Blog - Page 44 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (2014) in Chicago

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:54-05:00January 18th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Unity of the Church|

The traditional period in the northern hemisphere for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is 18-25 January. Those dates were proposed in 1908 by Paul Wattson to cover the original days of the feasts of the Chair of St. Peter (January 18) and the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25) , and therefore have a symbolic significance. In Chicago a special event is to be held on January 25 in Hyde Park. I encourage all friends of Christian unity to join me this year, on Saturday, January 25, at 7:00 p.m.

True Friendships (4)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:54-05:00January 17th, 2014|Categories: Death, Friendship, Love, Personal, Uncategorized|

In my Tuesday blog (1/14) I gave a quotation from the monastic writer John Cassian that is taken from his book titled The Conferences. In this extremely practical and moving treatment of deep spirituality Cassian wrote the following about “true friendships” which I share again today:

True friendships . . . have as their foundation [five principles] . . . The last is something not to be doubted with regard to vice in general–namely, a person must believe each day that he is going to depart from this world.

There is not much to add to this last principle of true friendship. If you truly believe that you are mortal then tell yourself every day (even many times during the day) that soon you will be done with this world as you now know it. If you live this way each moment then you will live a life that is genuinely prepared to meet the true judge and savior of all mankind. You will also count your reputation as of little importance and value what truly matters […]

True Friendships (3)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:54-05:00January 16th, 2014|Categories: Forgiveness, Liturgy, Patristics, Sports|

The goal of life for every Christian should be the kingdom of God. The gospel is the good news of the kingdom of God. Tragically, we have settled for what Dallas Willard calls “the gospel of sin management,” a gospel which is something far less than the gospel of the kingdom.

Very early in the church’s history a group of men and women, fearing the devastation to the soul brought about by the breakdown of spiritual culture inside the church, went to live in the desert in order to learn how to practice the Christian life with greater clarity. Robert Wilken (photo), the famous church historian and patristic scholar, has written, “In their writings the phrase used most often to depict what one strives for in life’s daily struggles was ‘purity of heart.’ Without purity of heart, all yearning for holiness and all desire for God come to naught, for hour by hour, even minute by minute, we are bent and shaped by distractions and wayward thoughts, many good and legitimate, that drive our minds and take our […]

True Friendship (2)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:57-05:00January 15th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Friendship, Love, Personal|

Yesterday I shared a lengthy quotation from The Conferences of John Cassian (d. 435). This quotation had to do with Christian friendship. (As I wrote on Monday, the subject of friendship means a great deal to me.) In his second of five points about the foundation of friendship John Cassian writes:

The second foundation is each person’s curtailment of his own inclinations, so as not to consider himself wise and skilled. Neither one insists on having his own way but both prefer to do what his neighbor wishes.

If you are to grow into a deep and lasting friendship, the kind of relationship that mutually encourages you and your friend, then you must learn to curtail your own sense of importance and your personal expectations and agenda for the other person.

Negatively this means that you must allow your friend to disagree with you, even rather profoundly at times, and still remain committed to keeping and nurturing the friendship. In fact, in such a time of disagreement the friendship might become more important to you. You will have to […]

True Friendship (1)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:57-05:00January 14th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Friendship, Money & Stewardship, Personal|

John Cassian (d. 435), a monk and influential spiritual writer, devoted a great deal of his writing to the meaning and importance of friendship. Cassian wisely wrote:

True friendships . . . have as their first foundation contempt for worldly wealth and a disdain for all the material goods that we possess . . . . The second foundation is each person’s curtailment of his own inclinations, so as not to consider himself wise and skilled. Neither one insists on having his own way but both prefer to do what his neighbor wishes. The third is that each person knows that all things–even those he values as useful and necessary–are to be treated as secondary to the value of love and peace. The fourth is that each person believes from the bottom of his heart that he must never become angry for any cause, whether just or unjust. The fifth is that each one desires to assuage the anger that the other may have toward him–even if for no reason–in the same way as he would his own […]

Engaging Friends Face-to-Face

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:57-05:00January 13th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Friendship, Love, Personal|

One of my deepest and most personal core values is friendship. I concur with the philosopher Simone Weil, “Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys recorded by art or life.”

I have learned so much from being in growing friendships over the course of my nearly sixty-five years. My relationships with others are so important to me that I cannot imagine a lonely journey without my true friends sharing my life’s joys.

