Adventures in RCIA - The Catholic Church Calender: Ordinary Time

"Ordinary" means "ordinal," here. It does not mean "boring."

Ordinary time comes in two parts. The first part comes between The Solemnity of the Baptism of Our Lord and ends the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.
The second part begins the day after Pentecost, and ends the day before Advent begins.

Solemnities celebrated during ordinary time include:
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, - the Sunday after Pentecost.
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), - the Sunday after the Most Holy Trinity.
Solemnity of St. John the Baptist, - June 24th.
Solemnity of Saint Peter (called the first Pope) and Saint Paul (author of many epistles) - June 29th
Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Mary the Mother of Jesus) - August 15
Solemnity of All Saints - November 1. Note that the Eve of All Saints, aka All Hallows, is Halloween.

Some Solemnities are particular to groups or regions. For exmple, the Parish I am in Celebrates the Solemnity of the Anniversary of the Dedication of St. James Church,which is one of the churches in our Parish. St Patrick's Day is a Solemnity in Ireland, but a Feast everywhere else. You get the idea, I think.

The decor is supposed to be plants and flowers. The readings come mainly from the Old Testament prophets, Paul's Epistles, and the Gospels where there is teaching on a variety of topics.
The color for this season ( I forgot to tell you the Colors for Christmas) is Green, whereas Christmas is White. The Priest's vestments are green in ordinary time and White during Christmas, and have other colors for the other times in the religious calender.

As of this writing, next Sunday will be the Solemnity of the Baptism of Our Lord and after it, the Christmas decorations will come down. parishioner have been asked to stay a few minutes and help. I am greatly looking forward to serving in my new church for the first time.
Our Parish is a amalgamation of two parishes, St. James and St Patrick. They have the same pastor but hold special events at one place or another, and hold regular masses at different times, usually an hour or two apart. I am hoping to make it to both services so I can help take down decor at both churches. I have no idea how short handed they are or are not likely to be. I will find out how much the parishioners here like to help out,and whether or not the 80/20 rule applies here, when I get there.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

Adventures in RCIA - The Wisdom of Solomon

The Wisdom of Solomon is another book from the Catholic and Orthodox and Coptic Bible I have never been exposed to before. I just finished reading it.
It is a little like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, and a little like Psalms also.
It starts out discussing the benefits of fearing God and doing right versus being terrible.
Parts of it seem very prophetic. It talks about how people who love and follow God will never really die. They go to peace when they die, death holds no terror for them, but it is a loss to die on bad terms with God. I think the Jews just believed the dead all went to Sheol. I am pretty sure that this concept about righteous souls going to peace and the evil people having a different afterlife was an unusual thing to say in Judaism - and that may be why the Tanakh does not include it. It goes very well with Christianity though. In this book's case, I strongly doubt that the Hebrew Bible not having it is a good reason to throw it out...
It has some things to say about idolatry, similar to what Isaiah had to say. It points out how stupid it is to ask for life from something that is dead, and to ask for strength from something that has no strength, and for guidance from something that can go nowhere - namely, an idol.
The last several chapters discuss God's works when getting the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land. This section is addressed to God, and reads like a worship song - a very long one! It mentions the serpent that people looked upon when bitten by snakes, and God would heal them from the snakebites. It says the statue of the snake did not do the healing, but God did the healing.
It does not cover all these things in chronological order, it seems to be like the writers flow of consciousness.

Now, for the controversial parts (for me): It says the offspring of adulterers will not live long, just like it says that adulterers will not. Parts of the Protestant Bible also say negative things about the children of immoral people. A passage in Isaiah calls people coming under judgment "the seed of the adulterer and the whore..." also some sections of the Psalms ask God to bring destruction on enemies, and talks about their kids. There are such things as generational curses, and God even mentioned that when He revealed himself to Moses, when Moses had asked to see God's glory. Therefore, I guess it is not grounds to doubt the inspiration of this book.
Obviously, the punishment going through generations is not God's favorite thing, by any means. That is why Jesus came, to break the curse off the sinner and their generations, and there are indeed curses like that to be broken. So, though I do not like it (clearly God feels the same way), but I think this is indeed sound doctrine, and can be verified by other scripture from several books that no Christian community has ever disputed, and which Jews also revere.

