From The Living Church-Zeal and patience are virtues of the kingdom, the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work among those who bear the name of Christ and strive together to do his will. He who moved from town to town proclaiming the immediacy of the kingdom also learned to bear with the slow of heart, revealing what they were able to receive. The apostles were commissioned to work wonders and preach with power, but also to forgive sins and celebrate sacraments. “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel,” Jesus commanded them (Mark 16:15), but also “wait in the city until the Holy Ghost has come upon you” (Lk. 24:49).
In his poem “Zeal and Patience,” John Henry Newman meditated on the place of the two virtues in the life of St. Paul. His ardent urgency propelled him and his gospel across the known world, until a prison cell kept him fixed in place. He who called himself “the Lord’s prisoner” came at length, Newman surmised, to find a new kind of fellowship with the one who first compelled him to preach:
Lord! who Thy thousand years dost wait
To work the thousandth part
Of Thy vast plan, for us create
With zeal a patient heart. (Verses on Various Occasions, 164)
More here-
http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2017/07/12/methodists-and-anglicans-zeal-and-patience/
No comments:
Post a Comment