Commemoration of Douglas Downes, Founder of the Society of Saint Francis, 1957 I am glad that you have been acquainted, from your youth, with the wrestlings of God, being cast from furnace to furnace; knowing, if you were not dear to God, and if your health did not require so much of him, he would not spend as much physic upon you. All the brethren and sisters of Christ must be conformed to his image in suffering, Rom. viii.17, and some do more fully resemble the copy than others.
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Feast of George Herbert, Priest, Poet, 1633 If I be bound to pray for all that be in distress, surely I am bound, so far as it is in my power, to practice what I pray for.
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.
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For some extraordinary reason, the Church moves in an atmosphere of antiquity. I have no doubt that it makes for dignity; I have also no coubt that there are times when it makes for complete irrelevance; for, if there is one thing that is true of religion it is that it must always be expressible in contemporary terms. Religion fails if it cannot speak to men as they are.
Commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician, 1750 The Church knew what the Psalmist knew: music praises God. Music read more
Commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician, 1750 The Church knew what the Psalmist knew: music praises God. Music is as well, or better, able to praise Him than the building of a church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.
God, to redeem us at the deepest portion of our nature -- the urge to love and be loved -- read more
God, to redeem us at the deepest portion of our nature -- the urge to love and be loved -- must reveal His nature in an incredible and impossible way. He must reveal it at a cross. At the cross God wrapped his heart in flesh and blood and let it be nailed to the cross for our redemption.
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Feast of Michael & All Angels When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself -- a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous or unrighteous man, ... when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God... then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian.
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Feast of Agnes, Child Martyr at Rome, 304 A Christian man is most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.
Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame, if I cannot write better sermons read more
Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame, if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.
Feast of Luke the Evangelist No man dares to condemn the Christian faith today, because the Christian faith has read more
Feast of Luke the Evangelist No man dares to condemn the Christian faith today, because the Christian faith has not been tried. Not until men get rid of the thought that it is a poor machine, an expedient for saving them from suffering and pain; not until they get the grand idea of it as the great power of God present in and through the lives of men; not until then does Christianity enter upon its true trial and become ready to show what it can do.
