Feast of Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists), 1660 If you wanted a read more

Feast of Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists), 1660 If you wanted a label for us, would you find a better than a Sadducean Age? We also are not worrying about immortality, hardly believe in it, or at least are not sure; we, too, have limited ourselves to this dust-speck of time, leaving unclaimed the vast inheritance beyond of which Christ told us; we, too, are putting all our zeal and passion and enthusiasm into things of this earth here, quite sure that that is the only road to progress, and that this everlasting chatter about the soul is quite beside the point. And they are all so earnest and so certain, work so hard, are animated often by such lofty motives, are so sure that there is really no manner of need for Christ: that given this, and this, and this, each of them pushing forward his particular panacea -- the world will manage very well; that to talk about Christ, and changing people's hearts, and making us new creatures, is merely to lose precious time and wander from the practical into vague day-dreaming of which nothing comes. And year by year their voices grow a little harder, and they eye Christ more and more askance, feel sourly that He is a bit of a nuisance and a stumbling-block to progress, keeping people quiet who should not be quiet, lulling them with these dim, immaterial, fantastic, spiritual hopes of His which they think have no body, and can not have. Once more the whisper grows, "Were He not far better away?" Meantime we can ignore Him, they say; and they do.

Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675 What happens to someone who follows heretical teachings? It became quickly read more

Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675 What happens to someone who follows heretical teachings? It became quickly and readily apparent how cruel heretical teachings are and how prevalent the heresies are in contemporary times. Victims of these teachings have been encouraged to either to escape the world and their basic humanity into some form of flight and death or to use religion to undergird and isolate further their own self-centered self from the need to be loved and to love... The conviction that heresy is cruel has given me a growing awe of and respect for orthodoxy.

THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE We are very shy nowadays of even mentioning Heaven. We are read more

THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE We are very shy nowadays of even mentioning Heaven. We are afraid of the jeer about "pie in the sky", and of being told that we are trying to "escape" from the duty of making a happy world here and now, into dreams of a better world elsewhere. But either there is "pie in the sky" or there is not. If there is not, then Christianity is false, for this doctrine is woven into its whole fabric. If there is, then this doctrine, like any other, must be faced, whether it is useful at political meetings or no.

Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730 It is sufficient to know in the general that our read more

Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730 It is sufficient to know in the general that our employment [in Paradise] shall be our unspeakable pleasure and every way suitable to the glory and happiness of that state, and as much above the noblest and most delightful employments of this world as the perfection of our bodies and the power of our souls shall then be above what they now are in this world. For there is no doubt that he who made us and endued our souls with a desire of immortality and so large a capacity of happiness, does understand very well by what ways and means to make us happy, and hath in readiness proper exercises and employments for that state, and every way more fitted to make us happy than any condition or employment in this world is suitable to a temporal happiness.

Pray with your intelligence. Bring things to God that you have thought out and think them out again with Him. read more

Pray with your intelligence. Bring things to God that you have thought out and think them out again with Him. That is the secret of good judgment. Repeatedly place your pet opinions and prejudices before God. He will surprise you by showing you that the best of them need refining and some the purification of destruction.

The scientist who lives laborious days in the disinterested pursuit of truth, the artist who will starve in a garret read more

The scientist who lives laborious days in the disinterested pursuit of truth, the artist who will starve in a garret if only he may express the beauty he has seen, the martyr who will obey God in the scorn of consequence, are all religious men or, at least, are men who illustrate that principle which lies behind religion. Truth, Beauty, Goodness -- these are sacred, the object of man's true love and reverence. He to whom nothing is sacred, all questions are open, and the distinction between right and wrong is blurred, is an enslaved, not an emancipated, spirit.

"The Bible," we are told sometimes, "gives us such a beautiful picture of what we should be." Nonsense! It gives read more

"The Bible," we are told sometimes, "gives us such a beautiful picture of what we should be." Nonsense! It gives us no picture at all. It reveals to us a fact: it tells us what we really are; it says, This is the form in which God created you, to which He has restored you; this is the work which the Eternal Son, the God of Truth and Love, is continually carrying on within you.

Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 [In nineteenth-century America] religion read more

Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 [In nineteenth-century America] religion became a matter of conduct, of good deeds, of works, with only a vague background of faith. It became highly functional, highly pragmatic; it became a guarantee of success, moral and material. "The proper study of mankind is man," was the evasion by which many American divines escaped the necessity for thought about God.

At the Day of Judgment, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done.

At the Day of Judgment, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done.