Category: Speaking to the Soul

Remigius came of a family distinguished for its sanctity. Not merely his mother and his brother, but his nurse and his foster-brother, are numbered among the saints. Holy influences surrounded him from his infancy, and the boy grew up grave and pure-minded and earnest. When he was but two and twenty the diocese became vacant. Remigius was amongst those who were assembled in the church at Rheims to elect a new bishop; suddenly a ray of light from an upper window fell upon the earnest face of the young layman.

Jerome is not a man to whom it is easy to warm, although he certainly had a powerful effect on various pious and wealthy ladies in late-fourth-century Rome. One feels that he was a man with a six-point plan for becoming a saint, taking in the papacy on the way. After [Pope] Damasus’s death Jerome abruptly relocated to Palestine, though the precise reasons for his departure from Rome have now somehow disappeared from the record.

Lord God, to Thee we give all praise,

With grateful hearts our voices raise,

That angel hosts Thou didst create

Around Thy glorious throe to wait.

A great fullness of spiritual comfort and joy in God comes into the hearts of those who recite or devoutly intone the psalms as an act of praise to Jesus Christ. They drop sweetness in men’s souls and pour delight into their thoughts and kindle their wills with the fire of love, making them hot and burning within, and beautiful and lovely in Christ’s eyes. And those who persevere in their devotion he raises up to the life of meditation and, on many occasions, he exalts them to the melody and celebrations of heaven.

Knowing the greatness and sweetness of Love, I can never be poor in any estate. How sweet a thing is it as we go or ride, or eat or drink, or converse abroad to remember that one is the heir of the whole world, and the friend of God! That one has so great a friend as God is: and that one is exalted infinitely by all His Laws! That all the riches and honours in the world are ours in the Divine Image to be enjoyed!

A dreadful thing, in truth, is poverty, as all who have had experience of it know. For no words can express the trouble which they endure who live in poverty, without knowing the relief of true philosophy. And in the case of Lazarus, there was not only this evil, but bodily weakness superadded, and that in the highest degree

St. Sergius of Radonej (1314-1392) is one of the most popular Russian saints. The monastery of the Holy Trinity founded by him, at present the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, is now the spiritual centre of Russia. The exceptional influence of the saint, which began during his life and never ceased, can be seen above all in the inner, spiritual life of the country, in its monastic life.

Blessed art Thou, O Lord,

who givest thy beloved pleasant sleep,

and to them that fear Thee to lie down safely.

Lighten our eyes,

that we sleep not in death:

deliver us from the terror by night,

The human journey rightly understood is a movement of metanoia. Repentance, the usual translation of the Greek word, is an unsatisfactory one, because it too much suggests self-blame and the acknowledgement of sin, instead of hope which is its essential characteristic.

Some time ago I had heard of the scattered remnants of the Oneida and Mohawk Tribes who still retained the use of our Liturgy, once taught them by the British Missionaries when they resided under that government. It was my most anxious wish to see and converse with them. This wish it pleased God most graciously to gratify. I paid them a visit, setting off from Mr. Woodward’s after divine service and a sermon. We lodged at Mr. Coles’s, the last house in the white settlements.