Thursday, March 1, 2007

Wherefore art thou sanctus liberalis?

To borrow from Shakespeare, the original quote "wherefore art thou Romeo?" If you did not already know, wherefore does not mean where. It actually means why. Why did I choose sanctus liberalis as an online handle? Well, I will tell you. Sanctus in Latin means holy, sacred or even saint. I choose it for holy. Liberalis means courteous or generous. So you are probably thinking right about now how can I call myself holy? What kind of self-righteous presumptuous person proclaims themselves holy? Well, let's look at the root meaning of the word. Most dictionaries will tell that holy means derived from a divine power or a sacred place of a divine power. I propose another definition for you to consider. Holy is to be set apart. When someone made a place holy in the old testament what was happening there? They would build an altar and set that place apart for worship. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis:1:1 The former definition would imply that everything is holy, because everything was created by God. I am going off a tangent here, so when I chose sanctus it was with the intended meaning of set apart. Liberalis was chosen because many people have called me generous. Also, when a Christian went through confirmation in the time of the early church, a new Christian would choose a Christian name. This name would not usually define a characteristic of themselves but something they would want to become more like. I too would like grow to be more like my handle describes, to set my life apart for God and to be gentle.

2 comments:

Courageous Grace said...

Nice name.

:P

Anonymous said...

This blessed me SO much - I mean the meaning of your "name" - read your comment at SF this morning, and since I don't know Latin, I took a guess at what the liberalis might mean and went to GOOGLE to check it out. Your blog was first up!

Just want you to know that as I read this post, I was moved to tears and All Hail King Jesus, All Hail Emmanuel came bubbling up in my spirit from nowhere, so I sang it and worshiped awhile. ALSO, this small explanation further confirmed my personal direction away from TEc and into a more committed relationship with others who share a faithful Anglican understanding of things holy! It has added just one more teaching to the several that have crossed my path in the past couple of weeks on Holiness - including a super one on SF a week or so ago. In fact, I e-mailed Jill Woodliff a link to one particular sermon which espoused that the major OT purpose of the priesthood was to differentiate between the holy and the profane for the people in the priest's care. It was my hope that some of the teaching might be brought to the SF blog as part of the discussion. Didn't happen...oh well.
May God bless you and Courageous Grace and your all your progeny.

Merlena Cushing (DioWMI -very liberal - far from liberalis)