Christian Love Is A Progression Out

St. John is definitely the poet of the New Testament writers (no offense, Paul). And if his Gospel is his Hamlet then his First Epistle is his collection of sonnets. The whole of 1 John 4 is worthy of close inspection and meditation on its own, and its genius only seems to grow when you absorb it with parallel thoughts in his gospel. We trace the agape love of the New Testament from the Father to the Son to the disciples to all the faithful and out into the world. And we see the lowliest Christian loving his neighbor with the same love that burn in the very depths of the Trinity.

Ascension Completes the Paschal Mystery

The Letter to the Hebrews takes a couple of things quite seriously. Important to the Ascension are two: Jesus' Ascension is part of the whole of the paschal mystery, and that his entrance into the heavenly sanctuary fulfills what the Day of Atonement had been pointing to for 1200 years.