Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

Scarcely any one is contented with that measure of the spirit which God gives; they are very disconsolate and querulous because they do not find the comfort they desire in spiritual things.

St. John of the Cross: Dark Night of the Soul.

God will be all in all; that is, since God is love, love will bring it to pass that what each has will be common to all.  That which one loves in another is one's own, though one have it not.  There will be no envy at superior grace, because of the unity of love.

St. Augustine, quoted in Aquinas: Catena Aurea.

8th Saturday after Trinity (July 31st, 2010)

What time we call to Jesus in our need bodily or ghostly, though we find it not anon but rather hardness and contrariety we shall bot leave therefore to call upon him by good hope.  Till through his mercy and grace the unsavoury water and cold of adversity and penance be turned into wine and comfort and ghostly liking.

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

8th Friday after Trinity (June 30th, 2010)

To the Christian love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is really an un-Christian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life. Søren Kierkegaard: Journals.

8th Thursday after Trinity (July 29th, 2010)

An old man said, "One man is thought to be silent, and yet his heart judgeth and condemneth others, and the man who acteth thus speaketh continually; another man speaketh from morning till evening; and yet keepeth silence, that is to say, he speaketh nothing which is not helpful."

The Paradise of the Fathers.

We love ourselves, because we are members of Jesus Christ.  We love Jesus Christ, because He is the body of which we are members.  All is one, one is in the other, like Three Persons.

Pascal: Pensées.

8th Wednesday after Trinity (July 28th, 2010)

To love one another as oneself is only the halfway house to Heaven, though it seems as far as it was prudent to bid man go.  The "greater love than this" of which our Lord speaks, though He does not command it, is to give oneself for one's friends.  And when one does this, or is ready to do this, prayer even for "us" seems too selfish—and it is unnecessary, for we then possess all that God Himself can give us.  The easy renunciation of self for the Beloved being the very breath of Heaven.

Coventry Patmore: Life.

8th Tuesday after Trinity (July 27th, 2010)

Beg our Lord to grant you perfect love for your neighbour, and leave the rest to Him.  He will give you more than you know how to desire if you constrain yourselves and strive with all your power to gain it, forcing your will as far as possible to comply in all things with your sisters' wishes, although you may sometimes forfeit your own rights by so doing.  Forget your self-interests for theirs, however much nature may rebel; when opportunity occurs take some burden upon yourself to ease your neighbour of it.

St. Teresa of Avila: The Interior Castle.

8th Monday after Trinity (July 26th, 2010)

Love and the good life are needful to right belief.

John Wycliffe: Quicunque Vult.

Seventh Sunday after Trinity (July 25th, 2010)

If you have no will but to all goodness, everything you meet, be it what it will, must be forced to be assistant to you.  For the wrath of an enemy, the treachery of a friend, and every other evil, only helps the Spirit of Love to be more triumphant to live its own life and find all its own blessings in an higher degree.  Whether therefore you consider perfection or happiness, it is all included in the Spirit of Love and must be so, for this reason, because the infinitely perfect and happy God is mere love, an unchangeable will to all goodness; and therefore every creature must be corrupt and unhappy so far as it is led by any other will than the one will to all goodness.

William Law: The Spirit of Love.