We love orthodoxy. It is good. It is the best. It is the clean, clear cut teaching of God's Word, read more

We love orthodoxy. It is good. It is the best. It is the clean, clear cut teaching of God's Word, the trophies won by truth in its conflict with error, the levees which faith has raised against the desolating floods of honest or reckless misbelief or unbelief; but orthodoxy, clear and hard as crystal, suspicious and militant, may be but the letter well shaped, well named, and well learned, the letter which kills. Nothing is so dead as a dead orthodoxy -- too dead to speculate, too dead to think, to study, or to pray.

The Christian Mission is thus anchored in dogma, is a result of what ordinary Christians believe. It is God's plan, read more

The Christian Mission is thus anchored in dogma, is a result of what ordinary Christians believe. It is God's plan, God's activity; but because God became man and took up manhood into Himself, it is God's will embodied in active obedience on the part of the Christian individual, the Christian group within the Church, and the Christian Church as a whole -- we are all involved in it, all of us, in our various callings.

Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461 Lord, forgive -- That I have dwelt too long on Golgotha, read more

Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461 Lord, forgive -- That I have dwelt too long on Golgotha, My wracked eyes fixed On Thy poor, tortured human form upon the cross, And have not seen The lilies in Thy dawn-sweet garden bend To anoint Thy risen feet; nor known the ways Thy radiant spirit walks abroad with men.

THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE Every single time a sacrament is celebrated, God takes action, there and read more

THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE Every single time a sacrament is celebrated, God takes action, there and then -- does something, not on Calvary, but in that church. And what He does is to come to each soul partaking in the Sacrament and to assure it that He stands to the best and biggest of His promises and to the fullness of His grace in Christ... de-universalizes the Scriptures and individualizes them, makes them a personal promise, couched no longer in general terms but offered to very you and very me, as individually as if they covered no other but referred to you and me alone. We may be cold and dead and unresponsive. None the less, something happens in the Sacrament. For God stands to His side of the Covenant, whether we stand to ours or not.

Feast of Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist True progress is not found in breaking away from the old ways, but read more

Feast of Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist True progress is not found in breaking away from the old ways, but in abiding in the teaching of Christ and His Spirit in the Church. There is an apparent contradiction here, for how can we abide, and yet advance? It is a paradox, like much else in scripture; but Christian experience proves it true. Those make the best progress in religion who hold fast by the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and not those who drift away from their moorings, rudderless upon a sea of doubt.

Feast of Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387 In the pure soul, whether it sing or pray, The Christ read more

Feast of Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387 In the pure soul, whether it sing or pray, The Christ is born anew from day to day. The life that knoweth Him shall bide apart And keep eternal Christmas in the heart.

Feast of All Saints What changed these very ordinary men (who were such cowards that they did not dare read more

Feast of All Saints What changed these very ordinary men (who were such cowards that they did not dare stand too near the cross in case they got involved) into heroes who would stop at nothing? A swindle? Hallucination? Spooky nonsense in a darkened room? Or Somebody quietly doing what He said He'd do -- walk right through death? What do YOU think?

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our read more

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our needs should come second. ... The Notebooks of Florence Allshorn March 16, 2000 Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can act. And you may well say "act". For what I call "myself" (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction; memories, glimpses in the shavinglass, and snatches of the very fallible activity called "introspection", are the principal ingredients. Normally I call this construction "me"' and the stage set "the real world". Now the moment of prayer is for me -- or involves for me as its condition -- the awareness, the reawakened awareness, that this "real world" and "real self" are very far from being rock-bottom realities. I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or to take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist. And I also remember that my apparent self -- this clown or hero or super -- under his grease-paint is a real person with an off-stage life. The dramatic person could not tread the stage unless he concealed a real person: unless the real and unknown I existed, I would not even make mistakes about the imagined me. And in prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but -- what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance?

Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no read more

Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.