Quotes
Quotes about Mission
Feast of Basil the Great & Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops, Teachers, 379 & 389 Commemoration of Seraphim, Monk of Sarov, Mystic, Staretz, 1833 We must always be on our guard lest, under the pretext of keeping one commandment, we be found breaking another. ... St. Basil the Great January 3, 1998 Commemoration of Gladys Aylward, Missionary in China, 1970 For us in the Pacific, in Asia, in India, and in Africa, Christian unity is not an optional extra. It is an urgent necessity, for our divisions are a real stumbling-block to the proclamation of the Gospel... Mission is at the heart of the divine reality. It is the will of God and the Kingdom of God which are to be made known. Wherever we are, our purpose is not to propagate the Church as an end in itself, but to proclaim Christ as Lord of all life and as Saviour of all men.
Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885 Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269 God generally gives spiritual blessings and deliverances as He does temporal ones; that is, by the mediation of an active and vigorous industry. The fruits of the earth are the gift of God, and we pray for them as such; but yet we plant, and we sow, and we plough, for all that; and the hands which are sometimes lift up in prayer must at other times be put to the plough, or the husbandman must expect no crop. Everything must be effected in the way proper to its nature, with the concurrent influence of the divine grace, not to supersede the means, but to prosper and make them effectual.
Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730 It is the Church's mission to confront the world from the Godward side of life with the Christian principles of a free and just society. The dignity, the value, and the importance of every individual are made abundantly clear by the Son of God. He has shown us what human life is intended to be, and we must be willing to stand against whatever is amiss in the temper and disposition of the world, or of any segment of it.
Feast of Chad, Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary, 672 Peace comes when there is no cloud between us and God. Peace is the consequence of forgiveness, God's removal of that which obscures His face and so breaks union with Him. The happy sequence culminating in fellowship with God is penitence, pardon, and peaceâthe first we offer, the second we accept, and the third we inherit.
It is possible that for a Jew nothing more was required than the assurance that his sins were 'remitted', 'blotted out'; he might thereafter feel himself automatically restored to the relation of favour on God's part and confidence on his own, which was the hereditary prerogative of his people. But it was different with those who could claim no such prerogative, and with those Jews who had become uneasy as to the grounds of such a relation and their validityâin a word, with any who had been led by conscience to take a deeper view of the consequences of sin. So long as these were found mainly in punishment, suffering, judgment, so long 'remission of sins'âletting off the consequencesâmight suffice. But when it was recognized that sin had a far more serious consequence in alienation from God, the severing of the fellowship between God and His children, then Justification... ceased to be sufficient. 'Forgiveness' took on a deeper meaning; it connoted restoration of the fellowship, the establishment or reestablishment of a relation which could be described on the one side as fatherly, on the other as filial.
Feast of Barnabas the Apostle The disorder of secularism is perhaps nowhere more apparent in our contemporary Church than in the extent to which we have permitted the order of the world to creep into the order of the Church... That it should carry out its mission to the men in the middle classes of capitalist society is doubtless a part of the Church's order; but that the mission should result in the formation of a middle-class church which defends the secular outlook and interests of that class is an evident corruption.
Feast of William Tyndale, Translator of the Scriptures, Martyr, 1536 Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not. He may be a blot radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society, or he may be a blessing spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world. But a blank he cannot be: there are no moral blanks; there are no neutral characters.
Feast of Paulinus, Bishop of York, Missionary, 644 To judge aright we must judge as Christ judged. He judged no man; yet if He judged, His judgments were just. He proclaimed none worthless, none hopeless. Yet men were continually being judged by their relations to Him. The result was infallible, because men judged themselves. Those who loved the light came to Him, those who rejected Him showed that they desired to walk in darkness.
Commemoration of Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies, Missionary, 1552 We see him exalting love for neighbor along with love for God. He reaches out to foreigners who are beyond the borders of the "Israel of God". He seeks the release of captives, prisoners, and slaves. He denounces the scribes and religious leaders who "devour the houses of widows". Despite his well-known requirement of loyalty that surpasses family ties, he insists that a man put the care of his own parents ahead of his obligations to his religion. His treatment of women is radically opposed to the strictures of that day. He exhibits sympathy and understanding toward children. He operates an out-patient clinic wherever he happens to be. He insists upon justice as the basis for everyday dealings between citizens. The social teaching of parables like "the good Samaritan" and incidents such as the encounter with the rich young ruler have had an effect upon his followers that cannot easily be measured. If one summary statement of Jesus' ethics can be made, it is that love of God is best shown by love of fellow men.
When once thy foot enters the church, be bare. God is more there than thou: for thou art there Only by his permission. Then beware, That leads from earth to heaven.
Make your life a mission, not an intermission.
Not to hurt our humble brethren in fur, feather or fin, is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission: to be of service to them whenever they require it.
Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.
Some people follow their dreams, others hunt them down and beat them mercilessly into submission.
Every mission constitutes a pledge of duty. Every man is bound to consecrate his every faculty to its fulfilment. He will derive his rule of action from the profound conviction of that duty.
Education is the transmission of civilization.
Education is the transmission of civilization.
Everything that can be invented has been invented.âCharles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
The morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised. I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
The history of the denial of the Armenian genocide has passed through several phases... all characterized by efforts to avoid responsibility and the moral, material, and political consequences of admission.
Then let him know that hatred without end Or intermission is between us two.
Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.
Most of us fall short much more by omission than by commission: "While the world perishes we go our way: purposeless, passionless, day after day.".
