Feast of John Vianney, Curè d'Ars, 1859 I am, indeed, far from agreeing with those who think all read more

Feast of John Vianney, Curè d'Ars, 1859 I am, indeed, far from agreeing with those who think all religious fear barbarous and degrading and demand that it should be banished from the spiritual life. Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things--ignorance, alcohol, passion presumption, and stupidity. It is very desirable that we should all advance to that perfection of love in which we shall fear no longer; but it is very undesirable, until we have reached that stage, that we should allow any inferior agent to cast out our fear.

Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330 The heart's slavish and dogged devotion to its idol read more

Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330 The heart's slavish and dogged devotion to its idol is what fathers of the Church have called "the bondage of the will". This bondage becomes most painfully apparent in our lives when we earnestly feel the need of changing but cannot; when we are attracted to another value that for one reason or another conflicts with the desires of our true god --that value nearest and dearest to us. But our true god lies so deeply inside us that often we are not even consciously aware of its presence or of what it actually is.

They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature read more

They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man; they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.

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.

O father Abram, what these Christians are,
Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect
The thoughts of read more

O father Abram, what these Christians are,
Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect
The thoughts of others!

Commemoration of Scholastica, Abbess of Plombariola, c.543 All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, read more

Commemoration of Scholastica, Abbess of Plombariola, c.543 All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired, although not in the hour or in the measure, or the very thing which they ask; yet they will obtain something greater and more glorious than they had dared to ask.

Continuing a short series on education: What are the gifts of biblical faith to the secular university? Education read more

Continuing a short series on education: What are the gifts of biblical faith to the secular university? Education can receive from the Bible a faith concerning man far more realistic than the naive faith by which education has tried to live. Not man as "pure reason": his reason is not pure. Not man as incipient angel: he can turn any structure... to good or to demonic purpose. Not man with his steps on the highroad called evolution: he is relatively free and, therefore, can and does wreck any evolution unless some Grace constantly renews his onward journey. Not man who by his science is sure to fashion a "brave new world"; by science he can destroy the world. Not man as centrally and characteristically a reasonable creature who needs only that his mind shall be educated to build a reasonable world. Not man regarded in any naive faith, but man as potentially divine and potentially unworthy, who stands always in need of help from beyond the confines of the natural order. If education confronts this faith, education will know that the mind's adventure also, like all things human, stands in need of redemption; and it can then proceed with lowliness, and thus with the power and light which are the reward of the lowly.

We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to read more

We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology however frank and open our behaviour we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through Him.

Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavour Fellowship, 1951 We, and all things, exist in God's lnfinitude now; read more

Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavour Fellowship, 1951 We, and all things, exist in God's lnfinitude now; our individuality begins with it; our personality grows strong because of it; and we know, if we know anything, that while the more we approach the good the more we please God, at the same time the more men approach the good the more nobly distinctive, the more beautifully individual do their characters become. To imagine, then, at the end of this life we shall cease to exist as conscious beings, that our characters, our personalities, will fall back into some boundless being, instead of becoming more and more definite, more and more individual, is certainly not to exalt God; for it is founded on the belief, either that God is now belittled by our present individuality, or that our present individuality is a mere delusion. In the latter case God, whom we find in the depths of our souls, is doubtless also a delusion, for if the self is not real it is no respectable witness on whose testimony we can accept God. Our deepest mature conviction is that finite and infinity interpenetrate, as time and eternity interpenetrate, and our problems must be solved in the light of that conviction.