Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

24th Thursday after Trinity

Grace is only the type of glory, for it is not the ultimate end.  It has been symbolized by the law, and itself symbolizes (glory).  But it is the type of it, and the origin or cause.

Pascal: Pensées.

21st Saturday after Trinity

Jesus Christ, without riches, and without any external exhibition of knowledge, is in His own order of holiness.  He did not invent; He did not reign.  But He was humble, patient, holy, holy to God, terrible to devils, without any sin.  Oh! in what great pomp, and in what wonderful splendour, He is come to the eyes of the heart, which perceive wisdom!

Pascal: Pensées.

Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.

Pascal: Pensées.

18th Tuesday after Trinity

We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellowmen.  Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone.  We should therefore act as if we were alone, and in that case should we build fine houses, etc.?  We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.

Pascal: Pensées.

15th Monday after Trinity

There is always some advantage in making men love us.  Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other.  No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence.  Human society is founded on mutual deceit.

Pascal: Pensées.

10th Saturday after Trinity

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

Pascal: Pensées.

Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience' sake.

Pascal: Pensées.

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.

We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but his image and idol which we must neither love nor adore, and still less must we love and adore its opposite—namely, falsehood.

Pascal: Pensées.

The Jews, in testing if he were God, have shown that he was man.

Pascal: Pensées.