Emperor Hadrian’s scrappy biography

“The only fully surviving ancient biography is a short (20 pages or so) life – one of a series of colourful but flagrantly unreliable biographies of Roman emperors and princes written by person or persons unknown, sometime in the fourth or fifth centuries AD”. Mary Beard Mary Beard on emperor Hadrian’s biography For example, she writes in “Hadrian — some myths busted”: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/hadrian-some-myths-busted/ I am delighted that the Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum looks set to be the huge success which it deserves. One of the downsides is that we classicists are going to have to get used to the rest of country enthusing about Hadrian in a way that will make us cringe. Last night’s Newsnight Review was a good example of just this. Newsnight Review is usually an excellent programme, and last night they had three intelligent critics on board (David Aaronovitch of this parish, Marina Hyde and Simon Sebag Montefiore). The trouble was none of them [seemed] … to know much more about Hadrian or the Roman empire than they had picked up in their preview visit to the show. The result was that they gave all kinds of misleading impressions to the innocent viewer. For a start you could easily have come away with the idea that we were uniquely well-informed about Hadrian thanks to his autobiography. As the presenter said, “No extant copy of his autobiography survives. But later copies were made so we know a lot about his life”. Well sorry guys, all we know is what may, or more likely may not, come from his autobiography in the scrappy, short and flagrantly unreliable biography in the series known as the Scriptores Historiae Augustae. So when Marina Hyde said “he was obsessed with cohesion the whole way through”, the truth is that we don’t have the foggiest clue what he was obsessed with. …. Oh well, we’ll have to get used to this kind of stuff – and learn not to stifle the enthusiasm but channel it towards a more sustained (and informed!) interest in the ancient world. …. Damien Mackey’s comment: To know much more about, to fill out, the somewhat poorly-known Hadrian, one might like to read my accounts of who may have been his ancient alter egos. See, for example, my articles: Antiochus 'Epiphanes' and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: "… a mirror image" (2) Antiochus 'Epiphanes' and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: "… a mirror image" | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian. Part Two: “Hadrian … a second Antiochus” https://www.academia.edu/35538588/Antiochus_Epiphanes_and_Emperor_Hadrian._Part_Two_Hadrian_a_second_Antiochus_ Mary Beard has yet more to say about the obscurity of Hadrian in, “A very modern emperor”: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jul/19/history …. The new exhibition at the British Museum, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict, features evocative objects from both sides of this Jewish war. There are simple everyday items recovered from a Jewish hideout: some house keys, a leather sandal, a straw basket almost perfectly preserved in the dry heat, a wooden plate and a mirror – evidence of the presence of women, according to the exhibition catalogue (as if men did not use mirrors). But with or without the women, these are all bitter reminders of the daily life that somehow managed to continue, even in hiding and in the middle of what was effectively genocide. From the other side, there is a magnificent bronze statue of the emperor himself, which once stood in a legionary camp near the River Jordan. The distinctive head of Hadrian (bearded, with soft curling hair and a giveaway kink in his ear lobe) sits on top of an elaborately decorated breast-plate, on which six nude warriors do battle. It is a striking combination, even if – here as elsewhere – the catalogue raises doubts about whether the head and body of this statue originally belonged together. Far away from Judaea, on the other side of the Roman world, Hadrian’s military operations in Britain were less bloody. Apart from the low-level guerrilla warfare endemic in most Roman provinces, he had his troops occupied in building the famous wall running across the north of the province. This was a project inaugurated when Hadrian himself visited in 122, one of the few Roman emperors ever to set foot in the empire’s unappealing northern outpost. It is now far from certain what this wall was for. The obvious explanation is that it was built to prevent hordes of nasty woad-painted natives from invading the nice civilised Roman province, with its baths, libraries and togas. But – leaving aside the rosy vision of life in Britannia that this implies (baths, libraries and togas for whom exactly?) – this overlooks one crucial fact. The impressive masonry structure, which provides the iconic photo-shot of the wall, makes up only part of its length. For one-third of its 70 miles the “wall” was just a turf bank, which would hardly have kept out a party of determined children, never mind a gang of barbarian terrorists. There are all kinds of alternative suggestion. Was it, for example, not much more than a fortified roadway across the province? Or was it more of a boast than a border – an aggressive, but essentially symbolic, Roman blot on the native landscape? …. …. If all this seems rather familiar, that is partly because there really are significant overlaps between the Hadrianic empire and our own experience of military conflict and geopolitics. We are still fighting in many of the same areas of the world and encountering many of the same problems. We are still claiming victory long before we have won the war – or indeed, in the Iraqi case, instead of winning the war. …. …. That feeling of familiarity has been boosted by Marguerite Yourcenar’s fictional, pseudo-autobiography of the emperor, Memoirs of Hadrian. Published in 1951, and once hugely popular (it now seems to me rambling and frankly unreadable), it took the modern reader inside Hadrian’s psyche – presenting the emperor as a troubled and intimate friend, in much the same way as Robert Graves made the emperor Claudius a rather jolly great-uncle. But Yourcenar’s fictional construction is not the only reason for Hadrian’s apparent modernity. There are all kinds of ways in which Hadrian’s life and interests seem to match up to our own expectations of monarchs and world leaders, and to modern interests and passions. He was the sponsor of Mitterand-style grands projet, a great traveller to the outposts of his dominion (including that trip to Britain), as well as an enthusiastic collector of art. And to cap it all, he had an intriguing, and ultimately tragic, sex life. …. Traveller, patron, grief-stricken lover, art collector, clear-thinking military strategist. How do we explain why Hadrian seems so approachably modern? Why does he seem so much easier to understand than Nero or