Seeking Eschatalogical Peace & the Way of Prayer

In the past few weeks I have been exploring the alleged eschatological violence in Matthew's Gospel. My reviews of A Peaceable Hope by David J. Neville and The Nonviolent Messiah by Joseph J. Simon. I have just read an even more helpful book called The Banished Messiah by Robert R. Beck. I  will try to review it soon & a link to it  should appear in the Theology & Peace Facebook page. My sermon on the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds Jesus the Rejected Cornerstone among the Weeds also speaks to this concern.

I have also been exploring the Difficulties in Forgiving with the first post discussing Jacob and Esau and Joseph and His Brothers.I am planning to do some more posts on the delicate issue of forgiveness so stay tuned.

For our celebration of St. Benedict's Day this year, I preached a sermon St. Benedict: a Personal Sketch which outlines what we can glean of Benedict 's character and personality from the Rule.

I also reviewed James Carroll's stimulating book Jerusalem Jerusalem which provides us with a Girardian analysis of the history of Jerusalem in history and more important and fatefully, in the human imagination.

Finally, for now, I have completed a series on the traditional Five Kinds of Prayer. I discuss these kinds of prayer in the light of mimetic theory, looking at how an awareness of mimetic desire and deepen our understanding of prayer. This link to the first article on petitionary prayer.

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Abundance Is a Spiritual Matter

On Sunday I wove together contemplative prayer, an MT account of the dualism of abundance and scarcity, and the current crisis at our southern border involving unaccompanied children. Here is a link to that sermon:

http://girardianlectionary.net/year_a/proper13a_2014_ser.htm