Christian Authors

IS GOD ALIVE? This seems a silly question in the Light of God’s knowledge and truth. It is plain enough for us that a dead man cannot follow an argument nor give a rebuttal, a fact that makes abuse of the dead a safe outlet for a coward’s malice. Only the living can understand. Yet again and again men have played the game of living with a dead God, makmg Him a symbol, an impersonal comic thing, a promise of the future, or a product of the hands or the minds of men. It is very much to the point in our time to ask: Is God alive? And, if He is, how much of life is there in Him?

TO THOSE WHO FEEL THEY HAVE FAILED

Ten years ago, Mons. Tonino Bello, bishop of the diocese of Molfetta died prematurely at barely 53 years of age from cancer. His role as pastor, writer and poet has emerged with increasing clarity from the many writings discovered in his archives. A man of great faith, he was also a firm supporter of non-violence, of solidarity and social justice; he was unstinting in his support for peace and hope. Among his writings is this letter which is written in his sharp-witted and immediately recognisable style.

In a way, this letter is also written to myself. I am quite convinced that all of us in our lives have carried inside us a dream that at dawn we have seen fade away. Taking myself, for example, I imagined a splendid career. I wanted to become a saint. I cherished the idea of spending my life among the poor in distant lands, helping people to live better lives, bringing the good news of the Gospel and courageously bearing witness to the Risen Christ. Now I realise that this heroic dream was perhaps based more on self love rather than love of Jesus. In short, I understand that in those far-flung impulses of my youth the desire to emerge outweighed the need to let myself be submerged by God’s tenderness.

This is the defect of almost all our unrealised dreams: that of starting out with a certain degree of pride. And my dream was no different. However, this does not alter the fact that today finding myself somewhat challenged where my health is concerned, I feel a great bitterness in my heart. And yet those for whom this letter is intended are not those who, like me, have experienced the disillusion of dreams and the prosaic cutting down to size of small achievements. This letter is addressed to all those who have not even made it to achieve the "normally" accepted standards by which a person’s life is judged to be fulfilled.

There was Amerigo, for example, who worked so hard to obtain his degree in medicine and who, immediately after his specialisation, had to give up all plans of a "brilliant career" because of an irreversible detached retina. Then there was Ugo, a child prodigy up to his school leaving examinations in classical studies, who then got bogged down by university exams and progressed no further. He is now forty and each time he and his wife have an argument she throws back in his face his failure and the fact that he is reduced to being an errand boy for a lawyer’s office. Marcella, who everyone was convinced would have a bright and successful future and who, after specialisation courses in the pianoforte at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, had dozens of opportunities to make a name for herself. She turned down numerous offers of marriage, each one better than the next. She ended up with a divorced man who went bankrupt and she had to sell the grand piano her father had bought her. Lucia, who was bursting with enthusiasm and wanted to become a missionary. In springtime, she used to pick the petals off daisies to foretell a happy future. But then she could not go as a missionary because her family would not allow it. Now she does not pick the petals off daisies any more and she has finished up being a shop assistant in a gift shop.

And so I address these words to all of you who have a bitter taste in your mouth following disappointments in life, not to give you comfort with the balm of kind words but to make you aware how much you have in common with the story of salvation. To those of you who, on your path, have seen your ideals that were so cherished in your youth fade away one by one. To those of you who deserved better, but were unlucky and got left behfnd at the starting post. To those of you who have never found sufficient scope, who have never been shortlisted and have seen yourselves overtaken by everyone else. To those of you who were unexpectedly derailed onto the dead-end tracks of bitterness by an illness, a moral tragedy, an accident or a twist of fate. To those of you for whom any comparison with the happy fate of many fellow travellers makes you more melancholy, even though you feel no hint of envy.

To all of you I say: look upon Him whom they have pierced! Success in life is not calculated according to the parameters of the stock market. And success that counts is not measured by an applausometer or by indices of audience appreciation. Ever since the Man on the Cross was crucified, this wood of failure has become the true parameter for everp victory, and defeat is no longer measured against wrecks in which dreams are drowned. Rather, if it is true that Jesus, as a symbol of powerlessness, worked greater salvation when His hands were nailed to the Cross than He did with His hands stretched out to miraculously cure the sick, then it means, dear disappointed brothers and sisters, that it is the very part of a dream that has faded away without ever being realised which gives the ruins of your life the merits of success, just as certain broken statues of antiquity are aesthetically completed by their defects.

