Hartford Art Exhibition: Brother Mickey McGrath, OSFS

Hartford — The Clare Gallery at the Franciscan Center for Urban Ministry is pleased to present Holy Saints and Timeless Mysteries:  A Fresh Look at Some of our Best Loved Traditions. The exhibition is free and open to the public. Brother Mickey O’Neill McGrath, Oblate of St. Francis de Sales, is an artist, writer and speaker who loves to explore the relationship between art and faith. His work and ministry have been featured in St. Anthony Messenger, USA Today and many Catholic newspaper articles around the country.

September 2 – October 28, 2010

Artist's Lecture and Reception

"All That Is Seen and Unseen"

Saturday, October 2, 9 am – 12 pm

St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church
285 Church Street, Hartford

It's in There... NOT!

(Fourth in a series)

Misquote: "Cleanliness is next to godliness"

While there are many references in the Torah (first five books of the Bible) to cleanliness, the focus is not on taking a bath. Mostly, being "clean" in the Bible refers to a state of ritual purity. That does sometimes involve hygiene, but cleansing in the Bible is often concerned most directly with a person's ability to enter holy places and engage in sacred activities.

The source of this proverb is not known, but some say it comes from a second-century Rabbi. The first reference in the English language comes from Sir Francis Bacon.

Navigating CBS Web Materials

Did you know that the CBS logo displayed on this blogsite is actually a link to the CBS webpage? (Who'd a thunk it?!) Simply click on the logo, and your browser will shift to www.orehartford.org/cbs.htm.

We love your feedback. Let us know how we can make the CBS Bible Blog easier to navigate, more interesting, or more informative by emailing BJ in the Office of Religious Education.

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It's in There... NOT!

(Third in a series)

St. Paul's Horse

Check it out, folks, there's no horse in that story! You can read the whole story of Saul's (later, Paul) conversion in Acts 22, but here's the part where they usually add the horse:

⁵as the high priest and all the Council can testify, I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.

 ⁶"About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. ⁷I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, 'Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?'(NIV)

Where the idea came from, I haven't a clue, but Christian artists through the centuries have pictured Paul falling off his "high horse." This fresco, "The Conversion of Paul the Apostle" by Ben Long, appears in St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

Horses in the Bible are often associated with war, but in Zechariah 9:9, the prophet places hope for the nation in the hands of a "gentle" king who rides not a war horse but "a colt, the foal of a donkey." (NIV)

  Biagio D'Antonio, Il Passagio Del Mar Rosso (The Crossing of the Red Sea)

It's in There... NOT!

(Second in a series.)

#2 - Misquote: "The lion will lie down with the lamb"

A common text for Christmas cards, this seems to be an abbreviated form of Isaiah 11:6 which reads, "The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child will lead them." (NRSV)

So how did the lion and the lamb get top billing? Does the short version simply make a better Christmas card (note the alliteration)? Do the lion and lamb make better symbols? ("The big bad wolf" gives wolves a bad name, and calves and fatlings remind us of food....)

And did you know that the popular Twilight movies have taken on the symbolism of the lion and the lamb? This ad reads, "And the lion fell in love with the lamb."

(And PS: The Twilight saga books use the image of an apple to hint at the theme of temptation. See our first installment of It's in There...Not.)

Feel free to email BJ Daly Horell with your favorite items and quotes that are not found in the Bible. I'll include as many as I can in this summer blog series!

Attention CBS Graduates!

Catholic Biblical School graduates who are looking to continue learning in faith might consider applying to the Archdiocesan Lay Ministry Formation Program. For details, check out the Being Catholic blog, or contact Mary Marsan at the Office of Religious Education, (860) 243-9465.

CBS on ORTV’s “That’s the Spirit"

On Sunday, July 18, tune in to a conversation between Fr. John Gatzak and BJ Daly Horell as they discuss how the Catholic Biblical School can energize both individual spirituality and parish life.

The program will air at 10:45 am on WTXX-TV The CW20, following The Celebration of the Eucharist.

If you don’t catch the program on Sunday, don't worry! You can find it next week online at http://www.ortv.org/tts.htm#segments.

Does Your Parish Need a "Scripture Infusion"?

Get a group of friends together and enroll in the Catholic Biblical School!

Encountering God's Word--at liturgy and any time--will not only enrich your own faith life, but it can (1) empower leaders and other parishioners as they bear witness to the gospel, and (2) form bonds of Christian fellowship within your faith community.

Do you want the Word of God to fire up your faith community?

Enrollment in the Hartford Catholic Biblical School continues until August 15. To get more information click here.

Or click on one of these links to see our videos on YouTube.

To download the application form, click here.

It's in There... NOT!

The CBS "Bible Blog" introduces, "It's in There...Not!" a summer series of short blogs on common mistakes and misunderstandings about the Bible. This will include items and quotations that we may think of as biblical, but which in fact are found nowhere in the Bible. Here's the first in our series:

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#1 - The Apple in the Garden of Eden

Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 3, but the kind of fruit is never mentioned. The introduction of an apple is an imaginative leap that has established the apple as a symbol of temptation in Christian tradition. We can probably thank artists and writers over the centuries for this innovation. (What would the "fruit" of knowledge look like, anyway?)

It has also been suggested that the tradition of the apple came from a phonetic association in Latin, where the word for evil ("malum") sounds a lot like the word for apple ("malus").

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Feel free to email BJ Daly Horell with your favorite items and quotes that are not found in the Bible. I'll include as many as I can in this summer blog series!

(Materials for this series will come from a variety of sources, including the internet, biblical commentaries, and the authors' imaginations.)

June "Bible Blog" Winner—by Linda Walsh

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And put a new and right spirit within me    —Psalm 51:10

It really is all about having the right spirit to determine how we view the world; and we never know the time, place, or person that God will choose to help infuse that spirit in us. Today, for me, it was six-year old Jacob who changed my heart. All day I felt lethargic and melancholy.  Finally, I took a good book and a cup of coffee and drove to one of my favorite places. I needed time to think and change my attitude.

Within minutes, an adorable boy came sauntering over and asked me what I was reading. After conversing a few minutes, his mom came to retrieve him, embarrassed that he was interrupting me. That didn’t stop Jacob, though—he kept on coming.

At one point he told me he had a big secret to tell.