Augustus? As so often with characters from the ancient world, the answer lies more in the kind of evidence we have for his life than in the kind of person he really was. The modern Hadrian is the product of two things: on the one hand, a series of vivid and evocative images and material remains (from portrait heads and stunning building schemes to our own dilapidated wall); on the other, the glaring lack of any detailed, still less reliable, account from the ancient world of what happened in his reign, or of what kind of man he was, or what motivated him. …. The only fully surviving ancient biography is a short (20 pages or so) life – one of a series of colourful but flagrantly unreliable biographies of Roman emperors and princes written by person or persons unknown, sometime in the fourth or fifth centuries AD. This includes one or two nice anecdotes, which may or may not reflect an authentic tradition about Hadrian. …. Sadly, very little of the life is up to this quality. Most of it is a garbled confection, weaving together without much regard for chronology allegations of conspiracies, accounts of palace intrigue, and vendettas on Hadrian’s part – plus an assortment of curious facts and personal titbits (his beard, it is claimed, was worn to cover up his bad skin). To fill the gaps, to make a coherent story out of the extraordinary material remains of his reign, to explain what drove the man, modern writers have been forced back on to their prejudices and familiarising assumptions about Roman imperial power and personalities. So, for example, where – thanks to the surviving ancient literary accounts – it has been impossible to see Nero as anything other than a rapacious megalomaniac, Hadrian has morphed conveniently into cultured art collector and amateur architect. Where Nero’s relationships with men have to be seen as part of the corruption of his reign, Hadrian has been turned into a troubled gay. Hadrian seems familiar to us – for we have made him so. The British Museum exhibition presents Hadrian as an appropriate successor to the first emperor of China and his terracotta army, both key figures in the foundation and development of early imperial societies. Maybe so. But an even better reason to visit this stunning show is to see how the myth of a Roman emperor has been created – and continues to be created – out of our own imagination and the dazzling but sometimes puzzling array of statues, silver plates and lost keys of slaughtered Jewish freedom-fighters.

Explosive number of conversions to Christianity taking place in Iran

“Confirming these statements, a significant survey taken in 2020 by Gamaan, a secular Netherlands-based research group, reported that there are far greater numbers of Christian believers in Iran than ever before — more than a million”. Lela Gilbert Taken from: https://www.hudson.org/religious-freedom/good-news-iran-million-new-christian-believers-lela-gilbert What first comes into your mind when you see the word “Iran” in the headlines? Some of us immediately reflect on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s relentless efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, while their government-sponsored mobs chant, “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” For others, it’s Iran’s relentless military aggression in the Middle East and assassination squads elsewhere. Meanwhile, those of us who focus on international religious freedom recall that year after year, Iran is listed as one of the 10 worst persecutors of Christians in the world. But there is another story that isn’t widely reported in our American media. Amazingly, there’s an explosive number of conversions to Christianity taking place in Iran. I first became aware of this surprisingly good news when I lived in Israel — it was talked about among groups who were focused on Middle East evangelism. Then after I returned to the U.S., I read an unexpected report by Daniel Pipes, a Jewish researcher and author and friend of mine who wrote about it for Newsweek: “Something religiously astonishing is taking place in Iran, where an Islamist government has ruled since 1979: Christianity is flourishing. The implications are potentially profound. “Consider some testimonials: David Yeghnazar of Elam Ministries stated in 2018 that ‘Iranians have become the most open people to the gospel.’ The Christian Broadcasting Network found, also in 2018, that ‘Christianity is growing faster in the Islamic Republic of Iran than in any other country.’ “This trend results from the extreme form of Shi’ite Islam imposed by the theocratic regime. An Iranian church leader explained in 2019: ‘What if I told you the mosques are empty inside Iran? What if I told you no one follows Islam inside of Iran? ...What if I told you the best evangelist for Jesus was the Ayatollah Khomeini [founder of the Islamic Republic]?”’ Confirming these statements, a significant survey taken in 2020 by Gamaan, a secular Netherlands-based research group, reported that there are far greater numbers of Christian believers in Iran than ever before — more than a million. In fact, those involved with the “house church” movement in Iran are convinced that there are likely several million Christian believers there. In my research and interviews, it has become clear that new Christians’ witness to others is mostly shared in quiet conversations, encouraged by low-profile online Bible studies, and affirmed by visions, dreams, and miraculously answered prayers. Due to their risky circumstances, recent Christian converts are enthusiastically communicating about their changed lives with friends and loved ones — but quietly and carefully. However, their discreet but persistent witness accounts for the extraordinary number of new Iranian believers, who meet in small house churches. These house churches are usually comprised of no more than 10 to 15 believers. On a given day, they arrive, one by one, at a small apartment or some other nondescript location. After the last one enters, the door closes and locks, and they all take a deep breath and relax, greeting each other warmly. A few minutes later, the little gathering begins to sing — very softly, accompanied by a quietly strummed guitar. They are cautious, not wanting their voices to be heard beyond the apartment’s thin walls. But soon, with closed eyes and hands lifted heavenward, they are lost in praise and worship music. Later a teaching from a biblical passage is offered and a communion service takes place. And finally, after more conversation they leave, one by one. Some house churches have continued for years without intrusion by government authorities. Others have experienced devastating interferences. Sudden invasions by state authorities can happen at any time; only rarely are they preceded by a threatening text message or phone call. Everyone knows about Christian gatherings in which, without warning, a dozen or more officials have burst into a small meeting and