Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

17th Wednesday after Trinity (September 30th, 2009)

If thou hast broken a vow, tie a knot on it to make it hold together again.  It is a spiritual thrift, and no misbecoming baseness, to piece and join thy neglected promises with fresh ones.  So shall thy vow in effect be not broken when new mended: and remain the same, though not by one entire continuation, yet by a constant successive renovation.

Thomas Fuller: A Wounded Conscience.

To be free is precisely the same thing as to be pious, wise, just and temperate, careful of one's own, abstinent from what is another's, and thence, in fine, magnanimous and brave.

John Milton: Second Defense.

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (September 29th, 2009)

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.

17th Tuesday after Trinity (September 29th, 2009)

The man who wishes to prove himself always in the right, in everything that he does, sees, hears, and discusses, and who will not give way and be silenced, will never be at peace in himself, and will have a barren, sullen, and wandering mind; he will prey upon himself, even though he be left in peace by all, and is tried by no outward pressure.

Johannes Tauler: Sermons.

Oh, the dignity, the DIGNITY of mediocre souls!  I have known it for a long time, this sinister mockery of my Saviour crucified!

Léon Bloy: Letters to his Fiancée.

17th Monday after Trinity (September 28th, 2009)

Now forasmuch as God hath so furnished the world, that there is no good thing needful but the same is also possible to be had; justice is the virtue whereby that good which wanteth in ourselves we receive inoffensively at the hands of others.

Richard Hooker: Sermons.

We must be always on our guard lest under pretext of keeping one commandment we be found breaking another.

St. Basil: The Longer Rules.

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (September 27th, 2009)

A brother asked Abba Poemen, saying, "Tell me, why is it that when I offer repentance to a brother who is wroth with me I do not see him pleased with me?"  The old man said unto him, "Tell me truly: when thou offerest to him repentance, dost thou not think that thou art not doing it because thou hast sinned against him, but because of the commandment?"  And the brother said unto him, "It is even thus."  The old man said unto him, "Because of this God doth not permit him to be pleased with thee, and because thou dost not offer repentance to him in fulfilment of thine own desire, but as if thou hadst not sinned against him, but he had sinned against thee."

The Paradise of the Fathers.

For the sake of each of us he laid down his life . . . He demands of us in return our lives for the sake of each other.

St. Clement.