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 Do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus says that His yoke is easy, His burden is light. People sometimes refuse to do God's work just because it is easy. This is sometimes because they cannot believe that easy work is His work; but there may be a very bad pride in it. Some, again, accept it with half a heart and do it with half a hand. But however easy any work may be, it can not be well done without taking thought about it. And such people, instead of taking thought about their work, generally take thought about the morrow -- in which no work can be done, any more than in yesterday.

Feast of Willibrord of York, Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle of Frisia, 739 We ought indeed to expect to find read more

Feast of Willibrord of York, Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle of Frisia, 739 We ought indeed to expect to find the works of God in such things as the advance of knowledge. Knowledge of the physical universe is not to be thought of as irrelevant to Christian faith [simply] because it does not lead to saving knowledge of God. In so far as it is concerned with God's creation, physical science is a fitting study for God's children. Moreover, the advance of scientific knowledge does negatively correct and enlarge theological notions--at the least, the geologists and astrophysicists have helped us to rid ourselves of parochial notions of God, and filled in some of the meaning of such phrases as "almighty".

Many ordinary treasures may be denied the man who has God, or if he is allowed to have them, the read more

Many ordinary treasures may be denied the man who has God, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss.

Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 The type read more

Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 The type of Judaism in which Paul had grown up had become largely traditional: the word of the Lord, the Rabbis held, came to the prophets of old, but we can only preserve and interpret the truth they handed down. Jesus Christ, with a confidence that to the timid traditionalism of His time appeared blasphemous, asserted that He knew the Father and was prepared to let others into that knowledge. He did so, not by handing down a new tradition about God, but by making others sharers in His own attitude to God. This is what Paul means by "having the mind of Christ." It was this clear, unquestioning conviction that gave Paul his power as a missionary: but he expected it also in his converts. To them too "the world of knowledge" came "by the same Spirit". He prayed that God would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. Such knowledge is, as Paul freely grants, only partial, but, so far as it goes, it is real, personal knowledge. In friendship between men there is a mutual knowledge which is never complete or free from mystery: yet you can know with a certainty nothing could shake, that your friend is "not the man to do such a thing", or that such-and-such a thing that you have heard is "just like him." You have a real knowledge which gives you a criterion. Such is the knowledge the Christian has of his Father.

We feel that other churches must accept, as the pre-conditions of fellowship, such changes as will bring them into conformity read more

We feel that other churches must accept, as the pre-conditions of fellowship, such changes as will bring them into conformity with ourselves in matters which we regard as essential, and that a failure to insist on this will involve compromise in regard to what is essential to the Church's being. But for precisely the same reason, we cannot admit a demand from others for any changes in ourselves which would seem to imply a denial that we already possess the esse of the Church.

Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 [In nineteenth-century America] religion read more

Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 [In nineteenth-century America] religion became a matter of conduct, of good deeds, of works, with only a vague background of faith. It became highly functional, highly pragmatic; it became a guarantee of success, moral and material. "The proper study of mankind is man," was the evasion by which many American divines escaped the necessity for thought about God.

Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253 Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, read more

Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253 Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, Teacher, Tractarian, 1890 In the first ages, [catechizing] was a work of long time; months, sometimes years, were devoted to the arduous task of disabusing the mind of the incipient Christian of its pagan errors, and of moulding it upon the Christian faith. The Scriptures indeed were at hand for the study of those who could avail themselves of them, but St. Iranaeus does not hesitate to speak of whole races who had been converted to Christianity, without being able to read them. To be unable to read or write was in those times no evidence of want of learning; the hermits of the deserts were, in one sense of the word, illiterate, yet the great St. Anthony, though he knew not letters, was a match in disputation for the learned philosophers who came to try him.

Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before.

Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before.

The evil of riches, then, for institutions, for nations, for individuals, is that those who possess or seek to possess read more

The evil of riches, then, for institutions, for nations, for individuals, is that those who possess or seek to possess almost invariably overvalue possessions and so cease to live creatively. They stop loving God with all the heart and all the soul and all the strength and all the mind. They stop loving their neighbors, too. When you find a person of means who is not either a self-centered bore or a low person, you may know that God has worked a miracle.