Church of the Nativity Old Catholic

Tonight at 7pm American Apostolic Old Catholic Church.
Mass of the Ascension.

Bishop Rake will resume broadcasting Mass on 5/11 (Ascension Sunday) and every Saturday at 7pm CST going forward.

From Bishop Rake:
Today is the commemoration of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Teachings about the role of the Mother of Jesus Christ in God's salvific act are widely misunderstood by people both in and outside of the Catholic Church. This is because the role of Jesus Christ himself in the Christian faith is often misunderstood, misinterpreted, malformed, or misused.
Christianity is a revealed religions: those religions based upon a set revelation from the Divine to a person or group of people; as opposed to evolved religions, which are built upon the successive wisdom of many generations of believers. Christianity is unusual as a religion in a general sense because of its teaching regarding Deicide. Many beliefs over the millennia have involved the death of a god or gods as a part of cosmogony (myths regarding the creation of the universe) or as the result of marriage or wars among deities.
However, Christianity is unusual in that the death of its God was God's plan; not to create the cosmos or solve a problem, but to transform human beings and collect them into Himself. In other words, Christianity does not teach that we must die for love of our god, but that our god died for love of us. In religious anthropology, that's a unique notion.
However, Christianity is unusual in another way, as well. Its entire core is not based upon the sayings or deeds of a holy person. This is what most people don't understand. Our faith is based, not on the things Jesus did, but on WHO HE WAS. Our faith is grounded in the person of Jesus Christ, his identity, his essence. His teachings, sayings, morality, ideas, actions, biography, desires, wants, choices, death--none of that would be of any consequence but for the fact of who he constantly claimed to be and offered continuous proofs of: God Incarnate. Without his divine nature, entangled as it was with the Godhead, he would have been another prophet; a religious minority who was the victim of capital punishment.
When you lose the "who he was" script of the Christian narrative, then you lose the necessity of the Marian Dogmas (teachings about the Virgin Mary). The fact that Jesus Christ was God is what causes us to look at the woman who conceived him; carried him in her womb for 9 months; gave birth to him; breastfed him; changed his diapers; kept him safe and loved; taught him to speak; rocked him to sleep; carried him about; gave him his DNA, flesh, blood, brain, and bone.
God, as a helpless, speechless, fragile infant, handed himself over to one woman. This is why Mary is so important and why the teachings surrounding her are so vital to a cohesive belief in Christ. As Aquinas said, "To fall into heresy about Mary is to fall into heresy about Christ."
For example, if Jesus was a lamb without blemish and sinless in his entire person, then how could he take flesh from a sinful woman? The Immaculate Conception explains that God prepared Mary, using the future sacrifice of Jesus, to clothe the Son in flesh without sin. There is scriptural proof for this, but it is also a logical response to the question: if Jesus was God and conceived inside of a regular person, then wasn't he subject to sin and Satan while he was inside?
(There are more subtle arguments here, but I'm simplifying for nontheologians).
Of all of the doctrines regarding Mary, her Queenship is the easiest to explain and understand. The church did not crown Mary. People did not crown Mary. Christ did when, as King, he was born of her.
In Europe, the Queen is the King's wife. In the Ancient Near East, however, the Queen was the King's Mother. This is because the King often had hundreds of wives, all of them vying to have their sons crowned the successor so they could, in turn, become Queen Mother--just as Bathsheba managed to cunningly do with her son, Solomon, even though Solomon was not King David's oldest son.
The Queen had a great deal of authority in the Kingdom and tremendous sway with her son, the King. When in need of something from the King, people would go to the Queen (mother), who held court and listened to the problems of the people. She would judge what to bring to her son and what not to. She was their intercessor--often a kindly one, compared to the King--and her reign lasted until she or her son died. (c.f. 1 Kings 2:13).
The Queen was the "Mother of the Kingdom" and honored as such.
The Blessed Virgin Mary has a Son whose Kingdom has no end and who's Kingship is eternal. She hears the pleas of her children (Revelation 12:17) and she intercedes with us to her Son, who can be swayed by her request because of his love for her (John 2:1-11).
We do not worship her. She is not the Queen of Heaven because she is the power of heaven. She is Queen of Heaven because her Son is King of Heaven. She does not ask for us to pray TO her; we ask her to pray FOR us. She is the Mother of God (Luke 2:41-44). We call her Blessed because God called her Blessed (Luke 2:45).
Mary points us to Christ: "Whatever he says to you, do it." (John 2:5) As Queen of the Kingdom of Heaven, we owe her our respect and love. Think about it: if your best friend's beloved elderly mother lived alone and you visited her, called her, mowed her lawn, drove her to the store: would this hinder your relationship with your friend or enhance it?
Let's ask Our Lady, Our Mother, Our Queen to help us know her Son as well as she did and to aspire to love Him as much as she did.
Hail Mary, Full of Grace, Pray for us!
Amen.

