Last week we looked at Samuel and Saul — a faithful man and a failed king.We saw something sobering: faithfulness in one generation does not guarantee faithfulness in the next. Now we step back a little further. Before Samuel stood as a prophet…Before Saul rose and fell as king… There was a father in Israel named Eli. And in his house, something went terribly wrong.

In Amos, the Lord stood in judgment. In Isaiah, the prophet sees the Lord in majesty. This is one of the great vision passages in all the Bible: “In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.” — Isaiah 6:1

St. Patrick's journey is a powerful reminder of resilience and purpose. From his beginnings as a slave to becoming a missionary, his story inspires us to overcome adversity. I met St. Patrick at McGovern's Bar in Newark, NJ, where dozens were drinking themselves drunk to celebrate this saint. -----Pātricius [paːˈtrɪ.ki.ʊs], the only name he used, was a holy man of God who knew Him well -----God spoke to him in visions and sometimes audibly and called him to be His own.

Like several prophets before him, Micah was not impressed by the outward religion of the nation. The temples were busy, the sacrifices continued, and the leaders spoke pious words. Yet underneath the surface, there was corruption, greed, and injustice. Judges took bribes, rulers exploited the poor, and prophets spoke what people wanted to hear rather than the truth of God.

This week, the Scriptures lead us forward into the lives of Samuel and Saul — two very different men whose experiences as fathers remind us of another sobering truth: faithfulness does not always produce the legacy we expect.

A Prophet Running the Wrong Way The word of the Lord came to Jonah with a clear command: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.” Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire — a brutal power feared throughout the ancient world. To Jonah, it was an enemy city, not a mission field. So Jonah ran.

Sons in Sacred Office Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, served as priests at the tabernacle in Shiloh. Their position was sacred, entrusted with the worship of God. But Scripture speaks of them bluntly: “Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD.” (1 Samuel 2:12) They abused their office. They took the best portions of sacrifices meant for God. They treated worshippers with contempt. They even used their position to exploit women serving at the entrance t

Today, as we begin our long walk through Paradise Lost, the Church also pauses to remember two brothers who helped awaken England from spiritual slumber: John Wesley (d. 1791) and Charles Wesley (d. 1788). In the calendar of the Anglican Church in North America, their memory is honored not because they left the Church of England, but because they sought to revive it. They were Anglican priests. They loved the liturgy. They believed in the new birth. And they would not let

Polycarp was a disciple of John the Apostle and bishop of Smyrna. Some speculate that he was the “angel” mentioned by the Lord Jesus in Revelation

Not a Professional Prophet Amos makes a point of telling us who he is — and who he is not: “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit.” (Amos 7:14) He is not trained, credentialed, or attached to the religious establishment. That is precisely why God sends him. Amos stands as a reminder that God’s word does not belong to institutions. It belongs to God — and He may put it in the mouth of a shepherd if priests ha

Before Job is a suffering man, he is something else first. He is a father. Job at the Beginning — A Father Who Prayed

Joel opens not with a vision, but with a disaster. A devastating locust plague has swept through the land of Judah. Crops are destroyed. Vineyards are stripped bare. Grain, wine, and oil — the essentials of daily life and temple worship — are gone. This is not distant theology. It is lived catastrophe. “That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten…” (Joel 1:4)

We meet Joseph not as a son, but as a father—raising children in a land that is not his own, within a marriage that did not begin inside the covenant, and yet marked throughout by a steady, unashamed faith in the LORD.

Hosea ministered to the northern kingdom of Israel during its final decades before destruction. The nation was outwardly prosperous but inwardly corrupt—idolatrous, self-confident, and spiritually unfaithful. God’s call to Hosea was unlike any other. Instead of beginning with visions or sermons, the LORD commanded Hosea to live the message: “Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD

Joseph is born to Jacob in his old age, the first son of Rachel, the wife Jacob loved above all others. From the beginning, Joseph is set apart—by his father’s affection and by God’s early dealings with him. His dreams speak of authority and purpose, though neither he nor his father yet understands their cost. pJacob’s favoritism is unmistakable. The coat he gives Joseph is not merely clothing; it is a public declaration. In a family already strained by rivalry, it becomes a

Daniel was among the first captives taken from Jerusalem to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. He was still a young man when he entered exile, selected with others of royal or noble lineage—“children in whom was no blemish… skilful in all wisdom… and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace” (Daniel 1:4). Babylon intended to reshape these young Israelites into servants of empire. God had other plans.

On January 30, the Church remembers Charles I, King of England, who was executed in 1649 after a long and bitter civil war. In the calendar of saints, he is remembered not as a flawless ruler, but as a Christian king who suffered death rather than surrender what he believed to be sacred trusts: the crown under God, the Church’s order, and the sanctity of conscience.

Jacob is the most experienced father of adult sons in the Bible—not because he was exemplary from the beginning, but because he lived long enough to see how deeply a father’s character shapes the lives of his children. He was the father of twelve sons, the heads of the tribes of Israel, yet his fatherhood was marked by favoritism, conflict, deception, grief, and finally hard-won wisdom. Jacob did not merely raise sons; he endured them, lost them, feared them, blessed them—an

Thomas Aquinas stands as the foremost scholar and philosopher of the Middle Ages, the towering intellect of medieval Christianity. As the leading scholastic of his age, Aquinas undertook one of the most ambitious tasks ever attempted by a Christian thinker: to reconcile the truths of Christian revelation with the philosophy of Aristotle and the wider Greek tradition. From this effort emerged what later generations would call Natural Law—that reason itself, properly used, poin

Ezekiel, the son of Buzi, was born in 622 BC. He was a priest by calling and training, the third of the “major prophets,” following Isaiah and Jeremiah. Though his ministry overlaps historically with Jeremiah and the rise of Nebuchadnezzar, Ezekiel’s calling and emphasis are markedly different. Jeremiah and Nebuchadnezzar move largely within the realm of political and military power—kings, nations siege, and exile. Ezekiel, by contrast, is sent to the people themselves. His c