Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

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.

Christmas Week Thursday

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.

Saint Teresa: The Interior Castle.

God loves all existing things.

Aquinas: Summa Theologica.

Christmas Week Wednesday

Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God is well pleased with a man, and that a man can rejoice in God.  Only when grace is recognized to be incomprehensible is it grace.  Grace exists, therefore, only where the Resurrection is reflected.  Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf which separates God and man, and, by exposing it, bridges it.

Karl Barth: The Epistle to the Romans.

 

The Way of Exchange

Friends,

The New Christian Year is now back in print in the first new edition in eighty years with an Essay by the editor, Charles Williams, published the same year titled, The Way of Exchange. a new introduction, and a comprehensive index.

I encourage you to Download The Way of Exchange extract for free, just as the daily church calendar devotional is available here too.

If you wish to order a print on demand copy in a dust jacket for your bookshelf you can do so at Lulu Books Online for $25.00 plus shipping.  

This is a labor of love, not profit.  Matthew Carver (who helped put this into print) and I would welcome your feedback.  We feel that both The Way of Exchange and The New Christian Year (while eighty years old) speak to today.  

Thank you!

Tom Wills

The Feast of Holy Innocents

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.

The Feast of St. John the Evangelist

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.

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: The Interior Castle.

All bodies together and all minds together and all their products are not equal to the least motion of love; that belongs to an order higher by infinity.

Pascal: Pensées.

Sunday after Christmas

Christ's human nature was so utterly bereft of Self and apart from all creatures as no man's ever was . . . Neither of that in him which belonged to God, nor of that which was a living human nature and a habitation of God, did he, as man, claim any thing for his own. His human nature did not even take unto itself the Godhead, whose dwelling it was, nor anything that this same Godhead willed, or did or left undone in him, nor yet any thing of all that his human nature did or suffered; but in Christ's human nature there was no claiming of anything, nor seeking nor desire, saving that what was due might be rendered to the Godhead; and he did not call this very desire his own.

Theologica Germanica.