Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

2nd Thursday after Trinity (June 30th, 2011)

The terror of guilt, or sin, is certainly not at its strongest at first.  On the contrary, it is not until some time has passed and there has been some progress in goodness—then, when such a man reads or happens by chance to hear that another man, who was guilty of the same thing, was lost; then terror awakes.  At the time of sinning sin has the power of self-preservation in a man, and gives him a certain strength, physical strength, the strength of despair, not to remain with the thought of guilt.

Søren Kierkegaard: Journals.

The free will of man is a true and real birth from the free, eternal, uncreated will of God, which willed to have a creaturely offspring of itself or to see itself in a creaturely state.  And therefore the will of man hath the nature of eternity and the nature of omnipotence in it, because it is what it is and hath what it hath as a spark, a ray, a genuine birth of the eternal, free, omnipotent will of God.  And therefore, as the will of God is superior to and ruleth over all nature, so the will of man, derived from the will of God, is superior to and ruleth over all his own nature.

William Law: Divine Knowledge.

2nd Wednesday after Trinity (June 29th, 2011)

You do not know who you are, nor do you know whom you love, and above all you have no idea what Our Lord is going to ask of you.

Léon Bloy: Letters to his Fiancée.

One of the old men came to another old man who was his companion, and as they were talking together one of them said, "I have died to the world"; and his companion said, "Have no confidence in thyself that this is so until thou goest forth from the world, for although you sayest, 'I have died', Satan is not dead."

The Paradise of the Fathers.

2nd Tuesday after Trintiy (June 28th, 2011)

Unless a man saith in his heart, "Only God and myself exist in this world," he will not find rest.

The Paradise of the Fathers.

Keep thy conscience with thy brother and thou shalt find rest.

The Paradise of the Fathers.

2nd Monday after Trinity (June 27th, 2011)

What is 'spirit'?  (for Christ is spirit, his religion that of the spirit).  Spirit is: to live as though dead (dead to the world).
  This way of life is so entirely foreign to man that to him it is quite literally worse than death.
Very carefully introduced for an hour or so in the distance of the imagination, natural man can bear it, it even pleases him.  But if it is brought nearer him, so near that it becomes, in all seriousness, something required of him: the natural instinct of self-protection rises up so powerfully in him that a regular uproar follows, as with drink . . . And in that condition, in which he is beside himself, he demands the death of the man of spirit, or rushes upon him to put him to death.

Søren Kierkegaard: Journals.

First Sunday after Trinity (June 26th, 2011)

It is owned on all hands that we are baptised into a renovation of some divine birth that we had lost.  And that we many not be at a loss to know what that divine birth is, the form in baptisim openly declares to us that it is to regain that first birth of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in our souls, which at the first made us to be truly and really images of the nature of the Holy Trinity in unity.  The form in baptisim is but very imperfectly apprehended, till it is understood to have this great meaning in it.  And it must be owned that the Scriptures tend wholly to guide us to this understanding of it.  For since they teach us a birth of God, a birth of the Spirit, that we must obtain, and that baptisim, the appointed sacrament of this new birth, is to be done into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, can there be any doubt that this sacrament is to signify the renovation of the birth of the Holy Trinity in our souls?

William Law: Christian Regeneration.

In nature the body makes the place, but in grace the place makes the body.

John Donne: Sermons.

1st Saturday after Trinity (June 25th, 2011)

But when does flesh receive the bread which he calls His flesh?  The faithful know and receive the Body of Christ, if they labour to be the body of Christ.  And they become the body of Christ, if they study to live by the Spirit of Christ: for that which lives by the Spirit of Christ, is the body of Christ.  This bread the Apostle sets forth, where he says, We being many are one body.  O sacrament of mercy, O sign of unity, O bond of love!  Whoso wishes to live, let him draw nigh, believe, be incorporated, that he may be quickened.

St. Augustine: quoted in Thomas Aquinas: Catena Aurea.