Feast of John Vianney, Curè d'Ars, 1859 To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian read more

Feast of John Vianney, Curè d'Ars, 1859 To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life -- to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son -- how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it means to refuse God's mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.

The true ground of most men's prejudice against the Christian doctrine is because they have no mind to obey it.

The true ground of most men's prejudice against the Christian doctrine is because they have no mind to obey it.

There is one single fact which we may oppose to all the wit and argument of infidelity, namely, that no read more

There is one single fact which we may oppose to all the wit and argument of infidelity, namely, that no man ever repented of being a Christian on his death bed.

The possibility of rejection was ever present. St. Paul did not establish himself in a place and go on preaching read more

The possibility of rejection was ever present. St. Paul did not establish himself in a place and go on preaching for years to men who refused to act on his teaching. When once he had brought them to a point where decision was clear, he reminded that they should make their choice. If they rejected him, he rejected them... He did not simply "go away"; he openly rejected those who showed themselves unworthy of his teaching. It was part of the Gospel that men might "judge themselves unworthy of eternal life". It is a question which needs serious consideration whether the Gospel can be truly preached if this element is left out.

Feast of Peter & Paul, Apostles You cannot escape Christ, do what You will. You reject His divinity, but, read more

Feast of Peter & Paul, Apostles You cannot escape Christ, do what You will. You reject His divinity, but, so doing, you have not evaded Him. If He is a man just like us, then obviously you must be a man like Him.

Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill.

Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill.

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can read more

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can act. And you may well say "act". For what I call "myself" (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction; memories, glimpses in the shavinglass, and snatches of the very fallible activity called "introspection", are the principal ingredients. Normally I call this construction "me"' and the stage set "the real world". Now the moment of prayer is for me -- or involves for me as its condition -- the awareness, the reawakened awareness, that this "real world" and "real self" are very far from being rock-bottom realities. I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or to take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist. And I also remember that my apparent self -- this clown or hero or super -- under his grease-paint is a real person with an off-stage life. The dramatic person could not tread the stage unless he concealed a real person: unless the real and unknown I existed, I would not even make mistakes about the imagined me. And in prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but -- what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance?

Jesus once declared that God is "good to the ungrateful and the wicked" (St. Luke 6:35), and I remember preaching read more

Jesus once declared that God is "good to the ungrateful and the wicked" (St. Luke 6:35), and I remember preaching a sermon on this text to a horrified and even astonished congregation who simply refused to believe (so I gathered afterwards) in this astounding liberality of God. That God should be in a state of constant fury with the wicked seemed to them only right and proper, but that God should be kind towards those who were defying or disobeying His laws seemed to them a monstrous injustice. Yet I was but quoting the Son of God Himself, and I only comment here that the terrifying risks that God takes are part of His Nature. We do not need to explain or modify His unremitting love towards mankind.

Even in a day of overdone distinctions, one might point out that interpretations are not properly to be classified as read more

Even in a day of overdone distinctions, one might point out that interpretations are not properly to be classified as historical or dogmatic, but as true or false. If they are false, it does not matter whether they be called dogmatic or historical; and if they are true, they may quite well be both.