roughly arrested everyone there. Typically, these authorities also literally tear apart the residence, searching for laptops, phones, evangelistic publications including Bibles and other books, DVDs, and videos. They’re looking for anything they can confiscate and label as “evidence” against the Christians. Arrests are made based on accusations such as “insulting Islam,” or conducting “deviant activity” that “contradicts or interferes with the sacred law of Islam.” The house church participants, including recent converts, know very well that the aftermath of such raids can also be perilous: continuing threats of violence, lost employment, expulsion from school or university, confiscated cash, and the endangerment of other family members. And everyone knows that sexual violence against a mother, wife, girlfriend, or daughter is likely to follow. Still, with all this in mind, Iranian house church Christians are extraordinarily courageous. And sometimes the price they pay for their boldness is exceptionally painful. Prominent organizations who report on Iran’s abuse of Christian believers, including the Vatican and several Protestant groups, declare that the regime has recently increased its abuses, including surveillance, arrests, and imprisonment of house church leaders and those who worship in their homes. And true justice seldom follows. Open Doors acknowledged that their watchdog organization is “appalled by the testimonies of violations of due process that took place in the court rooms, including humiliating remarks from the judge, the court’s unconcealed favor for the prosecutor’s side, the defendants’ occasional lack of access to a lawyer, and verdicts issued in less than 10 days — clearly — without sufficient consideration of evidence.” As I’ve learned about the many abuses suffered by our sisters and brothers in Iran, I have also been awestruck by their courage and boldness — and by the remarkable results. More than a million new converts — called Muslim Background Believers (MBB) — are reading the Bible for the first time, praying, gathering in small groups, and sharing their new faith with friends and family, despite the risks. Their faith is amazing, encouraging, and inspiring. Today, when we see “Iran” in the headlines, we are wise to be concerned. Let’s pray for God’s intervention into the regime’s deadly intentions. But let’s also remember our little-known but rapidly growing Christian family inside Iran’s borders. Their bold example of courage in the face of persecution shines brightly amid the ever-increasing darkness in the Middle East. Read in The Washington Stand.

Beginnings of a Catholic revival

“Even Richard Dawkins, God bless him, has decided to dial the God-hatred back a bit and now says he’s also a cultural Christian. Christianity, for him, is a “fundamentally decent religion,” unlike a certain other form of monotheism, of which Dawkins doesn’t approve”. Dr Philippa Martyr Taken from: https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/a-catholic-revival-is-upon-us-feel-free-to-enjoy-it/ A Catholic revival is upon us. Feel free to enjoy it By Dr Philippa Martyr April 14, 2024 If you’ve been reading the international Catholic media lately, you’ll know what an exciting Easter it’s been. Westminster Cathedral in London had to turn people away from the Triduum ceremonies because the cathedral was overflowing. Other churches reported record crowds over Easter. In France, around 1.6 million Catholics turn up to Sunday Mass on a regular basis. But there’s been a 30 per cent increase in adult baptisms since 2023, to a whopping 7,135 in 2024. Next door in Belgium, there’s around 460,000 Catholics going to Mass on Sundays. But the number of adult converts there has doubled in 10 years from 186 in 2014 to 362 in 2024. I wish I could tell you how many adult converts came into the Church in Australia this Easter, but outside Sydney where the bumper RCIA group was even noticed overseas, I don’t know. We don’t collect or publish that data centrally, which I think is a shame. This Easter, Tammy Peterson also became a Catholic. Tammy is the wife of Dr Jordan Peterson—the psychologist, speaker, and author who is probably best described as “Christian-adjacent.” Many of us have great hopes for Dr P’s eventual conversion. But I think it will need more prayers, as he’s already announced he won’t be rushing into anything soon. Media pundits are saying that there’s a Christian revival going on in the UK. Prominent public figures there like Tom Holland and Douglas Murray have publicly praised the social and cultural value of Christianity. Even Richard Dawkins, God bless him, has decided to dial the God-hatred back a bit and now says he’s also a cultural Christian. Christianity, for him, is a “fundamentally decent religion,” unlike a certain other form of monotheism, of which Dawkins doesn’t approve. But none of them has become a Christian yet (and Douglas Murray is openly gay so that’s going to be a hard sell). Nor has Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose recent embrace of Christianity is based not on her belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God, but her belief in Christianity’s ability to withstand the coming fall of Western civilisation. And that’s the rub. This kind of “secular Christianity” is a response to fears about radical Islam and its increasing public presence in the UK. Even the most virulent anti-Christian public figures have started to realise that radical Islam does not tolerate most of the things they value. Is any of this okay? Of course it is. It’s nice when prominent people stop publicly hating your religion 24 hours a day. We should all enjoy the breather. Huge influxes of people into our churches at Christmas and Easter are also not a new thing, and some of the crowds may have been coming in a tidal wave of post-COVID relief. But of course, they’re all welcome. There’s also an online social media trend in “ChristianCore” and “CatholicCore,” where getting your Catholic weird on is increasingly attractive to bored and disenchanted young people. …. The church is here to stay. It has been planted very firmly in the world to save it. But the Christian tide comes in and goes out in different parts of the world over time. God is very patient. He is deeply immersed in his relationship with the individual soul who he is wooing over time and space. We can help him best by getting out of his way. What won’t help is to rush in and start watering down church teaching in the hope of head-hunting famous people who aren’t ready to love God back just yet. Conversion is a journey. Some people like to admire the scenery on the way to the beach while they’re wondering just how cold the water will be when they decide to plunge in. This means that those of us already in the water should be having the best time we can in it. The water is glorious but we might need to signal that more often to the ones still waiting to come in.

