Feast of Matthias the Apostle In religion, we are not asked to make up our minds, we are asked read more

Feast of Matthias the Apostle In religion, we are not asked to make up our minds, we are asked to make up our lives... We may refuse to make up our minds, but our lives get made up, one way or the other... Whatever we believe with our minds, our lives are committed either to God's way or to the God-denying way, and what matters in religion is the act of commitment.

Feast of Hugh, Carthusian Monk, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200 It is of great importance that you endeavour, at all read more

Feast of Hugh, Carthusian Monk, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200 It is of great importance that you endeavour, at all times, to keep your hearts in peace; that you may keep pure that temple of God. The way to keep it in peace is to enter into it by means of inward silence. When you see yourself more sharply assaulted, retreat into that region of peace; and you will find a fortress that will enable you to triumph over all your enemies, visible and invisible, and over all their snares and temptations. Within your own soul resides divine aid, and sovereign succour. Retreat within it, and all will be quiet, secure, peaceable, and calm. Thus, by means of mental silence, which can only be attained with divine help, you may look for tranquility in tumult: for solitude in company; for light in darkness; for forgetfulness in pressures: for vigour in despondency; for courage in fear; for resistance in temptation; and for quiet in tribulation.

When Jesus takes possession of our life, it is not only that the past is forgotten and forgiven; if that read more

When Jesus takes possession of our life, it is not only that the past is forgotten and forgiven; if that were all, we might well proceed to make the same mess of life all over again; but into life there enters this new power which enables us to be what by ourselves we could never be, and to do what by ourselves we could never do. Water and the Spirit stand for the cleansing and the strengthening power of Christ, which wipes out the past and which gives us victory in the future.

There is a major disaster when a person allows some success to become a stopping place rather than a way read more

There is a major disaster when a person allows some success to become a stopping place rather than a way station on to a larger goal. It often happens that an early success is a greater moral hazard than an early failure.

I believe that pure thinking will do more to educate a man than any other activity he can engage in. read more

I believe that pure thinking will do more to educate a man than any other activity he can engage in. To afford sympathetic entertainment to abstract ideas, to let one idea beget another, and that another, till the mind teems with them; to compare one idea with others, to weigh, to consider, evaluate, approve, respect, correct, refine; to join thought with thought like an architect till a whole edifice has been created within the mind; to travel back in imagination to the beginning of the creation and then to leap swiftly forward to the end of time; to bound upward through illimitable space and downward into the nucleus of an atom; and all this without so much as moving from our chair or opening the eyes--this is to soar above all the lower creation and come near to the angels of God.

Feast of All Saints From every pulpit in the land it needs to be thundered forth that God still read more

Feast of All Saints From every pulpit in the land it needs to be thundered forth that God still lives, that God still observes, ... still reigns. Faith is now in the crucible, it is being tested by fire, and there is no fixed... resting place for the heart and mind but in the Throne of God. What is needed now, as never before, is a full, positive, constructive setting forth of the Godhood of God.

When compassion for the common man was born on Christmas Day, with it was born new hope among the multitudes. read more

When compassion for the common man was born on Christmas Day, with it was born new hope among the multitudes. They feel a great, ever-rising determination to lift themselves and their children our of hunger and disease and misery, up to a higher level. Jesus started a fire upon the earth, and it is burning hot today, the fire of a new hope in the hearts of the hungry multitudes.

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916 No heart can conceive that treasury of mercies read more

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916 No heart can conceive that treasury of mercies which lies in this one privilege, in having liberty and ability to approach unto God at all times, according to His mind and will.

Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095 There is a misplaced sense of loyalty which makes many Christians feel read more

Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095 There is a misplaced sense of loyalty which makes many Christians feel reluctant to come out in open opposition to anything that calls itself by the same name, or uses words like "God" and "Christ"; even Christians who in practice dislike superstition as much as I do still often treat it as a minor aberration to be hushed up rather than a radical perversion to be denounced.