{"id":7186,"date":"2023-02-17T09:16:33","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/?p=7186"},"modified":"2023-02-17T12:38:17","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T17:38:17","slug":"our-b-c-pagan-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/?p=7186","title":{"rendered":"Our (B.C.) Pagan Heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>17 February, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our Pagan Heritage<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our Lord came into a pagan, fallen world and has brought us light so we can walk straight on a path leading to <em>life<\/em>.&nbsp; February has a meaning pointing most starkly to our Godless, pagan roots from which our Savior has cut us loose.&nbsp;&nbsp; The name of the month derives from the decadent practice of child sacrifice through &#8220;februation&#8221;&nbsp; (Latin&nbsp; <em>februatio<\/em>, from&nbsp;the Greek <em>februatus<\/em>, past participle of&nbsp;<em>februare &#8211;<\/em>&nbsp;&#8220;to purify,&#8221; from&nbsp;<em>februa<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks be to God for deliverance from our Godless human heritage!&nbsp; Let us turn away from our tendency, via for example abortion, to drift back to our natural pagan roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Will Durant, in volume 3 of his Story of Civilization, writes about Rome&#8217;s calendar:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The year began with the coming of spring, and the first month, Martius, more the name of the god of sowing; next came Aprilis, sprouting, Maius, month of Maia, or perhaps of increase; Iunius, month of Juno, or possibly of thriving; then Quinctilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December, named from their numerical order in the year; then January for Janus, and February for the <em>februa, <\/em>or magic objects by which persons might be purified. The year itself was called <em>annus,<\/em> ring; as if to say that in reality there is no beginning and no end.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Efforts have been made, from time to time, by various reformers to scrap the old names and install new ones which trumpet more sanctified symbols.&nbsp; But long-standing, deep-rooted tradition is hard to extract and discard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, He delivered us from such damnable, pagan sacrifices.&nbsp; Sacrifice, to be sure, was necessary to be offered to a holy God by disgusting, filthy human beings, but nothing could satisfy His righteous indignation but the blood of our Savior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17 Feb., 2023<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>17 February, 2023 Our Pagan Heritage Our Lord came into a pagan, fallen world and has brought us light so we can walk straight on a path leading to life.&nbsp; February has a meaning pointing most starkly to our Godless, pagan roots from which our Savior has cut us loose.&nbsp;&nbsp; The name of the month [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[48,50,57,21,24,53,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7186"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7186"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7190,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7186\/revisions\/7190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}