I do not wish to drench you with consolation. I only want to enwrap you in the mystery. Once you have entered into it, you will see that the unexpressed portions of your grand scale ambitions, the shards of your original projects, the changes of gear along your route that never became a career, are not only not useless but now constitute the funds in the deposit and loan account that still today fuels the salvation economy. I give my thanks on behalf of all the beneficiaries!

Don Tonino Bello

THE STRONG PULSE OF THE SEA, the waters of a mountain stream scampering as if for warmth, or the smooth strength of a broad river are all in striking contrast to the waters of a stagnant pond. We speak with reason of living waters. The water in the river, brook and sea does look alive for it is never still, and it is activity, after all, that is our measure of life. If that activity is from without, we know that we are not watching the progress of a living thing but a likeness of life that can be enchanting or foreboding. The violent rush of storm clouds has all the air of a personal attack, while the carefree patch of white idling its way across a summer sky seems an open invitation to our own dawdling. The persistent tap of rain on a window is not a demand for entry, it just sounds like that; and the harsh anger of a pounding. sea has no life in it, though we see it as a living threat. All these are likenesses of life, but they are dead things driven from the outside. Life’s activity is always from within.

WHATEVER WE ARE, high or lowly, learned or unlearned, married or single, in a full house or alone; charged with many affairs or dwelling in quietness, we have our daily round of work, our duties of affection, obedience, love, mercy, industry, and the like; and that which makes one man to differ from another is not so much what things he does, as his manner of doing them.

H. E. Manning

CHRIST INCOMPARABLE

He came from the bosom of the Father to the bosom of a woman. He put on humanity that we might put on divinity. He became Son of Man that we might become sons of God.

He was born contnry to the laws of nature, lived in poverty, was reared in obscurity, and only once crossed the boundary of the land - in childhood. He had no wealth or influence, and had neither training nor education in the world’s schools. His relatives were inconspicuous and uninfluential.

In infancy He startled a king; in boyhood He puzzled,the learned doctors; in manhood He ruled the course of nature. He walked upon the billows and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed the multitudes without medicine and made no charge for His services. He never wrote a book, yet all the libraries of the country could not hold the books that have been written about Him. He never wrote a song, yet He has furnished the theme for more songs than all song writers together. He never founded a college yet all the schools together cannot boast of as many students as He has. He never practised medicine, and yet He healed more broken hearts than the doctors have healed broken bodies.

He is the Star of astronomy, the Rock of geology, the Lion and the Lamb of zoology, the Harmoniser of all discords and the Healer of all diseases. Great men have come and gone, yet He lives on. Herod could not kill Him: Satan could not seduce Him: death.could not destroy Him: the grave could not hold Him.

He was rich yet for our sake became poor. How poor? Ask Mary. Ask the wise men. He slept in another’s manger: He cruised the lake in another’s boat: He rode on another man’s ass: He was buried in another man’s tomb. He is the ever perfect One, the Chiefest among ten thousand. He is altogether lovely.

Selected and slightly abridged

WHATEVER MY GOD ORDAINS IS RIGHT

Whatever my God ordains is right;

Though I the cup must drink

That bitter seems to my faint Heart,

I will not fear nor shrink.

S. Rodigast

MARTYRDOM

The worst part of martyrdom is not the last agonizing moment; it is the wearing, daily steadfastness. Men who can make up their minds to hold out against the torture of an hour have sunk under the weariness and the harass of small prolonged vexations. And there are many Christians who have the weight of some deep, incommunicable grief pressing, cold as ice, upon their hearts. To bear that cheerfully and manfully is to be a martyr. There is many a Christian bereaved and stricken in the best hopes of life. For such a one to say quietly, “Father, not as I will, but as You will,” is to be a martyr. There is many a Christian who feels the irksomeness of the duties of life, and feels his spirit revolting from them. To get up every morning with the firm resolve to find pleasure in those duties, and do them well, and finish the work which God has given us to do, that is to drink Christ’s cup. The humblest occupation has in it materials of discipline for the highest heaven.

