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[I’m exploring the Fathers of the Church for insights into hospitality. I have published a list of ideas about hospitality in the Old Testament, and the New. Now Tradition. Hence Basil.]                 St. Basil wrote a powerful call to repentance, to communal repentance, during a drought. I found the frame a little odd, but the insights powerful.                 For most of human history, I guess, people have tried to figure out what as on God’s mind when the weather changed. I don’t really know how to get inside that. I think of weather as being a kind of neutral background, like the moon and stars. But politics, on the other hand: that’s a huge force, about as predictable as the weather. I think there are connections between my (our, your, their) attitudes and actions in one corner of a social fabric, and politics in a different c...

St. Basil was such a great man! His approach to justice has the fire and freshness of the prophets! Pope Paul VI, in his pleas for the people of developing nations, often used Basil’s writing. I’ve been reading his sermon, “I will tear down my barns.” Example: “Who are the greedy? Those who are not satisfied with what suffices for their own needs. Who are the robbers? Those who take for themselves what rightfully belongs to everyone. And you, are you not greedy? Are you not a robber? The things you received in trust as a stewardship, have you not appropriated them for yourself? Is not the person who strips another of clothing called a thief? And those who do not clothe the naked when they have the power to do so, should they not be called the same? The bread you are holding back is for the hungry, the clothes you keep put away are for the naked, the shoes that are rotting away with disuse are for those who have none, the silver you keep buried in the earth is for the needy. You ar...

                The Didache is a short catechism summarizing the beliefs and rituals and structure of the Church, that may have been written in the first century AD. It’s short, perhaps 3,000 words in English, shorter in the original Greek; it is often presented in a chapter format, with 16 chapters; but each “chapter” is a single paragraph.                 It summaries the commandments under two headings, love of God and love of neighbor. But the details do not follow any other familiar list. The section on love of God includes many details from the Sermon on the Mount, and the section on the love of neighbor overlaps the neighbor-oriented half of the Ten Commandments. But it’s not a neat and tidy fit.                 The teaching on sharing is forceful. If someone asks you for something,...

One of the great works of St. Pope John Paul II was re-establishing links between Eastern and Western Christianity, between Roman Catholics and the Orthodox churches. He was not the first to struggle for unity, nor the last; the task is not completed yet. One detail of his great work for unity was re-establishing a habit of thinking through issues in part by drawing on the wisdom of the Fathers of the Church. Reading the encyclicals of the past century, it struck me that for decades the teaching was often somewhat self-referential: the popes quoted previous popes, making sure that the continuity from one to the next was clear. But then, around the time of the Second Vatican Council, the encyclicals returned to the teaching of the past, drawing extensively on Scripture. And then John Paul II took another step, and began drawing extensively on Patristic literature.                 I’m sure many people know bet...

So Jesus said, welcome immigrants or go to hell. Check it out: Matthew 25:35-46. I read the Old Testament to figure out who he was talking about when he said we should welcome strangers. And I wrote a really wonderful book about what I found: 21 Stranger Claims in the Old Testament. I guarantee, no matter who you are or what you've read, that I say things you have never heard before. I'm not a brilliant Scripture scholar or anything like that, but I came at the text from an odd angle and saw old (ancient, actually) material in a fresh way.  That was a few months ago. What I've done now is to move from the Old Testament into the New. Do the 21 claims I made about teaching in the Old Testament show up intact in the New Testament? 18 of the 21 do; three don't.  The new book, "The Persistent Other," is available on Amazon today ($5.50, shows up in 1-2 days), or Kindle ($3, or free with Prime), in your hand in seconds.  But more: again, I was coming...