My friends include a growing number of Millennials (sometimes called the Echo Boomers for the size of this generation, a generation which ranges from birth in the early 1980s to 2004), Generation X (ranging from the early 1960s to the early 1980s), Baby Boomers (my own post-WW II generation, ranging from 1945 to 1964 ) and a few dear (older) friends from what has been called the Silent Generation (1924 until 1945). Most of my G.I. Generation friends (the generation from 1901-1924, like my parents, are now in the presence of Jesus). These friendships transcend wealth, class, gender, race and ethnicity. They push me to think […]

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2014, Part Two

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:58-05:00January 10th, 2014|Categories: Church History, Current Affairs, Missional-Ecumenism, Personal, Roman Catholicism, Unity of the Church|

In 1935 Abbé Paul Couturier, a priest of the Archdiocese of Lyons, sought a solution to the problem of Catholics and non-Roman Catholics observing the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity together. He found this solution in the Roman Missal as the Association for Promotion of the Unity of Christians had done seventy-eight years earlier in England. Couturier promoted prayer for Christian unity on the inclusive basis that “our Lord would grant to his Church on earth that peace and unity which were in his mind and purpose, when, on the eve of His Passion, He prayed that all might be one.” (cf. John 17:21-23). I think one of the most significant statements written, at least up until this point in the history of this week of prayer, is the expressed hope that this time would unite Christians in their prayer for that perfect unity that God wills and by the means that he wills. Like Fr. Paul Wattson, Abbé Couturier exhibited a powerful passion for unity. He sent out “calls to prayer” annually until his death […]

The War on Poverty Fifty Years Later

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:58-05:00January 8th, 2014|Categories: America and Americanism, Current Affairs, Economy/Economics, Poverty|

Fifty years today (January 8, 1964), in his first State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proposed a piece of legislation that came to be known as the “War on Poverty.” This legislation was proposed by the president in response to a national poverty rate that had reached around nineteen percent. The speech led the U.S. Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which then established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. As a part of Johnson’s vision of the Great Society the role of government in education and health care became federal policy.

Under President Clinton this “war” ended. Aspects of the Johnson policy still remain; e.g. Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America, Job Corps, etc. Some of these programs have worked better than others. But the major aspects of the original program ended in the 1990s. I would argue that the major reason they came to an end was the factual evidence that followed their initiation in the 1960s showed […]

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2014, Part One

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:58-05:00January 8th, 2014|Categories: Church History, Church Tradition, Current Affairs, Missional-Ecumenism, Personal, Prayer, Roman Catholicism, Unity of the Church|

The idea of a designated period of prayer for Christian unity was developed by two American Episcopalian converts to Catholicism, Father Paul James Wattson and Sister Lurana White, co-founders of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement. This Catholic order was totally committed to the reunion of the Anglican Communion with the Roman Catholic Church. It was Wattson and White who initially led a prayer movement that explicitly prayed for the return of non-Catholic Christians to the Holy See. Needless to say, such an observance attracted very few non-Catholics. In 1907 Rev. Spencer Jones suggested to Wattson that a special day be set aside for prayer for Christian unity. Fr. Paul Wattson agreed with the concept but offered the idea of an octave of prayer between the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair on January 18 and the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on January 25. This decision eventuated in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

When Fr. Paul and Sr. Lurana became Roman Catholics, Pope Pius X gave his blessing to the Church Unity […]

The Priority of Christ, Part Two

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:58-05:00January 7th, 2014|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Biblical Theology, Christ/Christology, Jesus, Lordship of Christ, The Church|

One of my deepest concern for Christians today, expressed in my post yesterday, is not widely shared by many in the North American church, whether Catholic or Protestant, mainline or evangelical. In fact, I have discovered only a few single-minded souls (e.g. friends such as Leonard Sweet, Joseph Girzone, David Bryant come to mind here) who are currently speaking prophetically to this concern. This concern is a base line, or a north star, for how I listen to, and process, the message of the church – the heart of Christian faith is Jesus the Christ, the Messiah. He is everything. He is all. His supremacy is self-evident if you read the New Testament. My question, the question with which I ended my post yesterday, was: “Could we have substituted a movement in morality and ecclesial practice for Jesus?”

It ought to be a simple truism that a lively concern for the gospel and the Christ-event, as it is centered in the life and person of Jesus of Nazareth himself, is the marrow of all true Christian faith and […]