Hello All,
Beginning this coming Friday, Feb 15, we begin studying the New Testament with Lesson 18-Messianic Fulfillment-Part 1. We have 6 sessions remaining-Messianic Fulfillment Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Gospel of Luke) and The Church Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Acts).
If you've found it difficult to keep up with the voluminous amount of unfamiliar, but fascinating, Old Testament reading (as I have!), we can now breathe a collective sigh of relief as our upcoming readings will be very familiar to us from the Mass. But I think we've all gained alot from all of this background as we move into studying the birth of the Lord and His life on earth.
Two sessions ago, I mentioned that Catholic World Report www.catholicworldreport.com has weekly commentaries on the Sunday Mass readings-here is the one from 1/26 when the OT reading was from Ezra: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/01/26/today-this-scripture-passage-is-fulfilled-in-your-hearing-2/. Here is the one from today: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/02/09/we-are-called-to-be-fishers-of-men/. If interested, you can sign up to receive them on the website.
This past Friday, we studied 1 and 2 Maccabees. I said I would send out a nice summary of the Maccabean period from the Catholic Answers website: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/1-2-maccabees.
A question that came up on Friday was: why isn't there more in the bible regarding Caesar Augustus being called "son of god" and how the gospel of Christ is actually "politically perilous and subversive" as described in this article: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jesus-versus-the-son-of-god? It is such important information and most of us have only heard about this through this bible study! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find an answer to this very good question. If others are able, please send to me for distribution.
For your reading for our remaining sessions, here is some information about the King Herods (there is more than one) we read about in the gospels and Acts that might be helpful to you: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/death-dynasty.
Finally, on Friday I had mentioned a book by Jeff Cavins about suffering. It might make for good Lenten reading along with the other book by Jeff Cavins that Kathy had kindly recommended. Here are both:
Thanks and see you Friday!
God bless,
Krishna Smith