Quotes
Quotes about Ritual
Commemoration of Albrecht Dürer, artist, 1528, and Michelangelo Buonarrotti, artist, spiritual writer, 1564 O God in heaven, have mercy on us! Lord Jesus Christ, interecede for your people, deliver us at the opportune time, preserve in us the true genuine Christian faith, collect your scattered sheep with your voice, your divine Word as Holy Writ calls it. Help us to recognize your voice, help us not to be allured by the madness of the world, so that we may never fall away from you, O Lord Jesus Christ.
Commemoration of Charles Williams, Spiritual Writer, 1945 Every contrition for sin is apt to encourage a not quite charitable wish that other people should exhibit a similar contrition.
Commemoration of Caroline Chisholm, Social Reformer, 1877 In saying God is there, we are saying God exists, and not just talking about the word God, or the idea God. We are speaking of the proper relationship to the living God who exists. In order to understand the problems of our generation, we should be very alive to this distinction. Semantics (linguistic analysis) makes up the heart of modern philosophical study in the Anglo-Saxon world. Though the Christian cannot accept this study as a total philosophy, there is no reason why he should not be glad for the concept that words need to be defined before they can be used in communication. As Christians, we must understand that there is no word so meaningless as the word "god" until it is defined. No word has been used to reach absolutely opposite concepts as much as the word "god". Consequently, let us not be confused. There is much "spirituality" about us today that would relate itself to the word god or to the idea god; but this is not what we are talking about. Biblical truth and spirituality is not a relationship to the word god, or to the idea god. It is a relationship to the one who is there, which is an entirely different concept.
Feast of Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, 605 Wherever there are three persons, even though they are laymen, there is the church. Every man lives by his own faith, and God does not distinguish between classes. Since, in cases of necessity, you have the right to act as a priest, then you must also accept priestly discipline. It is God's will that all of us should be in the right spiritual state, at any time or place, to administer His sacraments.
Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: The philosopher [Immanuel] Kant was right long ago to notice that moral activity implies a religious dimension. The atheist [Friedrich] Nietzsche also saw the point and argued forcefully that the person who gives up belief in God must be consistent and give up Christian morals as well, because the former is the foundation of the latter. He had nothing but contempt for fellow humanists who refused to see that Christian morality cannot survive the loss of its theological moorings, except as habit or as lifeless tradition. As Ayn Rand also sees so clearly, love of the neighbor cannot be rationally justified within the framework of secular humanism. Love for one's neighbor is an ethical implication of the Christian position. This suggests to me that the world's deepest problem is not economic or technological, but spiritual and moral. What is missing is the vision of reality that can sustain the neighbor-oriented life style that is so urgently needed in our world today.
Feast of Willibrord of York, Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle of Frisia, 739 In that age they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be as the angels. We are destined to a better stateâdestined to rise to a spiritual consortship. So we, who shall be with God, shall be together: since we shall all be with the one God, though there be many mansions in the house of the same Father; and, in eternal life, God will still less separate them whom He has joined together, than, in this lesser life, He allows them to be separated.
More than any other religion or, indeed, than any other element in human experience, Christianity has made for the intellectual advance of man in reducing languages to writing, creating literatures, promoting education from primary grades through institutions of university level, and stimulating the human mind and spirit to fresh explorations into the unknown. It has been the largest single factor in combating, on a world-wide scale, such ancient foes of man as war, famine, and the exploitation of one race by another. More than any other religion, it has made for the dignity of human personality. This it has done by a power inherent within it of lifting lives from selfishness, spiritual mediocrity, and moral defeat and disintegration, to unselfish achievement and contagious moral and spiritual power and by the high value which it set upon every human soul through the possibilities which it held out of endless growth in fellowship with the eternal God.
In the twentieth century, the secularists, still living off the spiritual capital of Christianity, often pretended to chide Christians for having invented the term "secularist," a term which, they said, was devoid of meaning. Their leaders knew very well, however, that secularism, like any other parasite, derives its sustenance from the object on which it feeds, and so they were rather pleased when milquetoast Christians timidly offered, as a definition of secularism, "living as though God did not exist." What Christians should have called it was, rather, "a contemptibly fraudulent way of living on the cheap, by reaping the maximum fruits of Christian effort, while contributing the minimum effort of your own." When secularists accused Christians of "living in the past," the Christians ought to have retaliated by pointing out that secularists were "living off the past." By the time they got around to doing so, however, the majority of secularists had become morally incapable of seeing the point.
Feast of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1170 Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose. Oh, that God would make me more fruitful and spiritual.
To perpetuate the clerical role of answer man, the layman when inside the church building must act as if he has only half a brain, while outside, in the world, he is expected to be an ambassador for Christ, a lay transmitter of faith. Outside, he is to be informed and vocal; inside, he must appear ignorant and mute as a sheep. Christians have within them many questionsâquestions that are at once elementary and profound, questions that would ripple the water were they raised. However, because a Christian is supposed to have "answers", life's important questions are not discussed outside the church building; and, because the pastor is the educated, spiritual authority, they are not discussed inside either.
A teacher appears--for whom no one was prepared, and whom no one could have expected. The argument from prophecy, on which the early apologists laid so much weight, was all ex post facto. No one beforehand could have conjectured a tenth of it. But without the background of Jewish prophet and psalmist, of Jewish national history, it would be hard to understand Jesus. If prophet and historian and legislator did not in type and enigma foretell in detail the story of his life, he was none the less their heir. None the less was he their heir in that he was not in bondage to his inheritance, but... a "minister not of the letter but of the spirit", and the whole of his activity lay "in newness of spirit". Without conjecturing what he might have been on another soil or of another stock--a type of guesswork always futile in history--we have to recognize the... immense spiritual wealth that lay ready to his hand.
