Feast of Basil the Great & Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops, Teachers, 379 & 389 Commemoration of Seraphim, Monk of Sarov, Mystic, read more

Feast of Basil the Great & Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops, Teachers, 379 & 389 Commemoration of Seraphim, Monk of Sarov, Mystic, Staretz, 1833 I have seen minute-glasses: glasses so short liv'd! If I were to preach upon this text ("For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matt. 6:21), to such a glass, it would be enough for half the sermon, enough to show the worldly man his treasure, and the object of his Heart, to call his eye to that minute-glass, and to tell him, "There flows, there flies, your treasure, and your heart with it." But if I had a secular glass, a glass that would run an age; if the two hemispheres of the world were composed in the form of such a glass, and all the world burnt to ashes, and all the ashes, and the sands, and atoms of the world put into that glass, it would not be enough to tell the godly man what his treasure, and the object of his heart is. A parrot will sooner be brought to relate to us the wisdom of a council table, than any Ambrose, or any Chrysostom, men that have gold and honey in their names, shall tell us what the treasure of heaven is, and that man's peace, that hath set his Heart upon that treasure.

Feast of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, Spiritual Writer, 1626 Commemoration of Sergius of Radonezh, Russian Monastic Reformer, Teacher, 1392 read more

Feast of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, Spiritual Writer, 1626 Commemoration of Sergius of Radonezh, Russian Monastic Reformer, Teacher, 1392 Pierce that in you, that was the cause of Christ's piercing; that is sin and the lusts thereof. Look and be pierced with love of Him, who so loved you, that He gave Himself in this sort to be pierced for you. Look upon Him, and His heart opened, and from that gate of hope promise yourself, and look for all manner of things that good are: the deliverance from the evil of our present misery [and] the restoring to the good of our primitive felicity. Look back upon it with some pain; for one way or other, look upon it we must.

Good Friday Feast of William Law, Priest, Mystic, 1761 Commemoration of William of Ockham, Franciscan Friar, Philosopher, Teacher, read more

Good Friday Feast of William Law, Priest, Mystic, 1761 Commemoration of William of Ockham, Franciscan Friar, Philosopher, Teacher, 1347 Commemoration of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Priest, Scientist, Visionary, 1955 Our Blessed Lord hath recommended His love to us as the pattern and the example of our love to one another. As, therefore, He is continually making intercession for us all, so ought we to intercede and pray for one another. "A new commandment," saith He, "I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." The newness of this precept did not consist in this, that men were commanded to love one another for this was an old precept, both of the law of Moses and of nature. But it was new in this respect, that it was to initiate a new and, till then, unheard-of example of love; it was to love one another as Christ had loved us. And if men are to know that we are disciples of Christ, by thus loving one another according to His new example of love, then it is certain that if we are void of this love we make it as plainly known unto men that we are none of His disciples.

Those who talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main read more

Those who talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main thing it is about; like reading Burke with no interest in politics, or reading the Aeneid with no interest in Rome... But there is a saner sense in which the Bible -- since it is, after all, literature -- cannot properly be read except as literature, and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are. Most emphatically, the Psalms must be read as poems -- as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry... Otherwise we shall miss what is in them and think we see what is not.

No one can deny that the New Testament has variety as well as unity. It is the variety which gives read more

No one can deny that the New Testament has variety as well as unity. It is the variety which gives interest to the unity. What is it in which these people, differing as widely as they do, are vitally and fundamentally at one, so that through all their differences they form a brotherhood and are conscious of an indissolubale spiritual bond? There can be no doubt that that which unites them is a common relation to Christ -- a common faith in Him, involving religious convictions about Him.

Commemoration of Felix, Bishop, Apostle to the East Angles, 647 Continuing a short series on the Bible: God read more

Commemoration of Felix, Bishop, Apostle to the East Angles, 647 Continuing a short series on the Bible: God the Father is the giver of Holy Scripture; God the Son is the theme of Holy Scripture; and God the Spirit is the author, authenticator, and interpreter of Holy Scripture.

Feast of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, Spiritual Writer, 1626 Commemoration of Sergius of Radonezh, Russian Monastic Reformer, Teacher, 1392 read more

Feast of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, Spiritual Writer, 1626 Commemoration of Sergius of Radonezh, Russian Monastic Reformer, Teacher, 1392 The characteristic of our modern Christianity, which correlates it with all apostolic times, is the substitution of loyalty to a person in place of belief in doctrines, as the essence and test of Christian life. This is the simplicity and unity by which the Gospel can become effective.

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.

Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no read more

Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.