Commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012 Nothing is too great and nothing is too small to commit read more

Commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012 Nothing is too great and nothing is too small to commit into the hands of the Lord.

Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for Himself is love: and it is the greatest thing read more

Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for Himself is love: and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the Law. It does the work of all the graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love of sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation and without opportunity, so does the love of God: it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace, without any other aims but those of love. It is a grace that loves God for Himself, and our neighbors for God. The consideration of God's goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from Him, may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginning of glory.

We can do nothing, we say sometimes, we can only pray. That, we feel, is a terribly precarious second-best. So read more

We can do nothing, we say sometimes, we can only pray. That, we feel, is a terribly precarious second-best. So long as we can fuss and work and rush about, so long as we can lend a hand, we have some hope; but if we have to fall back upon God -- ah, then things must be critical indeed!

Commemoration of Lanfranc, Prior of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1089 The denominations, churches, sects, are sociological groups whose read more

Commemoration of Lanfranc, Prior of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1089 The denominations, churches, sects, are sociological groups whose principle of differentiation is to be sought in their conformity to the order of social classes and castes. It would not be true to affirm that the denominations are not religious groups with religious purposes; but it is true that they represent the accommodation of religion to the caste system. They are emblems, therefore, of the victory of the world over the church, of the secularization of Christianity, of the church's sanction of that divisiveness which the church's gospel condemns.

When we are saved, we are at home in the universe; and, in principle and in the main, feeble and read more

When we are saved, we are at home in the universe; and, in principle and in the main, feeble and timid creatures as we are, there is nothing anywhere within the world or without it that can make us afraid.

Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.

Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.

When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines.

When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines.

Feast of Oswald, King of Northumbria, Martyr, 642 Continuing a short series of verse on Christ: Break Thou read more

Feast of Oswald, King of Northumbria, Martyr, 642 Continuing a short series of verse on Christ: Break Thou the bread of life, Dear Lord, to me, As Thou didst break the loaves Beside the sea; Beyond the sacred page I seek Thee, Lord; My spirit pants for Thee, O living word! Bless Thou the truth, dear Lord, To me, to me, As Thou didst bless the bread By Galilee; Then shall all bondage cease, All fetters fall; And I shall find my peace, My All-in-All.

Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525 We can all call to mind movements which have begun as pure read more

Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525 We can all call to mind movements which have begun as pure upsurges of fresh spiritual vitality, breaking through and revolting against the hardened structure of the older body, and claiming, in the name of the Spirit, liberty from outward forms and institutions. And we have seen how rapidly they develop their own forms, their own structures of thought, of language, and of organisation. It would surely be a very unbiblical view of human nature and history to think -- as we so often, in our pagan way, do -- that this is just an example of the tendency of all things to slide down from a golden age to an age of iron, to identify the spiritual with the disembodied, and to regard visible structure as equivalent to sin. We must rather recognise here a testimony to the fact that Christianity is, in its very heart and essence, not a disembodied spirituality, but life in a visible fellowship, a life which makes such total claim upon us, and so engages our total powers, that nothing less than the closest and most binding association of men with one another can serve its purpose. ... Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God February 2, 2000 THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE Persons that are well affected to religion, that receive instructions of piety with pleasure and satisfaction, often wonder how it comes to pass that they make no greater progress in that religion which they so much admire. Now the reason of it is this: it is because religion lives only in their head, but something else has possession of their heart; and therefore they continue from year to year mere admirers and praisers of piety, without ever coming up to the reality and perfection of its precepts.