From Bishop Rake:

Today is the commemoration of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Teachings about the role of the Mother of Jesus Christ in God's salvific act are widely misunderstood by people both in and outside of the Catholic Church. This is because the role of Jesus Christ himself in the Christian faith is often misunderstood, misinterpreted, malformed, or misused.

Christianity is a revealed religions: those religions based upon a set revelation from the Divine to a person or group of people; as opposed to evolved religions, which are built upon the successive wisdom of many generations of believers. Christianity is unusual as a religion in a general sense because of its teaching regarding Deicide. Many beliefs over the millennia have involved the death of a god or gods as a part of cosmogony (myths regarding the creation of the universe) or as the result of marriage or wars among deities.

However, Christianity is unusual in that the death of its God was God's plan; not to create the cosmos or solve a problem, but to transform human beings and collect them into Himself. In other words, Christianity does not teach that we must die for love of our god, but that our god died for love of us. In religious anthropology, that's a unique notion.

However, Christianity is unusual in another way, as well. Its entire core is not based upon the sayings or deeds of a holy person. This is what most people don't understand. Our faith is based, not on the things Jesus did, but on WHO HE WAS. Our faith is grounded in the person of Jesus Christ, his identity, his essence. His teachings, sayings, morality, ideas, actions, biography, desires, wants, choices, death--none of that would be of any consequence but for the fact of who he constantly claimed to be and offered continuous proofs of: God Incarnate. Without his divine nature, entangled as it was with the Godhead, he would have been another prophet; a religious minority who was the victim of capital punishment.

When you lose the "who he was" script of the Christian narrative, then you lose the necessity of the Marian Dogmas (teachings about the Virgin Mary). The fact that Jesus Christ was God is what causes us to look at the woman who conceived him; carried him in her womb for 9 months; gave birth to him; breastfed him; changed his diapers; kept him safe and loved; taught him to speak; rocked him to sleep; carried him about; gave him his DNA, flesh, blood, brain, and bone.

God, as a helpless, speechless, fragile infant, handed himself over to one woman. This is why Mary is so important and why the teachings surrounding her are so vital to a cohesive belief in Christ. As Aquinas said, "To fall into heresy about Mary is to fall into heresy about Christ."

For example, if Jesus was a lamb without blemish and sinless in his entire person, then how could he take flesh from a sinful woman? The Immaculate Conception explains that God prepared Mary, using the future sacrifice of Jesus, to clothe the Son in flesh without sin. There is scriptural proof for this, but it is also a logical response to the question: if Jesus was God and conceived inside of a regular person, then wasn't he subject to sin and Satan while he was inside?

(There are more subtle arguments here, but I'm simplifying for nontheologians).

Of all of the doctrines regarding Mary, her Queenship is the easiest to explain and understand. The church did not crown Mary. People did not crown Mary. Christ did when, as King, he was born of her.

In Europe, the Queen is the King's wife. In the Ancient Near East, however, the Queen was the King's Mother. This is because the King often had hundreds of wives, all of them vying to have their sons crowned the successor so they could, in turn, become Queen Mother--just as Bathsheba managed to cunningly do with her son, Solomon, even though Solomon was not King David's oldest son.