At the end, there is a part that says God can reverse the whole setup of creation, and make birds fly through water and fish swim through air if he should choose. The wording, in English at least, is confusing at that part, but I think he may be saying that this actually happened when the Red Sea was parted. I do not know af any other passage that says this was the case, but I can see it happening. The water might have been standing up pretty high, and birds could have run into it and been guided right through it and back to the air on the other side by God, The fish may well have fallen out of the water and been carried along in the wind to the other side where they were in water again,  as safely as the children of Israel were being taken across the sea bed. Now that I have actually written all that out, it even seems likely. Therefore, I see no particular issue with this. It could also be interpreted as a poetic device, painting an image of the situation with more vivid, though perhaps imagined, detail.
Psalm 18 describes God riding on angels, which I think God is way bigger than and is far too big to ride them. That is a poetic device used in a worship song, as could be this imagery of swimming birds and flying fish in this worshipful poetry.

So with that, I find prophetic statements in here that are not part of the religion that the book was connected to, but are central to Christianity, such as the afterlife, and how friends of God never die, but pass from this life to new peace in a new life. That concept was alien to Jews, but as Christians, this is our Blessed hope. Therefore, I firmly believe this book is inspired, if no other disputed book is. I based my conclusion about the other ones on how I felt and thought about them and on whatever measure of discernment I have;  I admit this is no more infallible than Martin Luther doing the same thing. This book is different though, this one is without a doubt sacred, because there is no other way a Jew in Greece could have said some of what was said in here.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

NEVER! GIVE!UP! - Knowing that You Have Value

I was  raised Republican. I am still not a Democrat, though I am no longer a Republican either.
Therefore, being out of work for an extended period and having to use assistance to survive is VERY demoralizing and makes me feel useless and like a parasite. Applying and sometimes interviewing and getting no calls makes me feel useless, as if I can't do any better than be a parasite. I can understand why losing a job drives some people to suicide, I felt suicidal over such things in the past. This time, not so much, as I have had so much more hope all the way through this than any other time I was out of work, plus I have people in my life that consistently show me I have value in spite of it, which has not always been the case.

My roommate, who is disabled due to Asperger's syndrome, says that even though he is having to pay almost everything right now out of his limited disability income, his life is still improved since I returned. He was, as he put it, "stagnating" while I was in MI, because he saw no prospects or hope for his life. He was gradually giving up and reverting to just amusing himself and passing the time till he dies - what a horrible feeling! Now, in spite of these obstacles, he does have hope and something to reach for.

My teaching him to drive goes a long way. Scrap metal is, according to his calculations, a perfectly viable way for him to survive. Once he has access to a truck, the possibility of putting disability income behind him and earning his own living - a dream that has often seemed impossible - will be within reach. If he has that to fall back on, PT or FT or temporary jobs will no longer be a risk, because he cannot be "cut off" from scrap metal for working elsewhere, and it will still be there whether or not working for others pans out. This is particularly true once he gets his driving license and his own truck. He tells me all the time that unemployment is at least connected to something that I have worked for and earned, whereas he has to psychologically cope with "you can't earn a living for yourself". That, of course, will likely change pretty soon.

I feel dependent when I am working too, because at any moment a change in the winds for the employer can spell disaster for me, as it recently has, and there will be nothing I can do about it. I "depend" on them and the future is incalculable. I, like Matthew, long to make my own way in life and put assistance from these programs behind me for good. Self employment is my dream, in combination with very self-sufficient (and markedly less costly) "Green" living. Since I was a teen I was expecting a collapse, and have been learning about self-sufficiency and homesteading and other ways to shield ones self from that.

Scrap metal is not, for me, a longterm prospect right now but on the short term it can be "insurance" against unemployment. In Decatur, there are a lot of people doing scrap metal because we have a metal recycling center in town. Plus, with the economy here doing so bad, and continually declining for so long, everybody is looking for alternatives to "a job" because jobs are scarce. At some point, even that becomes somewhat competitive in a place like this but so far it has not caused us a problem.

In our neighborhood, most houses are rentals, so landlords are always throwing things away. We have gotten a lot of mattresses and box springs and other furniture that we have dismantled for wood and metal. Without my car, we have no way to take it in, but we still collect it, especially Matthew. By the time the truck is in the driveway, we might even be able to totally fill it, who knows?

I will be going to RCC tomorrow, I hope, to register for classes. I am very concerned about all the things that can still go wrong, but on the whole I am hopeful. I will just have to take better care of myself so I will not become sick so much as I did before. Getting something better to drive plays a role in that too, as it means there will be no walking long distances in bad, freezing weather like I did last time I went there. As it is, I am fighting a sinus infection. I am resting today so that tomorrow, hopefully, I will be up to the possible 4+ hours in the waiting area to talk to the people I must talk to and fill out papers, etc.