New Adam tends the Garden neglected by the Old Adam

“Trust the gardener (and stay in his garden!) and Jesus will grow new life out of the husk of your old life. Please, stay in the garden. Yes, I know it’s easy to get depressed about ecclesial garbage. But just remember, even beautiful gardens have a compost pile”. Brian Zahnd Taken from: https://www.ecodisciple.com/blog/god-the-cosmic-gardener/ God the Cosmic Gardener May 25, 2023 - The whole of creation is a magnificent garden created by God. Every aspect of that creation God looked at and proclaimed “It is good.” By Christine Sine …. ________________________________________ Not long ago we celebrated Earth Day, and recently I had the privilege of sharing the sermon at Seattle Mennonite church. This was not another doom and gloom talk about climate change. I think we are all aware and concerned about the future of our planet. I couldn’t open my computer in the last few weeks without another story shouting its concern. Some feel we only have a decade in which to make changes. It overwhelms us but research suggests that it does not galvanize us into action; in fact, quite the reverse. It actually makes us less likely to respond, because we feel so helpless. We need new language and new perspectives that inspire us with the enthusiasm and passion to get out and make a difference. We need to re-enchant and re-wonder peoples’ view of the world. Part of our problem is that we have lost the language to describe the beauty around us. When the Oxford Junior dictionary was last updated, some words were removed and new ones added. All the words removed were about nature. One of them was dandelion. Can you imagine? No wonder we think of dandelions as weeds to be eradicated rather than recognizing them as one of the most nutritious plants in the garden and, to a child, one of the most beautiful too. I love that the Bible begins and ends with a garden. The Eternal God, the cosmic gardener, starts by creating a garden. Our creator doesn’t just go to the local nursery and buy a few plants, but creates every single element of that garden. The divine spirit is infused through every aspect of creation. The flora, the fauna, even the soil, pregnant with life, shimmers with the vibrant presence and glory of God. It’s not just Eden that is a garden, though; the whole of creation is a magnificent garden created by God. Every aspect of that creation God looked at and proclaimed “It is good.” In the Voice translation of Genesis 2:7-9 we read: “The Eternal God planted a garden in the east in Eden – a place of utter delight – and placed the human whom they had sculpted there. In this garden, the Creator of all made the ground pregnant with life – bursting forth with nourishing food and luxuriant beauty.” God took all the good stuff of creation and formed it into a garden of utter delight. It gives me a feeling of delight just to think about it. The great Irish teacher John Scotus Eriugena taught that God speaks to us through two books - the physically small book of scripture and the big book of creation, vast as the universe. Eriugena invites us to listen to the two books in stereo, to listen to the strains of the human heart in scripture and discern within them the sound of God and to listen to the murmurings and thunders of creation and know within them the music of God’s Being. To listen to one without the other is to only half-listen. To listen to scripture without creation is to lose the cosmic vastness of the song. To listen to creation without scripture is to lose the personal intimacy of the voice. At the end of the Bible in Revelation 22 there is another garden. This is a garden city, a garden that inspires me with possibilities for how to beautify our urban world today. Imagine it—garden cities multiplying throughout the world. I am deeply touched by the verse, “On each bank of the river stood the tree of life, firmly planted, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and producing its sweet crop every month throughout the year.” I will never forget my first experience of holding a child dying of starvation in my arms when I worked in the refugee camps on the Thai Cambodian border in the mid 80's. Then, from Africa, more images of starvation are seared in my brain. Starvation is seasonal. If the harvest is poor, stored crops will run out before new crops are ready for harvest. In the Middle Ages, it was known as the hunger season. I close my eyes and think of it—a tree that gives fruit twelve months of the year. Can you imagine abundant, lush harvests every month of the year? In God’s garden there is no hunger season, no chance of a child dying in infancy— abundance and provision for everyone and every creature at all times. Jesus is the gardener of this new creation garden. We heard it at Easter. When Mary Magdalene encounters the resurrected Jesus as depicted in John 20:15, she was coming to the garden tomb looking for Christ’s body. Instead she finds a very much alive Jesus and she thinks he is the gardener. This is not a throwaway line. It is of cosmic significance! Jesus is indeed the gardener of the new creation and asks us to once again join him in its care. Soil must be fertilized, seeds planted, watered, and nurtured and fruit harvested. Animals must be tended and cared for. I don’t think this is a spiritual metaphor. Jesus loved creation and delighted in using it as the focus for his parables. Several years ago I read A New Heaven and A New Earth by Richard Middleton. It both inspired and stunned me. Middleton suggested that our purpose is to transform the whole earth into a fitting and hospitable place not just for humankind but also for God to dwell. Can you imagine it? God longs for a beautiful place where all creation flourishes and all creatures enjoy abundant provision. A place in which God, too, feels welcomed and comfortable, able to walk once more in relationship with humankind. I like to close my eyes and think about this. What kind of world would God feel comfortable in? Obviously, one in which justice and peace reign, but also one in which creation is restored and cared for. This is why Earth Day is so important for me. It is not just about climate change and our concern for a world humankind has abused, but about our longing to be able to walk once more with our God in a world of beauty where creation flourishes and all are abundantly provided