Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

Our Lord asks but two things of us: love for Him and for our neighbor: these are what we must strive to obtain.  If we practice both these virtues perfectly we shall be doing His will and so shall be united to Him.

St. Teresa of Avila: The Interior Castle.

All bodies together and all minds together and all their products are not equal to the least motion of love; that belongs to an order higher by infinity.

Pascal: Pensées.

Christmas Week Saturday (Dec. 26th, 2009)

Grant to us, O Lord, to know that which is worth knowing, to love that which is worth loving, to praise that which pleases thee most, to esteem that which is most precious unto thee, and to dislike whatsoever is evil in thy eyes.  Grant us with true judgement to distinguish things that differ, and above all to search out and to do what is well pleasing unto thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Thomas à Kempis.

Grant to us, O Lord, to know that which is worth knowing, to love that which is worth loving, to praise that which pleases thee most, to esteem that which is most precious unto thee, and to dislike whatsoever is evil in thy eyes.  Grant us with true judgement to distinguish things that differ, and above all to search out and to do what is well pleasing unto thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Thomas à Kempis.

The Lord, having taken upon him all the infirmities of our body, is then covered with the scaret-coloured blood of all the martyrs.

St. Hilary of Poitiers, quoted by Thomas Aquinas: Catena Aurea.

The Feast of St. Stephen (December 26th, 2009)

Death is ugsome (loathsome) and very terrible unto the flesh; but joyful and welcome is it unto all such as are instructed in the secret science of God.

Miles Coverdale: Fruitful Lessons upon the Passion.

Christmas Day

This is the solemnity of all the Holy Trinity Father and Son and Holy Ghost by whom this soverign deed of the Incarnation was wrought and fulfilled . . . But sovereignly this day is a high feast and a special solemnity of all mankind: for this day was mankind sovereignly worshipped in that it was oned and knitted to the Godhead in Christ without departing.  And this day began the healing and the redemption of mankind, and the reconciling to the Father of heaven.  For unto this time God was wroth to mankind for the sin and the trespass of our forefathers.  But from this time forth he may no longer be wroth seeing his dear Son became man.  And therefore is this day skilfully called the plenty [plenteousness] of time to man.

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

But he was under a heavier law than the Greeks or Romans, the law of his Father and his own eternal decree.

John Donne: Sermons on Christmas Day, 1625.

Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by taking of the manhood into God.

The Creed commonly called of St. Athanasius.

4th Friday in Advent (December 25th, 2009)

Love is a life, a coupling together the loving and the loved.  For meekness maketh us sweet to God; purity joins us to God; love makes us one with God.  Love is fairhead [beauty] of all virtues.  Love is [the] thing through the which God loves us, and we God, and each one of us other.  Love is [the] desire of the heart, ever thinking to that that it loves; and when it has that it loves, then it joys, and nothing may make it sorry.  Love is yearning between two, with lastingness of thought.  Love is a stirring of the soul, for to love God for himself and all other thing for God; the which love, when it is ordained in God, it does away all inordinate love in anything that is not good.  But all deadly sin is inordinate love in a thing that it naught; then love puts out  all deadly sin.  Love is a virtue that is rightest affection of man's soul.  Truth may be without love, but it may naught help without it.  Love is perfection of letters, virtue of prophecy, fruit of truth, help of sacraments, stabling of with and cunning [knowledge], riches of poor men, live of dying men.  See how good love is.

Richard Rolle: The Form of Living.

4th Thursday in Advent (December 24th, 2009)

The Light which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world, came here in the flesh; because He was here in His Divinity alone, the foolish, blind, and unrighteous could not discern Him; those of whom it is said above, The darkness comprehended it not.

St. Augustine: On St. John