Religion

I’m going to be honest with you. I find prayer really hard. If I had to give reasons for all my tears over the past few years, most of them have come during conversations with God.

Cremation has been part of the death rituals of various cultures since prehistoric times, but with the advent and spread of Christianity, cremation began to be used less and less. Most Christian denominations see it as a taboo. Let's discover why.

“There are no other two churches in the world today that are so similar yet, at the same time, so opposite as the Eastern, or Greek, and the Western, or Roman Church” (Philip Schaff).

At the beginning of the 15th century, the threat of the Ottoman Empire to Eastern Europe was a painful certainty. The last Byzantines, aware of the ensuing disaster, called on Western aid, seeking political union with the Roman Catholic Church.

For ten years Luther read the Bible twice a year. His first Bible was so thoroughly read that he "knew what was on every page and where every passage was found." Martin Luther is the most prominent name among those who brought about the Reformation and took Bible study to a new level.

"Is it not too sadly true that we can recollect anything but Christ, and forget nothing so easy as Him whom we ought to remember?"—Charles Spurgeon

The smell of burning food filled my tiny kitchen. “What's that smell?” I asked a friend who was sharing my house for the week. Every young man knows the smell, familiar from an early age—your first acquaintance comes from burnt toast and camping trips where, after burning everything you tried to cook, you end up eating your baked beans straight from the can.

For the crowds gathered around the casket containing the relics of Saint Paraskeva, everything is just dream and faith. Amazingly much faith. There is also something else. There is the hope of a miracle, a miracle that will cure diseases, cover debts, and make life happy.

Louis Braille said: "God was pleased to hold before my eyes the dazzling splendours of eternal hope. After that, doesn't it seem that nothing could keep me bound to the earth?"

The troubled centuries that followed the Great Schism of 1054 and the corresponding climate inside the Christian church gradually gave way to profound shifts in the thinking and spirituality of Europeans.

On the basis of ancient, hidden non-canonical gospels, some commercial and half-learned scholars propagate sensational discoveries, which are in fact both old and novel speculations arising from the Bible’s silence on some aspects of Jesus’s life.

October 13, 1247. In the Westminster Cathedral in London, the crowd was eagerly awaiting the revelation of a great mystery.

More than a collection of information, beyond its role as a guide, the Bible is where we have a redemptive encounter with the One who holds the keys to eternal life.

One of the surprises of the twentieth century when it comes to religious freedom was Dignitatis Humanae Persona, the first declaration of religious freedom officially promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church in 1965, at the end of the Second Vatican Council.

With news that the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) has won the election in the Netherlands, once again there is talk of an exit from the European Union on the horizon—this time being called “Nexit”.