Categories: study, spiritual-writings
Date: 07 May 2009 03:56:12
I am greatly enjoying the Reading the Classics -- "The Life of Moses" course at the Catholic Institute I am attending each Wednesday: we are blessed with a great presenter; seven superb and hilarious fellow students; and simply fascinating teaching and discussion on what is a most wondrous book.
St Gregory of Nyssa's The Life of Moses is an interesting book [with an "interesting" cover!], and one I may unpack a bit in the weeks to come. In summary the book has two parts: the first is a biography of Moses life and the second is where St Gregory reflects on the spiritual sense" of the Scriptures. The key to the spiritual sense of the life of Moses according to St Gregory is "epektasis" [a Greek word I learnt last night!], which is a continual growth or straining ahead: God, who is Unknowable, can never be fully grasped, so our whole life, here and after death, is a continual progress towards God. And, as our presenter Daniel Ang stated, each time we encounter God, an entirely new vista opens up before us, showing us that there is more and more to know about God and we can never, ever completely know Him. And this is one of the joys to me of Christianity: we will continually be growing in the love and knowledge of the Infinite Creator God, even in heaven, forever learning more and more of Him, and hence drawing deeper into Him.
[At least I hope that is what St Gregory states or otherwise I have completely misunderstood!]
Cannot wait until next week: the third lecture of, sadly, only five.
I get a day off work tomorrow as I have a full day of lectures for IT Governance. I handed in the final assessment Monday, and also had my presentation that evening. I stumbled a bit, and got a bit confused in one place, so I did not have high hopes. I was very content to see the mark 20.5 out of 30 appear in my Inbox together with the comment, among others, "Well presented and entertaining." Nice to read. I need to work on my eye contact a bit [too much staring at the projector screen] and need to go a bit more in-depth into topics in future. Good constructive comments which I appreciate.
And after hearing from other students that some did not pass either assignment one or the presentation, my humble marks [I am a perfectionist, you know!: an issue that was brought up -- in general: not directed at me! -- at last night's class on The Life of Moses and which I may go into in a future post] are seeming a whole lot better.