F. W. Robertson

TO CUT OFF THE SOURCE OF TRUTH, denying God, is to summon up an unreal reality as monstrously impossible as the uncaused effect that so satisfies the sick minds of our day. There is tragic loss in this casting off of. truth’s beauty. The tragedy mounts when we realize that this precludes our ever coming into contact with the world outside ourselves; in this condition, we shall never see a single thing as it really is. The supremely tragic note, however, comes from the fact that this blindness is self-inflicted in the very name of the truth whose light is being extinguished. With laborious care, men lift some of the mysterious outer wrappings of reality, and their eyes are caught by the beauty of the vision of complex order and smooth harmony. There is wonder and beauty here indeed, something of the wonder and beauty of God; the fallen angels were caught in just such an enchantment by the vision of their own beauty. To refuse, as the angels did, to look beyond that first glimpse of reality is to make the whole thing unreal and put an end to the pursuit of the full vision of truth.

UNTIL TRUTH GIVES LIGHT to a man’s mind, his heart is immobilized more effectively than the feet of a man in the pitch blackness of a strange place. Unless the mind of a man is nourished on truth, his heart is shrunken and starved. If error, not truth, is the diet of the mind, then the heart gorges itself on poison and is doomed to bloated frustration and the writhings of despair. We can reach out only for what we know; if the light of knowledge be fatse, we can make nothing but missteps. Our hearts can be aflame only with the fuel offered by our minds. Nor can we change ourselves, adapting mind and heart to any light, to any diet; only truth is light for the eyes and goal for the heart. We are real, we live in a world of real things, our hearts are not to be nourished on fantasies or nightmares but on realities.

EVERY DAY is a fresh beginning,

Every morn is the world made new.

You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,

here is a beautifal hope for you;

A hope for me and a hope for you.

Susan Coolidge

OH SHADOW in a sultry land

We gather to Thy breast,

Whose love, enfolding like the night,

Brings quietude and rest,

Glimpse of the fairer life to be,

In foretaste here possessed.

C.M. Packard

BECAUSE PERSEVERANCE is so difficult, even when supported by the grace of God, thence is the value of new beginnings. For new beginnings are the life of perseverance.

E. B. Pusey

ALL THE GRACES OF THE CHRISTIAN, spring from the death of self. Let us, then, bear patiently the afflictions, which reduce this overflowing life. There is a suffering in connexion with confusions and uncertainties, very trying to bear. Unbounded patience is necessary, to bear not only with ourselves, but with others, whose various tempers and dispositions are not congenial with our own. Offences, which are the wounds of the spirit, will occur while we live in the flesh. These offences must be borne in silence, and thus subjugated and controlled by the spirit of grace. By a law of our nature we feel, more or less, the influence of the spheres in which we move.

While we honour, we think, the true cross, the affliction that comes from God, let us remember, that these instruments, so disagreeable, are the true cross that providence daily furnishes us.

Do not disgrace the cross and mar its operations, by your murmurs and reflections. Let us welcome any trials, that teach us what we are, and lead us to renouncc ourselves and find our all in God.

Jesus Christ says, “He who renounces not all that he has, cannot be My disciple.” Of all possessions, that of ourselves is the most dangerous.

Madame Guyon

YOU CAN CALM the troubled mind,

You its dread can still;

Teach me to be all resigned

To my Father’s will.

Heinrich Puchta

THOUGH THIS PATIENT, meek resignation is to be exercised with regard to all outward things and occurrences of life, yet it chiefly respects our own inward state, the troubles, perplexities, weaknesses, and disorders of our own souls. And to stand turned to a patient, meek, humble resignation to God, when your own impatience, wrath, pride, and irresignation attack yourself, is a higher and more beneficial performance of this duty, than when you stand turned to meekness and patience, when attacked by the pride, or wrath, or disorderly passions of other people.

William Law

O YOU, THE PRIMAL FOUNT of life and peace,

Who sheds Your breathing quiet all around,

In me command that pain and conflict cease,

And turn to music every jarring sound.

J. Sterling

ACCUSTOM YOURSELF to unreasonableness and injustice. Abide in peace in the presence of God, who sees all these evils more clearly than you do, and who permits them. Be content with doing with calmness the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not.

Francois de la Mothe Fénelon

IT IS RARE WHEN INJUSTICE, or slights patiently borne, do not leave the heart at the close of the day filled with marvellous joy and peace.

