Enjoyed this entire piece, but the vestibule metaphor was especially delightful.
It’s encouraging to see Jerusalem reenter mainstream discourse via new media. But you’re right that it’s fraught with charlatans.
Euthanasia is indeed a good litmus test to reveal those who would assault human dignity. Another test is willingness to forgive, recognizing that even those who assault human dignity still have their own dignity. Everyone is called, including the Herods of today.
The challenge to awaken to the strangeness of the Magi reminds me of a quote from Josef Pieper’s book The End of Time:
"All the same, an already "concluded" revelation, which has been fashioned into the accepted property of tradition by centuries of theological interpretation and has thereby become, so to speak, historically legitimized, seems to be something less scandalous and aggressive something so little aggressive that it becomes positively needful to "render oneself synchronous" to the fact of the revelation again (as Kierkegaard has put it) by an explicit, almost violent act of reflection and so call to mind the scandalous character of the revelation, its incommensurability with the spheres both of nature and of culture."
I am thinking about why the Magi went to Jerusalem in the first place. They had been following the star - why didn't they follow it to Bethlehem? That would have prevented the infanticide. Were they trusting their own "wisdom" that a baby king would be at the palace? Were they wanting to consult the "powers that be"?
Enjoyed this entire piece, but the vestibule metaphor was especially delightful.
It’s encouraging to see Jerusalem reenter mainstream discourse via new media. But you’re right that it’s fraught with charlatans.
Euthanasia is indeed a good litmus test to reveal those who would assault human dignity. Another test is willingness to forgive, recognizing that even those who assault human dignity still have their own dignity. Everyone is called, including the Herods of today.
The challenge to awaken to the strangeness of the Magi reminds me of a quote from Josef Pieper’s book The End of Time:
"All the same, an already "concluded" revelation, which has been fashioned into the accepted property of tradition by centuries of theological interpretation and has thereby become, so to speak, historically legitimized, seems to be something less scandalous and aggressive something so little aggressive that it becomes positively needful to "render oneself synchronous" to the fact of the revelation again (as Kierkegaard has put it) by an explicit, almost violent act of reflection and so call to mind the scandalous character of the revelation, its incommensurability with the spheres both of nature and of culture."
I am thinking about why the Magi went to Jerusalem in the first place. They had been following the star - why didn't they follow it to Bethlehem? That would have prevented the infanticide. Were they trusting their own "wisdom" that a baby king would be at the palace? Were they wanting to consult the "powers that be"?