Category: Speaking to the Soul

Once I lay in darkness and in the depths of night and was tossed to and fro in the waves of the turbulent world, uncertain of the correct way to go, ignorant of my true life and a stranger to the light of truth. At that time and on account of the life I then led, it seemed difficult to believe what divine mercy promised for my salvation, namely, that someone could be born again and to a new life by being immersed in the healing water of baptism.

God always was, and always is, and always will be. Or rather, God always Is. For Was and Will be are fragments of our time, and of changeable nature, but He is Eternal Being. And this is the Name that He gives to Himself when giving the Oracle to Moses in the Mount. For in Himself He sums up and contains all Being,

Again the darkness is past; again Light is made. . . . Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. The letter gives way, the Spirit comes to the front. The shadows flee away, the Truth comes in upon them. . . . For God was manifested to man by birth. On the one hand Being, and eternally Being, of the Eternal Being, above cause and word, for there was no word before The Word;

Grant us your light, O Lord,

that the darkness in our hearts

being wholly passed away,

we may come at last to the light

which is Christ.

In the Celtic tradition, this daily celebration of the coming of the light of each day then became a daily reminder of heaven, of the future light of eternity:

Elizabeth Seton did not live long ago and far away. She died a little over 150 years ago. New York, Baltimore, and the Maryland countryside were the setting for her work and growth in holiness. She was a wife and mother, a religious sister and educator, a woman who faced crises and setbacks which she surmounted by love, devotion, and openness to the grace of God. In proclaiming her a saint, the Church invites each of us to respond like her to the challenges in our own life.

Brought together by a power higher than our own, we find ourselves on the virgin soil of this new continent, the representatives of numerous nationalities of the old world. Our childhood, boyhood, manhood, early training, and later education have been widely different, and the associations, modes of thought and local surroundings of each individual have not been without their influence in the formation of our character as a Church.

Is thy heart athirst to know

That the King of heaven and earth

Deigns to dwell with man below,

Yea, hath stoop’d to mortal birth?

Search the Word with ceaseless care

Till thou find this treasure there.

This day is a new day

that has never been before.

This year is a new year,

the opening door.

The person who made the crucial conjunction between the religion of the settlers and the mass of the African people was a Yoruba receptive, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the foremost churchman of nineteenth-century Africa and a pioneer of the cause in his native Nigeria.