Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

3rd Monday after the Epiphany (January 26th, 2009)

In Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of Paradise, in Adam I died; how shall the Lord call me back, except He find in me Adam; guilty as I was in him, so now justified in Christ.

St. Ambrose: On the Death of Satyrus.

If you kept your body in accordance with virtue, your desires would not be of this world.

Leonardo da Vinci: Notebooks.

Third Sunday after the Epiphany (January 25th, 2009)

Now the reason why there are spiritual properties in all the material things of this world is only this, it is because the matter of this world is the materiality of the Kingdom of Heaven, brought down into a created state of grossness, death, and imprisonment, by occasion of the sin of those angels who first inhabited the place or extent of this material world. Now these heavenly properties which were brought into this created compaction lie in a continual desire to return to their first state of glory; and this is the groaning of the whole creation to be delivered from vanity which the Apostle speaks of.

William Law: An Appeal.

2nd Saturday after the Epiphany (January 24th, 2009)

Our accesses to his presence are but his descents into us; and when we get anything by prayer, he gave us beforehand the thing and the petition.

John Donne: Letters.

Meekness hath three degrees.  The first degree is: a man to be subject and lowered to his sovereign and not preferred or raised above him that is equal with him in estate.  The second is: to be subject to his equal like in estate and not to be raised or preferred above his underling.  The third and sovereign degree of meekness is: to be subject and lowered to his underling, that is, he that is less in estate than he.

The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, translated by Nicholas Love.

2nd Friday after the Epiphany (January 23rd, 2009)

Thy Kingdom come . . .
Christ Himself may be the kingdom of God, whom we day by day desire to come, whose advent we crave to be quickly manifested to us.  For since he is himself is the resurrection, since in him we rise again, so also the kingdom of God may be understood to be himself.

St. Cyprian: On the Lord's Prayer.

2nd Thursday after the Epiphany (January 22nd, 2009)

O Lord, shew me this matter; one fleeth from the world for Thy Name's sake, and another receiveth and is gracious for Thy Name's sake.

The Paradise of the Fathers.

A man will always be tripped up by that thing which he will not cut off from himself.

The Paradise of the Fathers.

2nd Wednesday after the Epiphany (January 21st, 2009)

Sin is a robbing of God: a robbery which becomes apparent in our arrogant endeavour to cross the line of death by which we are bounded (i. 18, 19); in our drunken blurring of the distance which separates us from God; in our forgetfulness of His invisibility; in our investing of men with the form of God, and of God with the form of man; and in our devotion to some romantic infinity, some 'No-God' of this world, which we have created for ourselves.

Karl Barth: The Epistle to the Romans.

2nd Tuesday after the Epiphany (January 20th, 2009)

God gives us many things in which He has Himself no part: being Himself self-existent, He gives us a beginning of existence; being Himself exempt from want, He gives us nourishment; Himself always the same, He gives us growth; Himself immortal and exempt from old age, He gives us a happy old age, and a happy death.

St. Clement: Stromata.