BEAUTY AND GOODNESS come into a man’s life only in the train of truth. Even the enemies of beauty and goodnass, making their entry like a burglar, must wear the disguise of the beautiful and the good. Perhaps the mind may never see through those disguises; but the heart of a man cannot be deceived perpetually. Ultimately the diet of evil, however good it is made to seem, sickens a man; and ugliness revolts his soul with its loathsomeness. It is to just such sickness and revulsion that leaders and teachers of men condemn the little ones when they deny them the truth. And God is truth.

ONLY OUR VERY BEING is more fundamental to us than truth. We must have truth; only then can we begin to live, only then can we rest in beauty’s contemplation, and have our hearts first stirred then fllled with good. It was the Word, the Wisdom of God, Who became man and lived amongst us, in order, as He Himself said, that men “might have the truth, and the truth might make them free.” He was, He said, “the way, the truth, and the life.” He lived for truth, and died rather than mouth the lie that woutd deny His divinity. Without truth, there is no way for a man’s feet to walk, no light for his eyes to see, no goal for his living. He is a slave of the lie that has usurped the throne of truth. Perhaps truth has been denied him with ruthless malice, perhaps the denial came through a teacher’s naive, wide-eyed, well meaning stupidity, perhaps it was the individual’s own cowardly fear of his own humanity and its demands for courageous living. Whatever the reason, culpable or not, malicious or well meant, the utter, fundamental destruction of the lives of men is exactly the same. We must have truth.

I READ IN A BOOK that a man called Christ went about doing good. It is very disconcerting that I am so easily satisfied with just going about.

Kagaws of Japan

I’D RATHER SEE A SERMON than hear one any day.

I’d rather one would walk with me than merely show the way.

The eye’s a better pupil and more willing than the ear;

Fine counsel is confusing but example is always clear.

For I may misunderstand you and the high advice you give;

But there’s no misunderstanding how you act and live.

Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)

I GOT UP EARLY ONE MORNING and rushed right into the day.

I had so much to accomplish that I didn’t have time to pray.

Problems just tumbled about me,

and heavier became each task.

I wondered why God did not help me,

He answered, “Because you did not ask.”

I wanted to see joy and beauty,

but the day toiled on grey and bleak.

I wondered why God did not show me

and He said, “You did not seek.”

I woke up early this morning and paused before entering the day.

I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray...

ALL THE TRULY DEEP PEOPLE have at the core of their being the genius to be simple or to know how to seek simplicity. The inner and outer aspects of their lives match; there is something transparent about them. They may keep the secret. of their existence in a private preserve, but they are so uncluttered by any self importance within, so unthreatened from without that they have what one philosopher called a certain ‘availability’; they are ready to be at the disposal of others.

Martin Marty

OUR FIRST TASK in approaching another people, another culture, another religion, is to take off our shoes for the place we are approaching is holy. Else we may find ourselves treading on another man’s dream. More serious still we may forget... that God was there before our arrival.

Anon

YOU, THE SICK, are the aristocracy of the kingdom of God and if you but choose to do so, you work out with Him the world’s salvation. This is the Christian understanding of suffering; it is the only one that puts your heart at rest.

Pope Paul VI (1897-1978)

TO HER, EVERY MOMENT WAS PRECIOUS even if it brought pain, and existence was significant and meaningful even if she was confined to bed. To her, sufferings were but a means of joining Christ in the redemption of mankind. She lived in love, she reflected love, and she died in love. From her misery she forged triumph. For her, indeed, to live was Christ and to die was to go to the eternal Lover whose presence she had come to know in suffering. The story of her suffering is beautiful. By accepting her Calvary she brought peace for herself and for others.

Murray Ballantyne, writing of a young friend dying of tubercolosis

WOULD YOU KNOW who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays rnost or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms, but it is he who is always thankful to God, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it.

If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and perfection, he must tell you to make a rule to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. Whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank God and praise God for it, you tum it into a blessing. Could you therefore work miracles you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit; it turns all that it touches into happiness.

William Law (1686-1761)

ALL SIN IS A FORM OF SELF-EXALTATION, the attempt to be the author of one’s own happiness rather than to receive this happiness from God. The effort to create this happiness for himself, an utterly impossible accomplishment for man, constitutes sin in its most basic form. Man cannot produce the deepest values in human life; they can only be received. It is God alone who can give ultimate fulfilment, complete peace and if man tries to achieve these values by himself, he is doomed to fall. This attempt we call sin.

Peter G. van Breemen S.J.

SIN HAS FOUR CHARACTERISTICS:

self-sufficiency instead of faith,

self-will instead of submission,

self-seeking instead of benevolence,

self-righteousness instead of humility.

