Commemoration of Martin Luther, Teacher, Reformer, 1546 Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books read more

Commemoration of Martin Luther, Teacher, Reformer, 1546 Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime.

Commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician, 1750 The Church knew what the Psalmist knew: music praises God. Music read more

Commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician, 1750 The Church knew what the Psalmist knew: music praises God. Music is as well, or better, able to praise Him than the building of a church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.

Commemoration of Charles Williams, Spiritual Writer, 1945 Although we have different ways of worshipping and doing things, we have read more

Commemoration of Charles Williams, Spiritual Writer, 1945 Although we have different ways of worshipping and doing things, we have only one God. So how can we claim to have... "Good News" unless people can see in us that Jesus Christ is breaking down barriers and bringing us together?

Commemoration of Maximilian Kolbe, Franciscan Friar, Priest, Martyr, 1941 Paul does not forbid you to use rites and ceremonies, read more

Commemoration of Maximilian Kolbe, Franciscan Friar, Priest, Martyr, 1941 Paul does not forbid you to use rites and ceremonies, but it is not his wish that he who is free in Christ should be bound by them. He does not condemn the law of works if only one uses it lawfully. Without these things perhaps you will not be pious; but they do not make you pious.

Commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 690 The primary truth about our church membership is not read more

Commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 690 The primary truth about our church membership is not that we are members of a particular congregation, but that we have been born into this new race of human beings, the Christian race, which is made up of people out of every nation and tribe and class. Further, each local church is a church only in so far as it is the expression, in a particular place, of this new race that has come into the world through Christ Jesus. It is the mighty acts of God in Him that are the guarantee of our fellowship in the Church.

Life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, read more

Life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society... but rather where it understands itself as being a part of the one, holy, catholic, Christian Church, where it shares actively and passively in the sufferings and struggles of the whole Church. Every principle of selection, every separation connected with it that is not necessitated quite objectively by common work, local conditions, or family connections is of the greatest danger to a Christian community. When the way of intellectual or spiritual selection is taken, the human element always insinuates itself and robs the fellowship of its spiritual power and its effectiveness for the Church, and drives it into sectarianism.

The genius of the Methodist movement, which enabled it to conquer the raw lives of workingmen in industrial England, and read more

The genius of the Methodist movement, which enabled it to conquer the raw lives of workingmen in industrial England, and the raw lives of men and women on the American frontier, was the "class meeting" -- ten members and their leader, meeting regularly for mutual encouragement, rebuke, nurture, and prayer.

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, read more

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature -- either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

Feast of Hildegard, Abbess of Bingen, Visionary, 1179 "He cannot deny Himself" [II Tim. 2:13], means at the read more

Feast of Hildegard, Abbess of Bingen, Visionary, 1179 "He cannot deny Himself" [II Tim. 2:13], means at the same time He cannot deny His grace to the sinful, and He cannot deny the moral order in which alone He can live in fellowship with men; and we see the inviolableness of both asserted in the death of Jesus. Nothing else in the world demonstrates how real is God's love to the sinful, and how real the sin of the world is to God. And the love which comes to us through such an expression, bearing sin in all its reality, yet loving us through and beyond it, is the only love which at once forgives and regenerates the soul.