The Queen had a great deal of authority in the Kingdom and tremendous sway with her son, the King. When in need of something from the King, people would go to the Queen (mother), who held court and listened to the problems of the people. She would judge what to bring to her son and what not to. She was their intercessor--often a kindly one, compared to the King--and her reign lasted until she or her son died. (c.f. 1 Kings 2:13).

The Queen was the "Mother of the Kingdom" and honored as such.

The Blessed Virgin Mary has a Son whose Kingdom has no end and who's Kingship is eternal. She hears the pleas of her children (Revelation 12:17) and she intercedes with us to her Son, who can be swayed by her request because of his love for her (John 2:1-11).

We do not worship her. She is not the Queen of Heaven because she is the power of heaven. She is Queen of Heaven because her Son is King of Heaven. She does not ask for us to pray TO her; we ask her to pray FOR us. She is the Mother of God (Luke 2:41-44). We call her Blessed because God called her Blessed (Luke 2:45).

Mary points us to Christ: "Whatever he says to you, do it." (John 2:5) As Queen of the Kingdom of Heaven, we owe her our respect and love. Think about it: if your best friend's beloved elderly mother lived alone and you visited her, called her, mowed her lawn, drove her to the store: would this hinder your relationship with your friend or enhance it?

Let's ask Our Lady, Our Mother, Our Queen to help us know her Son as well as she did and to aspire to love Him as much as she did.

Hail Mary, Full of Grace, Pray for us!
Amen.

AUGUST 22: THE QUEENSHIP OF MARY

Collect: Queenship of Mary: O God, who made the Mother of your Son to be our Mother and our Queen, graciously grant that, sustained by her intercession, we may attain in the heavenly Kingdom the glory promised to your children. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

It's all been done!

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdcW2Ftf/?k=1

ryals on TikTok omg I had to do it🦄☠️🔥

Reflection for Thursday of the 4th Week of Easter.
(Forgive the written reflection--my voice is still bad, as is my cough)

From the Acts of the Apostles

Paul said: “'Fellow children of Israel and you others who are God-fearing, listen.
The God of this people Israel chose our ancestors
and exalted the people during their sojourn in the land of Egypt.
With uplifted arm he led them out,
and for about forty years he put up with them in the desert.'"

From the Gospel according to St. John

When Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, he said to them:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master
nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.
If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it."

RELFECTION:

The theme that strikes me in both passages is God's process of calling, hearing, listening, choosing, acting.

The God of Israel made a choice when He spoke to Abraham and the 9 Patriarchs. God chose Abraham and called him--the strange voice of a strange god, calling an old man from the enjoyment of his retirement to enter a journey in the desert. Abraham heard. Abraham listened. Abraham chose and Abraham went.

This same process is repeated throughout scripture, both successfully...and unsuccessfully. God calls. We hear. We listen. We choose. We act.

It became harder for the Israelites to continue this process when they became so numerous that God no longer spoke to each person face-to-face, but rather chose mediators to speak on His behalf. Moses told the people what God had said and they chose to believe him. But did they choose to believe because they accepted Moses' account of his conversation with God?

Or did they act and paint their lentils with lamb's blood out of a superstitious pipe dream that it MIGHT JUST WORK and they might be free of their enslavement?

Here's the great thing with God: it doesn't matter. The end result was the same: God now had a people He could prepare for His own Incarnation by training them to listen to mediators, to prophets. He could convince them to be monotheists and to follow Him alone. He could begin to give them maturity in faith by withdrawing His protection and allowing them to see that He was bigger than the idols that surrounded them.

God calls. We hear. But then we must listen. We must choose. And we must act. At any point in this process, we can ignore God and go our own way, like the Middle-Eastern GoatSheep that we are, untrainable and wild, running off to the mountains to be solitary creatures. We can ignore. We can not listen to the exact message and create our own, justifying it by saying, "God spoke." We can congratulate ourselves that we got a message and do nothing with it. We can assent with our minds, but not act.