E. Paul Hovey

THE LITTLE ILLS WE HAVE are, I believe, a blessing. Without them we would not know how to appreciate all we have had in the past or we would never think about a better life to come.

Hilda Burke

DROP YOUR STILL DEWS OF QUIETNESS,

Till all our strivings cease;

Take from our souls the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Your peace.

J.G. Whittler

“THESE THINGS WRITE WE UNTO YOU, that your joy may be full.” What is fulness of joy but peace? Joy is tumultuous only when it is not full; but peace is the privilege of those who are “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee”. It is peace, springing from trust and innocence, and then overflowing in love towards all around him.

J. H. Newman

THROUGH THE SPIRIT OF DIVINE LOVE, let the violent, obstinat powers of thy nature be quieted, the hardness of thy affections softened, and thine intractable self-will subdued; and as often as anything contrary stirs within thee, immediately sink into the blessed Ocean of meekness and love.

A. Steecen

THERE IS A VOICE, “a still, small voice” of love, heard from above;

But not amidst the din of earthly sounds, which here confounds;

By those withdrawn apart it best is heard,

And peace, sweet peace, breathes in each gentle word.

Anonymous

O LORD! my best desires fulfil,

And help me to resign

Life, health, and comfort, to Thy will,

And make Thy pleasure mine.

W.M. Cowper

HE SPEAKETH, but it is with us to hearken or no. It is much, yea, it is everything, not to turn away the ear, to be willing to hearken, not to drown His voice. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” It is a secret, hushed voice, a gentle intercourse of heart to heart, a still, small voice; whispering to the inner ear. How should we hear it, if we fill our ears and our hearts with the din of this world, its empty tumult, its excitement, its fretting vanities, or cares, or passions, or anxieties, or show, or rivalries, and its whirl of emptinesses?

E. B. Pusey

SLOWLY, through all the universe, that temple of God is being built. Wherever, in any world, a soul, by free-willed obedience, catches the fire of God’s likeness, it is set into the growing walls, a living stone. When, in your hard fight, in your tiresome drudgery, or in your terrible temptation, you catch the purpose of your being, and give yourself to God, and so give Him the chance to give Himself to you, your life, a living stone, is taken up and set into that growing wall. Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely ways - there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple. Oh, if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is to be a part forever, what patience must fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the Master wills.

Phillips Brooks

WHAT DO OUR HEAVY HEARTS PROVE but that other things are sweeter to us than His will, that we have not attained to the full mastery of our true freedom, the full perception of its power, that our sonship is yet but faintly realized, and its blessedness not yet proved and known? Our consent would turn all our trials into obedience. By consenting we make them our own and offer them with ourselves again to Him.

H. E. Manning

NOTHING IS INTOLERABLE that is necessary. Now God hath bound thy trouble upon thee, with a design to try thee, and with purposes to reward and crown thee. These cords thou canst not break; and therefore lie thou down gently, and suffer the hand of God to do what He please.

Jeremy Taylor

THE SOUL’S LAST CHANCE

The most terrible crime is to smother the inspirations of the indwelling God. This is the unpardonabIe sin. Conscience may be so many times beaten down that finally it has not the courage to rise and speak. Even God may become discouraged. Jesus said, "If I speak to you, you believe not," so He was silent. When God is discouraged and gives no more inspirations, when He grows weary and will no longer say, "Do this," or "Do that," then probation is over, the soul is lost, and eternal darkness has begun. The rest of life is only prolixitas mortis, the delay of death. The unpardonable sin has been committed.

This is the most horrible risk that the habitual sinner takes. An inspiration of God may be the last. The warning in conscience may never be repeated. The last whisper of Christ dies within the sinner’s soul. He will never hear God or conscieace again. If so, he imagines that he is safe. He hears no rebuke. He feels no compunction. He says, "I have outgrown my former scrupulosity. I am no longer so narrow in my views. I am become free." But he is lost.

HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD

A man practised in woodcraft, out of a babel of sounds in a tropical forest, will recognize any one. He may hear the calls of a hundred, a thousand, different species of birds, squawking, hooting, whistling, singing, but he says, "Ther! listen to the note of such and such a bird." The novice strains his ears, but cannot catch the particular sound. "I listen," says he, "but I cannot recognize it. How can you know it?" And the master says, "I could tell that note if every leave on every tree had a different voice and all were speaking. I could tell that note in the midst of any tumult."

