Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

Monday after Christmas Week (Monday December 31st, 2018)

When our Lord says, "Except a man hateh his father and mother, yea, and his own life, he cannot be my disciple," it is because our best tempers are yet carnal and full of the imperfections of our fallen nature.  The doctrine is just and good; not as if father and mother were to be hated, but that love, which an unregenerate person or natural man has towards them, is to be hated as being a blind self-love, full of all the weakness and partiality with which fallen man loves, honours, esteems, and cleaves to himself.  This love, born from corrupt flesh and blood and poluted with self, is to be hated and parted with, that we may love them with a love born of God, with such a love and on such a motive as Christ has loved us.

William Law: The Spirit of Prayer

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Sunday after Christmas (December 30th, 2018)

Charity is the great channel through which God passes all his mercy upon mankind. For we recieve absolution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother. This is the rule of our hopes, and the measure of our desire in this world; and in the day of death and judgement the great sentence upon mankind shall be transacted according to our alms, which is the other part of charity. Certain it is, that God cannot, will not, never did, reject a charitable man in his greatest needs and in his most passionate prayers; for God Himself is love, and every degree of charity that dwells in us is the participation of the Divine nature.

 

Jeremy Taylor: Holy Dying.

 

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Christmas Week Saturday (December 29th, 2018)

All outward power that we excercise in the things about us is but a shadow in comparison of that inward power that resides in our will, imagination, and desires; these communicate with eternity and kindle a life which always reaches either heaven or hell . . . here lies the ground of the great efficacy of prayer, which when it is the prayer of the heart, the prayer of faith, has a kindling and creating power, and forms and transforms the soul into everything that its desires reach after: it has the key to the Kingdom of Heaven and unlocks all its treasures, it opens extends and moves that in us which has its being and motion in and with the divine nature, and so brings us into real union and communion with God.

William Law: An Appeal.

more quotes from William Law: http://tomwills.typepad.com/thenewchristianyear/william_law/

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Christmas Week Friday (December 28th, 2018)

The affirmative man, that does acknowledge all blessings, spiritual and temporal, to come from God, that prepares himself by holiness to be fit to receive them from God, that comes for them by humble prayer to God, that returns for them humble thanks to God, this man hath the first mark of this person upon him, He trusts in God.

John Donne: Sermons.

more quotes from John Donne: http://tomwills.typepad.com/thenewchristianyear/john_donne/

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The 'now' wherein God made the first man and the 'now' wherein the las man disappears and the 'now' I speak in, all are the same in God where this is but 'the now.'

Eckhart: Sermons and Collations.

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The Feast of Holy Innocents (December 28th, 2018)

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span,
Summer in winter, day in night,
Heaven in earth and God in man.
Great little one, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.

Richard Crashaw: Nativity Ode.

more quotes from Richard Crashaw: http://tomwills.typepad.com/thenewchristianyear/richard_crashaw/

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Christmas Week Thursday (December 27th, 2018)

We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reasons for thinking so, but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or no.  Be sure that in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing in your love for God, for His Majesty bears so tender an affection for us, that I cannot doubt He will repay our love for others in augmenting, in a thousand different ways, that which we bear for Him.

St. Teresa of Avila: The Interior Castle.

more quotes from St. Teresa of Avila: http://tomwills.typepad.com/thenewchristianyear/st_teresa_of_avila/

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God loves all existing things.

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica.

More quotes from Thomas Aquinas: http://tomwills.typepad.com/thenewchristianyear/thomas_aquinas/

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The Feast of St. John the Evangelist (December 27th, 2018)

He did lay aside His own nature in that He did make Himself poor of the fame of His holiness, goodness and innocence . . . He might have revealed himself in all the fame of holiness, so that He would have been universally held to be the greatest of all saints and one in whom there was no sin; but He did choose to take upon Himself the sins of us all and the fame of holiness did He give unto His servant John.

Angela of Foligno: The Book of Divine Consolation.

more quotes from Angela of Foligno: http://tomwills.typepad.com/thenewchristianyear/angela_of_foligno/

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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.

more quotes from St. Teresa of Avila: http://tomwills.typepad.com/thenewchristianyear/st_teresa_of_avila/

#thenewchristianyear #charleswilliams #devotional #christianity #anglican #inklings #advent #hymns #liturgy #saints #Theology