When the will abandons what is above itself and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil -- not because read more

When the will abandons what is above itself and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil -- not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked. Therefore it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly and inordinately desiring an inferior thing.

Feast of Justin, Martyr at Rome, c.165 Commemoration of Angela de'Merici, Founder of the Institute of St. Ursula, 1540 read more

Feast of Justin, Martyr at Rome, c.165 Commemoration of Angela de'Merici, Founder of the Institute of St. Ursula, 1540 The attitude of Jesus to the Jewish law was singularly free and unembarrassed. He made full use of it as an impressive statement of high ethical ideals; even its ritual practices He treated with perfect tolerance where they did not conflict with fundamental moral obligations. From Pharisaic formalism He appealed to the relative simplicity of the venerable written Law. But again from the written Law itself He appealed to the basic rights and duties of humanity: the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; the Law might permit the dissolution of marriage, but there was something more deeply rooted in the nature of things which forbade it; the [law of retaliation], the central principle of legal justice, must go overboard in the interest of the holy impulse to love your neighbor, not merely as yourself, but as God has loved you. Such freehanded dealing meant that the whole notion of morality as a code of rules, with sanctions of rewards and punishments, was abandoned. But the average Christian was slow to see this implication. For instance, Jesus had taken fasting out of the class of meritorious acts, and given it a place only as the fitting and spontaneous expression of certain spiritual states. This is what an early authoritative catechism of the Church made of His teaching: "Let not your fast be made with the hypocrites, for they fast on Monday and Thursday; ye therefore shall fast on Wednesday and Friday." It sounds ludicrous, but we may ask, Was it not on some very similar principle that the Church did actually carry through its reconstruction of "religious observance"? And a Church which so perverted Christ's treatment of the ritual law proved itself almost equally incapable of understanding His drastic revision of the moral law.

This is the irrational season Where love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason There'd have been read more

This is the irrational season Where love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason There'd have been no room for the child.

Among Christians so much prominence has been given to the disciplinary effects of sorrow, affliction, bereavement, that they have been read more

Among Christians so much prominence has been given to the disciplinary effects of sorrow, affliction, bereavement, that they have been in danger of overlooking the other and more obvious side: that by every joy, by every favor, by every sign of prosperity -- yea, and by these chiefly -- God designs to educate and discipline His children. This one-sided view of the truth has made many morbid, gloomy Christians, who look for God's hand only in the lightning and never think of seeing it in the sunlight.

Our hearts deceive us, because we leave them to themselves, are absent from them, taken up in outward rules and read more

Our hearts deceive us, because we leave them to themselves, are absent from them, taken up in outward rules and forms of living and praying. But this kind of praying, which takes all its thoughts and words only from the state of our hearts, makes it impossible for us to be strangers to ourselves. The strength of every sin, the power of every evil temper, the most secret workings of our hearts, the weakness of any or all our virtues, is with a noonday clearness forced to be seen, as soon as the heart is made our prayer book, and we pray nothing, but according to what we read, and find there.

We may not understand how the spirit works; but the effect of the spirit on the lives of men is read more

We may not understand how the spirit works; but the effect of the spirit on the lives of men is there for all to see; and the only unanswerable argument for Christianity is a Christian life. No man can disregard a religion and a faith and a power which is able to make bad men good.

Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461 From subtle love of softening things, From easy choices, weakenings, (Not read more

Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461 From subtle love of softening things, From easy choices, weakenings, (Not thus are spirits fortified; Not this way went the Crucified;) From all that dims Thy Calvary, 0 Lamb of God, deliver me. Give me the love that leads the way, The faith that nothing can dismay, The hope no disappointments tire, The passion that will burn like fire; Let me not sink to be a clod: Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God!

Feast of Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894 Heaven overarches earth and sea, Earth-sadness and sea-bitterness. Heaven overarches you and read more

Feast of Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894 Heaven overarches earth and sea, Earth-sadness and sea-bitterness. Heaven overarches you and me: A little while and we shall be - Please God -- where there is no more sea Nor barren wilderness. Heaven overarches you and me, And all earth's gardens and her braves. Look up with me, until we see The day break and the shadows flee. What though to-night wrecks you and me, If so to-morrow saves?

Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099 What does this desire and this inability of ours proclaim to us read more

Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099 What does this desire and this inability of ours proclaim to us but that there was once in man a genuine happiness, of which nothing now survives but the mark and the empty outline; and this he vainly tries to fill from everything that lies around him, seeking from things that are not there the help that he does not get from those that are present? Yet they are quite incapable of filling the gap, because this infinite gulf can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object -- that is, God, Himself. He alone is man's veritable good, and since man has deserted Him it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature that has not been capable of taking His place for man: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has lost the true good, everything can equally appear to him as such -- even his own destruction, though that is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to nature.