Be Strong and Holy

Worth meditating on:  Apparently the/a Greek word for “holy” also means “strong”.

In Christianity, we are called to sanctification, the lifelong process of cooperating more and more with God’s work to make us holy, pure and set apart for His service.  In one of the seeming paradoxes of Christian theology, this process also makes us spiritually stronger and stronger, even as it also makes us more and more dependent on God, the eternal Source of all goodness and love and power.

From Dictionary.com, on the etymology of the modern English anatomical term “sacrum”:

Word Origin and History for sacrum
n.
bone at the base of the spine, 1753, from Late Latin os sacrum “sacred bone,” from Latin os “bone” (see osseous) + sacrum, neuter of sacer “sacred” (see sacred). Said to be so called because the bone was the part of animals that was offered in sacrifices. Translation of Greek hieron osteon. Greek hieros also can mean “strong,” and some sources suggest the Latin is a mistranslation of Galen, who was calling it “the strong bone.”

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper