Feast of John of the Cross, Mystic, Poet, Teacher, 1591 A Christian should always remember that the value read more

Feast of John of the Cross, Mystic, Poet, Teacher, 1591 A Christian should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence, but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things. St. John of the Cross December 15, 2000 Two thousand years of failure have not taught some reformers that you can't stop sin by declaring it illegal. Two thousand years have not taught them that you can't save a man's soul by force -- you can only lose your own in the attempt. Drunkenness and gambling and secularism and lechery -- various hopeful churchmen have earnestly tried to outlaw them all; and what is the result? A drunken nation, a gambling nation, a secularist nation, an adulterous nation. And, often, a ruined Church.

There has been a tendency of late to interpret alienation from faith in intellectual rather than experiential terms. Academically oriented read more

There has been a tendency of late to interpret alienation from faith in intellectual rather than experiential terms. Academically oriented Christians especially tend to think that the barriers to faith should be removed by repackaging the content of the message in a way more congenial to the modern outlook. But it is quite possible that we are dealing not so much with a failure of intellect as with an alienation from the experiential roots of Christianity itself so amply attested in the New Testament.

Silence, indeed, is the one form of worship which is almost universally thought intolerable by Dissenting clergy. Despite their not-too-distant read more

Silence, indeed, is the one form of worship which is almost universally thought intolerable by Dissenting clergy. Despite their not-too-distant affinity to the Quakers, they think they will be heard for their much speaking. And since their organists too are equally reluctant to let any liturgical action pass without a ruminative obbligato on the Swell manual, congregations are subjected to unrelieved noise during a service which may well have begun with the reading of the sentence, "Be still, and know that I am God.".

Feast of Chad, Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary, 672 Peace comes when there is no cloud between read more

Feast of Chad, Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary, 672 Peace comes when there is no cloud between us and God. Peace is the consequence of forgiveness, God's removal of that which obscures His face and so breaks union with Him. The happy sequence culminating in fellowship with God is penitence, pardon, and peace -- the first we offer, the second we accept, and the third we inherit.

Feast of the Naming & Circumcision of Jesus Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in Thy read more

Feast of the Naming & Circumcision of Jesus Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in Thy presence will prevail to make! What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched ground refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline brave and clear; We kneel, how weak! we rise, how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or other, that we are not always strong, That we are ever overborne with care, That we should ever weak or heratless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with Thee!

The Christian message is not an exhortation -- "try hard to be good." Good advice, but there is no saving read more

The Christian message is not an exhortation -- "try hard to be good." Good advice, but there is no saving gospel in that.

Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915 It will perhaps be read more

Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915 It will perhaps be said that in our present state of schism this assertion of [spiritual] principle [of oneness] can give us no definite guidance for action, can provide us with no clear programme, and must remain unfruitful. Surely that is not wholly true. It certainly must help us if we recognize that it is the presence of the Holy Spirit which creates a unity which we can never create.If men believe in the existence of this unity, they may begin to desire it, and desiring it to seek for it, and seeking it to find it. If, when they find it, they refuse to deny it, in due time, by ways now unsearchable, they will surely return to external communion.

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our read more

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our needs should come second. ... The Notebooks of Florence Allshorn March 16, 2000 Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can act. And you may well say "act". For what I call "myself" (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction; memories, glimpses in the shavinglass, and snatches of the very fallible activity called "introspection", are the principal ingredients. Normally I call this construction "me"' and the stage set "the real world". Now the moment of prayer is for me -- or involves for me as its condition -- the awareness, the reawakened awareness, that this "real world" and "real self" are very far from being rock-bottom realities. I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or to take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist. And I also remember that my apparent self -- this clown or hero or super -- under his grease-paint is a real person with an off-stage life. The dramatic person could not tread the stage unless he concealed a real person: unless the real and unknown I existed, I would not even make mistakes about the imagined me. And in prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but -- what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance?

Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253 Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, read more

Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253 Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, Teacher, Tractarian, 1890 It is our great relief that God is not extreme to mark what is done amiss, that he looks at the motives, and accepts and blesses in spite of incidental errors.