Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (August 31st, 2008)

The Goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down to the lowest part of our need.  It quickeneth our soul and bringeth it on life, and maketh it for to waxen in grace and virtue.  It is nearest in nature; and readiest in grace: for it is the same grace that the soul seeketh, and ever shall seek till we know verily that he hath us all in himself beclosed.

    For he hath no despite of that he hat made, nor hath he any disdain to serve us at the simplest office that to our body belongeth in nature, for love of the soul that he hath made to his own likeness.

    For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed.

Juliana of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love.

15th Saturday after Trinity (August 30th, 2008)

He showed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball.  I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought "What may this be?"  And it was generally answered thus: "It is all that is made."  I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for littleness.  And I was answered in my understanding: "It lasteth, and ever shall last for that God loveth it."  And so all thing hath the Being by the love of God.

Juliana of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love.

This and that are good; take away this and that, and see good in itself if thou canst; and so thou shalt see God, good not by any other good, but the good of every good.

St. Augustine: On the Trinity.

15th Friday after Trinity (August 29th, 2008)

St. Thomas says the active life is better than the life of contemplation, so far as we actually spend in charity the income we derive from contemplation.  It is all the same thing; we have but to root ourselves in this same ground of contemplation to make it fruitful in works, and the object of contemplation is achieved.

Eckhart: Sermons and Collations.

Love is as strong as death; but nothing else is as strong either; and both, love and death, met in Christ.  How strong and powerful upon you then should that instruction be, that comes to you from both these, the love and death of Christ Jesus!

John Donne: Sermons.

15th Thursday after Trinity (August 28th, 2008)

Love does not consist in great sweetness of devotion, but in a more fervent determination too strive to please God in all things, in avoiding, as fas as possible, all that would offend Him, and in praying for the increase of the glory and honour of his Son and for the growth of the Catholic Church.

St. Teresa: The Interior Castle.

But the blessed Anthony knelt Down upon his knees on the ground, and prayed before Him Who said, "Before thou criest unto Me, I will answer thee" (Isaiah lxv, 24), and said, "O my Lord, this I entreat Thee: let not Thy love be blotted out from my mind, and behold, I am, by Thy grace, innocent before Thee."

St. Athanasius: Life of St. Anthony.

15th Wednesday after Trinity (August 27th, 2008)

The less it thinketh that it loveth or seeth God the nearer it nigheth for to perceive the gift of the blessed love.  For then is love master, and worketh in the soul, and maketh it for to forget itself, and for the see and behold only how love doth.  And then is the soul more suffering than doing, and that is clean love.

Walter Hylton: The Scale of Perfection.

Loving, it [the Soul] flies, runs, and rejoices; it is free and is not restrained.

Thomas à Kempis: Imitation.

Great love is also pliant and inquisitive in the instances of its expression.

Jeremy Taylor: Holy Living.