basilthesecond

Enjoy this last installment of "The Ancient Church." The take-home point of this series is this simple fact: People do not go to church to hear a lecture, but their real, inner and spiritual longing in going to church is to be sanctified. I am not sure who said this, nor in which installment it was in, but it resonates with me. Only upon attending a vigil and a liturgy did I behold the work of sanctification that the Church's services contain, because they are the true vessels of Christ, and none other.

C

I used to believe I was in the original, true church that had somehow been killed and resurrected over and over, disappearing and reappearing over the ages, and become the American Bible-based, fundamentalist-edged, hard-preaching, devil-decrying, etc, church. Now I understand, that all the Protestant and Western churches that I had belonged to were but steps along the way. But, as this episode tells us, the Reformation, in its its rejection of Roman Catholic tradition, threw the baby out with the bathwater

Christ is risen!