Jews Alarmed by Messianic Movement Boom

In an interview with Catholic magazine 30 Giorni, Riccardo Di Segni, Chief Rabbi of Rome speaks out against the rise in Messianic movements.

SOS fake Messiah. Alarm bells have been raised within the Jewish population, in light of the boom in Messianic movements. The “Messiah” is different from the prophet, in that contrary to the latter, he does not proclaim himself to be a simple intermediary, but a direct incarnation of the divinity or of another divine principle. However, the difference between the two is not always clear. Indeed, it is not unusual for some prophets, who have gained a certain notoriety, to declare that they are of divine descent or considered by the followers as the Messiah.

Among those who condemn the risk posed by these Messianic movements, is Riccardo Di Segni, Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Rome (the oldest Jewish Diaspora) who aired his opinions in an interview with Italian Catholic magazine 30 Giorni. “These Messianic movements present themselves to the Jewish world as something new; their mission is aimed solely at Judaism – Chief Rabbi Di Segni said. Judaism does not carry out any missions outside the Jewish community and our traditions are conserved through experimental and ancient mechanisms: schools, synagogues and the family”…

Christians say that Christ is the Messiah, that Christianity is Messianism by definition. Judaism sees the Messianic idea as one of many ideas. It is characterised by a tension, a waiting and Judaism could theoretically exist without the Messianic prophesy being fulfilled…

Read the whole piece here.

HT:  Stuart

 

Military Wives Turn to Bible for Marriage Advice

The Huffington Post:

With husbands deployed or off preparing for war, some young wives at this sprawling Army installation have spent much of their marriages so far alone.

Faced with long periods of separation and worry over the next combat tour, a group of wives mostly in their late 20s and early 30s are drawn together weekly to seek spiritual support to bolster the strength of their marriages.

Mya Parker, 27, saw both sides of the average military marriage and the strain that years of combat duty can do to a relationship. She served in the Army for four years on active duty before helping to start the Lantern, a nondenominational faith group for military wives and girlfriends outside Fort Campbell, Ky.

“The military, because of the complexities of the deployment, can have more uncertainties,” she said. “The reason God is the answer is because scripture says that He has never changed. From the beginning of time to the end of time, He is unchanging.”

While not solely sponsored by any one church, these wives meet weekly in small, informal groups of eight to 12 at their homes to study the Bible’s teachings and how to apply them to today’s modern military marriage.

Parker and her husband, an Army aviator, both served in Afghanistan with the famed 101st Airborne Division, a unit that has been heavily impacted by the wars there and in Iraq since 2001. During her Army career, Parker saw deployed husbands anxious about their wives back home and wives struggling to communicate with husbands a world away.

In the privacy of these small weekly gatherings, the wives don’t hold back their fears about the realities of war.

“We don’t sugar-coat it and say, `Oh, it will be great, it will be fine. This deployment is going to fly by.’ To be honest, it’s hard and you have good days and bad days,” said Mandy Costello, 29, who has been married five years through her husband’s three deployments.

With less than 1 percent of Americans serving in the military, the lifestyle of a military wife can sometimes feel isolating. But when they get together, these wives speak the same language that is peppered with military acronyms as they share advice for keeping marriages intact, when sometimes months go by without kisses or hugs from their spouses.

“If you don’t know what to expect, you feel alone, you feel isolated and you feel like you are the only one going through this, when you know there are thousands of soldiers deployed with your husband at the same time. It still feels like you are the only one,” said Holly Klich, 31, who has been married four years to a soldier who has had two combat tours.

Besides the Lantern meetings, many of these wives participate in the military’s family readiness groups, which provide information about deployments and organize events and classes for military spouses and families.

Parker said group members come from a variety of faith backgrounds, including Mormon, Catholic, Church of Christ, Pentecostal, but she said the group is open to all faiths. The group also does public service projects that Parker said aren’t faith-focused and are open to anyone who wants to join them.

The Army has also been focused on improving military marriages and has invested in a marriage counseling program run by unit chaplains called Strong Bonds, which is popular with soldiers of all faiths.

Parker and others said they need additional strength from their faith to be resilient.

Parker points to the Bible’s emphasis on grace, patience, kindness and forgiveness as keys to a healthy marriage, even those tested by war.

“It has made me much more patient with him dealing with what he has been through and honoring that he ultimately doesn’t belong to me,” Parker said. “He belongs to the Lord.”

