A basic trouble is that most Churches limit themselves unnecessarily by addressing their message almost exclusively to those who are open to religious impression through the intellect, whereas ... there are at least four other gateways -- the emotions, the imagination, the aesthetic feeling, and the will -- through which they can be reached.
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Commemoration of Wilson Carlile, Priest, Founder of the Church Army, 1942 There is no longer any room in the read more
Commemoration of Wilson Carlile, Priest, Founder of the Church Army, 1942 There is no longer any room in the world for a merely external form of Christianity, based upon custom. The world is entering upon a period of catastrophe and crisis when we are being forced to take sides, and in which a higher and more intense spiritual life will be demanded of Christians.
Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 The ordinary group of worshipping Christians, as the preacher read more
Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 The ordinary group of worshipping Christians, as the preacher sees them from the pulpit, does not look like a collection of very joyful people, in fact, they look on the whole rather sad, tired, depressed people. It is certain that such people will never win the world for Christ... It is no use trying to pretend: we may speak of joy and preach about it: but, unless we really have the joy of Christ in our hearts and manifest it, our words will carry no conviction to our hearers.
Commemoration of Peter Chanel, Religious, Missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr, 1841 We can reach the point where it read more
Commemoration of Peter Chanel, Religious, Missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr, 1841 We can reach the point where it becomes possible for us to recognize and understand Original Sin, that dark counter-centre of evil in our nature -- that is to say, though it is not our nature, it is of it -- that something within us which rejoices when disaster befalls the very cause we are trying to serve, or misfortune overtakes even those we love. Life in God is not an escape from this, but a way to gain full insight concerning it. It is not our depravity which forces a fictitious religious explanation upon us, but the experience of religious reality which forces the "Night Side" out into the light. It is when we stand in the righteous all-seeing light of love that we can dare to look at, admit, and consciously suffer under this something in us which wills disaster, misfortune, defeat to everything outside the sphere of our narrowest self interest.
Feast of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, Teacher, Martyr, c.200 We must never speak to simple, excitable people about "the read more
Feast of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, Teacher, Martyr, c.200 We must never speak to simple, excitable people about "the Day" without emphasizing again and again the utter impossibility of prediction. We must try to show them that that impossibility is an essential part of the doctrine. If you do not believe our Lord's words, why do you believe in His return at all? And if you do believe them, must you not put away from you, utterly and forever, any hope of dating that return?
Feast of John and Charles Wesley, Priests, Poets, Teachers, 1791 & 1788 He was but a heathen that said, read more
Feast of John and Charles Wesley, Priests, Poets, Teachers, 1791 & 1788 He was but a heathen that said, If God love a man, He takes him young out of this world; and they were but heathens, that observed that custom. to put on mourning when their sons were born, and to feast and triumph when they died. But thus much may we learn from these heathens, that if the dead, and we, be not upon one floor, nor under one story, yet we are under one roof. We think not a friend lost, because he has gone into another room, nor because he has gone into another land: and into another world, no man has gone; for that Heaven, which God created, and this world, is all one world... I spend none of my faith, I exercise none of my hope, in this, that I shall have my dead raised to life again. This is the faith that sustains me, when I lose by the death of others, or when I suffer by living in misery myself: that the dead and we are now all in one Church, and at the resurrection, shall be all in one Choir.
Feast of John of the Cross, Mystic, Poet, Teacher, 1591 He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over read more
Feast of John of the Cross, Mystic, Poet, Teacher, 1591 He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.
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.
Feast of Teresa of Avila, Mystic, Teacher, 1582 We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring read more
Feast of Teresa of Avila, Mystic, Teacher, 1582 We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God; for, beholding His greatness, we realize our own littleness; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble.
In the Bible, faith is a mixture of trust and trustworthiness. To have complete confidence in God makes a man read more
In the Bible, faith is a mixture of trust and trustworthiness. To have complete confidence in God makes a man reliable. And, when someone never lets you down, you look instinctively for a deeper relationship.
