Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

3rd Thursday in Lent

What is Christ but the death of the body, the breath of life?  And so let us die with Him that we may live with him.  Let there then be in us as it were a daily practice and inclination to dying, that by this separation from bodily desires of which we have spoken, our soul may learn to withdraw itself, and . . . may take upon herself the likeness of death, that she incur not the penalty of death.

St. Ambrose: On the Death of Satyrus.

2nd Friday in Lent

My will, therefore, He took to Himself, my grief.  In confidence I call it grief, because I preach His Cross.  Mine is the will which he called His own, for as man He bore my grief, and man He spake, and therefore said, "Not as I will but as Thou wilt."  Mine was the grief, and mine the heaviness with which He bore it, for no man exults when at the point to die.  With me and for me He suffers, for me He is sad, for me He is heavy.  In my stead, therefore, and in me He grieved Who had no cause to grieve for Himself.

St. Ambrose: Of the Faith.

3rd Monday after the Epiphany

In Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of Paradise, in Adam I died; how shall the Lord call me back, except He find in me Adam; guilty as I was in him, so now justified in Christ.

St. Ambrose: On the Death of Satyrus.

1st Monday after the Epiphany

Francis beheld in each creature the goodness of God perfectly, and therefore he was moved by a particular and heartfelt delight and love for all creatures.

Speculum Perfectionis.

Fourth Sunday in Advent

They do greatly err who acknowledge that the flesh of man was taken on Himself by Christ, but deny that the affections of man were taken; and they contravene the purpose of the Lord Jesus Himself, since thus they take away from man what constitutes man, for man cannot be man without human affections.  Whence could I to-day recognize the Lord Jesus as man, who's flesh I see not, but whose affections I read of—whence, I say, could I recognize Him as man, if he had not hungered, thirst, wept?  But He is known by these things to be man, who by His Divine works is accounted to be more than man.  He assumed the affections of man from His mother, that He might take on Himself our weaknesses.

St. Ambrose: On Psalm 61.

What was the purpose of the Incarnation but this—that the flesh which had sinned could be redeemed by itself?

St. Ambrose: Of the Incarnation.

25th Monday after Trinity (Nov. 21st, 2005)

It is a great mystery of divine love, that not even in Christ was exception made of the death of the body; and although He was the Lord of nature, He refused not the law of the flesh which He had taken upon Him.  It is necessary for me to die, for Him it was not necessary.

St. Ambrose: On the Death of Satyrus.