for. How could this view change how we approach God’s good creation and the destruction we often unwittingly contribute to? How could we make this world more inviting for God to dwell in? What difference would it make if we saw God as the cosmic gardener and Jesus as the gardener of the new creation? My husband Tom and I live in a small intentional community with three two-bedroom units. One of our foundational guidelines is sustainability. Recently, we became full for the first time in several years with keen gardeners, and we look forward to sharing an abundant harvest of salad greens straight out of the garden, as well as tomatoes, squash, and beans. In our parking strip, we have several fruit trees, including three apple trees that sometimes produce up to 400 pounds of apples. Over the last 15 years we have probably harvested 5,000 pounds of apples from the trees. Talk about the abundance of a generous God. "I am not a gardener!" you might exclaim. "I have a black thumb. I don’t have space or time for gardening. I don’t like dirty hands." Well it doesn’t matter. There are many ways to become a co-worker with Jesus to create the new world that Easter beckons us into. It is not just about plants and gardens; it is also about justice and concern for those whose lives are increasingly devastated by the impact of climate change, which usually hits the poorest in our world and communities hardest. …. And, taken from: https://brianzahnd.com/2018/03/mistaken-as-the-gardener/ Mistaken As the Gardener Brian Zahnd “Mary Magdalene turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know it was Jesus…supposing him to be the gardener.” –John 20:14, 15 “On the third day the friends of Christ coming at day-break to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of a gardener God walked again in the garden, not in the cool of the evening, but in the dawn.” –G.K. Chesterton The first person to encounter the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene. It happened in a garden. At first Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. A logical mistake. Or a prophetic mistake. Or a beautiful mistake. Or perhaps not a mistake at all. On Good Friday Jesus was buried in a garden. A garden is a place to cultivate and grow living things. An appropriate place for Jesus to be buried. A few days before his crucifixion Jesus had said, “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) On Holy Saturday the Son of God was a holy seed sown in a peaceful garden. On Easter Sunday the garden brought forth the first fruits of resurrection — “Jesus Christ declared to be the Son of God by resurrection from the dead.” (Romans 1:4) The first seed raised by God in the garden of resurrection became the gardener. When Mary Magdalene “supposed him to be the gardener,” she was exactly right! Jesus is now the gardener of resurrection, cultivating new life in all who believe. The first Adam was a gardener who failed in his task and the world became a wasteland of war and sin. But the second Adam will succeed in his task — Christ will restore the ruined garden. With Christ as the gardener of new creation we have a hopeful eschatology. Instead of the thorn bush shall come up the juniper; Instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle. –Isaiah 55:13 “On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be there anymore.” –Revelation 22:2, 3 Jesus is the gardener who turns blighted wastelands into verdant gardens. Jesus is NOT a conductor punching tickets for a train ride to heaven. Christian hope is not so much about getting from earth to heaven, as it is about getting heaven to earth. Jesus is NOT a lawyer to get us out of a legal jam with his angry dad. God is not mad at sinners. Jesus told Mary to tell his disciples that his Father was their Father too! Jesus is NOT a banker making loans of his surplus righteousness. Modern people love economic metaphors…but they are terrible! Economic metaphors invariably produce bad theology. Jesus IS a gardener! A gardener cultivating resurrection life in all who will come to him. The conductor, lawyer, banker metaphors are mostly false, giving a distorted view of salvation. The gardener (and physician) metaphor is beautiful and faithfully depicts the process of salvation in our lives. A gardener’s work is earthy and intimate. Gardeners have their hands in the humus. (We are humans from the humus.) Conductors and lawyers and bankers are concerned with abstract and impersonal things like tickets, laws, and money. But gardeners handle living things with living hands. Jesus is not afraid to get his hands dirty in the humus of humanity. That Jesus is a gardener with a good heart and a green thumb should change your perspective on life. I promise you that your life is not so messed up that Jesus can’t nurture you into a flourishing state. This is the good news! Take a leap of faith and believe it! Trust the gardener (and stay in his garden!) and Jesus will grow new life out of the husk of your old life. Please, stay in the garden. Yes, I know it’s easy to get depressed about ecclesial garbage. But just remember, even beautiful gardens have a compost pile. Believing that Jesus is a good gardener tending to your soul really does change your perspective on life. So when “stuff” happens (you know the expression), don’t despair. Allow Jesus to use “it” as fertilizer to help you grow. Paul says something about God causing all things to work together for good… Then there are those times when the gardener pulls out his shears. Oh, no! Pruning time! Pruning is the painful experience of loss. No one likes to be cut back. But the gracious intention of the good gardener is always the same: to prepare you to flourish. Jesus says, “every branch of mine that bears fruit is pruned, that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:2) I know in my own life any fruitful result from my work of writing has only been possible because of pruning. If I had remained a church-growth, success-in-life unpruned pastor I could never have written on forgiveness and beauty, peace and love as I have. I had to be pruned. It was painful. Very painful. But I thank the gardener for it. So take heart, if you’re in the garden, the gardener is there. You may not always recognize him at first, but he is there. He calls you by name and his desire is for you to flourish. Believe in the gardener…for he is risen!

