Dear Father Hollywood Reader:A most holy and blessed Feast of the Holy Nativity to all of you, to your families, and your churches. May the Christ Child, born of the Virgin Mary, true God and true Man, continue to hold you in His grace, forgive you all your sins, and bring you to life everlasting.
May this coming year be a time of joy, peace, hope, and love to all of you, in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
"Venite adoremus, Dominum!"
Rev. Larry Beane and family
Merry Christmas to you too!
ReplyDeleteIf I may be permitted a personal note rather than my usual rant, may I say thank you for the year round Christ's Mass gift that confessional blogs like this have been for me this year.
My "conversion" to Lutheranism wasn't really that at all. It was discovering that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church and Faith had indeed survived, and therefore was true. I remember like nothing else the moment when that happened -- reading during my instuctions from a WELS pastor the treatment of the Eucharist in the Babylonian Captivity. Here it was -- unlike my former church body, clearly and simply stated, what should be the most obvious thing about the church most obvious again, to borrow a phrase. Going on to the Book of Concord, it was not only that here was a true and accurate exposition of the truths of Scripture, but that there even was such a thing!
Your blog and others like it, Pastors Beisel, Juhl, Weedon and Snyder to name a few, reinforce that moment with each read. My subscription, if you will, isn't to a synod but the Book of Concord. Whatever those who go to Rome (from whence I came), Constantinople, Willow Creek, etc, and whatever the problems in the synod, these confessional blogs were a large part in me seeing that Lutherans like me belong in LCMS.
Your statement that the enemies of Christ seek to remove Christ from the culture without and the mass from the church within exactly sums up what we face. I'm grateful this past year to have found full fellowship and communion with faithful pastors and laity who understand both the problem and the solution, who seek a place where the Gospel is indeed righly preached and the sacraments properly administered, where quia looks like quia for real.
Who would not faint for joy at the thought of such a Saviour, Luther wrote. And thanks to you confessional bloggers for your daily Christ's Mass present!