Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

2nd Monday After Easter (April 24th, 2017)

Give yourself up to ever so many good works, read, preach, pray, visit the sick, build hospitals, clothe the naked, etc., yet if anything goes along with these or in the doing of them you have anything else that you will and hunger after, but that God's Kingdom may come and His will done, they are not the works of the new-born from above and so cannot be his life-giving food.  For the new creature in Christ is that one will and one hunger that was in Christ; and therefore, where that is wanting, there is wanting that new creature which alone can have His conversation.

William Law: Letters.

First Sunday after Easter (April 23rd, 2017)

Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life. These are words by which the slanderers of the nature of the body, the impeachers of our flesh, are completely overthrown . . . We do not with to cast aside the body, but corruption; not the flesh, but death.  The body is one thing, death another . . . What is foreign to us is not the body but corruptibility.

St. John Chrysostom: On the Resurrection of the Dead.

Easter Week Saturday (April 22nd, 2017)

After the meeting was over I went to John Audland's, and there came John Story to me and lighted his pipe of tobacco.  And said he, "Will you take a pipe of tobacco?" saying, "Come; all is ours."  And I looked upon him to be a forward bold lad; and tobacco I did not take, but it came to my mind that the lad might think I had not unity with the creation.  For I saw he had a flashy, empty notion of religion.  So I took his pipe and put it to my mouth, and gave it to him again to stop him lest his rude tongue should say I had not unity with the creation.

George Fox: Journal.

Easter Week Friday (April 21st, 2017)

It belongs to God alone to bestow beatitude upon souls by a participation with Himself; but it is Christ's prerogative to bring them to such beatitude, inasmuch as He is their Head and the author of their salvation.

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica.

None can be eternally united who have not died for each other.

Coventry Patmore: The Rod, the Root, and the Flower.

Easter Week Thursday (April 20th, 2017)

The Word, leaving his Father in heaven, came down to be joined to his Wife, and slept in the trace of his Passion, and willingly suffered death for her, that he might present the Church to himself, glorious and blameless, having cleansed her by the laver, for the receiving of the spiritual and blessed seed which is sown by him who, with whispers, implants it in the depths of the mind, and is conceived and formed by the Church, as by a woman, so as to give birth and nourishment to virtue.  For in this way, too, the command "Increase and multiply" is duly fulfilled, the Church increasing daily in greatness and beauty and multitude by the union and communion of the Word who now still comes down to us and falls into a trance by the Memorial of his Passion.

Methodius: Banquet of the Ten Virgins.

Easter Week Wednesday (April 19th, 2017)

The will of the Creator shall gather together man's dust, shall renew it, and make of it the temple of glory; the body shall lead his companion, the soul, into the bridal chamber and there comfort her; and the body filled with sorrow in Hades shall rejoice, and the body that hath despaired shall give praise for his redemption, and that over which the foolish despaired shall receive great mercy.

St. Ephraem Syrus: Hymns.

Easter Week Tuesday (April 18th, 2017)

. . . Whereas now their souls (of just men) be only in heaven, at the day of judgement this further increase of joy shall they have, that their bodies also shall be partakers of eternal bliss, and they shall in their flesh receive joy.

St. Gregory the Great: Dialogues.

When the glorious and holy flesh shall clothe us again, our whole persons shall be more admirable by being more complete.

Dante: Paradise.

Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the Paradise of God.  All things were new: and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter.

George Fox: Journal.