Mercy of God the answer to the specific problems of our times

“The Message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me… which I took with me to the See of Peter and which it in a sense forms the image of this Pontificate”. Pope St. John Paul II Taken from: https://www.thedivinemercy.org/message/john-paul-ii The Great Mercy Pope It was St. Pope John Paul II who told the Marian Fathers: “Be apostles of Divine Mercy under the maternal and loving guidance of Mary.” We've been faithfully following his instructions ever since. Both in his teaching and personal life, St. Pope John Paul II strove to live and teach the message of Divine Mercy. As the great Mercy Pope, he wrote an encyclical on Divine Mercy: "The Message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me… which I took with me to the See of Peter and which it in a sense forms the image of this Pontificate." In his writings and homilies, he has described Divine Mercy as the answer to the world’s problems and the message of the third millennium. He beatified and canonized Sr. Maria Faustina Kowalska, the nun associated with the message, and he did it in Rome and not in Poland to underscore that Divine Mercy is for the whole world. Establishing Divine Mercy Sunday for the Entire Church When St. Pope John Paul canonized Sr. Faustina (making her St. Faustina), he also, on the same day, surprised the entire world by establishing Divine Mercy Sunday (the feast day associated with the message) as a feast day for the entire Church. The feast day falls on the Second Sunday of the Easter season. On that day, John Paul II declared, "This is the happiest day of my life." Entrusting the World to Divine Mercy In 2002, the Pope entrusted the whole world to Divine Mercy when he consecrated the International Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Lagiewniki, a suburb of Krakow in Poland. This is where St. Faustina’s mortal remains are entombed. The saint lived in a convent nearby. The Pope himself remembers as a young man working in the Solvay Quarry, just a few meters from the present-day Shrine. He also says that he had been thinking about Sr. Faustina for a long time when he wrote his encyclical on Divine Mercy. Further, the Holy Father has frequently quoted from the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska and has prayed The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy at the saint’s tomb. Beyond the Life of John Paul II Given all these connections to Divine Mercy and St. Faustina, is it any wonder that Pope John Paul II died on the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday (the evening before the feast day), which fell that year on April 3? It is also no surprise that the Great Mercy Pope left us a message for Divine Mercy Sunday, which was read on the feast day by a Vatican official to the faithful in St. Peter’s after a Mass that had been celebrated for the repose of the soul of the Pope. Repeatedly Pope John Paul II has written and spoken about the need for us to turn to the mercy of God as the answer to the specific problems of our times. He has placed a strong and significant focus on the Divine Mercy message and devotion throughout his pontificate that will carry the Church long after his death.

Awe-inspiring lessons of Fatima July 13th

“Yet every pope from Pius XII to Francis has said “the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.” The refusal to repent — the belief that sin doesn’t really matter — is at the heart of the major moral disasters of our time, from abortion to human trafficking, from the pornography epidemic to the urban violent crime rate. Those who see no wrong do terrible things”. Tom Hoopes Taken from: https://aleteia.org/2017/07/10/fatima-how-july-13-1917-changed-the-church Fatima: How July 13, 1917 “changed” the Church Tom Hoopes - published on 07/10/17 What Our Lady of Fatima did that day inspired many to convert, but provoked others to reject the faith. This week marks the 100th anniversary of the most controversial apparition of Our Lady in Fatima, Portugal. What she did that day inspired many to convert but provoked others to reject the faith out of hand. It made some people a little nutty and won the begrudging respect of others. July 13 was the day Our Lady scared the daylights out of three shepherd children by showing them hell and sternly warning them about a second global war and a new age of martyrdom. But the surprising — and surprisingly harsh — July 13, 1917 apparition changed the faith of the Church in our time. First: July 13 returned hell to the center of Catholic consciousness. Little Lucia dos Santos was 10 when Our Lady of Fatima began to appear to her every 13th of the month starting in May, 1917, along with her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 8 and 7. But in July, instead of just exhorting the children to say the Rosary and pointing them to heaven, she showed them a terrible sight. “We saw as it were a sea of fire,” Lucia wrote. “Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form … amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.” To give Our Lady of Fatima credit, the vision of hell only happened after a year of preparation, including visits by an angel and much reassurance about heaven. But the vision so badly rattled Jacinta, especially, that it seemed to change her personality utterly. The only thing that would make this vision okay, and not an example of emotional abuse, is if hell were a real place and we were in eminent danger of ending up there if we don’t do something drastic. It is. We are. Second: She reiterated the most unpopular — and most important — message of Christianity. The messages of Jesus (Mark 1:15), John the Baptist (Matthew 3:1-2) and Peter (Acts 2:38) were all the same: “Repent!” Jesus defined the Church’s mission as preaching “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47). Yet every pope from Pius XII to Francis has said “the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.” The refusal to repent — the belief that sin doesn’t really matter — is at the heart of the major moral disasters of our time, from abortion to human trafficking, from the pornography epidemic