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

Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 It is, of course, impossible to exaggerate the importance of the historicity of what is commonly known as the Resurrection. If, after all His claims and promises, Christ had died and merely lived on as a fragrant memory, He would only be revered as an extremely good but profoundly mistaken man. His claims to be God, His claims to be Himself the very principle of life, would be mere self-delusion. His authoritative pronouncements on the nature of God and Man and Life would be at once suspect. Why should He be right about the lesser things, if He was proved to be completely wrong in the greater?

Feast of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, c.326 If we with earnest effort could succeed To make our life one long, read more

Feast of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, c.326 If we with earnest effort could succeed To make our life one long, connected prayer, As lives of some, perhaps, have been and are; If, never leaving Thee, we have no need Our wandering spirits back again to lead Into Thy presence, but continued there Like angels standing on the highest stair Of the Sapphire Throne: this were to pray indeed!

Forgiveness is a rebirth of hope, a reorganization of thought, and a reconstruction of dreams. Once forgiving begins, dreams can read more

Forgiveness is a rebirth of hope, a reorganization of thought, and a reconstruction of dreams. Once forgiving begins, dreams can be rebuilt. When forgiving is complete, meaning has been extracted from the worst of experiences and used to create a new set of moral rules and a new interpretation of life's events.

The men of faith might claim for their positions ancient tradition, practical usefulness, and spiritual desirability, but one query could read more

The men of faith might claim for their positions ancient tradition, practical usefulness, and spiritual desirability, but one query could prick all such bubbles: Is it scientific? That question has searched religion for contraband goods, stripped it of old superstitions, forced it to change its categories of thought and methods of work, and in general has so cowed and scared religion that many modern-minded believers... instinctively throw up their hands at the mere whisper of it... When a prominent scientist comes out strongly for religion, all the churches thank Heaven and take courage, as though it were the highest possible compliment to God to have Eddington believe in Him. Science has become the arbiter of this generation's thought, until to call even a prophet and a seer 'scientific' is to cap the climax of praise.

For man to turn his back on God is to turn towards death; it involves ultimately the renunciation of every read more

For man to turn his back on God is to turn towards death; it involves ultimately the renunciation of every aspect of life. To deny God, man must ultimately deny that there is any law or reality. The full implications of this were seen in the [19th] century by two profound thinkers, one a Christian and the other a non-Christian. [Friedrich W.] Nietzsche recognized fully that every atheist is an unwilling believer to the extent that he has any element of justice or order in his life, to the very extent that he is even alive and enjoys life. In his earlier writings, Nietzsche first attempted the creation of another set of standards and values, affirming life for a time, until he concluded that he could not affirm life itself nor give it any meaning, any value, apart from God. Thus Nietzsche's ultimate counsel was suicide; only then, [he asserted] can we truly deny God: and in his own life, this brilliant thinker -- one of the clearest in his description of modern Christianity and the contemporary issue -- did in effect commit a kind of psychic suicide. The same concept was powerfully developed by [Fyodor M.] Dostoyevski, particularly in The Possessed, or, more literally, the Demon-Possessed. Kirilov, a thoroughly Nietzschean character, is very much concerned with denying God, asserting that he himself is God and that man does not need God. But at every point, Kirilov finds that no standard or structure in reality can be affirmed without ultimately asserting God, that no value can be asserted without being ultimately de rived from the Triune God. As a result, Kirilov committed suicide as the only apparently practical way of denying God and affirming himself -- for to be alive was to affirm this ontological deity in some fashion.

Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730 The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in read more

Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730 The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, pride, and worldly honor.

It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the read more

It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the same thing, described from opposite points of view. How we shall experience it depends upon the way we shall come up against it: God does not change; it is man's moral state that changes. The wrath of God is a figure of speech to denote God's unchanging opposition to sin; it is His righteous love operating to destroy evil. It is not evil that will have the last word, but good; not sorrow, but joy; not hate, but love.

Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274 God usually answers our prayers so much more according read more

Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274 God usually answers our prayers so much more according to the measure of His own magnificence, than of our asking, that we do not recognize His benefits to be those for which we sought Him.

Feast of Paulinus, Bishop of York, Missionary, 644 God is especially present in the hearts of His people, by read more

Feast of Paulinus, Bishop of York, Missionary, 644 God is especially present in the hearts of His people, by His Holy Spirit; and indeed the hearts of holy men are temples in the truth of things, and in type and shadow they are heaven itself. For God reigns in the hearts of His servants; there is His Kingdom. The power of grace hath subdued all His enemies; there is His power. They serve Him night and day, and give Him thanks and praise; that is His glory. This is the religion and worship of God in the temple. [Continued tomorrow] ...Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living October 11, 1997 Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675 The temple itself is the heart of man, Christ is the high priest, who from thence sends up the incense of prayers, and joins them to His own intercession and presents all together to His Father; and the Holy Ghost by His dwelling there hath also consecrated it into a temple; and God dwells in our hearts by faith, and Christ by His Spirit, and the spirit by His purities: so that we are also cabinets of the mysterious Trinity, and what is this short of heaven itself, but as infancy is short of manhood?... The same state of life it is, but not the same age. It is heaven in a looking glass, dark but yet true, representing the beauties of the soul, and the grace of God, and the images of His eternal glory, by the reality of a special presence. ...Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living October 12, 1997 Commemoration of Wilfrid, Abbot of Ripon, Bishop of York, Missionary, 709 Commemoration of Elizabeth Fry, Prison Reformer, 1845 If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry: for I am verily persuaded, the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy Word.