Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

20th Tuesday after Trinity (September 30th, 2008)

Teach me the art of patience whilst I am well, and give me the use of it when I am sick.

Thomas Fuller: Good Thoughts in Bad Times.

Teach me the art of patience whilst I am well, and give me the use of it when I am sick.

Thomas Fuller: Good Thoughts in Bad Times.

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

God which moveth mere natural agents as an efficient only, doth likewise move intellectual creatures, and especially his holy angels: for beholding the face of God, in admiration of so great excellency they all adore him; and being rapt with the love of his beauty, they cleave inseparably for ever unto him.  Desire to resemble him in goodness maketh them unweariable and even unsatiable in their longing to do by all means all manner good unto all the creatures of God, but especially unto the children of men: in the countenance of whose nature, looking downward, they behold themselves beneath themselves; even as upward, in God, beneath whom themselves are, they see that character which is nowhere but in themselves and us resembled.

Richard Hooker: Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

The Cause of all is not one, as one among many, but before every one and every multitude, and it determines every one and every multitude.

Dionysius the Areopagite: On The Divine Names.

20th Monday after Trinity (September 29th, 2008)

In suffering and tribulation there are really certain situations in which, humanly speaking, the thought of God and that he is nevertheless love, makes the suffering far more exhausting . . . For either one suffers at the thought that God the all-powerful, who could so easily help, leaves one helpless, or else one suffers because one's reason is crucified by the thought that God is love all the same and that what happens to one is for one's good . . . The further effort which the idea of God demands of us is to have to understand that suffering must not only be borne but that it is good, a gift of the God of love.

Søren Kierkegaard: Journals.

Ninteenth Sunday after Trinity (September 28th, 2008)

He who did not suffer as the man suffers upon whom hardships and adversity suddenly fall but who has before him every instant the possibility that everything nevertheless might be redressed—for He knew that it was inevitable; He who knew that with every new sacrifice He made in behalf of the truth He was hastening His persecution and destruction, so that He had control of His fate, could ensure for Himself the splendour of royal power and the devout admiration of the race if He would let go of the truth, but knew also with even greater certainty that He would ensure His destruction, if (oh, eternally certain way to destruction!) He were in any respect to desert the truth—how did he manage to live without anxiety for the next day? . . . He had Eternity with Him in the day that is called to-day, hence the next day had no power over Him, it had no existence for Him.  It had no power over Him before it came, and when it came, and was the day that is called to-day it had no power over Him than that which was the Father's will, to which He had consented with eternal freedom, and to which He obediently bowed.

Søren Kierkegaard: Christian Discourses.

19th Saturday after Trinity (September 27th, 2008)

Some men the fiend will deceive in this manner full wonderfully.  He will enflame their brains to maintain God's law, and to destroy sin in all other men.  He will never tempt them with a thing that is openly evil.  All men will they reprove of their faults right as though they had a cure of their souls: and yet they think that they dare not else for God but tell them their faults that they see.  And they say that they be stirred thereto by the fire of charity, and of God's love in their hearts; and truly they lie, for it is with the fire of hell, welling up in their brains and in their imagination.

The Cloud of Unknowing.

[There are] . . . those who form too strong a love for one spiritual art, and make, as it were, an end for themselves of this act, and if, by any chance, they lose it, straightaway they despair and cease from all other acts.

St. Catherine of Siena.

19th Friday after Trinity (September 26th, 2008)

Pride calls me to the window, gluttony to the table, wantonness to the bed, laziness to the chimney, ambition commands me to go up-stairs, and covetousness to come down.  Vices, I see, are as well contrary to themselves as to virtue.  Free me, Lord, from this distracted case; fetch me from being sin's servant to be thine, whose "service is perfect freedom," for thou art but one, and ever the same.

Thomas Fuller: Good Thoughts in Bad Times.

Would wicked men dwell a little more at home, and descend into the bottom of their own hearts they would soon find Hell opening her mouth wide upon them, and those secret fires of inward fury and displeasure breaking out upon them.

John Smith: Discoveries.