EPIPHANY The paradox is that a genuine "love for souls" which allows itself to be diverted by fashionable modes read more

EPIPHANY The paradox is that a genuine "love for souls" which allows itself to be diverted by fashionable modes into a mere "winning" of them to this or that mutually exclusive version of the "Truth", very often descends to a use of people for more-or-less irrelevant ends (already an evil), and can then so easily degenerate into a total misuse of people for alleged evangelical "results" with the consequent loss of all respect for people and their souls, and the withering of the original concern and love.

Concluding a series on the person of Jesus: Jesus' good news, then, was that the Kingdom of God had read more

Concluding a series on the person of Jesus: Jesus' good news, then, was that the Kingdom of God had come, and that he, Jesus, was its herald and expounder to men. More than that, in some special and mysterious was, he was the kingdom.

Commemoration of Bridget of Sweden, Abbess of Vadstena, 1373 Christ came, not so much to preach the Gospel, read more

Commemoration of Bridget of Sweden, Abbess of Vadstena, 1373 Christ came, not so much to preach the Gospel, as that there might be a Gospel to preach.

The symbol of the New Testament and the Christian Church is a cross, which stands for a love faithful despite read more

The symbol of the New Testament and the Christian Church is a cross, which stands for a love faithful despite physical agony and rejection by the world. No amount of air-conditioning and pew-cusioning in the suburban church can cover over the hard truth that the Christian life... is a narrow way of suffering; that discipleship is costly: that, for the faithful, there is always a cross to be carried. No one can understand Christianity to its depths who comes to it to enjoy it as a pleasant weekend diversion.

The mark of modern unbelieving man as a whole is that he has felt astonishingly much at home in his read more

The mark of modern unbelieving man as a whole is that he has felt astonishingly much at home in his earthly surroundings. He has taken a cheerful view of the prospects of the race and of the future of human history, staying his soul upon the promise of further "evolution" of the human individual, the continuous upward progress of civilization, or perhaps the confident expectation of a completely revolutionized order of society -- a communist Utopia beyond the class struggle or something else of that same general kind. Where such hopes remain unchastened by the cold touch of reality, there is little prospect of the Christian Gospel recommending itself to men's minds, and any wordy defense of it is likely to be quite useless.

Feast of All Saints He took upon Him the flesh in which we have sinned, that by wearing read more

Feast of All Saints He took upon Him the flesh in which we have sinned, that by wearing our flesh He might forgive sins; a flesh which He shares with us by wearing it, not by sinning in it. He blotted out through death the sentence of death, that by a new creation of our race in Himself He might sweep away the penalty appointed by the former Law... For Scripture had foretold that He who is God should die; that the victory and triumph of them that trust in Him lay in the fact that He, who is immortal and cannot be overcome by death, was to die that mortals might gain eternity. (Continued tomorrow) ... St. Hilary, On the Trinity November 2, 2000 Feast of All Souls In this calm assurance of safety did my soul gladly and hopefully take its rest, and feared so little the interruption of death, that death seemed only a name for eternal life. And the life of this present body was so far from seeming a burden or affliction that it was regarded as children regard their alphabets, sick men their draughts, shipwrecked sailors their swim, young men the training for their profession, future commanders their first campaign -- that is, as an endurable submission to present necessities, bearing the promise of a blissful immortality. ... St. Hilary, On the Trinity November 3, 2000 Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 People make mistakes when they believe. They may even want something so badly that passion creates its own evidences. Reprehensible though these habits are, they nonetheless fall within the pale of man's general effort to conform the self to things as they are. But when a person acknowledges the deficiency of evidences and yet goes right on believing, he defends a position that is large with the elements of its own destruction. Any brand of inanity can be defended on such a principle.

I find that doing the will of God leaves me with no time for disputing about His plans.

I find that doing the will of God leaves me with no time for disputing about His plans.

Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no read more

Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.

Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461 How wonderful it is -- is it not? -- read more

Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461 How wonderful it is -- is it not? -- that literally only Christianity has taught us the true place and function of suffering. The Stoics tried the hopeless little game of denying its objective reality, or of declaring it a good in itself (which it never is); and the Pessimists attempted to revel in it, as a food to their melancholy, and as something that can no more be transformed than it can be avoided or explained. But Christ came, and He did not really explain it; He did far more: He met it, willed it, transformed it; and He taught us to do all this -- or, rather, He Himself does it within us, if we do not hinder the all-healing hands.