Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

3rd Tuesday after Easter (April 24th, 2007)

Faith becomes hope through repentance, as does fear through faith; perseverance and exercise in these, united with instruction, are perfected into charity; and charity is perfected into knowledge.

St. Clement: Stromata.

Each one creates his god, when judging, "This is good or bad"; and men mourn or rejoice too much at events.

Pascal: Pensées.

3rd Monday after Easter (April 23rd, 2007)

Wonder not then that all the true followers of Christ, the saints of every age, have so gloried in the cross of Christ, have imputed such great things to it, have desired nothing so much as to be partakers of it, to live in constant union with it.  It is because His sufferings, His death and cross were the fulness of His victory over all the works of the devil.  Not an evil in flesh and blood, not a misery of life, not a chain of death, not a power of hell and darkness, but were all baffled, broken, and overcome by the process of a suffering and dying Christ.  Well therefore may the cross of Christ be the glory of Christians!

William Law: The Spirit of Love.

Second Sunday after Easter (April 22nd, 2007)

There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.  But what is Repentance?  Not the last and noblest and most refined achievement of the righteousness of men in the service of God, but the first elemental act of the righteousness of God in the service of men; the work that God has written in their hearts and which, because it is from God and not from men, occasions joy in heaven; that looking forward to God, and to Him only, which is recognized only by God and by God Himself.

Karl Barth: The Epistle to the Romans.

All things in motion desire to make known their own proper movement, and this is an aspiration after the Divine Peace of the whole, which, unfalling, preserves all things from falling, and, unmoved, guards the idiosyncrasy and life of all moving things, so that the things moved, being at peace among themselves, perform their own proper functions.

Dionysius the Areopagite: On the Divine Names.

2nd Saturday After Easter (April 21st, 2007)

Grant me, O most sweet and loving Jesus, to rest in thee above every creature, above all health and beauty, above all glory and honour, above all power and dignity, above all joy and exultation, above all fame and praise, above all sweetness and consolation, above all hope and promise, above all desert and desire, above all gifts and presents which Thou art able to bestow or infuse, above all joy and gladness which the mind is capable of receiving and feeling; finally, above Angels and Archangels, and above all the host of Heaven, above all things visible and invisible, and above all that falls short of Thyself, O Thou, my God.

Thomas à Kempis: Imitation.

2nd Friday After Easter

  Jehovah's salvation
Is without money and without price, in the continual forgiveness of sins,
In the perpetual mutual sacrifice in great eternity: for behold,
There is none that liveth and sinneth not!  And this is the covenant
Of Jehovah: "If you forgive one another so shall Jehovah forgive you;
That He Himself may dwell among you."

William Blake: Jerusalem.

Joseph wraps the body in a clean linen cloth, in which same linen sheet were let down to Peter out of heaven all manner of living creatures; whence we understand that under the representation of this linen cloth the Church is buried together with Christ.

St. Hillary of Poitiers, quoted by Thomas Aquinas: Catena Aurea.

2nd Thursday After Easter

The word was from the beginning and therefore was and is the divine of all things; but now that He has taken the name, which of old was sanctified, the Christ, He is called by me a New Song.

St. Clement: Address to the Greeks.

He called us when we were not, and willed us from not being to be.

St. Clement: Epistles.