Commemoration of Albrecht Dürer, artist, 1528, and Michelangelo Buonarrotti, artist, spiritual writer, 1564 It is my opinion that art read more

Commemoration of Albrecht Dürer, artist, 1528, and Michelangelo Buonarrotti, artist, spiritual writer, 1564 It is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord... In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God... Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.

This is our great need, to be more like Christ, that His likeness may be seen in our lives; and read more

This is our great need, to be more like Christ, that His likeness may be seen in our lives; and this is just what is promised to us as we yield ourselves in full surrender to the working of His Spirit. Then, as we draw nearer to Christ, we shall be drawn nearer to His people; and in our search for unity with the members we shall be drawn closer to the Head.

Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349 It is of no use to say that Christ, read more

Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349 It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been super-added by the tradition of his followers. Who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings of Jesus or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source.

The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. read more

The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.

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 Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304 Christians in their relationships should be the most human people read more

Feast of Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304 Christians in their relationships should be the most human people you will ever see. This speaks for God in an age of inhumanity and impersonality and facelessness. When people look at us, their reaction should be, "These are human people" -- human, because we know that we differ from the animal, the plant, and the machine; and that personality is native to what has always been [human]. If they cannot look upon us and say, "They are real people", nothing else is enough. (Continued tomorrow).

Common experience declares how momentary and how useless are those violent fits and gusts of endeavours which proceed from fear read more

Common experience declares how momentary and how useless are those violent fits and gusts of endeavours which proceed from fear and uncertainty, both in things spiritual and things temporal, or civil. Whilst men are under the power of actual impressions from such fears, they will convert to God, yea, they will turn in a moment, and perfect their holiness in an instant; but so soon as that impression wears off (as it will do on every occasion, and upon none at all) such persons are as dead and cold towards God as the lead or iron, which but now ran in a fiery stream, is now when the heat is departed from it.

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916 Assuredly there is but one way in read more

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916 Assuredly there is but one way in which to achieve what is not merely difficult but utterly against human nature: to love those who hate us, to repay their evil deeds with benefits, to return blessings for reproaches. It is that we remember not to consider men's evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.

Feast of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1944 In this age when it seems tacitly assumed that the read more

Feast of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1944 In this age when it seems tacitly assumed that the Church is concerned only with another world than this, and in this world with nothing but individual conduct as bearing on prospects in that other world, hardly anyone reads the history of the Church in respect to its exercise of political influence. It is often assumed that the Church exercises little such influence and ought to exercise none; it is further assumed that this assumption is self-evident and has always been made by reasonable men. As a matter of fact the assumption is entirely modern and unjustified.