A satisfying prayer life elevates and purifies every act of body and mind and integrates the entire personality into a read more

A satisfying prayer life elevates and purifies every act of body and mind and integrates the entire personality into a single spiritual unit. In the long pull we pray only as well as we live.

Commemoration of Denys, Bishop of Paris, & his Companions, Martyrs, 258 Commemoration of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, Philosopher, Scientist, read more

Commemoration of Denys, Bishop of Paris, & his Companions, Martyrs, 258 Commemoration of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, Philosopher, Scientist, 1253 Holy Orders is a vocation from God; it is not a profession which we enter expecting an advance, or some sort of recognition as a right after so many years of work. But it is rather the giving up of self into the hands of God, without stint and without reserve, and letting Him set the work. It is the recognition of the fact that God has many kinds of work to be done, and that the best paid are not always the most honourable. To enter or exercise the ministry with a view to preferment is like marrying for money and not for love.

Feast of Stephen, Deacon, First Martyr Joy to the world! the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; read more

Feast of Stephen, Deacon, First Martyr Joy to the world! the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; Let every heart prepare him room, And heav'n and nature sing. Joy to the earth! the Savior reigns! Let men their songs employ, While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, Repeat the sounding joy. No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make his blessings flow Far as the curse is found. He rules the world with truth and grace, And makes the nations prove The glories of his righteousness, And wonders of his love.

Feast of Evelyn Underhill, Mystical Writer, 1941 Anyone can lead a "prayer-life" -- that is, the sort of read more

Feast of Evelyn Underhill, Mystical Writer, 1941 Anyone can lead a "prayer-life" -- that is, the sort of reasonable devotional life to which each is called by God. This only involves making a suitable rule and making up your mind to keep it however boring this may be.

Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525 We can all call to mind movements which have begun as pure read more

Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525 We can all call to mind movements which have begun as pure upsurges of fresh spiritual vitality, breaking through and revolting against the hardened structure of the older body, and claiming, in the name of the Spirit, liberty from outward forms and institutions. And we have seen how rapidly they develop their own forms, their own structures of thought, of language, and of organisation. It would surely be a very unbiblical view of human nature and history to think -- as we so often, in our pagan way, do -- that this is just an example of the tendency of all things to slide down from a golden age to an age of iron, to identify the spiritual with the disembodied, and to regard visible structure as equivalent to sin. We must rather recognise here a testimony to the fact that Christianity is, in its very heart and essence, not a disembodied spirituality, but life in a visible fellowship, a life which makes such total claim upon us, and so engages our total powers, that nothing less than the closest and most binding association of men with one another can serve its purpose. ... Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God February 2, 2000 THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE Persons that are well affected to religion, that receive instructions of piety with pleasure and satisfaction, often wonder how it comes to pass that they make no greater progress in that religion which they so much admire. Now the reason of it is this: it is because religion lives only in their head, but something else has possession of their heart; and therefore they continue from year to year mere admirers and praisers of piety, without ever coming up to the reality and perfection of its precepts.

Commemoration of Clement, Bishop of Rome, Martyr, c.100 We say, and we say openly, and while ye torture us, read more

Commemoration of Clement, Bishop of Rome, Martyr, c.100 We say, and we say openly, and while ye torture us, mangled and gory we cry out, "We worship God through Christ!" Believe Him a man: it is through Him and in Him that God willeth Himself to be known and worshipped.

The supreme antidote against strife and confusion, the supreme principle of unity and service in the Church, was also the read more

The supreme antidote against strife and confusion, the supreme principle of unity and service in the Church, was also the greatest gift of the Spirit and the perfect and abiding proof of its presence, namely, love. This introduces a third criterion of the Spirit, and on the wider stage of the moral life. It is loyalty to the moral ideal of Christ. "If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk" (Gal. 5:25). Where the Spirit dwells, it produces a new, a higher, a unique type of moral life. For Paul, the Christian life was not the normal and natural product of human activity, but a gracious divine gift, received by the descent of the Spirit into the human heart, for "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance" (Gal. 5:22-23). And there is yet one higher manifestation of the Spirit, the participation in the divine sonship of Jesus Christ. "And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6). Where sonship is, there the Spirit is. On the other hand, "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God" (Rom. 8:l4). Where the Spirit leads, there sonship is... The possession of the Spirit and participation in Christ's sonship are but two aspects of the same experience. Here, the phenomenon, if it may be so called, bears its own credentials. Sonship is a self-evident work of the Spirit. But the evidence is available only for its owners in order that the Spirit of adoption may attest itself to others, it must issue in the life according to the Spirit, by walking in the spirit and bearing the fruit of the Spirit.

[Johannes] Brahms chose his own texts [for his German Requiem] from Luther's Bible to illustrate the Protestant conviction that man read more

[Johannes] Brahms chose his own texts [for his German Requiem] from Luther's Bible to illustrate the Protestant conviction that man must hear and respond to God's word in man's own language, and that every believer must be free to deal with the Biblical text apart from priestly veto... For the word "German" he would gladly have substituted the word "human" because he was concerned to comment on "the primary text of human existence," finding there, as in the Bible, the universal themes of suffering and joy.

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 Much of today's Christianity is almost completely read more

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 Much of today's Christianity is almost completely earthbound, and the words of Jesus about what follows this life are scarcely studied at all. This, I believe, is partly due to man's enormous technical successes, which make him feel master of the human situation. But it is also partly due to our scholars and experts. By the time they have finished with their dissection of the New Testament and with their explaining away as "myth" all that they find disquieting or unacceptable to the modern mind, the Christian way of life is little more than humanism with a slight tinge of religion.