The weekly prayer meetings have helped many wives reconnect with their husbands, many who have recently returned from the 101st Airborne’s yearlong deployment to Afghanistan. Parker said many wives expect a joyous reunion, but many couples have to learn how to live together again.

Vanessa James, a 30-year-old who had twin boys while her husband was deployed, said she prayed that she wouldn’t be resentful that her husband missed so much while he was gone.

“He has been home for three months now and I can honestly say that I feel closer to my husband than ever before, and I think it’s because I approached this reintegration with a servant’s heart,” she said.

With the support of other wives, Parker said a deployment can also be a blessing if women take the opportunity to grow in their faith and their marriages.

“My number one piece of advice, even if someone didn’t grow up in the church and isn’t a believer, is to really take the time. Deployment is an amazing time to pursue a relationship with God for maybe the first time,” she said…

More here.

 

Clerics Fight in Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

Speaking of Church brawl, this time it’s between clergy in Bethlehem at the Church of the Nativity. Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic priests and monks who were armed with brooms got into it while cleaning the Church. Palestinian riot police were called in:

A Christmas cleaning of the Church of the Nativity turned into scuffles on Wednesday between rival Christian clerics zealously guarding denominational turf at the holy site.

Brooms and fists flew inside the church marking the birthplace of Jesus as some 100 priests and monks of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches brawled.

Palestinian police, bending their heads to squeeze through the church’s low “door of humility,” rushed in with batons flailing to restore order.

“It was a trivial problem that … occurs every year,” said police Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled al-Tamimi. “Everything is all right and things have returned to normal,” he said. “No one was arrested because all those involved were men of God.”

Administration of the 6th century Bethlehem church, the oldest in the Holy Land, is shared by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics.

Any perceived encroachment of jurisdictional boundaries within the church can set off a row, especially during the annual cleaning for Orthodox Christmas celebrations, which will be held next week.

What a pathetic witness. See for yourself:

Holy Innocents

The Massacre of the Innocents:

… is an episode of infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great. According to the Gospel of Matthew Herod orders the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth has been announced to him by the Magi. The incident, like others in Matthew, is described as the fulfillment of a passage in the Old Testament read as prophecy, in this case a reading of Jeremiah: “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children.”

The infants, known in the Church as the Holy Innocents, have been claimed as the first Christian martyrs. Some accounts number them at more than ten thousand, but more conservative estimates put their number in the low dozens…

Collect:

Heavenly Father,
whose children suffered at the hands of Herod,
though they had done no wrong:
by the suffering of your Son
and by the innocence of our lives
frustrate all evil designs
and establish your reign of justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

                                                       – Amen

A Midnight Mass Brawl

Chairs fly and punches thrown as all hell breaks loose among 400-strong congregation.

It has to be: The Daily Mail.

A priest today described how he feared parishioners’ lives were in danger when a fight broke out in his church during midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

Monsignor Vincent Harvey said heavy chairs were thrown down an aisle at St Edmund’s Church, Southampton, during the fight in the middle of the service on Saturday night.

Police patrol cars and an ambulance raced to the historic church on The Avenue, Southampton, as other members of the congregation tried to break up the fight.

The priest managed to continue the mass to his shocked but uninjured congregation after police arrived to arrest those involved.

‘You often expect some drunken behaviour at the Christmas Midnight Mass but this was actually quite shocking,’ said Father Vincent Harvey.

‘But then about three or four minutes later, there were scuffles going on. Then it was obvious it was more than just a scuffle, there was actually a fight going on.’

‘I had to halt the Mass because the congregation were in considerable danger as chairs were being hurled down the aisle. Some of them were made of steel and could easily have injured people in the pews.’

He continued: ‘The person involved started throwing fairly heavy chairs down a side aisle, endangering people’s lives.

‘People were frightened that it was happening. If they’d hit anybody they could have been badly injured’…

‘Some of the congregation were worried about the statues in the church getting smashed but I told them not to be concerned about those, just to make sure they didn’t get injured themselves’…

Read more here.

The priest said: ‘I just asked people for a bit of silence so we could recollect ourselves and to pray for the person involved.

‘My sermon had been about how we are broken people, fragile people, and I said he is one of the very people I’m talking about.’

Ah, yes, Southampton…

 

Hilarious Hanukkah Medley

As Hanukkah draws to a close: