Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675 What happens to someone who follows heretical teachings? It became quickly read more

Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675 What happens to someone who follows heretical teachings? It became quickly and readily apparent how cruel heretical teachings are and how prevalent the heresies are in contemporary times. Victims of these teachings have been encouraged to either to escape the world and their basic humanity into some form of flight and death or to use religion to undergird and isolate further their own self-centered self from the need to be loved and to love... The conviction that heresy is cruel has given me a growing awe of and respect for orthodoxy.

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 Continuing a short series on read more

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 Continuing a short series on forgiveness: He who has not forgiven an enemy has not yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life.

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells read more

Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888 Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells That the wind sways above a ruined shrine. Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine. Light songs we breathe, that perish with our breath, Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod. They shall not live who have not tasted death. They only sing who are struck dumb by God.

The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.

The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.

Feast of Mark the Evangelist To love another as oneself is only the halfway house to Heaven, though it read more

Feast of Mark the Evangelist To love another as oneself is only the halfway house to Heaven, though it seems as far as it was prudent to bid man go. The "greater love than this" of which our Lord speaks, though He does not command it, is to give oneself for one's friends. And when one does this, or is ready to do this, prayer even for "us" seems too selfish -- and it is unnecessary, for we then possess all that God Himself can give us. The easy renunciation of self for the Beloved becomes the very breath of life.

Feast of Andrew the Apostle I would very earnestly ask you to check your conception of Christ, the image read more

Feast of Andrew the Apostle I would very earnestly ask you to check your conception of Christ, the image of Him which as a Christian you hold in your mind, with the actual revealed Person who can be seen and studied in action in the pages of the Gospels. It may be of some value to hold in our minds a bundle of assorted ideals to influence and control our conduct. But surely we need to be very careful before we give that "bundle" the name of Jesus Christ the Son of God.

I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.

I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.

[If] there be any difference among professed believers as to the sense of Scripture, it is their duty to tolerate read more

[If] there be any difference among professed believers as to the sense of Scripture, it is their duty to tolerate such difference in each other, until God shall have revealed the truth to all.

The Creeds... were formulated gradually, as a result of a series of desperate controversies -- which are now named, sometimes read more

The Creeds... were formulated gradually, as a result of a series of desperate controversies -- which are now named, sometimes after the supposed leaders and representatives of a particular interpretation of the Christian religion, and sometimes after the particular interpretation itself. I need not now attempt to make precise these heresies, as they came to be called. It is necessary only to point out that in various ways all these heresies were simplifications. By means of them, the revelation of God to men was made -- or appeared to be made -- less scandalous. On the other hand, the various clauses of the Creed were not formulated as a new simplification, or as an alternative-ism. They were nothing more than emphatic statements of the Biblical scandal, statements which brought into sharp antagonism the new simplification and the old, Scriptural, many-sided, and vigorous truth.