Who Knew?

The sailfish (the fastest fish, 68 mph) is speedier in the water than the cheetah (the fastest land animal, 62 mph) is on land.

Today is the eighteenth day of Lent – let’s suck it up, folks.

Clieck here for today’s reading in the Church Fathers. Scroll down to page 92 for the reading in Cyprian. Saint Cyprian (died September 14, 258) was bishop of Carthage in North Africa and an important early Christian writer. He was probably born in the early 200’s and he received an excellent classical (pagan) education. After converting to Christianity, he became a bishop (249) and eventually died a martyr at Carthage.

Cyprian lived during a time of much persecution and faced the challenge of how to handle Christians who lapsed under the threat of death, particularly other bishops. Cyprian’s stance was demanding, one that eventually could not stand up under the sheer weight of numbers of the lapsed. In the following decades the church opened its doors wider to those who either had lapsed or whose life did not meet the very narrow definition of “allowable” post-baptismal sins. This broadening of the church eventually led to the the monastic movement of St. Anthony where “committed” Christians moved to the desert to practice their faith untainted by the worldliness of the church.