to the urban violent crime rate. Those who see no wrong do terrible things. Our Lady of Fatima’s vision of hell is an absolutely necessary corrective to the presumptuous expectation that we are all going to heaven no matter what. It is true that God wants to forgive everybody. But one thing stops him: We don’t repent. Third: Our Lady of Fatima de-romanticized war. “This war will end,” Our Lady of Fatima told the children in July, “but if men do not refrain from offending God, another and more terrible war will begin.” Whatever they understood about the particulars, the general sense of this message was clear to the children: War isn’t an occasion for God to reward victors, but to punish sin. The “reward” paradigm had existed for a long time in Christian history …. Every Christian culture had their Robin Hood and King Arthur figures: Heroes of the unconventional virtues of clever violence. But Our Lady of Fatima poured cold water on all of that. Martial virtues are real, but they are an example of God bringing good out of evil — not of God’s will being won by violence. Finally, July 13 de-romanticized martyrdom. For that matter, Our Lady of Fatima also level-set our understanding of martyrdom. In the at-home movies era, many of us are only now watching Silence by Martin Scorcese, which follows a Jesuit’s disillusionment as he looks for glory in the persecutions of Japan and finds soul-numbing horror instead. Our Lady of Fatima taught that lesson 100 years ago. The children saw a vision of the pope “half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow,” praying for the corpses he stumbled past until he was himself shot. Our Lady knows that in heaven martyrdom is glorious — and that on earth, it is painful and sad. The meaning of all of this was not lost on the three shepherd children. They learned that it was absolutely urgent that they console Jesus, convert sinners and commit to Mary. July 13 is only part of their story — a story that includes far more consolation than condemnation and was meant for every generation, including ours.

Temple and Gihon Spring sat in the middle of Jerusalem

“In fact, in Josippon ben Gorion’s version of War, he says that from the top of the temple’s east wall, the water in the Kidron Brook could be seen running at one cubit’s distance from the wall”. Marilyn Sams Taken from: https://www.academia.edu/14532171/The_Temple_Mount_in_the_City_of_David_Ancient_Authenticating_Descriptions with a few comments added: The Temple Mount in the City of David: Ancient Authenticating Descriptions by Marilyn Sams Ancient descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple Mount are incompatible with the current identification and location of it in Jerusalem, which is a long-standing tradition only, entirely dependent on the undocumented proposition that during the time of David or Solomon the northern walls of the City of David/Jerusalem were broken down to append a large northerly extension for the temple and acropolis. Instead, ancient descriptions of the boundaries of the City of David/Jerusalem delimit it to the southeastern hill, with no northerly extension added. …. In 1909-1910, Parker and Vincent discovered archaeological remains dated to 3000 B.C. in the Gihon Spring area, affirming the southeastern hill was the original site of the ancient habitations chronicled in the Bible and history (Reich, 2011). In War VI, 10, 438, Josephus mentions an early king of Jerusalem, a contemporary of Abraham: But he who first built it was a potent man among the Canaanites, and is in our own tongue called [Melchizedek], the Righteous King, for such he really was; on which account he was [there] the first priest of God, and first built a temple [there], and called the city Jerusalem, which was formerly called Salem. Mackey’s comment: I suspect that Melchizedek’s Salem was in the north, near Shechem, a long way from Jerusalem. Another reference in Josephus states the city “was called Solyma, but afterwards they named it Hiersolyma, calling the temple (hieron) Solyma, which, in the Hebrew tongue means “security” (Antiquities VII, 3, 67, Loeb translation). The translation of this passage indicates an amalgamation of the city’s former name (Salem) and the word for “temple” to create the new name “Hierosolyma” or “Jerusalem,” because of the temple there. Mackey’s comment: Melchizedek, like his contemporary, Abram (Abraham), belonged to the Late Chalcolithic, much earlier than Middle Bronze II. These include the Spring Tower surrounding the Gihon Spring, the Pool Wall guarding the Rock-cut Pool adjacent to it, and the Fortified Passage, which consists of two massive walls forming a path from the Spring and Rock-cut Pool and heading toward the ridge at the top of the slope. These fortifications protected citizens while accessing their major water supply. Reich surmised there was an important fortress at the top of the ridge (Reich, 2011). Since this will be shown to be where Solomon’s temple stood, it also qualifies as the likeliest place for Melchizedek’s temple [sic]. The Uru Salem of Abdi-Heba, in the 14th century B.C. and the later city of Jebus also occupied the southeastern hill (Van der Veen, 2013). In the 10th century B.C., after David conquered Jebus, he renamed it the City of David. Mackey’s comment: As Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky had proposed, in Ages in Chaos I (1952), Abdi-Hiba of Urusalim actually belonged to the approximate time of King Ahab of Israel, even later than kings David and Solomon. Abdi-hiba was, in fact, King Jehoram of Judah (Peter James). The northern boundary of the City of David is generally located at Area H of Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations at the bottleneck of the southeastern hill. After Solomon had built the temple and his own house (1 Kings 3:1), “…he made a breach in the wall of the city of David: thus the daughter of Pharoa went up out of the city of David to her house which he built for her” (3 Kings 2:35, Septuagint version). Hence, it is not until after the construction of the temple and Solomon’s palace that an enlargement of the City of David is mentioned, creating what I call the “City of David/Jerusalem.” In