Feast of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1109 O Lord our God, grant us grace read more

Feast of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1109 O Lord our God, grant us grace to desire Thee with our whole heart; that, so desiring,we may seek, and seeking find Thee; and so finding Thee may love Thee; and loving Thee, may hate those sins from which Thou hast redeemed us.

Commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community, 1637 It is a Gospel to men who read more

Commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community, 1637 It is a Gospel to men who are without God, sinful, bewildered, anxious, discouraged, self-sufficient and proud yet destroying themselves and others, caught in a desperate plight from which they cannot extricate themselves. The Bible characterizes men in such a state as "lost", and as being "without hope in the world"... And let no one suppose that such a term as "lost" is merely a bit of conventional theological jargon. It stands for a terrible reality, a reality which modern man in his modern predicament knows only too well from his own bitter experience. It gives rise to the voices of despair which haunt our radios, our newspapers, our fiction and poetry, our stage and screen, our doctors' offices, our hospital wards, our grisly nightmare of atomic war, and the conversation of common people who no sooner meet than they begin to bemoan the fate that has overtaken the world.

Feast of Lucy, Martyr at Syracuse, 304 Commemoration of Samuel Johnson, Writer, Moralist, 1784 It is by affliction chiefly read more

Feast of Lucy, Martyr at Syracuse, 304 Commemoration of Samuel Johnson, Writer, Moralist, 1784 It is by affliction chiefly that the heart of man is purified, and that the thoughts are fixed on a better state. Prosperity has power to intoxicate the imagination, to fix the mind upon the present scene, to produce confidence and elation, and to make him who enjoys affluence and honors forget the hand by which they were bestowed. It is seldom that we are otherwise than by affliction awakened to a sense of our imbecility, or taught to know how little all our acquisitions can conduce to safety or quiet, and how justly we may inscribe to the superintendence of a higher power those blessings which in the wantonness of success we considered as the attainments of our policy and courage.

C. S. Lewis Centennial Holding [the Way of Affirmation], we see that every created thing is, in its degree, read more

C. S. Lewis Centennial Holding [the Way of Affirmation], we see that every created thing is, in its degree, an image of God, and the ordinate and faithful appreciation of that thing a clue, which, truly followed, will lead back to Him. Holding [the Way of Rejection], we see that every created thing, the highest devotion to moral duty, the purest conjugal love, the saint and the seraph, is no more than an image; that every one of them, followed for its own sake and isolated from its source, becomes an idol whose service is damnation.

There is that in the Gospel with which no one is allowed to argue. All we can do is believe read more

There is that in the Gospel with which no one is allowed to argue. All we can do is believe or disbelieve; to give it in our life the place of the final reality to which everything else must give way, or to refuse it that place. Many people ... would like to talk the Word of God over. It raises in their minds various questions they would willingly discuss. It has aspects of interest and of difficulty which call for consideration; and so on. Perhaps there are some that confusedly shield themselves against the responsibilities of faith and unbelief by such thoughts. All that such thoughts prove, however, is that those who cherish them have never yet realized that what we are dealing with in the Gospel is GOD. When God speaks in Christ, He reveals His gracious will without qualification. And without qualification, we have to believe in it, or refuse to believe, and so decide the controversy between ourselves and Him. God has not come into the world in Christ ... to be talked about, but to become the supreme reality on the life of men, or to be excluded from that place.

Feast of the Visit of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth The solution lies in a complete realisation of what read more

Feast of the Visit of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth The solution lies in a complete realisation of what we mean by asserting that God is Almighty. The two ideas of Free-will and Divine Sovereignty can not be reconciled in our own minds, but that does not prevent them from being reconciled in God's mind. We measure Him by our own intellectual standard if we think otherwise. And so our solution of the problem of Free-will and of the problems of history and of individual salvation must finally lie in the full acceptance and realisation of what is implied by the infinity and the omniscience of God.

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Even the most traditional theologian will be anxious read more

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Even the most traditional theologian will be anxious to point out that the classical images which have been used, with more or less success, to depict different aspects of the Redemption -- the winning of a battle, the liberation of captives, the payment of a fine or debt, the curing of a disease, and so on -- are not to be interpreted literally, any more than, when we say that the eternal Word "came down from Heaven", we are describing a process of spatial translation. For here we are dealing with processes and events which, by the nature of the case, cannot be precisely described in everyday language... The matter is quite different with such a statement as that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary; for, whatever aspects of the Incarnation outstrip the descriptive power of ordinary language, this at least is plainly statable in it. It means that Jesus was conceived in his mother's womb without previous sexual intercourse on her part with any male human being, and this is a straightforward statement which is either true or false. To say that the birth... of Jesus Christ cannot simply be thought of as a biological event, and to add that this is [not] what the Virgin Birth means, is a plain misuse of language; and no amount of talk about the appealing character of the "Christmas myth" can validly gloss this over.

Whoever has Christ in his heart, so that no earthly or temporal things -- not even those that are legitimate read more

Whoever has Christ in his heart, so that no earthly or temporal things -- not even those that are legitimate and allowed -- are preferred to Him, has Christ as a foundation. But if these things be preferred, then even though a man seem to have faith in Christ, yet Christ is not the foundation to that man.

The task of the people of God is to proclaim the kingdom of God, which is a universal kingdom extending read more

The task of the people of God is to proclaim the kingdom of God, which is a universal kingdom extending to every aspect of human life. In a secular society, religion cannot remain a department of life. It must be the expression of a faith that extends over the whole of life, or it will be nothing.