Commemoration of Peter Chanel, Religious, Missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr, 1841 Tell God all that is in your read more

Commemoration of Peter Chanel, Religious, Missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr, 1841 Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them: show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself and others. If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back; neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration they say just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.

Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095 See that you buy the field where the Pearl is; sell read more

Commemoration of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095 See that you buy the field where the Pearl is; sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy: for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory: many are lying dead by the way, slain with security.

[At the Garden of Olives Monastery] "Why are you all so quiet all the time?" I say, still whispering read more

[At the Garden of Olives Monastery] "Why are you all so quiet all the time?" I say, still whispering at him in this hoarse voice. "We are teachers and workers," he says, "not talkers." "Workers, O.K.," I say, "but how can a teacher be quiet all the time and teach anybody anything?" "Christ was the best," he says, thinking of something. "He lived thirty-three years. Thirty years he kept quiet; three years he talked. Ten to one for keeping quiet.".

Feast of Saints & Martyrs of England Old truths must be constantly re-stated if they are not to read more

Feast of Saints & Martyrs of England Old truths must be constantly re-stated if they are not to be forgotten. To Homer, the dawn was "rosy-fingered"; to Shakespeare, it was "in russet mantle clad"; to Housman, "the ship of sunrise burning". The scientist can explain exactly why the sky looks as it does in the early morning, the physiologist why we perceive as we do. Yet no one suggests that there is no dawn at all, or that its appearance has changed over the centuries, or that any one of these percipients was mad or deceitful. Why should our knowledge of the Creator be less capable of variety and development than our knowledge of any aspect of Creation?

The Creeds... were formulated gradually, as a result of a series of desperate controversies -- which are now named, sometimes read more

The Creeds... were formulated gradually, as a result of a series of desperate controversies -- which are now named, sometimes after the supposed leaders and representatives of a particular interpretation of the Christian religion, and sometimes after the particular interpretation itself. I need not now attempt to make precise these heresies, as they came to be called. It is necessary only to point out that in various ways all these heresies were simplifications. By means of them, the revelation of God to men was made -- or appeared to be made -- less scandalous. On the other hand, the various clauses of the Creed were not formulated as a new simplification, or as an alternative-ism. They were nothing more than emphatic statements of the Biblical scandal, statements which brought into sharp antagonism the new simplification and the old, Scriptural, many-sided, and vigorous truth.

A system of doctrine has risen up during the last three centuries, in which faith or spiritual-mindedness is contemplated and read more

A system of doctrine has risen up during the last three centuries, in which faith or spiritual-mindedness is contemplated and rested on as the end of religion, instead of Christ. I do not mean to say that Christ is not mentioned as the author of all good, but that stress is laid on the believing rather than on the object of belief, on the comfort and persuasiveness of the doctrine than on the doctrine itself. And in this way religion is made to consist of contemplating ourselves, instead of Christ; not simply in looking to Christ, but in seeing that we look to Christ; not in His divinity and atonement, but in our conversion and faith in Him... [Continued tomorrow].

The Christian Church does not want and does not need members because of a job it has to do. The read more

The Christian Church does not want and does not need members because of a job it has to do. The Christian Church has a secret at her heart and she wants to share it. Whenever one, by repentance and forgiveness, enters this community of grace, he discovers life's end, and he too will be constrained to let this life flow out in appropriate channels. Thrilling and costly projects will come into existence, but not as ends in themselves, and the group will not become a means to [such ends]. The group will never forget that one of its primary functions is to up build the members in love.

One of the most striking parts of the Day of Atonement is that of the scapegoat. The high priest placed read more

One of the most striking parts of the Day of Atonement is that of the scapegoat. The high priest placed both his hands on the head of a goat and confessed all the sins of the nation. Then the goat carrying the sins of the people is sent off into the wilderness. But it is not just a piece of history! There is in the modern world a quest for scapegoats though with one enormous difference. Whenever there is an accident or a tragedy, there is a search for someone to blame. Often all the modern means of communication join in; accusations, resignations, demands for compensation and the rest. If a guilty person is found, then an orgy of condemnation and vilification. Rarely a sense of, there but for the grace of God go I. Instead of dealing gently with one another's failure because of our own vulnerability to criticism, there is the presumption that we are in a fit condition to judge and to condemn. The enormous difference? The original scapegoat followed a confession of the sins of the people. There was no blaming of someone else, but an admission of guilt and a quest for the forgiveness of God. The goat wasn't hated, but was a dramatic picture of the carrying away sins. It was the very opposite of a selfrighteous victimisation of someone else. Ever since 200 A.D., Christians have seen the scapegoat as a picture of Jesus. As it was led out to die in the wilderness bearing the sins of the people, so he was crucified outside Jerusalem for our sins. We are to be both forgiven and forgiving people.

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 It is the recognition of this divine necessity -- read more

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 It is the recognition of this divine necessity -- not to forgive, but to forgive in a way which shows that God is irreconcilable to evil, and can never treat it as other or less than it is -- it is the recognition of this divine necessity, or the failure to recognise it, which ultimately divides interpreters of Christianity into evangelical and non-evangelical, those who are true to the New Testament and those who cannot digest it.