Antiquities VII, 3, 66, Josephus states that David made buildings around the “lower city,” which becomes a synonym for the City of David, after the northerly expansion. The northeastern corner of the City of David/Jerusalem (or the Sheep Gate) probably stood where the southeastern corner of the traditional temple mount stands, or possibly 105 feet north, at the “seam” on the east wall. Fig. 2. Boundaries for the City of David/Jerusalem Fig. 2. The City of David is the lower half of the southeastern hill, with its northern boundary at the bottleneck (Area H). The City of David/Jerusalem occupied the whole crescent-shaped southeastern hill. The map outlines the ridge area, but the walls were further down the slopes. A northerly extension of the southeastern hill did not begin, as illustrated here, until about 134 B.C.E. when John Hyrcanus built the Baris, which was expanded to become the 36-acre Haram. To understand there was no northerly appendage added to the southeastern hill, one must start with later descriptions of the City of David/Jerusalem and work back. Although the city had spread to the western hill in Hezekiah’s reign, it shrunk back to the southeastern hill during the Persian era. Even in the Greek era and later, the City of David/Jerusalem is described in the Letter of Aristeas as having its towers arranged “in the manner of a theater;” Tacitus describes its walls as “bending inwards” (Histories 5.11, as cited in Dissertation 3); Josephus said it had “the shape of the moon when she is horned” (War V, 5, 137); and the Venerable Bede compared it to “an arc,” each description of the city referring to the crescent shape of the southeastern hill, without any northerly extension appended. In Antiquities XV, 11, 410, Josephus again uses “in the manner of a theater” to describe the temple lying near to the city, adding that its southern quarter was bounded by a deep valley, both descriptions which refer to the southeastern hill lying against the western hill in the lower Tyropoeon Valley, with the Hinnom and Kidron Valleys on the south and southeast. In addition, Antiquities XV, 11, 397 says: "The hill [of the temple plaza foundations] was a rocky ascent, that declined by degrees towards the east parts of the city, until it came to an elevated level.” This eliminates the traditional site of the temple mount, since there never has been a city built on its east side, as was the case with the temple mount described by Josephus. Several descriptions locating the temple on the southeastern hill derive from its being the lowest mountain in Jerusalem. The Venerable Bede noted the temple [ruins] were located in the “lower part of the city” in the vicinity of the “wall from the east,” Eudocia’s 5th century city wall on the east of the southeastern hill. In Special Laws I.XIII.73, Philo of Alexandria gave a similar topographical description that the temple “…being very large and very lofty, although built in a very low situation…is not inferior to any of the greatest mountains around.” In his letter to Faustus, Eucherius (5th Century C.E.), the Bishop of Lyons, said: “The Temple, which was situated in the lower city near the eastern wall, was once a world wonder, but of its ruins there stands today only the pinnacle of one wall, and the rest are destroyed down to their foundations.” Fig. 4. The Curve of the Southeastern Crescent-Shaped Hill Fig. 4. The photo shows how the southeastern hill is curved or “bending back,” like “a moon when she is horned” or would have had its towers arranged in “the manner of a theater.” The Gihon Spring is where buildings begin south of the very steep slopes. Note that the traditional temple mount’s east wall cannot be considered “within the valley,” as described by Josephus. [Courtesy of Ferrell Jenkins] Further, the Cairo Geniza documents explain that when Omar granted permission to seventy households of Jews to return to Jerusalem, they requested to be near the site of the temple and the water of Shiloah, in the southern section of the city. Mackey’s comment: On (Omar and) the Ummayad caliphate, though, see my article: Dumb and Dumbfounded archaeology (6) Dumb and Dumbfounded archaeology | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu The accounts of the temple ruins standing in the lower city or the temple being built in a low situation or in the south are consistent with Josephus’s descriptions of the temple foundations of the east wall being built deep within the Kidron Valley, not upslope as is the case with the traditional temple mount. In fact, in Josippon ben Gorion’s version of War, he says that from the top of the temple’s east wall, the water in the Kidron Brook could be seen running at one cubit’s distance from the wall. The southeastern hill location of the City of David/Jerusalem is also affirmed by descriptions of both the Gihon Spring and the temple being in the middle of the city. In Contra Apion I, 22, 198, Hecateus of Abdera (4th Century B.C.) mentioned the temple measured 150 feet by 500 feet in the middle of the city. This being the case, a location for the temple on a northerly extension is not possible. Coincidentally, the Jerusalem Talmud says Shiloah was also in the middle of the city (Hagigah 76a). In the Letter of Aristeas, from his standpoint on the citadel, looking down into the temple, he describes upper and lower crossroads, implying the city was bifurcated by the temple. This is also implied by the injunction in the Mishnah (Berachot 9:5) that the temple should not be used as a shortcut. Several scriptures refer to the temple in the “midst” of the city, including Psalm 46:4-5: “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High God is in the midst of her….” (the river being derived from the waters of the Gihon Spring); Psalm 116:18-19: “I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people, In the courts of the Lord’s house, in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem;” Zechariah 8:3: “Thus saith the Lord; I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the Lord of hosts the holy mountain.” Hence, these ancient descriptions verify the city associated with the temple occupied only the southeastern hill.