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Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356 Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, read more
Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356 Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, 1932 I suppose these are the three main dangers to which ecclesiastical developments are liable: (1) The danger of undue accommodation to natural religion or to the indolence and superstitious tendencies of human nature, from which result undue and unguarded accretions upon Christian doctrine and perversions of it. (2) There is the danger of one-sidedness by accommodation to the particular tendencies of a particular age. (3) There is the danger of an arrested development, because ecclesiastical authority acting hastily or unguardedly solidifies the one-sidedness or undue accommodation of a particular moment of the Church into a premature and unjustifiable dogma. There is, I venture to think, for all these dangers one remedy, and one remedy only, and that the most old-fashioned; and yet it is with this that is bound up all that is most true, all that is most free, all that is most spiritual in the Church. The remedy to which I refer is the continual recurrence to the original pattern, the continual appeal to antiquity and Scripture. Such an appeal limits the dogmatic authority and in a sense the whole authority of the Church. But it is by the maintenance of this appeal, and only so, that you can safeguard what is, after all, the most important thing, that is, the real power of the Church to be true to its own best spirit, to reassert the original teaching in all its freedom and largeness of application, without being trammelled and contracted by the errors and narrownesses of particular periods.
One mustn't make the Christian life into a punctilious system of law, like the Jewish, for two reasons. (1) It read more
One mustn't make the Christian life into a punctilious system of law, like the Jewish, for two reasons. (1) It raises scruples when we don't keep the routine. (2) It raises presumption when we do. Nothing gives one a more spuriously good conscience than keeping rules, even if there has been a total absence of all real charity and faith.
Feast of Hugh, Carthusian Monk, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200 Let me love Thee so that the honour, riches, read more
Feast of Hugh, Carthusian Monk, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200 Let me love Thee so that the honour, riches, and pleasures of the world may seem unworthy even of hatred -- may not even be encumbrances.
Take up the cross if thou the crown would'st gain.
[Lat., Tolle crucem, qui vis auferre coronam.]
Take up the cross if thou the crown would'st gain.
[Lat., Tolle crucem, qui vis auferre coronam.]
Those talents which God has bestowed upon us are not our own goods but the free gifts of God; and read more
Those talents which God has bestowed upon us are not our own goods but the free gifts of God; and any persons who become proud of them show their ungratefulness.
Wisdom outweighs any wealth.
Wisdom outweighs any wealth.
Commemoration of John Wyclif, Reformer, 1384 All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on read more
Commemoration of John Wyclif, Reformer, 1384 All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.
Commemoration of Anne & Joachim, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary The higher the mountains, the more understandable is read more
Commemoration of Anne & Joachim, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary The higher the mountains, the more understandable is the glory of Him who made them and who holds them in His hand.
I take it that every Christian delivers himself up wholly to God in his baptism, when he renounces all the read more
I take it that every Christian delivers himself up wholly to God in his baptism, when he renounces all the pomps and vanities of Satan, and enlists himself as a soldier to fight under Christ's banner all his life after. And Saint Paul, speaking of those that die with Christ, that they may live no longer to themselves, but to Him that died for them, does not mean this of monks only, but of Christians universally. ... The Colloquies of Erasmus July 13, 1999 Do right, and God's recompense to you will be the power of doing more right. Give, and God's reward to you will be the spirit of giving more: a blessed spirit, for it is the Spirit of God Himself, whose Life is the blessedness of giving. Love, and God will pay you with the capacity of more love; for love is Heaven: love is God within you.