Why Did Christ go to Galilee after the Resurrection? Three Reasons

Writes Dr Taylor Marshall:

On the morning of the Glorious Resurrection of Christ, the angel tells the women to tell the Apostles that Christ would go before them into Galilee. Why would Christ desire to go to Galilee rather than remain in Jerusalem? After all, we might presume that it would be better to remain in Jerusalem. In the city of Jerusalem, Christ would have more witnesses to the resurrection.

On the contrary, Christ purposed to go to Galilee. Cornelius a Lapide gives three reasons for this:

1) He goeth before you into Galilee. First, because Galilee was the native country of the Apostles, to which, after the death of Jesus, they were purposing to return, that they might live more safely among their own relations.

2) Secondly, because in Galilee Christ willed to show Himself openly to all His assembled disciples. For the Jews would not have permitted them to assemble in Judæa.

3) Thirdly, because in Galilee Christ had for the most part preached, and had performed very many miracles.

St. Gregory (Hom. 21)  continues on the mystical reason for going to Galilee:

For Galilee means a passing over from death to life; for our Redeemer had already passed from His Passion to His resurrection, from death unto life. And He is seen first by His disciples after His resurrection in Galilee, because we shall have joy in seeing the glory of His resurrection, if only we pass over from vice to the heights of virtue. He, then, who is announced at the tomb is shown in passing over; because He who is first known in mortification of the flesh is seen in this passing over of the soul.

Yet Christ appeared to the Apostles in Judæa also, but secretly; in Galilee publicly.

Here is the historical order of events:

In the historical order of the events must be brought in here what Luke mentions (chap. xxiv. 3), namely, that Magdalene and her companions, while at the invitation of the angel they had entered the sepulchre and seen that it was empty, yet were affrighted; on account of which the angels cheered them, and at the same time gently reproved their want of faith. For that Luke’s account is not the same as that of Matthew and Mark, as some think, is clear from the words themselves, which are evidently different. Also, from the circumstance that in Luke two angels are said to have appeared, while in Matthew and Mark only one is mentioned.

 

Canada: 2 Anglican Bishops to Enter Catholic Church, Will Become Part of US Ordinariate

I fear I need to count my words more carefully these days - lest I be misinterpreted or (dare I say) misrepresented…

The following article is in the Catholic World News today, is relevant, AND MAY OR MAY NOT BE OF INTEREST TO THE READERS OF THIS BLOG:

Joined by clergy and laity, two of the three active bishops of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) will be received into the Catholic Church on Divine Mercy Sunday. Bishops Peter Wilkinson and Carl Reid will be received into the Church by Bishop Richard Gagnon of Victoria and Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa at separate Masses. Bishop Wilkinson is the head of the ACCC.

Their parishes–along with two Anglican parishes already received into the Church, and up to six other ACCC parishes–will become the Canadian Deanery of St. John the Baptist of the US Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, which Pope Benedict established on January 1.

“While the apostolic constitution[Anglicanorum Coetibus] left open the possibility of an ordinariate in Canada, this linking Anglicans in Canada to the United States Ordinariate as a deanery attached to it is a good step for now,” said Archbishop Pendergrast.

Founded in 1977, the  Anglican Catholic Church of Canada is part of the Traditional Anglican Communion.

 

Quote

We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything.

- Blessed John Henry Newman

Hold Firm

Fr Anthony Chadwick has just posted: ‘Another blow and the door is kicked in?’ In it, he refers to two recent post here:

Two new articles from the South African priest blogger, apparently one of Bishop Gill’s clergy, seemingly all-out to promote the ordinariate-or-bust trajectory. Read them for yourselves.

• Trouble in St Mary of the Angels Parish (ACA)
• The ACC and APCK Take Over ACCC (TAC) Parishes in Joint Venture

Allow me to point out, quickly, in my defence (perhaps?), that I am most certainly not ‘all-out to promote the ordinariate-or-bust trajectory.’ To be fair, I would say: ‘the ordinariate-or-stay trajectory’. And staying is not ‘bust’! There is work to be done. Plenty. Just listen to my Bishop.

