The Reign of Christ over This World.       “What will it profit a person to gain the whole world if he loses his own soul?” ( Mt16:26 ; Mk 8:36 ; Lk 9:25 .)       “World,” of course can mean the physical universe. “World” is also used in the Bible to refer to the collection of forces of opposition to God. “Worldliness.” Anti-God.       So what if a person gains everything this world has to offer – riches, pleasures, honors and respect, power and authority over others, self-satisfaction – all of it! But if you lose your soul, your personhood, your life? If you end up apart from God by your own choice? That’s Hell. You’ve given your soul to the devil. Jesus says your soul – destined for eternity – is worth more than the whole world. But you’ve tossed it away.       So let’s look at what Jesus, the Truth, tells us about this world. First, He’s not of this world ( Jn 8:23 , 17:14 ). The world doesn’t k...

  O Antiphons: O King of All the Nations       This Sunday is the Third Sunday of Advent, and the “O Antiphon” we consider this week is the Lord’s Messianic title, “O King of All the Nations.”  The antiphon for Vespers is:           O King of all the nations,           the only Joy of every human heart;           O Keystone of the mighty arch of man,           come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust. The Alleluia for Mass modifies it as, “O King of all nations and keystone of the Church: come and save man, whom you formed from the dust!”       We start with the last phrase, the “dust.” Genesis 2:7 tells us, “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The prophet Isaiah has this to say to us creatures of dust: “Your d...

O Antiphons: O Key of David           This Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent, and the “O Antiphon” we consider this week is the Lord’s Messianic title, “O Key of David.”       The antiphon for Vespers is:                O Key of David, O Royal Power of Israel,                  controlling at your will the gate of heaven:                 come, break down the prison walls of death                 for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death;                 and lead your captive people into freedom.          The Alleluia for Mass modifies it as, “O Key of David, opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom: come and free the prisoners of darkness!”...

The Gospel of the Forty Days: Baptism, Part 1       “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:20). The verse tells us that Christ (now resurrected and speaking with His Apostles before His ascension) commanded them to baptize all peoples as they became disciples. With the same words, Jesus also spoke of God’s revelation of Himself: baptism was to be in the Name (singular, one God) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (three Persons), thus reinforcing what the Apostles had learned being with Jesus: that God had, in Christ, revealed Himself to be three divine Persons possessing simultaneously the one divine nature of the one God as revealed to Israel. So Jesus’ command (Ac 1:2) and teaching (Ac 1:3) here are part of his “gospel of the forty days.”       Jesus spoke on different occasions during the forty days of the baptism He was commanding the Apostl...

The Gospel of the Forty Days:  The Church as the Restored Kingdom       Last week we developed the theme of the Messianic expectation of the restoration of the Kingdom of David, and asserted that in Jesus’s teaching about the “kingdom of God” during the forty days between His resurrection and ascension (Ac 1:3), He would have taught that this kingdom is now the Church. Let’s explore that a bit more.       David’s kingdom was based on covenant with God (2 Sam 7:1-29), which included God’s promise to establish an eternal kingdom with a descendant of David, and “I will be His Father, and He shall be My Son.” Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that Jesus, in the flesh, is a descendant of David (Lk 2:4-7, 3:31); and in previous articles we have discussed some of the Bible’s evidence that Jesus is, at the same time, in His Divinity, the Son of God.       Now at the Last Supper, Jesus says to the Twelve, “As My Father appoin...