As you know, I love words and especially I love to
learn the origin or history of words which is called etymology. To me words are music
but when I know their history and meaning they do more than pass through my
ears with their sound, or enter my mind with their meaning, they pass into my
heart with their ardent intention. Learning meanings and history has enhanced my
knowledge of the gospel-the Good News! That's why I can say that examining words has taught me more about the gospel than any other thing.
I am amazed how many gospel words that we use all
come back to one Latin root, sanctus which means sacred. Sanctify, sanctification,
consecrate, consecration, sacrament, saint, and sacrifice are all from that same Latin root word.
Sanctify means to free from sin so that you are sacred. Sanctification
means the action or process of being sanctified. Consecrate means dedicated to a sacred purpose and consecration means the process
of dedicating to a sacred purpose. In sacrament we find the root meaning of
sacred combined with the suffix –ment which means “the concrete action or
process of.” In other words the sacrament is the concrete action that makes us
sacred. Sacrifice also means to make sacred, and a saint is a person who has been
made sacred.
It is interesting that the gospel
is all about making us into saints and the words we use in the gospel all point
us in that direction. We do well to stop and think about the words!
Posts
2 comments:
You always think of things on levels that I rarely get to on my own. Thanks for sharing these insights. :)
Nice blog. As a lover of words you might be interested in the word play involved in cryptic crosswords. I am doing a series of posts on solving cryptic clues. This was the first one I did. http://caroleschatter.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/cryptic-crosswords-solving-hints-1.html Hope you enjoy.
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