In school before, I severely neglected myself in the name of saving money and limiting debt. That did not serve me well in the end. I will remember that and learn from it, and make myself a higher priority this time. I just need to remember that I am worth it.

Please remember that you are worth it too.

I think this is DuBourg Hall at SLU, one of the biggest disappointments of my life.
This time, I will not need to transfer to a new school to finish my degree, it is only a two-year program. Doing it right the second time around.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

NEVER! GIVE! UP! - Appreciating the Power of the Little Things

Today the lesson is on how little things can make a big impact.

I found a plan for how to get through the semester with all my present income cut off.

I do not like having all my income being from some government program. Getting off of that would involve possibly having to go over a month with nothing coming in at all, not even the unemployment insurance and food stamps.
There are pretty healthy recipes I know that cost so little that I could afford to get through most if not all of the semester eating them. The ingredients last long enough, and are healthy enough, to do that, though they can be somewhat bland and I will need to take a vitamin supplement. I bought 15 bags of brown rice yesterday, thats one of the ingredients.
My LINK card, which is what the foodstamps are loaded on in IL, is missing. It may have fallen from my backpack or pocket when I was running errands yesterday.
No one can use it without the PIN number, but I can't get groceries without it.
If it does not turn up before tomorrow morning, my plan to go sign up for school at the last minute could potentially be foiled. I will have to go to the DHS office tomorrow, if I am well enough as I am now feeling ill, and see if I can get it replaced in the morning. Whether that can be done that quickly or not will effect how soon, and thus whether, I can register for school at RCC. A little piece of plastic, just a few square inches of plastic. Because of that, the direction of my life could be altered.

The alternative/backup plan is to start the online program through Ashworth college as soon as can get car back to running. Got a starter for it, and a new positive battery cable. just gotta put it back together, and wait for the next (last?) unemployment check to get insurance back on it. That will not help me put the investment class I already bought and read the material for to use though, as my car will still be ugly and loud and ruin my credibility...

The thing with the investments is you have to get an option to buy the property, the kind where you can back out of but the seller cannot. Then you have to find a buyer within the option period, and when/if you do, you buy and sell them at the same closing. Your buyer pays closing costs, and of course they are paying more than you are, so you have a profit. Options tend to cost around $100. In order for people to accept your offer (most won't anyway as it'll be low, but you don't know who will until you try and there are people out there who will) they must believe you can actually buy their house though - which you actually need not be able to do, you just need to secure the option and find someone else to buy it. If you drive up in a noisy, smoking, rusty, heavily dented car like mine, NO ONE will believe you can buy their $100,000+ house! Forget it. Ditto with not having a car at all. That's my problem in that area now.

Going back to school this spring could, in addition to job skills, get me access to resources to get a car with. Being cut off for what little income I have because of returning to school would justify maxing out student loans if I have to, and having a decent truck would enable me to do the investment stuff AND scrap metal. It will also go a long way to help in the traditional job search. So while I am waiting for the right house deal, I can still make money to pay the loans down.That is, even though no payments will be due til I am out of school for six months. There's no sense letting it grow unchecked if I don't have to...

If that plan gets shot down, then I will have to persevere as I have been, and try to fix the car up on my unemployment while looking for a job in a job market where you basically have to have a car or else... In which case it will just take a lot longer to get the same things done, and I will have to persevere for longer. How much longer, I don't exactly know for sure. I have seen a few more "Now hiring" signs lately, so things are picking up...

In the next few days, it will all get ironed out, and the decisions will be made.

I met the deadline for that anthology submission, and I did some writing for clients since I got laid off, so to say I was self-employed as a freelance writer is not a lie, at all. I was doing a lot of writing. I had a big project I got done and will hear feedback on sometime in the next week or so, about getting published or not. That stuff all resolves the "gap in employment" issue, I think/hope. Returning to school works pretty good as a reason to stop that "job."
I cut my hair today, since the shagginess and dead ends probably made me look less "together," even though I tried to make it look real nice. I will have to ask my roommates' mom to help me even it out. Then I will be more marketable for both employers and as an investor. It does not look much better now, except the dead ends are snipped off...

Little things make a huge difference, A little bitty piece of plastic, a snap on a pocket or a small pocket zipper coming open, which possibly letting the plastic fall out. Split ends in one's hair. Things that can alter the course of your life in this modern world, because they can deny you access to what you need in the times when you need it, or create an impression of you other than what people want to see.

