Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

Second Sunday in Lent (Feburary 28th, 2010)

He seeth all our living here a penance, for kind loving in us is to him age-lasting penance in us; which penance he worketh in us, and mercifully he helpeth us to bear it . . . For this penance goeth never from us till what time that we be fulfilled.

Juliana of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love.

Although Christ died as man, and His holy soul was separated from His spotless body, nevertheless His Godhead remained unseparated from both—from the soul and from the body.

St. John Damascene: On the Faith.

                                 II
             THE TRIAL BEFORE CAIAPHAS

And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled.

Matthew 26:57

  When the Messiah . . . stands alone before the high-priest, deserted even by the chosen disciples . . . he is the sole representative at that moment of God's holy people; be bears in his own person the whole burden of Israel's appointed destiny.

Doctrine in the Church of England: Report of the Commission.

  The Goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down to the lowest part of our need.

Juliana of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love.

  Let them now hold him that he may work his own will with those who know it not.

St. Augustine: Lectures on St. John.

Now Caiaphas was he, which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.

John 18:14

  Nothing is due to anyone, except on account of something already given him gratuitously by God.

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica.

  I have a mind to draw a complete character of a worldly-wise man. . . . He would be highly-finished, useful, honoured, popular—a man revered by his children, his wife, and so forth.  To be sure, he must not expect to be beloved by one proto-friend; and if there be truth in reason or Christianity, he will go to hell.

S. T. Coleridge: Anima Poetae.

  Or is it not?  Is it indeed better that a thousand, or a million, should die, by painful and prolonged destruction, than that one should be unjustly put to death?  Perhaps; but to take the responsibility for it is not easy, and is should not suprise us if we, as well as Caiaphas, decline.

Anonymous.

See the end of The Preface for info on 'Anonymous'