Feast of Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, 605 Christians must learn again what Christians have always known -- how read more

Feast of Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, 605 Christians must learn again what Christians have always known -- how to live without immediate hopes in the world.

Commemoration of Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, c.862 Commemoration of Bonaventure, Franciscan Friar, Bishop, Peacemaker, 1274 It is necessary to read more

Commemoration of Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, c.862 Commemoration of Bonaventure, Franciscan Friar, Bishop, Peacemaker, 1274 It is necessary to die, but nobody wants to; you don't want to, but you are going to, willy-nilly. A hard necessity that is, not to want something which can not be avoided. If it could be managed, we would much rather not die; we would like to become like the angels by some other means than death. "We have a building from God," says St. Paul, "a home not made with hands, everlasting in heaven. For indeed we groan, longing to be clothed over with our dwelling from heaven; provided, though we be found clothed, and not naked. For indeed we who are in this dwelling place groan, being burdened; in that we do not wish to be stripped, but to covered over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." We want to reach the kingdom of God, but we don't want to travel by way of death. And yet there stands Necessity saying: "This way, please." Do you hesitate, man, to go this way, when this is the way that God came to you?

It is not the distance of the earth from the sun, nor the sun's withdrawing itself, that makes a dark read more

It is not the distance of the earth from the sun, nor the sun's withdrawing itself, that makes a dark and gloomy day; but the interposition of clouds and vaporous exhalations. Neither is thy soul beyond the reach of the promise, nor does God withdraw Himself; but the vapours of thy carnal, unbelieving heart do cloud thee.

One way to recall the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquility, is not read more

One way to recall the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquility, is not to let it wander too far at other times. You should keep it strictly in the Presence of God; and , being accustomed to think of Him often, you will find it easy to keep your mind calm in the time of prayer, or at least to recall it from its wonderings.

Feast of Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, Scholar, 899 Commemoration of Cedd, Founding Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop read more

Feast of Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, Scholar, 899 Commemoration of Cedd, Founding Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of the East Saxons, 664 All the revelations of God, as well as the laws of men, go upon this presumption, that men are not stark fools, but that they will consider their interest and have some regard to the great concernment of their eternal salvation. And this is as much to secure men from mistake in matters of belief as God hath afforded to keep men from sin in matters of practice. He hath made no effectual and infallible provision that men shall not sin; and yet it would puzzle any man to give a good reason why God should take more care to secure men against errors in belief than against sin and wickedness in their lives.

Feast of Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 680 Commemoration of Elizabeth, Princess of Hungary, Philanthropist, 1231 Commemoration of Mechtild, Bèguine of read more

Feast of Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 680 Commemoration of Elizabeth, Princess of Hungary, Philanthropist, 1231 Commemoration of Mechtild, Bèguine of Magdeburg, Mystic, Prophet, 1280 If He hath promised to make us happy, though He hath not particularly declared to us wherein this happiness shall consist, yet we may trust Him that made us, to find out ways to make us happy, and may believe that He who made us, without our knowledge or desire, is able to make us happy beyond them both.

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary As out of Jesus' affliction came a read more

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary As out of Jesus' affliction came a new sense of God's love and a new basis for love between men, so out of our affliction we may grasp the splendor of God's love and how to love one another. Thus the consummation of the two commandments was on Golgotha; and the Cross is, at once, their image and their fulfillment.

Feast of Basil the Great & Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops, Teachers, 379 & 389 Commemoration of Seraphim, Monk of Sarov, Mystic, read more

Feast of Basil the Great & Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops, Teachers, 379 & 389 Commemoration of Seraphim, Monk of Sarov, Mystic, Staretz, 1833 The fool for Christ holds a prophetic role in Christianity, from the early church to Russian Orthodox "pilgrims" and such later fools as Luther, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky, who were seekers after the true, the good, the holy, the beautiful. They were insane -- not in a clinical sense, but in the madness of the Holy, an insanity which ordinary sanity refuses to admit.

Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356 Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, read more

Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356 Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, 1932 I suppose these are the three main dangers to which ecclesiastical developments are liable: (1) The danger of undue accommodation to natural religion or to the indolence and superstitious tendencies of human nature, from which result undue and unguarded accretions upon Christian doctrine and perversions of it. (2) There is the danger of one-sidedness by accommodation to the particular tendencies of a particular age. (3) There is the danger of an arrested development, because ecclesiastical authority acting hastily or unguardedly solidifies the one-sidedness or undue accommodation of a particular moment of the Church into a premature and unjustifiable dogma. There is, I venture to think, for all these dangers one remedy, and one remedy only, and that the most old-fashioned; and yet it is with this that is bound up all that is most true, all that is most free, all that is most spiritual in the Church. The remedy to which I refer is the continual recurrence to the original pattern, the continual appeal to antiquity and Scripture. Such an appeal limits the dogmatic authority and in a sense the whole authority of the Church. But it is by the maintenance of this appeal, and only so, that you can safeguard what is, after all, the most important thing, that is, the real power of the Church to be true to its own best spirit, to reassert the original teaching in all its freedom and largeness of application, without being trammelled and contracted by the errors and narrownesses of particular periods.