Life sucks right now, but it could really be SOOO much worse, I really cannot complain. I have internet access and am sitting here blogging to the world about what I am dealing with.
I started this series with the certainty that in the end, it would encourage someone, because they would see what I come up against and yet, I WILL win! I still believe that, and I will never give up.
Neither should you.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

Adventures in RCIA: What Pope Francis' Recent Message Said

Today, in our church bulletin, there was a message from Pope Francis. It is mostly a prayer, and one which I fully agree with. It made me realize what a job it is to be the pope of Rome.

There are Catholic churches and members of religious orders working in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. all over Africa, China, and even in North and South Korea, as well as in more affluent nations. Feedback from all these places funnels up the various chains of command to the Vatican. Senior pastors have so much crap come across their desks, but imagine if your desk was just full of wars, plagues, trafficking, international controversies, and gross sin, with all its consequences, on a large scale? The job is harder than being president of the U. S. Nobody asks to be Pope either; they can only accept or decline the task. If someone seems to want the job, it rules them as a candidate; there's no campaigning to be Pope.
 While surfing youtube fairly recently, I have seen footage from the same events, shared by various anti-Catholics, claiming that Pope Francis was bad because he supposedly said at these events that he favors abortion (he doesn't) AND that he was bad because he was saying, at the same events,  that he is against abortion. Some of the same images alleged to be pics of him saying to kill gay people or some such (he doesn't say that) AND that he was pro-gay (he's not). 
Today I did a search in youtube for "pope francis." Scrolling the results, it mostly read like a list of headlines from Weekly World News, (that's a defunct, faux newspaper with headlines like "Bat-Child Found in Cave," "World to End in Two Weeks," "Aliens Steal Family Dog, Leave Life-Changing Messages," "80-Foot Tall Two Year Old Wreaks Havoc in India." One of those actually was a Weekly World News front-page headline when I was kid!), I can't believe the stuff people come up with - and believe! So, before any of this gets distorted beyond recognition by whoever and by whatever means, here is a synopsis of the "Urbi et Orbi, Message of Pope Francis", that I got today in my church bulletin. Exact quotes will be in "" marks:

"Thursday, December 25th, 2014
Dear Brothers and Sisters, Happy Christmas!
Jesus, the Son of God, the Saviour of the World, is born for us, born in Bethlehem of a Virgin, fulfilling ancient prophecies. The Virgin's name was Mary, the wife of Joseph." (That is both the first, of the only two, brief mentions of Mary in the whole thing) 
"Humble people, full of hope in the goodness of God, are those who welcome Jesus and recognize Him." The Holy Spirit enlightened the shepherds of Bethlehem, and they rushed to adore Him. The Spirit led Simeon and Anna to Jerusalem, and they recognized Him as Messiah. "'My eyes have seen your salvation,' Simeon Exclaimed, 'the salvation prepared by God in the sight of all peoples' (Luke 2:30)."
"Yes, brothers and sisters, Jesus is the salvation for every person and for every people!"
Today, I ask Jesus to help our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria, who for too long have suffered brutal persecution, along with other ethnic and religious groups. May Christmas bring to them, and the other refugees and displaced persons of all ages from this region, hope. "May indifference be changed closeness and rejection into hospitality, so that all who are now suffering may receive the necessary humanitarian help to overcome the rigours of winter, return to their countries and live with dignity. May the Lord open hearts to trust" and may he bring his peace to the whole middle east, beginning in the place of his birth.
"May Jesus, the Saviour of the world, protect all who suffer in Ukraine," and help them overcome tensions and violence and begin a healing journey of reconciliation.
"May Christ the Saviour bring peace to Nigeria, where even in these hours more blood is being shed and too many people are being unjustly deprived of their possessions, held as hostages, or killed." I contend for peace in other parts of Africa. "I beseech all who have political responsibility to commit themselves through dialogue to overcoming differences and to build a lasting, fraternal coexistence."
May Jesus save all the trafficked and enslaved children. "Children, so many abused children. May he give comfort to the families of the children killed in Pakistan last week." May he be with all who are ill, especially victims of Ebola (This makes sense, as many of those people are on their deathbed now, sadly). I thank all those dedicated to helping the sick, and their family members, and I make another urgent appeal that the necessary help be provided.
"The Child Jesus. My thoughts turn to all those children today who are killed and ill-treated, be they infants killed in the womb, deprived of that generous love of their parents and then buried in the egoism of a culture that does not love life; be they children displaced due to war and persecution, abused and taken advantage of before our very eyes and our complicit silence. I think of those infants massacred in bomb attacks, also those where the Son of God was born. Even today, their impotent silence cries out under the sword of so many Herods. In their blood stands the shadow of contemporary Herods. Truly there are so many tears this Christmas, together with the tears of the infant Jesus."
May the Holy Spirit enlighten our hearts now, to recognize in the Infant Jesus the salvation God has given to each of us, and to all the peoples of the earth. May the power of Christ, which brings freedom and service, be felt in so many hearts afflicted by atrocity. "May this divine power, by its meekness, take away the hardness of heart of so many men and women immersed in worldliness and indifference, the globalization of indifference." May his grace transform weapons to ploughshares, destruction to creativity, and hatred to love, that we may cry out with joy, "'Our eyes have seen your salvation"

