Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 You, O eternal Trinity, are a deep sea, into which the read more

Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 You, O eternal Trinity, are a deep sea, into which the more I enter the more I find, and the more I find the more I seek. The soul cannot be satiated in your abyss, for she continually hungers after you, the eternal Trinity, desiring to see you with the light of your light. As the hart desires the springs of living water, so my soul desires to leave the prison of this dark body and see you in truth.

Feast of Saints & Martyrs of England And I said to the man who stood at the gate of read more

Feast of Saints & Martyrs of England And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light. that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.".

Commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community, 1637 Suffer all, and conquer all.

Commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community, 1637 Suffer all, and conquer all.

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can read more

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 Willibrord of York, Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle of Frisia, 739 Other sins find their vent in the read more

Feast of Willibrord of York, Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle of Frisia, 739 Other sins find their vent in the accomplishment of evil deeds, whereas pride lies in wait for good deeds, to destroy them.

Feast of Luke the Evangelist He is my Altar, I His holy place; I am His guest, and He my read more

Feast of Luke the Evangelist He is my Altar, I His holy place; I am His guest, and He my living food; I'm His by penitence, He is mine by grace; I'm His by purchase, He is mine by blood; He's my supporting elm, and I His vine: Thus I my Best-beloved's am; thus He is mine.

Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915 When law and read more

Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915 When law and sin ceased to be distinguished in Israel, compassion induced Him to appoint judges again. If these are gifted with heroic qualities, to vanquish the oppressors of Israel, it is nevertheless not this heroism that forms their principal characteristic. That consists in judging. They restore... the authority of the law. For this reason, God raises up judges, not princes. The title sets forth both their work and the occasion of their appointment. Israel is free and powerful when its law is observed throughout the land.

Feast of All Saints No doubt the gospel is quite free, as free as the Victoria Cross, which anyone read more

Feast of All Saints No doubt the gospel is quite free, as free as the Victoria Cross, which anyone can have who is prepared to face the risks; but it means time, and pains, and concentrating all one's energies upon a mighty project. You will not stroll into Christlikeness with your hands in your pockets, shoving the door open with a careless shoulder. This is no hobby for one's leisure moments, taken up at intervals when we have nothing much to do, and put down and forgotten when our life grows full and interesting... It takes all one's strength, and all one's heart, and all one's mind, and all one's soul, given freely and recklessly and without restraint. This is a business for adventurous spirits; others would shrink out of it. And so Christ had a way of pulling up would-be recruits with sobering and disconcerting questions, of meeting applicants -- breathless and panting in their eagerness -- by asking them if they really thought they had the grit, the stamina, the gallantry, required. For many, He explained, begin, but quickly become cowed, and slink away, leaving a thing unfinished as a pathetic monument of their own lack of courage and of staying power.

If Dr. [John A. T.] Robinson is right in saying that "God is teaching us that we must live as read more

If Dr. [John A. T.] Robinson is right in saying that "God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get on very well without him", then the Church has no need to say anything whatever to secularized man for that is precisely what secularized man already believes.