‘Bust’ is Church-hopping (between Continuing Anglican bodies who look more like vultures prey off one another). Sectarian  individualism, privatization of the faith and ecclesiological anarchism is unChristian.

I do however shamelessly believe in maintaining and pursuing (‘promoting’, if you will Fr Chadwick) a visible Christian Unity. That comes from even the most basic of Scriptural reading (John 17:20-23; 1 Cor 1:10-13) and the ancient Creeds. Why?  Because it is unity that makes Christianity and Jesus more believable to the lost and dying world.

As I have just commented:

Every TAC parish faces one of two choices:

1) Follow through on Unity with Rome (where Ordinariates are available).

Or

2) Stay.

Jumping ship is the now added option…

That’s what I decry.

The English French priest blogger continues, and has a bit more info on the TTAC (UK):

Another blow is my being informed about the reality of the TTAC in England. Some months ago, I published a letter from Canon Ian Gray that informed his clergy that if they were ordinariate-bound, they would be out of the TAC by a given date. That leaves those clergy who have not received the nulla osta from Rome in canonical “limbo”. Canon Gray’s argument would be that the TAC had to move on and cannot tolerate divided loyalties. There are no regional deans, because they have left. The priest who runs the TTAC website has gone, as has Fr Michael Silver. Fr Ian Westby discerns his future. Fr John Maunder I understand has gone to the Ordinariate. What is there left? The best and youngest clergy are writing to me with their tales from the Gulag!

I am informed about seven priests waiting for a decision to arrive from Rome. That number is added to the small number of those who have received a nulla osta from Rome and are acting on it or have refused to go ahead to the Ordinariate and have not remained with the TAC. The information I received spells out the bleak future of the TAC in England: it is left with ten clergy, five with “life limiting conditions” (which we all have but relatively) and two are elderly. No priest now remaining is under the age of 60, and my informant’s prognosis is that there will remain no more than 4 priests within 2 years.

If this version of events and developments goes unchallenged, then the future is bleak and it is “game over” in England, but the scandal and pain caused to those involved will not cause them to feel forced to go to the Ordinariate, or the local RC diocese, or the traditionalists or whatever. Their hearts are broken and they will most likely not go anywhere…

There seems to be no way to deny the notion that the TAC is irremediably broken except in those countries where the ordinariate movement was never an option, like in the African Continent and India. I have a tremendous amount of esteem for Archbishop Prakash and Bishop Michael Gill. Bishop Craig Botterill has been pastoral in his dealings with his clergy and faithful in Canada, and that separation between the ordinariate-bound and those who wish to remain Anglicans has been ordered, charitable and peaceful. Perhaps he will use his authority to save the situation in England – that is up to him to decide…

The rest is here.

Allow me to conclude with a quote:

Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.

- St Thomas Aquinas

Oxford University, Vatican Libraries to Digitize Works

1.5 million pages of ancient texts will become available online.

Awesome. MSNBC:

London — The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) say they intended to digitize 1.5 million pages of ancient texts and make them freely available online.

The libraries said the digitized collections will center on three subject areas: Greek manuscripts, 15th-century printed books and Hebrew manuscripts and early printed books.

The areas have been chosen for the strength of the collections in both libraries and their importance for scholarship in their respective fields.

With approximately two-thirds of the material coming from the BAV and the remainder from the Bodleian, the digitization effort will also benefit scholars by uniting virtually materials that have been dispersed between the collections for centuries.

“Transforming these ancient texts and images into digital form helps transcend the limitations of time and space which have in the past restricted access to knowledge,” Bodley’s librarian Sarah Thomas said.

“Scholars will be able to interrogate these documents in fresh approaches as a result of their online availability.”

The initiative has been made possible by a $3.17 million award from the Polonsky Foundation.

“The service to humanity which the Vatican Library has accomplished over almost six centuries, by preserving its cultural treasures and making them available to readers, finds here a new avenue which confirms and amplifies its universal vocation through the use of new tools, thanks to the generosity of the Polonsky Foundation and to the sharing of expertise with the Bodleian Libraries,” Holy See Librarian Cardinal Raffaele Farina said