I wish you a Happy Christmas!

"Francis"

Now, I agree that wars, plagues, and abounding evil are signs of the times, but they are still the work of the Christians' sole enemy. We are to resist those things passionately, with prayer and other means when possible. We are soldiers of peace and light, don't forget it. 
I see nothing unscriptural, dangerous, or unglodly in this prayer. I see a believer whose heart is broken for the heaps of reports about hideous atrocity, and equally atrocious selfishness and indifference, accumulating in his office daily. I see someone sending out his prayer for us all to read and to agree with. I for one will say "Amen!"

By the way, "Urbi et Orbi"means "City and World" in Latin, according to google translate. I had to put it in one word at a time to get it to translate it, but that is what those words mean.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

Adventures in RCIA - The Catholic Church Calender: Christmas Time

I will start with the time we are in now, which is still Christmas. If you are one of those people who wishes Christmas lasted longer than it does, you would appreciate the Catholic way of celebrating.
Christmas time in the Catholic Church lasts for several weeks.

Here is a brief list of the times and seasons on the Catholic religious calender.
Christmas time
Lent
The Triduum
Easter
Ordinary Time (from the word "ordinal" since it is ordered by numbers, not "boring" or "blase" time!)
Advent

A Solemnity is the highest ranking of all the special days on the Calender. A Holy Day of Obligation means that it is required to go to Mass that day. Holy Days of Obligation are always Solemnities, but Solemnities need not be Holy Days of Obligation.
A Feast Day is a Holy Day that commemorates an event, a mystery, a person. There are Feast days for every saint in the canon, and not enough days in the year to assign every single day to only one saint.

A shot of the handout from RCIA class, the page on Christmas Time, obviously.

That being said, today we are talking about Christmas Time.
Christmas Time starts with the Vigil of Nativity, held on December 24th, the day before the Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord, which is Christmas Day.
December 26th is the Feast of Saint Stephen,who was the first Christian Martyr ("Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen..." Now you know what that refers to!).
December 27th is the Feast,of Saint John, the Apostle, evangelist and author of the Gospel of John,one of Jesus' twelve disciples.

December 28 is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the babies who got killed in and around Bethlehem, age two years old and younger, when Herod was after Jesus. They are ranked with martyrs and remembered during this special time each year. They were sainted collectively, as only God knows their names now, and are the Patron Saints of babies. I thought that was interesting. We should probably ask them to pray for us to succeed in the fight against infanticide/abortion. It can't hurt anything...

The Sunday after Christmas is the Feast of the Holy Family - Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.
January 1, New Year's Day, is the Solemnity of Mary, It is meant to coincide with Jesus' circumcision.
The Sunday after January first is the Solemnity of the Epiphany of Our Lord, which means Christ Jesus being revealed to humankind - our epiphany of knowing Him and who He is.
Christmas Time ends with the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, which is the Sunday right after Epiphany.

All the Church's decorations - Christmas trees, poinsettia's, and Nativity figures - stay up until after the Feast of Jesus Baptism. Christmas Carols are sung all the way through the season, The scripture readings, which are the texts for the homilies, cover the accounts of Jesus' birth, the visit of the magi, and finally, Jesus' Baptism.

Enjoy the rest of the Christmas Season!

Godspeed.

~ Mother Star

Adventures in RCIA - The Second/Greek Book of Esther

From my Bible. It says, "Esther, The Greek Version Containing the Additional Chapters"

This one is kind of cool to me because I was named for this woman, and this story.
The differences between the book of Esther in the Protestant canon and the Greek translation used for older/other Bible canons are usually not that striking. At the end, the short discourse on the history and translation (into Greek) of either the whole manuscript or just Mordecai's letter about Purim (I can't be sure which, but probably the latter), is very striking if you're used to the other version, but it still does not change the meaning of the story. No synopsis is required here, as a synopsis could read exactly the same as a synopsis of the Protestant Canon's Hebrew book of Esther.

