Christianity is not a religion but a relationship of love expressed toward God and men. The church is committed by its Founder to reach out in love to every movement that upbuilds character and integrity in men, and every gesture that aims to resolve the differences that estrange human beings from each other. The Gospel in its free course goes hand-in-hand with the cup of cold water.
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Feast of English Saints & Martyrs of the Reformation We must not encourage in ourselves or others any tendency read more
Feast of English Saints & Martyrs of the Reformation We must not encourage in ourselves or others any tendency to work up a subjective state which, if we succeeded, we should describe as "faith", with the idea that this will somehow ensure the granting of our prayer. We have probably all done this as children. But the state of mind which desperate desire working on a strong imagination can manufacture is not faith in the Christian sense. It is a feat of psychological gymnastics.
Commemoration of Thomas à Kempis, priest, spiritual writer, 1471 Every man naturally desires knowledge; but what good is knowledge read more
Commemoration of Thomas à Kempis, priest, spiritual writer, 1471 Every man naturally desires knowledge; but what good is knowledge without fear of God? Indeed a humble rustic who serves God is better than a proud intellectual who neglects his soul to study the course of the stars.
It's bad when you fail morally. It's worse when you don't repent.
It's bad when you fail morally. It's worse when you don't repent.
Feast of English Saints & Martyrs of the Reformation Continuing a series on the person of Jesus: We might read more
Feast of English Saints & Martyrs of the Reformation Continuing a series on the person of Jesus: We might have said beforehand, if we had been told that God was coming into a man's life, ... "That must be something very terrible and awful. That certainly must rend and tear the life to which God comes. At least, it will separate it and make it unnatural and strange. God fills a bush with His glory and it burns. God enters into the great mountain, and it rocks with earthquake. When he comes to occupy a man, He must distort the humanity which He occupies into some inhuman shape." Instead of that, this new life into which God comes, seems to be the most quietly, naturally human life that was ever seen upon the earth. It glides into its place like sunlight. It seems to make it evident that God and man are essentially so near together, that the meeting of their natures in the life of a God-man is not strange. So always does Christ deal with His own nature, accepting His Divinity as you and I accept our humanity, and letting it shine out through the envelope with which it has most subtly and mysteriously mingled, as the soul is mingled with and shines out through the body.
Commemoration of Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies, Missionary, 1552 Who is there that ever receives a gift read more
Commemoration of Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies, Missionary, 1552 Who is there that ever receives a gift and tries to make bargains about it? Let us, then, return thanks for what He has bestowed on us. Who can tell whether, if we had had a larger share of ability or stronger health, we should not have possessed them to our destruction.
Commemoration of Mellitus, First Bishop of London, 624 Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you read more
Commemoration of Mellitus, First Bishop of London, 624 Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you -- out of love -- takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.
Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded.
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded.
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
At the very moment when the pulpit has fallen strangely silent about sin, fiction can talk of little except evil, read more
At the very moment when the pulpit has fallen strangely silent about sin, fiction can talk of little except evil, not indeed viewed as sin, but apparently as the invariable ways of a peculiarly repulsive insect, which it can't help, poor thing; and there is no manner of use expecting anything from it, except the nastiness natural to it.
Feast of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, Martyr, c.155 We may search so far, and reason so long of faith read more
Feast of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, Martyr, c.155 We may search so far, and reason so long of faith and grace, as that we may lose not only them, but even our reason too, and sooner become mad than good. Not that we are bound to believe any thing against reason, that is, to believe, we know not why. It is but a slack opinion, it is not Belief, that is not grounded upon Reason. It is true, we have not a Demonstration; not such an Evidence as that one and two are three, to prove these to be Scriptures of God; God hath not proceeded in that manner, to drive our reason into a pound, and to force it by a peremptory necessity to accept these for Scriptures, for then, here had been no exercise of our Will, and our assent, if we could not have resisted.
