal identity since Jesus Christ first appeared on the scene. Some have died for the faith and others walk away when called to defend it. Some identify with the crucified Christ and others with the resurrected Christ. Some deem obedience the crucial element needed to be true, while others consider love to be essential in the teachings of the Catholic faith. Many spend their whole lives devoted to the Church answering when called to serve, supporting the Church in all her needs, savoring the joys that can be found therein. Whoever you are, Ms. Scoyola invites you to enter into her experience of thirty plus years in the service of the Church. She returned to the faith after an absence of twenty years, guilty but repentant and found reconciliation and redemption. In her years of serving in several parishes of the Archdiocese of Galveston Houston in Texas, she directed the formation of hundreds of adults and children asking to be initiated or welcomed into the Catholic Church through the RCIA ministry. In doing so she learned to become Intentionally Catholic.
Benedict XVI’s writing as priest-professor, bishop, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and now pope has shaped Catholic theological thought in the twentieth century. In Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI, a multidisciplinary group of scholars treat the full scope of Benedict’s theological oeuvre, including the Augustinian context of his thought; his ecclesiology; his theologically grounded approach to biblical exegesis and Christology; his unfolding of a theology of history and culture; his liturgical and sacramental theology; his theological analysis of political and economic developments; his use of the natural law in ethics and conscience; his commitment to a form of interreligious dialogue from a place of particularity; and his function as a public, catechetical theologian.
