Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 [Christ] tells us plainly, and read more

Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 [Christ] tells us plainly, and without any qualifications, that we are involved in a war in which there is no room for neutrals. Yet people attempt to evade His statement. Generally speaking, these are the very people who are the quickest in laying the blame upon God for all the sorrow and sin in the world. They argue that He could prevent it. They excuse their own do-nothing attitude by making of evil's apparent predominance a ground for doubt of His loving kindness. It never seems to occur to them to look for the cause in mankind.

Commemoration of Felix, Bishop, Apostle to the East Angles, 647 Sin is a base and ill-natured thing, and renders read more

Commemoration of Felix, Bishop, Apostle to the East Angles, 647 Sin is a base and ill-natured thing, and renders a man not so apt to be affected with the injuries he hath offered to God as with the mischief which is likely to fall upon himself.

Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 Only by critical questioning can I read more

Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 Only by critical questioning can I tell whether I am reading into the text, not only my own presuppositions and questions, but also those of my own generation and even those of my own church and religious tradition. Evangelicals have been too afraid of the word "criticism", when only by critical questioning can I sufficiently disengage myself from my own worldly or religious (even evangelical) tradition to ask: Is this what the Bible is really saying?

Feast of All Souls The antithesis between death and life is not so stark for the Christian as it read more

Feast of All Souls The antithesis between death and life is not so stark for the Christian as it is for the atheist. Life is a process of becoming, and the moment of death is the transition from one life to another. Thus it is possible for a Christian to succumb to his own kind of death-wish, to seek that extreme of other-worldliness to which the faith has always been liable, especially in periods of stress and uncertainty. There may appear a marked preoccupation with death and a rejection of all temporal things. To say that this world is in a fallen state and that not too much value must be set upon it, is very far from the Manichaean error of supposing it to be evil throughout. The Christian hope finds ambivalence in death: that which destroys, also redeems.

Commemoration of Bartolomè de las Casas, Apostle to the Indies, 1566 Of course, it all depends upon what we read more

Commemoration of Bartolomè de las Casas, Apostle to the Indies, 1566 Of course, it all depends upon what we are praying for. If we are whimpering, and sniveling, and begging to be spared the discipline of life that is sent to knock some smatterings of manhood into us, the answer to that prayer may never come at all. Thank God! Though, indeed, it is not easy to say that, with honesty. Still, it may never come at all, thank God. But if you have attained as far as Epictetus--pagan though you would call him--whose daily prayer was this: "O God, give me what Thou desirest for me, for I know that what Thou choosest for me is far better than I could choose"; if you are not bleating to get off, but asking to be given grace and strength to see this through with honour, "the very day" you pray that prayer, the answer always comes.

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 I look on all the world as read more

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 I look on all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.

PSALM 126 The Lord can clear the darkest skies Can give us day for night. Make drops of sacred read more

PSALM 126 The Lord can clear the darkest skies Can give us day for night. Make drops of sacred sorrow rise To rivers of delight.

If you will study the history of Christ's ministry from Baptism to Ascension, you will discover that it is mostly read more

If you will study the history of Christ's ministry from Baptism to Ascension, you will discover that it is mostly made up of little words, little deeds, little prayers, little sympathies, adding themselves together in unwearied succession. The Gospel is full of divine attempts to help and heal, in the body, mind and heart, individual men. The completed beauty of Christ's life is only the added beauty of little inconspicuous acts of beauty -- talking with the woman at the well; going far up into the North country to talk with the Syrophenician woman; showing the young ruler the stealthy ambition laid away in his heart, that kept him out of the kingdom of Heaven; shedding a tear at the grave of Lazarus; teaching a little knot of followers how to pray; preaching the Gospel one Sunday afternoon to two disciples going out to Emmaus; kindling a fire and broiling fish, that His disciples might have a breakfast waiting for them when they came ashore after a night of fishing, cold, tired, discouraged. All of these things, you see, let us in so easily into the real quality and tone of God's interests, so specific, so narrowed down, so enlisted in what is small, so engrossed in what is minute.

Feast of Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, Scholar, 899 Commemoration of Cedd, Founding Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop read more

Feast of Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, Scholar, 899 Commemoration of Cedd, Founding Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of the East Saxons, 664 Continuing a short series on prayer: All outward power that we exercise in the things about us is but a shadow in comparison of that inward power that resides in our will, imagination, and desires; these communicate with eternity and kindle a life which always reaches either Heaven or hell... Here lies the ground of the great efficacy of prayer, which when it is the prayer of the heart, the prayer of faith, has a kindling and creating power, and forms and transforms the soul into everything that the desire reaches after: it has the key to the Kingdom of Heaven and unlocks all its treasures; it opens, extends and moves that in us which has its being and motion in and with the divine nature. and so it brings us into real union and Communion with God.