Feast of Thomas More, Scholar & Martyr, & John Fisher, Bishop & Martyr, 1535 Almighty God, have mercy read more

Feast of Thomas More, Scholar & Martyr, & John Fisher, Bishop & Martyr, 1535 Almighty God, have mercy on N and N and on all that bear me ill will, and would me harm, and on their faults and mine together; and by such easy, tender, merciful means as Thine infinite wisdom best can divine, vouchsafe to amend and redress; and make us saved souls together in heaven where we may ever live and love together with Thee and Thy blessed saints, O glorious Trinity, for the bitter passion of our sweet saviour Christ, amen. ... ascribed to Sir Thomas More July 7, 2002 O God, the strength of all those who put their trust in thee; mercifully accept our prayers; and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. ... Collect for the first Sunday after Trinity, The Book of Common Prayer [1928] July 8, 2002 Happily for us, the fundamental Christian message concerns not what we ought to do, but what God has done and what God is willing to do. In fellowship with Him and with others who are likewise trying to be like Him, we can be lifted up above our native possibilities.

Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885 Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269 I read more

Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885 Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269 I see the wrong that round me lies, I feel the guilt within; I hear, with groan and travail-cries, The world confess its sin. Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings I know that God is good!

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 The Church has no read more

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 The Church has no mission of its own. All we can have by ourselves is a club or a debating society; and our only hope, left to ourselves, is to win as many members for our own club and away from other clubs as we can. And whatever this is, it is not Mission. Mission belongs to God. The Mission was His from the beginning; it is His; it will always be His. He has His purposes from the foundation of the world, and the means to fulfill them; and the only part the Church has in this is obedience -- a share in the eternal and life-giving obedience of the Son of God... And the most terrible judgment on the Church comes when God leaves us to our own devices because He is tired of waiting for our obedience -- leaves us to be the domestic chaplains to a comfortable secular world -- and goes Himself into the wilderness of human need and injustice and pain. This judgment does come on churches and nations, when they forget that God is in command, that He does the choosing.

Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274 The end of all my labors has come. read more

Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274 The end of all my labors has come. All that I have written appears to me as much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.

A Christian is a man who feels repentance on Sunday for what he did on Saturday and is going to read more

A Christian is a man who feels repentance on Sunday for what he did on Saturday and is going to do on Monday.

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 In his experience of God, a read more

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 In his experience of God, a Christian has a strong sense of his individuality, never of his unity with God. Expressed more sharply, he has a strong sense of the Creator-creature distinction, never of merging or absorption. Or, to put it more sharply still, a Christian has a sense of his moral sin and not just of his metaphysical smallness in the face of the beyond. The dilemma for man is not who he is but what he has done. His predicament is not that he is small, but that he is sinful.

God has called us to shine, just as much as Daniel was sent into Babylon to shine. Let no one read more

God has called us to shine, just as much as Daniel was sent into Babylon to shine. Let no one say that he cannot shine because he has not so much influence as some others may have. What God wants you to do is to use the influence you have. Daniel probably did not have much influence down in Babylon at first, but God soon gave him more because he was faithful and used what he had.

Theologians have felt no hesitation in founding a system of speculative thought on the teachings of Jesus; and yet Jesus read more

Theologians have felt no hesitation in founding a system of speculative thought on the teachings of Jesus; and yet Jesus was never an inhabitant of the realm of speculative thought.

Feast of Mark the Evangelist The reason why we can hope to find God is that He is here, read more

Feast of Mark the Evangelist The reason why we can hope to find God is that He is here, engaged all the time in finding us. Every pulse of love is a tendril that draws us in His direction. Every verification of truth links the finite mind up into a Foundational Mind that undergirds us. Every deed of good will points toward a consummate Goodness which fulfills all our tiny adventures in faith. We can find Him because in Him we live and move and have our being.