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"They then who are born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but
of God, must offer to the Father the unanimity of peace-loving sons, and all the
members of adoption must meet in the first-begotten of the new creation, who came to
do not his own will but his that sent him; inasmuch as the Father in his gracious favor
has adopted as his heirs not those that are discordant nor those that are unlike him, but those that are in feeling and affection one. They that are remodeled after one pattern
must have a spirit like the model.
"The birthday of the Lord is the birthday of peace: for
thus says the apostle, 'he is our peace, who made both one; since whether we be Jew or
Gentile, through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father.' And it was this in
particular that he taught his disciples before the day of his passion which he had of his
own free-will foreordained, saying, 'My peace I give unto you, my peace I leave for you'; and lest under the general term the character of his peace should escape
notice, he added, 'not as the world give I unto you.' The world, he says, has
its friendships, and brings many that are apart into loving harmony. There are also minds
which are equal in vices, and similarity of desires produces equality of affection. [Such] belong not to God's friendship but to this
world's peace.
"But the peace of the spiritual and of catholics coming down from above
and leading upwards refuses to hold communion with the lovers of the world, resists all
obstacles and flies from pernicious pleasures to true joys, as the Lord says: 'Where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also': that is, if what you love is below
you will descend to the lowest depth: if what you love is above, you will reach the
topmost height: there may the Spirit of peace lead and bring us, whose wishes and feeling
are at one, and who are of one mind in faith and hope and in charity: since as many as are
led by the Spirit of God are sons of God -- who reigns with the Son
and Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen."
--Leo the Great, Sermon 26 (On the Feast of the Nativity VI)
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How then do you account for the countless hundreds of millions of human corpses created by the agents of the institutional church?
ReplyDeleteCollateral damage perhaps!
How then do you account for the fact that all Christian nations past and present have always been armed to the teeth?
How then do you account for the Papal (paypal) Bulls which "authorized" in the "name of God" and for the "glory of Christ" the colonial/imperialist invasion and systematic plunder of the "new" world, beginning with the Americas and then the entire world?
Of course the imperialist invasion is still occurring - as strong as ever.
How then do you account for the fact that the Christian West gave the two World Wars to the entire world?
"The birthday of the Lord is the birthday of peace."
ReplyDeleteI love that.
Hurry the day when warriors' boots and blood-soaked garments are fuel for the fire, and we're beating our swords into plowshares.