So it looks like Pope Benedict XVI is one busy bee. The daily blog from the National Catholic Register has a nice article about “One Busy Holy Father.” Check it out!

Sorry for the nearly two-week hiatus. It was not intentional, I’ve just been busy trying to score some work (got laid off a few months back). I should have enough breathing room to more regularly post.

When I’m not using my Bible study software, the actually-printed-with-ink-on-paper Bible that I most frequently use is the Ignatius Bible – the mercifully shortened name for Ignatius Press’ Revised Standard Version – Second Catholic Edition.

The cover features icons that most Catholics will recognize, since they also adorn the cover of the Book of Gospels used in the Catholic liturgy. However, many people, including some Catholics, might not understand what these icons represent.

The quick explanation is that the cover shows Christ the Teacher surrounded by the Four Evangelists (i.e., the writers of the four gospels). Here’s a more detailed explanation of what they represent:

• Christ the Teacher – the large icon in the center depicts Jesus blessing the viewer with his right hand and holding a Bible in his left. The Bible shows His words from John 8:12: “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” This icon is commonly called “Christ the Teacher,” although it is also called “Christ Pantocrator” meaning “Christ, Ruler of All.” Also in the artwork are the abbreviated Greek words for Christ (abbreviations are indicated by the horizontal lines above the letters; Iota and Sigma (which look like IC) represent the first and last letter of the name Jesus in Greek; Chi Sigma (XC), the first and last letters of the title Christ).

Tradition has long associated the “four living creatures” mentioned in Rev. 4:7 with the four Gospels in the Bible:

• St. Matthew (upper left) – the winged “living creature with the face of a man” is the symbol for Matthew, since his Gospel narrative traces Jesus’ human genealogy.
• St. Mark (upper right) – the “living creature like a lion” is associated with Mark, whose Gospel begins with “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Mark 1:3), suggesting the roar of a lion.
• St. Luke (lower left) – the “living creature like an ox” is the emblem of Luke, since his account of Christ’s life emphasizes the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.
• St. John (lower right) – the “living creature like a flying eagle” symbolizes John, whose high-soaring narrative takes us to lofty heights in understanding Christ’s nature.

More interesting insight into the Four Evangelists can be found on Wikipedia and Catholic Resources.

If you don’t have a local Catholic radio station, here’s one way to listen to EWTN Radio for free on your iPhone. Download the free iPhone app called TimeShift Radio Lite. Once installed, you can listen to KJMA or KVDG, both part of the Guadalupe Radio Network. Enjoy!

Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans! Today is a great day to re-read the Declaration of Independence and proudly fly your American Flag.

The National Archives has a nice online version of the Declaration of Independence including both a transcript and high resolution image of the document.

Proper etiquette on the display of the nation’s flag can be found at USHistory.org. This page not only shows proper use of the flag, but highlights some shameful violations reported in the news. Another resource is a PDF brochure on the flag prepared by my dad a few years ago.

Whew! Finally, the web technical bugs have been resolved. Not sure what exactly happened, but the blog is now fully functional. Thanks for your patience.

Sorry for the lack of posts in recent days. I have been experiencing hosting problems and hope to have them resolved soon.

Last Thursday’s passing of Father Richard John Neuhaus — the noteworthy editor of First Things and ex-Lutheran minister who became a Catholic priest — is marked by a nice article by George Weigel in Newsweek.

I enjoyed Fr. Neuhaus’ commentary on EWTN this past April when Pope Benedict XVI visited the United States. That was the first time I saw him on television, and I liked his dry wit!

Two or three years ago, on my own journey toward Catholicism, I read an article Neuhaus wrote entitled, “How I Became the Catholic I Was.” (I later learned that it was an excerpt from his book Catholic Matters.) The article is available as a PDF in the Coming Home Network’s Feb. 2003 newsletter (beginning on page 3) and as HTML on the First Things site.

He recalled the story of how “the great confessional Lutheran theologian Peter Brunner regularly said that a Lutheran who does not daily ask himself why he is not a Roman Catholic cannot know why he is a Lutheran.” Neuhaus also pointed out how Lutheranism “turned against the fulfillment of its destiny as a reforming movement within the one Church of Christ. Lutheranism in all its parts, both in this country and elsewhere, had settled for being a permanently separated Protestant denomination; or, as the case may be, several Protestant denominations.”

That hit me hard — especially as someone who was a proud member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod since the early 1990s. The original idea of the Reformation was to work toward reform of and reconciliation with the Catholic Church, not to establish a permanently separated state. This original idea has been lost over the past 490+ years.

I cannot say that Fr. Neuhaus’ writings immediately prompted me to join the Catholic Church, but he did get the old wheels turning in my head at a much faster rate than they had in the past.

Thank you, Father Neuhaus, for all that you did in this life, and may you enter into eternal rest!

Today is the 41st anniversary of my baptism!

Christ taught us that to enter heaven, we must be “born again of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5) – a statement that from the earliest days of the Church have been understood to refer to baptism. St. Peter taught that “baptism…now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21), and St. Paul wrote that God “saved us…by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). So, when I was baptized 41 years ago, I was “born again” the Bible way!

I was four months old when I was baptized. The Methodist congregation our family attended shared the same belief in infant baptism that is practiced in the Catholic Church. In fact, most non-Catholic groups also practice infant baptism – Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed/Presbyterian, Anglican/Episcopal, Methodist and more. Infant baptism is not followed by some Protestant groups, in particular those that stem from the Anabaptist movement that came later in Reformation history.

Interested in learning why we baptize infants? Here are two helpful articles from Catholic Answers and Steve Ray (in addition to his blog post, which is about baptism in general, read the PDF of his article on infant baptism which he links to in one of the comments).

Today’s email from Townhall.com has a great message:

We Need to Hear the Message of Christmas
—Albert Mohler

Christmas comes as many Americans seem anxious and all-too-aware of challenges that face us all. Economic uncertainty, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a constant barrage of news create a strange context for Christmas.

Then again, maybe this is very much like the first Christmas. When Jesus came, the world hardly noticed. It was filled with anxiety and very few, it seemed, were thinking about what God was then doing as Christ was born in Bethlehem’s manger.

Christmas is a gift. This season of celebration interrupts our lives and reminds us that our anxieties and uncertainties do not have the last word. Instead, “the hopes and fears of all the years” are put in their place by the coming of the Christ.

We need to hear the message of the angels again–unto you is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.