Christmas Day as we experience it, and the roller-coaster preceding it, have evolved into a festival that is part cultural, part commercial, and part Christian. This is true throughout the Western world, from Santiago to Seoul, from Helsinki to Hobart. And especially here in Sydney. At the centre of our celebrations stands a season of generosity …
The quiet dawn of redeeming grace
A Christmas Eve sermon based on Luke 2:1-20. Luke’s Gospel slows the world to a hush as it tells the story of the birth of Jesus. Empires rise and fall, decrees are issued from distant palaces, caravans move across desert trade routes, shepherds settle in for another night’s work out in the hills, and angel …
A summer Christmas benediction
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, born for us and for our salvation, fill you with peace, hope and love this Christmas. As you go out into the warmth of this summer season, may our Father in heaven grant you his enduring peace, may the clear light of Christ shine in your hearts …
20 Christian mystics often regarded as “Great Souls”
Throughout Christian history, mystics have been recognised as “great souls”: women and men whose lives display an unusual depth of prayer, moral seriousness, spiritual authority, and love for God and neighbour. Here are twenty of them. Who else, in your opinion, should make the list? Augustine of Hippo Gregory of Nyssa Evagrius Ponticus Macrina the …
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Christian mystics as “great souls”
In his writings, the Australian Baptist theologian G. H. Morling occasionally refers to “great souls,” people of extraordinary humanity or spiritual insight – those rare individuals able to express uncommon empathy or magnanimity, whether in actions or words. The phrase “great soul” echoes the classical Greek notion of megalopsychos, the “great-souled man,” articulated by Aristotle, denoting largeness of …
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