Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary The Old Testament does not occupy itself with read more

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary The Old Testament does not occupy itself with how Israel thought of God. Its concern is with how Israel ought to think of God. To it, the existence of God is not an open question, nor His nature, nor the accessibility of knowledge of Him. God Himself has taken care of that He has made Himself known to His people, and their business is not to feel after Him if haply they may fumblingly find Him, but to hearken to Him as He declares to them what and who He is. [Continued].

It is the "terror of the Lord" that causes us to "persuade" others, but it is the love of Christ read more

It is the "terror of the Lord" that causes us to "persuade" others, but it is the love of Christ that constraineth us to live to Him.

Oh my debt of praise, how weighty is it, and how far run up! Oh that others would lend me read more

Oh my debt of praise, how weighty is it, and how far run up! Oh that others would lend me to pay, and teach me to praise!

Feast of Stephen, Deacon, First Martyr O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! read more

Feast of Stephen, Deacon, First Martyr O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by: Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight. For Christ is born of Mary; And gathered all above, While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love. O morning stars together Proclaim the holy birth; And praises sing to God the King, And peace to men on earth. How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is giv'n! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of His Heav'n. No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive Him still, The dear Christ enters in. O holy Child of Bethlehem, Descend to us, we pray, Cast out our sins, and enter in, Be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel.

Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist Continuing a short series on authenticity: There, right in the read more

Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist Continuing a short series on authenticity: There, right in the middle of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked"; but watch the faces, mark well the accents, of the debunkers. These are the men whose tap-root in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach -- men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality, they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honour a king, they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.

When the bones have become most dry, when they are lying most scattered and separate from each other, there is read more

When the bones have become most dry, when they are lying most scattered and separate from each other, there is still a word going forth -- from Him who liveth for ever and ever -- the voice which says, "These bones shall rise." All struggles after union, though they may be of the most abortive kind, though they may produce fresh sects and fresh divisions, though they must do so as long as they rest on the notion that unity is something visible and material, yet indicate a deep and divine necessity which men could not be conscious of in their dreams if they were not beginning to wake.

Feast of the Venerable Bede, Priest, Monk of Jarrow, Historian, 735 Commemoration of Aldhelm, Abbot of Mamsbury, Bishop of Sherborne, read more

Feast of the Venerable Bede, Priest, Monk of Jarrow, Historian, 735 Commemoration of Aldhelm, Abbot of Mamsbury, Bishop of Sherborne, 709 As we shared together our feelings about the study groups, we realised that we were not meeting together each week for an intellectual exercise: some thing very real and significant was taking place. We were coming to know that the Christian faith is not primarily an ethic; it is not the struggle to do good or be good, but an encounter with Christ, of which morality and ethical living are by-products.

One attempt to reconcile the Gnostic doctrine [of the unreality of evilness] of matter with the apostolic teaching about Christ read more

One attempt to reconcile the Gnostic doctrine [of the unreality of evilness] of matter with the apostolic teaching about Christ was the theory that the body which our Lord took at His coming into the world was not a real body but a phantom one. He only seemed to inhabit a material body, and from the Greek word dokein ["to seem"], people who held this theory were known as Docetists. But if Christ's incarnation was unreal, His death and resurrection were also unreal; and the whole gospel message was thus evacuated of its truth and power: one unhappy legacy of this short-lived phase of Christian heresy remains to bedevil Christian witness to Muslims up to the present day. For when the Koran says of Jesus that "they did not kill Him, nor did they crucify Him, but they thought they did", we may infer that Muhammad was indebted for this idea to a Christian source tainted with Docetism.

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.