“Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy Cross I cling.” — Augustus Montague Toplady “Blessed are the poor in spirit” is Matthew’s version of our Lord’s sermon; Luke has simply “Blessed are the poor.” When we lack financial resources, people say we are “needy” and “broke.” When we lack spiritual resources, people says we are “needy” and “broken.”…
“So therefore let us too run up to the upward path, so that we may come with Isaiah to the pinnacle of hope, and see from a vantage-point those good things which the Word shews to those who accompany him to the height.”–Gregory of Nyssa[1] When Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) described the first two verses of Matt 5 as a “brief…
In 1555, at the end of Broad street just outside the gates of Balliol College, Oxford, three leaders in the Church of England were burned at the stake. 300 years later, the city of Oxford offered a rather public apology when they constructed a monument “in grateful commemoration” of the three martyrs for “bearing witness to the sacred truths which…