There are segments in the Greek version that are not in the Hebrew version. For example, the Hebrew version says prayers were made, cries were uttered, and etc. but does not say what exactly was said. The Greek version includes some prayers and some detailed descriptions of what people wore, what position they were in, where they were, the words they said, and so forth. It also at least claims to present the actual decrees when Haman's edict against the Jews and Mordecai and Esther's decree for the Jews. In short, it is more detailed. There also appears to be more direct teaching in this version.

One of the additions includes Mordecai's declaration of the feast of Purim, and in this section it also adds "because lots were cast, and that word means 'lot' in their language." That is something the translators added to clarify the subject of the text for Greek Jewish readers. I think it is useful for us because we are also reading a translated version, even if not in Greek. The fact is usually noted in footnotes, but not everyone reads those.

We do not have, as far as I know, the manuscript this was translated from, so we do not know how old it was. The translators either made some little errors, or something else is a bit funny here and there with the manuscript - either the original they translated from, or the Hebrew versions we are using now. The translators may have dropped the word "not" in a couple of places, for example.  None of the differences change the actual the story though, they change details.

The readers of this version would have been living among gentiles, and had to fight hard to keep to their roots and their faith. Much of the Septuagint books that were not added to the Hebrew Tanakh are very concerned with people holding on to their Jewish ways amid social and cultural pressure to adopt gentile ways. Most of the additional sections in this book do apply very much to that kind of situation; there are parts that read a lot like spiritual teaching on that topic. Esther and Mordecai also faced that situation, though. The Jews were targeted, in both versions of the story, because Mordecai the Jew bowed to no one but YHVH, while the king commanded everyone to bow to Haman. Some parts or aspects of the additions also add romance and strong emotional impact to the comparatively detached and dry (when read in English at least) Hebrew version. The Greeks likely would have valued the increased emotional elements. Perhaps Greek-speaking Jews would too, though perhaps not enough to justify adding to the scriptures over it... I think it could be that the translators added stuff that was not there in order to impact the Greek-speaking Jews, but why alter the story to get people to be faithful to the Truth?

Maybe these additions, or parts of them, were added by translators only, in order to adapt it for their readers. Maybe those additional sections were in the first manuscripts, but got lost or left out somewhere along the line.  I do not know for sure. We have no proof that these additions were in the original, but I don't think we have definitive proof that they were not. An absence of evidence does not guarantee anything. Either way, the Greek book of Esther seems aimed at people who must struggle against erosion and distortion of their faith in a culture that has conflicting values and does not love God. The Greek Jews and the early church surely drew strength from this, as can we.

To me, the difference between the Greek book of Esther and the Hebrew book of Esther is like the difference between the gospel accounts of the Resurrection. If you go through a Christian Bible - no matter which church it is printed for - and read the resurrection accounts in all four Gospels in a row, you'll find they do not perfectly line up. Some details vary, but the message we believe about Jesus altered by differences in details people remembered? No.

Does the Greek rendering of the story change anything for me? Well, it made my namesake more relatable, not that she wasn't already pretty relatable before. Her prayer when she was fasting in preparation for her uninvited visit to the King's throne-room, plus her behavior when she actually went in, particularly intensify the story for me. In the Greek version, she leaned on a maidservant's arm as she entered the throne-room, and nearly fainted a couple of times, yet still did what she had to do. At the very first instant when the doors came open the king was upset, and at the sight of his angry face she lost her strength. Yet at the sight of her - especially in that condition - God touched the king and his heart melted. The king was moved with compassion and went to comfort her. That was part of why he gave her mercy. The account does differ slightly in that he went to her, not she to him, and he touched her with the scepter as opposed to her reaching out to touch the scepter. If this deviation offends you, please read the accounts of the resurrection in all four gospels in one sitting, then return to the question.

The Greek version does not change the meaning of this book on the whole. It mostly just makes it easier to"see" the story in your mind, as it brings it much more to life. If a person prefers the Hebrew version for any reason, I do not think it will cause a problem. I also do not think relying on this one will hurt either, as it is so much the same. I do recommend a read through of both versions before getting too upset, one way or another. The differences are certainly not worth splitting churches or dividing the Body over, at all.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star