So, the man who knows the voice of God, hears it anywhere - in the midst of crowded streets, at an entertainment, on a battle field, in his soul, even when temptation is making pandemonium within. He can recognize the voice of God anywhere.

CONVERSING WITH GOD

We cannot persuade the natural man of the reality of mystical experiences. He will say: "Imagination. Delusion. Catholic saints, Quakers, Quietists, Swedenborgians, Theosophists, are to be placed in the same category - fanatics all." Meanwhile, we shake the head and say, "No. You misunderstand." "Then explain to me," says he. "I will listen. Explain how you know that God talks to you." The mystic answers, "We cannot explain. We know because we know" and the skeptic laughs and says, "I thought so." But how can he ever be taught? He will not try. He will not submit to the discipline. He will not go into silence. He dreads solitude, especially the solitude of the soul. He cannot hear the voice of God unless God thunders at him. But God is a Spirit, and the Spirit breathes, whispers "He breathed on them.” To hear God, one must be quiet enough to hear a breath and they that will not be quiet, will never hear.

There are objects that cannot be seen by certain eyes. There are truths that cannot be proved to certain minds. Music and poetry, for example, mean nothing to those who have not the soul to hear and to feel. So of the voice of God. You cannot hear it unless your ear is attuned, unless your soul is trained. You attune the ear and train the soul in solitude, in reflection, in meditation, in prayer.

TEMPTATION

“Watch and pray that you enter not into temptaticn" (Mt. 26, 41). Generally, we place the emphasis upon "watch and pray". Why not sometimes put it upon the other words, "that you enter not”. Once we are actually in temptation - deeply in - it may be too much for us. Temptation produces a peculiar intoxication of the mind, a sort of paralysis of the will, an hypnosis of the soul, or, on the other hand, a diabolical recklessness, and sin becomes almost inevitable. It is better to stave off temptation, not to "enter in".

If, however, temptation comes, we shall still fight our hardest, knowing that we can always win.

The advice of Polonius to Laertes is not bad, for a conflict either between man and man or between man and the devil: “Beware of entering into a quarrel, but being in, be sure that the opposed may beware of you.”

NONE CAN PRODUCE SO GREAT A SERENITY OF LIFE, as a mind free from guilt, and kept untainted, not only from actions, but purposes that are wicked. By this means the soul will be not only unpolluted, but not disturbed; the fountain will run clear and unsullied, and the streams that flow from it will be just and honest deeds, ecstasies of satisfaction, a brisk energy, of spirit, which makes a man an enthusiast in his joy, and a tenacious memory, sweeter than hope. For as shrubs which are cut down with the morning dew upon them do for a long time after retain their fragrancy, so the good actions of a wise man perfume his mind, and leave a rich scent behind them. So that joy is, as it were, watered with these essences, and owes its flourishing to them.

Plutarch

ON THE ASSUMPTION

MARY IS THE STELLA MATUTINA, THE MORNING STAR AFTER THE DARK NIGHT, BUT ALWAYS HERALDING THE SUN.

What is the nearest approach in the way of symbols, in this world of sight and sense, to represent to us the glories of that higher world which is beyond our bodily perceptions? What are the truest tokens and promises here, poor though they may be, of what one day we hope to see hereafter, as being beautiful and rare? Whatever they may be, surely the Blessed Mother of God may claim them as her own. And so it is; two of them are ascribed to her as her titles, in her Litany - the stars above, and flowers below. She is at once the Rosa Mystica and the Stella Matutina.

And of these two, both of them well suited to her, the Morning Star becomes her best, and that for three reasons.

First, the rose belongs to this earth, but the star is placed in high heaven. Mary now has no part in this nether world. No change, no violence from fire, water, earth, or air, affects the stars above; and they show themselves, ever bright and marvellous, in all regions of this globe, and to all the tribes of men.

And next, the rose has but a short life ; its decay is as sure as it was graceful and fragrant in its noon. But Mary, like the stars, abides for ever, as lustrous now as she was on the day of her Assumption; as pure and perfect, when her Son comes in judgment, as she is now.