Commemoration of Albrecht Dürer, artist, 1528, and Michelangelo Buonarrotti, artist, spiritual writer, 1564 Man cannot make a redemptive art, but he can make an art that communicates what he experiences of redemption as a man and what he knows of it as an artist. God in his infinite wisdom may use an art work as an instrument of redemption, but what serves or can serve that purpose is beyond the knowledge of man.
Commemoration of Charles Williams, Spiritual Writer, 1945 Come to the Bible, not to study the history of God's divine action, but to be its object; not to learn what it has achieved throughout the centuries and still does, but simply to be the subject of its operation.
Commemoration of Sundar Singh of India, Sadhu, Evangelist, Teacher, 1929 The breadth and depth of [William] Carey's missionary service [in India] is well illustrated in the principles laid down for themselves by the Serampore Brotherhood to be read three times a year in each station in their charge. Here is a summary: To set an infinite value on men's souls. To abstain from whatever deepens India's prejudice against the Gospel. To watch for every chance of doing the people good. To preach Christ crucified as the grand means of conversions. To esteem and treat Indians always as equals. To be instant in the nurture of personal religion. To cultivate the spiritual gifts of the Indian brethren, ever pressing upon them their missionary obligation, since only Indians can win India for Christ.
To relinquish any of the Psalms on the excuse that its sentiments are too violent for a Christian is a clear sign that a person has also given up the very battle that a Christian is summoned to fight. The Psalms are prayers for those who are engaged in an ongoing, spiritual conflict. No one else need bother even opening the book.
Broadly speaking, I learned to recognize sin as the refusal to live up to the enlightenment we possess: to know the right order of values and deliberately to choose the lower ones: to know that, however much these values may differ with different people at different stages of spiritual growth, for one's self there must be no compromise with that which one knows to be the lower value.
He who desires to become a spiritual man must not be ever taking note of others, and above all of their sins, lest he fall into wrath and bitterness, and a judging spirit towards his neighbors.
A simple rule, to be followed whether one is in the light or not, gives backbone to one's spiritual life, as nothing else can. ... Evelyn Underhill November 30, 1996 Andrew the Apostle With his continual doctrine [Bishop Hooper] adjoined due and discreet correction, not so much severe to any as to them which for abundance of riches and wealthy state thought they might do what they listed. And doubtless he spared no kind of people, but was indifferent to all men, as well rich as poor, to the great shame of no small number of men nowadays. Whereas many we see so addicted to the pleasing of great and rich men, that in the meantime they have no regard to the meaner sort of poor people, whom Christ hath bought as dearly as the other.
Faith is the soul's consciousness of its Divine relationship and exalted destiny. It is the recognition by man's higher nature of sources of comfort and hope beyond anything that sense-knowledge discloses. It is the consciousness of a Divine Father toward Whom goes out all that is in affection and highest in moral aspiration; it is the premonition of a future life of which the best attainment here is but the twilight promise. In our day, the sudden and vast revelation of material wonders unsteadies and dims for the moment the spiritual sight; but the stars will shine clear again. The truth-seeking spirit and the spirit of faith, instead of being opposed, are in the deepest harmony. The man whose faith is most genuine is most willing to have its assertions tested by the severest scrutiny. And the passion for truth has underlying it a profound conviction that what is real is best; that when we get to the heart of things we shall find there what we most need. Faith is false to itself when it dreads truth, and the desire for truth is prompted by an inner voice of faith.
Commemoration of Charles Williams, Spiritual Writer, 1945 Although we have different ways of worshipping and doing things, we have only one God. So how can we claim to have... "Good News" unless people can see in us that Jesus Christ is breaking down barriers and bringing us together?
Feast of Willibrord of York, Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle of Frisia, 739 The great need today among the young is the strengthening of belief in things spiritual, for in spite of the superhuman advances in science, invention, and culture, none of this is attributed to God's gift to man; in fact, the increase of knowledge and the cult of education have but given to youth a self-reliant independence where religion has no place, and beyond admitting that Christ was "the best man that ever lived," there are few who concede any other tribute to the Creator. And yet the saving principles of the world are rooted in Christ, implanted in him; the Truth by which men live is the Truth as taught and lived by Jesus.
[Jesus'] life and utterance were the proclamation of this new order of things, of this new force by which man was to be ruled. When, unarmed and defenseless, He said to the Roman power, "My Kingdom is not of this world," He spoke the word of inauguration. Over the kingdom of the elemental forces, over the kingdom of the animal, over the kingdom of the intellect, He beheld rising, with Himself as prophet and embodiment, that kingdom of the spiritual whose forces should be those of purity and sacrifice, love and trust, obedience and service. It is the last of the kingdoms because it is the highest; it will be the most enduring for there is nothing that can take its place.
Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 Every other creature in nature is simply itself, without this discord which is our constant lot. That is why we can study everything else in nature much more surely than we can study ourselves. With ourselves, all we have to go on is an occasional glimpse of some small part of the truth, and we must be content with that, knowing that we are truly known by Him who alone knows us.
If Christians are ever to be united, they must be united in Christ, their living head and the source of their spiritual life.
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.
