When Jesus in the wild the conquest won,
Then His prophetic office was begun,
He faithful, no one saving truth conceal’d,
He gracious, the right way to Heaven reveal’d,
Joseph, the practical patron saint of those who work with their hands, from artisans to plumbers, would seem an unlikely dreamer. Daily he crafted the tangible and measurable into the furniture of ordinary life.
And lead us not into temptation, O Lord. Is this then what the Lord teaches us to pray, that we may not be tempted at all? How then is it said elsewhere, a man untempted, is a man unproved; and again,
May the strength of God pilot us.
May the power of God preserve us.
May the wisdom of God instruct us.
May the hand of God protect us.
The first great principle of temptation I shall note, is a general mistake, which excuses very many of our crimes upon pretence of infirmity, calling all those sins to which by natural disposition we are inclined (though by carelessness and evil customs they are heightened to a habit) by the name of sins of infirmity;
God, who is the fountain of good, did choose rather to bring good out of evil, than not to suffer any evil to be: not only because variety of accidents and natures do better entertain our affections and move our spirits, who are transported and suffer great impressions by a circumstance,
Notwithstanding the remarkable progress of philanthropic ideas and humanitarian feelings, during the last half century, among almost every nation and people throughout the habitable globe; yet the great mass of the Caucasian race still deem the negro as entirely destitute of those qualities,
It was said that one of the Desert Fathers had prayed to the Lord and the Lord had taken away all his passions, so that he became impassible. And in this condition he went to one of the elders and said, “You see before you a man who is completely at rest and has no more temptations.”
The unique and supreme proof of love is this: to love a person who opposes us. That is why Truth himself bore the suffering of the cross, and even bestowed his love on his persecutors. He said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Charity does not demand of us that we should not see the faults of others; we must in that case shut our eyes. But it commands us to avoid attending unnecessarily to them, and that we be not blind to the good, while we are so clear-sighted to the evil that exists. We must remember too God’s continual kindness to the most worthless creature, and think how many causes we have to think ill of ourselves