Lastly, it is Mary’s prerogative to be the Morning Star, which heralds in the sun. She does not shine for herself, or from herself, but she is the reflection of her and our Redeemer, and she glorifies Him. When she appears in the darkness, we know that He is close at hand. He is Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Behold He comes quickly, and His reward is with Him, to render to every one according to his works. “Surely I come quickly. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”

H.N.

WHY SHOULD YOU FILL TODAY

with sorrow about tomorrow, my heart?

One watches all with care most true,

Doubt not that He will give you too your part.

Paul Flemming

THE CROSSES which we make for ourselves by a restless anxiety as to the future, are not crosses which come from God. We show want of faith in Him by our false wisdom, wishing to forestall His arrangements, and struggling to supplement His Providence by our own providence. The future is not yet ours; perhaps it never will be. If it comes, it may come wholly different from what we have foreseen. Let us shut our eyes, then, to that, which God hides from us, and keeps in reserve in the treasures of His deep counsels. Let us worship without seeing ; let us be silent; let us abide in peace.

Francois de la Mothe Fénelon

COGITATIONES IN NOCTE NATALIS

Natus Est, in frigore nocte, in praesepia, in Bethlehem –

Longe hominibus Judaeae:

Pax in Terra!

Natus Est, ex Virgine Maria, ex Spiritu Sancto, ex mysterio Fidei –

In animo nostris semper Es:

Cum omni tempore fides habeamus!

Natus Es, pro nobis, pro omnibus nobis –

Sive Hebraei, seu Arabes, sive Gentiles, sew Æthiopes,

Humani sumus, et semper clamabimus – PAX !

Victor Cauchi, Nox Natalis Christi 1967

THE ONE GOD

The road that stretches before the feet of a man is a challenge to his heart long before it tests the strength of his legs. Our destiny is to run to the edge of the world and beyond, off into the darkness: sure for all our blindness, secure for all our helplessness, strong for all our weakness, gaily in love for all the pressure on our hearts.

In that darkness beyond the world, we can begin to know the world and ourselves; though we see through the eyes of Another. We begin to understand that a man was not made to pace out his life behind the prison walls of nature, but to walk into the arms of God on a road that nature could never build.

Life must be lived, even by those who cannot find the courage to face it. In the living of it, every mind must meet the rebuff of mystery. To some men, this will be an exultant challenge: that so much can be known and truth not be exhausted, that so much is still to be sought, that truth is an ocean not to be contained in the pool of a human mind. To others, this is a humiliation not to be borne; for it marks out sharply the limits of our proud minds. In the living of life, every mind must face the unyieldiing rock of reality, of a truth that does not bend to our whim or fantasy, of the rule that measures the life and mind of a man.

In the living of life, every human heart must see problems awful with finality. There are the obvious problems of death, marriage, the priesthood, religious vows; all unutterably final. But there are, too, the day to day, or rather the moment to moment choices of heaven or hell. Before every human heart that has ever beat out its allotted measures, the dare of goals as high as God himself wss tossed down: to be accepted, or to be fled from in terror.

God has said so little, that yet means so much for our living. To have said more would mean less of reverence by God for the splendor of His image in us. Our knowing and loving, He insists, must be our own; the truth ours because we have accepted it; the love ours because we have given it. We sre made in His image. Our Maker will be the last to smudge that image in the name of security, or by way of easing the hazards of the nobility of man.’

The great truths that must flood the mind of man with light are the limitless perfection of God; and the perfectibility of man. The enticements that must captivate the heart of man are the divine goodness of God and man’s gratuitously given capacity to share that divine life, to begin to possess that divine goodness even as he walks among the things of earth. The truths are not less certain because they are too clear for our eyes. The task before our heart is not to hold fickle lover but to spend itself.

Without these truths, and the others that fill out the pattern of a man’s days, we are underfed weaklings, starving waifs, paralyzed in our living not only by lack of strength but even more by lack of light. To live a man must move by the steps of his heart; and how can he move until he can see and be drawn by the beauty of Goodness and Truth?

Anon

WITHOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT, God is far away, Christ stays in the past, the Gospel is a dead letter, the Church is simply an organisation, authority is a matter of domination, mission a matter of propaganda, the liturgy no more than an evocation, Christian living a slave morality.

BUT IN THE HOLY SPIRIT, the Risen Christ is there, the Gospel is the power of life, the Church shows forth the life of the Trinity, the authority is a liberating service, mission is a Pentecost, the liturgy is both memorial and anticipation, human action is deified.

Patriarch Athenagoras

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