Feast of Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894 Am I a stone, and not a sheep, That I can stand, 0 read more

Feast of Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894 Am I a stone, and not a sheep, That I can stand, 0 Christ, beneath Thy cross, To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss, And yet not weep? Not so those women loved Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee; Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly; Not so the thief was moved; Not so the Sun and Moon Which hid their faces in a starless sky: A horror of great darkness at broad noon I only I. Yet give not o'er But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock; Greater than Moses, turn and look once more And smite a rock.

Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 You rob, and spoile, and eat his people as bread, by Extortion, read more

Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 You rob, and spoile, and eat his people as bread, by Extortion, and bribery, and deceitful waights and measures, and deluding oathes in buying and selling, and then come hither, and so make God your Receiver, and his house a den of Thieves. His house is Sanctum Sanctorum, The holiest of holies, and you make it onely Sanctuarium: It should be a place sanctified by your devotions, and you make it onely a Sanctuary to priviledge Maelfactors, a place that may redeeme you from the ill opinion of men, who must in charity be bound to thinke well of you, because they see you in here.

It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the read more

It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the same thing, described from opposite points of view. How we shall experience it depends upon the way we shall come up against it: God does not change; it is man's moral state that changes. The wrath of God is a figure of speech to denote God's unchanging opposition to sin; it is His righteous love operating to destroy evil. It is not evil that will have the last word, but good; not sorrow, but joy; not hate, but love.

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916 Whoever loves much, does much.

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916 Whoever loves much, does much.

Feast of Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 651 Commemoration of Cuthburga, Founding Abbess of Wimborne, c.725 Commemoration of John Bunyan, read more

Feast of Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 651 Commemoration of Cuthburga, Founding Abbess of Wimborne, c.725 Commemoration of John Bunyan, Spiritual Writer, 1688 [John Bunyan] had to live through that obscure night -- "wide, vast, and lonely" -- which fell upon St. John of the Cross before; like him, he knew that grace would enter "the dark caverns where the senses live". In the meantime, Bunyan tossed to and fro, as it were between heaven and hell. It has been said that he paints too dark a picture of his moral condition when a young man, that he exaggerates his wickedness at this period, and afterwards wrestles with phantoms of his vivid imagination. But spiritual sins, though not so obvious as those that are sensual, may be just as real; and Bunyan's intensity of feeling and expression arose from the intensity of his spiritual nature.

The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is a divine meaning of the world, of man, read more

The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is a divine meaning of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and me.

So long as we stand "under the Law", we cannot perceive this hidden unity of all the commandments. It is read more

So long as we stand "under the Law", we cannot perceive this hidden unity of all the commandments. It is part of legalism that the will of God must appear to it as a multiplicity of commandments. In actual fact, it is one and indivisible; God wants nothing else except love because He Himself is love.

Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367 Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603 read more

Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367 Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603 It is one thing to fear God as threatening, with a holy reverence, and another to be afraid of the evil threatened.

The Creeds... were formulated gradually, as a result of a series of desperate controversies -- which are now named, sometimes read more

The Creeds... were formulated gradually, as a result of a series of desperate controversies -- which are now named, sometimes after the supposed leaders and representatives of a particular interpretation of the Christian religion, and sometimes after the particular interpretation itself. I need not now attempt to make precise these heresies, as they came to be called. It is necessary only to point out that in various ways all these heresies were simplifications. By means of them, the revelation of God to men was made -- or appeared to be made -- less scandalous. On the other hand, the various clauses of the Creed were not formulated as a new simplification, or as an alternative-ism. They were nothing more than emphatic statements of the Biblical scandal, statements which brought into sharp antagonism the new simplification and the old, Scriptural, many-sided, and vigorous truth.