Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 This matter of "salvation" is, when seen intuitively, a very read more

Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 This matter of "salvation" is, when seen intuitively, a very simple thing. But when we analyze it, it turns into a complex tangle of paradoxes. We become ourselves by dying to ourselves. We gain only what we give up, and if we give up everything we gain everything. We cannot find ourselves within ourselves, but only in others; yet at the same time, before we can go out to others we must first find ourselves. We must forget ourselves in order to become truly conscious of who we are. The best way to love ourselves is to love others; yet we cannot love others unless we love ourselves, since it is written, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." But if we love ourselves in the wrong way, we become incapable of loving anybody else. And indeed when we love ourselves wrongly, we hate ourselves; if we hate ourselves we cannot help hating others. Yet there is a sense in which we must hate others and leave them in order to find God... As for this finding of God, we cannot even look for Him unless we have already found Him, and we cannot find Him unless He has first found us. We cannot begin to seek Him without a special gift of His grace; yet if we wait for grace to move us before beginning to seek Him, we will probably never begin.

Feast of Perpetua, Felicity & their Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 203 Use yourself then by degrees thus to worship read more

Feast of Perpetua, Felicity & their Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 203 Use yourself then by degrees thus to worship Him, to beg His grace, to offer Him your heart from time to time, in the midst of your business, even every moment if you can. Do not always scrupulously confine yourself to certain rules, or particular forms of devotion; but act with a general confidence in God, with love and humility.

Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle It is often said with a sneer that the God of Israel was only read more

Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle It is often said with a sneer that the God of Israel was only a God of Battles, "a mere barbaric Lord of Hosts" pitted in rivalry against other gods only as their envious foe. Well it is for the world that He was indeed a God of Battles. Well it is for us that He was to all the rest only a rival and a foe. In the ordinary way, it would have been only too easy for them to have achieved the desolate disaster of conceiving Him as a friend. It would have been only too easy for them to have seen Him stretching out His hands in love and reconciliation, embracing Baal and kissing the painted face of Astarte... It would have been easy enough for His worshipers to follow the enlightened course of Syncretism and the pooling of all the pagan traditions. It is obvious indeed that His followers were always sliding down this easy slope; and it required the almost demoniac energy of certain inspired demagogues, who testified to the divine unity in words that are still like winds of inspiration and ruin, [to stop them]. The more we really understand of the ancient conditions that contributed to the final culture of the Faith, the more we shall have a real and even a realistic reverence for the greatness of the Prophets of Israel. As it was, while the whole world melted into this mass of confused mythology, this Deity who is called tribal and narrow, precisely because He was what is called tribal and narrow, preserved the primary religion of all mankind. He was tribal enough to be universal. He was as narrow as the universe.

It is necessary to point out that our responsibility is a relative one only, for as we think of the read more

It is necessary to point out that our responsibility is a relative one only, for as we think of the world-wide disintegration of the human family, the prospect before us could easily fill us with alarm and despondency, if we were not sure first of the absolute sovereignty of God who (I speak reverently) knows what He is doing in conducting this enormous experiment that we call life.

Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597 To have faith is to rely upon Christ, the Person, with the read more

Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597 To have faith is to rely upon Christ, the Person, with the whole heart. It is not the understanding of the mind, not the theological opinion, not creed, not organization, not ritual. It is the koinonia of the whole personality with God and Christ, ... This experience of communion with Christ is itself the continual attitude of dependence on the Saviour which we call faith.

At the Day of Judgment, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done.

At the Day of Judgment, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done.

Feast of Peter & Paul, Apostles Christ did not throw about that great word Salvation. But once, in the read more

Feast of Peter & Paul, Apostles Christ did not throw about that great word Salvation. But once, in the heart of an angry crowd, their enthusiasm soured suddenly into a growling muttering. He applied it confidently to a man who, under the inspiration of His friendship, had broken with his sorry past and his old selfish, unclean ways, and was doing what he could to put things right. Now that, He said, is what I call a saved man. Very solemnly He tells us that on the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked the questions we are expecting, but others that will puzzle and startle us. Those folk on the left hand were, as far as we hear, respectable folk; their business books were straight, their home life was kindly, they themselves were clean-living men and women: nothing whatever is laid to their charge excepting this, that they lived in a world needing their help and were too absorbed in something -- what it was, we are not told; it may have been their souls -- to give what aid they could.

In the twentieth century, the secularists, still living off the spiritual capital of Christianity, often pretended to chide Christians for read more

In the twentieth century, the secularists, still living off the spiritual capital of Christianity, often pretended to chide Christians for having invented the term "secularist," a term which, they said, was devoid of meaning. Their leaders knew very well, however, that secularism, like any other parasite, derives its sustenance from the object on which it feeds, and so they were rather pleased when milquetoast Christians timidly offered, as a definition of secularism, "living as though God did not exist." What Christians should have called it was, rather, "a contemptibly fraudulent way of living on the cheap, by reaping the maximum fruits of Christian effort, while contributing the minimum effort of your own." When secularists accused Christians of "living in the past," the Christians ought to have retaliated by pointing out that secularists were "living off the past." By the time they got around to doing so, however, the majority of secularists had become morally incapable of seeing the point.

Feast of Charles Simeon, Pastor, Teacher, 1836 It is further objected that he hath left to us no example read more

Feast of Charles Simeon, Pastor, Teacher, 1836 It is further objected that he hath left to us no example of that which by many is esteemed the only religious state of life, viz. perfect retirement from the world, for the more devout serving of God and freeing us from the temptations of the world -- such as is that of monks and hermits. This perhaps may seem to some a great oversight and omission. But our Lord in great wisdom thought fit to give us a pattern of a quite different sort of life, which was, not to fly the conversation of men and to live in a monastery or a wilderness, but to do good among men, to live in the world with great freedom and with great innocence. He did indeed sometimes retire himself for the more free and private exercise of devotion, as we ought to do; but he passed his life chiefly in the conversation of men, that they might have all the benefit that was possible of his instruction and example We read that "he was carried into the wilderness to be tempted," but not that he lived there to avoid temptation. He hath given us an example of denying the world without leaving it.