Feast of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, Teacher, Martyr, c.200 We need not despair of any man, so long as read more

Feast of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, Teacher, Martyr, c.200 We need not despair of any man, so long as he lives. For God deemed it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit evil at all.

One use of prayer is to maintain in us a higher standard and prevent our principles insensibly sinking to our read more

One use of prayer is to maintain in us a higher standard and prevent our principles insensibly sinking to our practice, or to the practice of the world around us.

Oh, plain, and easy, and simple way of salvation! wanting no subtleties of art or science, no borrowed learning, no read more

Oh, plain, and easy, and simple way of salvation! wanting no subtleties of art or science, no borrowed learning, no refinements of reason; but all done by the simple natural motion of every heart that truly longs after God. For no sooner is the finite desire of the creature in motion towards God, but the infinite desire of God is united with it, co-operates with it; and in this united desire of God and the creature is the salvation and life of the soul brought forth.

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.

Feast of Simon & Jude, Apostles Some natures will endure an immense amount of misery before they feel read more

Feast of Simon & Jude, Apostles Some natures will endure an immense amount of misery before they feel compelled to look there for help whence all help and healing come. They cannot believe that there is verily an unseen, mysterious power, till the world and all that is in it has vanished in the smoke of despair; till cause and effect are nothing to the intellect, and possible glories have faded from the imagination. Then, deprived of all that made life pleasant or hopeful, the immortal essence, lonely and wretched and unable to cease, looks up with its now unfettered and wakened instinct to the source of its own life -- to the possible God who, notwithstanding all the improbabilities of His existence, may yet perhaps be, and may yet perhaps hear His wretched creature that calls. In this loneliness of despair, life must find The Life: for joy is gone, and life is all that is left; it is compelled to seek its source, its root, its eternal life. This alone remains a possible thing. Strange condition of despair into which the Spirit of God drives a man -- a condition in which the Best alone is the Possible!

Nothing shall be lost that is done for God or in obedience to Him.

Nothing shall be lost that is done for God or in obedience to Him.

Inward rest... gives an air of leisure to [Christ's] crowded life: above all, there is in this Man a secret read more

Inward rest... gives an air of leisure to [Christ's] crowded life: above all, there is in this Man a secret and a power of dealing with the waste-products of life, the waste of pain, disappointment, enmity, death -- turning to divine uses the abuses of man, transforming arid places of pain to fruitfulness, triumphing at last in death, and making a short life of thirty years or so, abruptly cut off, to be a "finished" life. We cannot admire the poise and beauty of this human life, and then ignore the things that made it.

Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189 Christ became ever more and more painfully convinced read more

Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189 Christ became ever more and more painfully convinced that men did not know God. They can't, He said, or they could not live as they are doing. Some of them are so anxious and worried, with all God's care and strength and love to lean against! They cannot know of it, and be so fidgety and nervous as they are. Some of them are afraid. Their consciences have drawn so grim a picture of Him that fearfully they shrink out of His presence, wish there were not God! Frightened of God, with His free and full and eager forgiveness, with His incredible generosity, with His compassionate heart that nobody can sour into illwill, do what he may. And even the best of them are not quite sure. Their faith at most is but a timorous hope, and a trembling perhaps; no more. Often in the Synagogue He had watched them sobbing out their penitential psalms and begging God to turn from anger and be gracious toward them... And it amazed Christ. Look at His sun, He cries, how it streams down in all its midday fullness on the most unworthy, and at the rain, how it falls healingly upon the fields of the least grateful, and how He keeps thrusting His benefits and blessings into the most soiled hands, loading the most impossible people with His kindnesses. If only I could make them see God as He really is: if only they could realize that He is their Father, that what their own child is to them, that, and far more, each of them is to Him.

Jesus! why dost Thou love me so? What hast Thou seen in me To make my happiness so great, So read more

Jesus! why dost Thou love me so? What hast Thou seen in me To make my happiness so great, So dear a joy to Thee?