Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

6th Wednesday after Easter (April 30th, 2008)

No commandment . . . is kept if, upon pretence of keeping that commandment, or of the service of God, I come to an uncharitable opinion of other men . . . This abundant and overflowing charity is the persuasive and antidote against the woe of this text, Woe unto the world because of scandals and offences.

John Donne: Sermons.

In every particular man there is some reason why he should be more afraid of God's judgements than another man.

John Donne: Sermons.

     Sole Victor from the expulsion of his foes,
     Messiah his triumphal chariot turned.

John Milton: Paradise Lost.

6th Tuesday after Easter (April 29th, 2008)

It may fortune thou wilt say, "I am content to do the best for my neighbour that I can, saving myself harmless."  I promise thee, Christ will not hear this excuse; for he himself suffered harm for our sakes, and for our salvation was put to extreme death.  I wis, if it had pleased him, he might have saved us and never felt pain; but in suffering pains and death he did give us example, and teach us how we should do one for another, as he did for us all; for, as he saith himself, "he that will be mine, let him deny himself, and follow me, in bearing my cross and suffering my pains."  Wherefore we must needs suffer pain with Christ to do our neighbour good, as well with the body and all his members, as with heart and mind.

Hugh Latimer: Sermons.

6th Monday after Easter (April 28th, 2008)

Remember: he who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling it pride and selfishness and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every mental gift, which always appear to the ignorance loving hypocrite as sins: but that which is a sin in the sight of cruel man, is not so in the sight of our kind God.  Let every Christian, as much as in him lies, engage himself openly and publicly, before all the world, in some mental pursuit for the building up of Jerusalem.

William Blake: Jerusalem.

Fifth Sunday after Easter (April 27th, 2008)

Nothing is so easy to men of goodwill as goodwill itself, and this is all that God requires.  Every act of goodwill permanently and sensibly increases goodwill.  Trifling acts of goodwill are often more efficacious in this way than great ones.  A flower given in kindness and at the right time profits more, both to the giver and receiver, than some vast material benefit in which the goodwill is hidden by the magnitude of the act.  Some little, sensible individual touch from the hand of our Lord may convert the heart more than the contemplation of His death for us.

Coventry Patmore: The Rod, The Root, and the Flower.

5th Saturday after Easter (April 26th, 2008)

Either let us fear the wrath to come, or let us love the grace that is present—either this or that; only be it ours to be found in Christ Jesus unto live, which is life indeed.

St. Ignatius: Epistle to the Ephesians.

Man has a natural dread of walking in the gloom—what wonder then that he naturally has a dread of the unconditional, of having to do with the unconditional, of which it holds good that no night and "no deepest gloom half so dark" as this gloom and this night, where all relative ends (the common milestones and signposts), where all relative considerations (the lanterns which else are a help to us), where even the tenderest and sincerest feelings of devotion—are quenched . . . for otherwise it is not unconditionally the unconditional.

Søren Kierkegaard: Journals.

The Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist

Who has taught the evangelists the qualities of a perfectly heroic soul, that they paint it so perfectly in Jesus Christ?  Why do they make Him weak in His agony?  Do they know how to paint a resolute death?  Yes, for the same Saint Luke paints the death of Saint Stephen as braver than that of Jesus Christ.
  They make him therefore capable of fear, before the necessity of dying has come, and then altogether brave.
  But When they make Him so troubled, it is when He afflicts Himself; and when men afflict Him, he is altogether strong.

Pascal: Pensées.

5th Friday after Easter (April 25th, 2008)

God's own work must be done by God's own ways.  Otherwise we can take not comfort in obtaining the end, if we cannot justify the means used thereunto.

Thomas Fuller: Good Thoughts in Bad Times.