We believe that God prepared Israel for His only-begotten Son. Suddenly, Mediators were no more. God Himself was there and we could hear him, tough him, smell him, hold him, laugh with him.

And Christ Himself gives us the same message: You are not greater than God or any messenger He sent before me. Not only do you have to listen to my words, see my example of service by washing your feet--you have to say "yes!" and you have to DO IT. That is where your blessing is: at the end of the line. Call, hear, listen, choose, act.

Jesus even gives us an example of what happens when things go awry in this process: The one who ate with me betrayed me. There is a concept in Jewish theology called "The Death Kiss" and it entail a betrayal. Jesus intentionally chose someone, knowing Judas would make the wrong choice, act the wrong way to demonstrate to us that we can thwart God's path, but not God's plan. Whether the lamb's blood is for God or for a hope that maybe this craziness is real doesn't matter.

What matters is that we heard and saw and now we work hard against our own selfishness and ego to march to that clarion call. It is in the action that we are blessed. It is in the choice that we embrace God. It is in listening to God that we know ourselves. It is in hearing that we experience faith. And it is in the call that we know love.

Amen.

There is still time to join our Bible Study! This Wednesday's evening session will have its first meeting and Saturday morning, 3/12, will start Week 1 in the book!

The books are available online as an ebook so you can purchase the materials on your own and have them immediately.

Go to our page and sign up today! Walk with Christ on the via delorosa (the Way of Sorrows) and to the Glorious Resurrection this Lent!

https://www.americanoldcatholic.org/aaocc-events.html

AAOCC Events Join clergy from the AAOCC for a six-week Bible Study focusing on the Passion and Resurrection Narratives of Jesus Christ. Sign up form is below.

A Reading from the Book of Jonah

"Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.” 3 So Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk. 4 Then Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he cried out and said, “Forty more days, and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

5 Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. 6 When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, removed his robe from himself, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat on the dust. 7 And he issued a proclamation, and it said, “In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: No person, animal, herd, or flock is to taste anything. They are not to eat, or drink water. 8 But every person and animal must be covered with sackcloth; and people are to call on God vehemently, and they are to turn, each one from his evil way, and from the violence which is in their hands. 9 Who knows, God may turn and relent, and turn from His burning anger so that we will not perish.”

10 When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil way, then God relented of the disaster which He had declared He would bring on them. So He did not do it."
Jonah 3:1-10

"For just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation."

Luke 11:30

JOIN THE AAOCC FOR A LENTEN BIBLE-STUDY!!

We will be using the Little Rock Scripture Study course materials for this special Lenten Journey. Each student will purchase their own e-book for the course. The materials are $12.95 per student for an e-book file or $16.95 for a hard copy book. Once you register, you will receive the link to the Little Rock Scripture Study site to purchase the materials for yourself. We do offer scholarships for those who can't afford their own book. ​

Each of the seven weeks will examine a particular aspect of Jesus' passion and resurrection as recorded in the Four Gospels. For each weekly lesson, students will access a brief, online lecture by Dr. Steven Binz. They will have access to the required Gospel reading for each week on this page beginning on Ash Wednesday. In their materials, there will be a commentary, special word studies, and discussion questions (as well as suggested Old Testament readings) to help participants link their own experiences to the scripture in a meaningful way. In addition, clergy will hold live, weekly discussion groups where participants can share their experiences, answer discussion questions, and pray together.

This Lent, we are offering two weekly groups:
Saturdays at 8:00am CST/9am EST beginning March 5th
Wednesdays at 7:30 EST/6:30 CST beginning March 9th.
If you want to participate but cannot make the discussion days and times every week, you are welcome to purchase the materials and join the groups when you can.

The Topics for each week are:
Week One:
Welcome & Learning the Materials
Introduction to the New Testament Timeline
Imagining Scripture

Week Two:
The Passion according to St. Mark

Week Three:
The Passion according to St. Matthew

Week Four:
The Passion according to St. Luke

Week Five:
The Passion according to St. John

Week Six:
The Resurrection according to Sts. Mark & Matthew

Week Seven:
The Resurrection according to Sts. Luke & John