Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Continuing a short series on prayer: The read more

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Continuing a short series on prayer: The life of prayer is just love to God, and the custom of being ever with Him.

If we think that Jesus did not rise, but "lives" and "reigns" only in his memories and imaginations, and is read more

If we think that Jesus did not rise, but "lives" and "reigns" only in his memories and imaginations, and is not actively and objectively "there" in the place of power, irrespective of whether he is acknowledged or not, we should give up hope of our own rising, and of Jesus' public return, and admit that the idea of churches and Christians being sustained by the Spirit-giving energy of a living Lord was never more than a pleasing illusion. And, in that case, we ought frankly to affirm that, though the New Testament is an amazing witness to the religious creativity of the human spirit, its actual message is more wrong than right, more misleading than helpful; and we must reconstruct our gospel accordingly. Only a weak, muddled, or cowardly mind will hesitate to do this.

Feast of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, Spiritual Writer, 1626 Commemoration of Sergius of Radonezh, Russian Monastic Reformer, Teacher, 1392 read more

Feast of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, Spiritual Writer, 1626 Commemoration of Sergius of Radonezh, Russian Monastic Reformer, Teacher, 1392 The manifestation of God in the flesh, the Evangelists set down by way of a history; the Apostle goes farther, and finds a deep mystery in it, and for a mystery commends it to us. Now there is difference between these two--many, this for one: that a man may hear a story and never wash his hands; but a mystery requires both the hands and the heart to be clean that shall deal with it.

Satan the envious said with a sigh: Christians know more about their hell than I.

Satan the envious said with a sigh: Christians know more about their hell than I.

Feast of Timothy and Titus, Companions of Paul Commemoration of Dorothy Kerin, Founder of the Burrswood Healing Community, 1963 read more

Feast of Timothy and Titus, Companions of Paul Commemoration of Dorothy Kerin, Founder of the Burrswood Healing Community, 1963 The... task of the ministry is, not to undertake some specialist activity from which the rest of the faithful are excluded, but to pioneer in doing that which the whole church must do. And the ministry itself is no originator, but receives its task from Christ. The ordained ministers only exercise the ministry which Christ himself has first exercised, and which he continues to exercise through them, and through their activity in the whole church also.

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 To put it shortly, the Church forgets that Christianity read more

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 To put it shortly, the Church forgets that Christianity is not an attitude of mind, but a type of life: a man's spirit is not known by his opinion, but by his action and general conduct.

Feast of Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 680 Commemoration of Elizabeth, Princess of Hungary, Philanthropist, 1231 Commemoration of Mechtild, Bèguine of read more

Feast of Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 680 Commemoration of Elizabeth, Princess of Hungary, Philanthropist, 1231 Commemoration of Mechtild, Bèguine of Magdeburg, Mystic, Prophet, 1280 The Kingdom of Heaven is not for the well-meaning: it is for the desperate.

Feast of the Venerable Bede, Priest, Monk of Jarrow, Historian 735 Commemoration of Aldhelm, Abbot of Mamsbury, Bishop of Sherborne, read more

Feast of the Venerable Bede, Priest, Monk of Jarrow, Historian 735 Commemoration of Aldhelm, Abbot of Mamsbury, Bishop of Sherborne, 709 The world exists, not for what it means but for what it is. The purpose of mushrooms is to be mushrooms, wine is in order to wine: things are precious before they are contributory. It is a false piety that walks through creation looking only for lessons which can be applied somewhere else. To be sure, God remains the greatest good; but, for all that, the world is still good in itself. Indeed, since He does not need it, its whole reason for being must lie in its own natural goodness; He has no use for it, only delight.

Feast of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1170 Owing to the pressure of an ever-increasing number of subjects read more

Feast of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1170 Owing to the pressure of an ever-increasing number of subjects introduced into the curriculum of a school, it is only too possible for men to be held to be educated and intelligent without ever having seriously tested their intelligence upon, say, the Book of Job, or upon the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. No doubt there are very good excuses for this lack of discipline. Many forward-thinking men will tell you that the Bible is not worth serious attention, that it is simple, trivial, and out-of-date; and so, even though you may hear the Bible read, read it yourselves, or even study it, the tension of your energy may be relaxed -- subtly relaxed. But is quite certain that a widespread relaxation of the tension of Biblical interpretation has disastrous effects. For there is no corruption that threatens a country so surely as the corruption or sentimentalizing of its religion; and there is no corruption of the Christian religion so swift as that which sets in when the Church loses its strict Biblical discipline.