Category: Speaking to the Soul

Then turning toward the woman, Jesus said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” (Luke 7:44-47)

The consecration of [St. Columba’s] church [on the White Earth reservation] by Bishop Whipple in August of 1872 was a gala occasion, with a huge crowd of both church and Indian dignitaries present. On that occasion, one of the chiefs spoke to Bishop Whipple: “I heard the new message which you had brought into the country. I went to your spirit man, Enmegahbowh. I sat at his feet, and I have all that story in my heart.”

“When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.” And Paul does not say, What? Have I not a right to be believed after so many signs? but he complied for their sakes. . . .

There is One Being, who knows Himself and sees Himself.

He is like the sea, in that all creation moves in Him.

As the waters beset the fish in all their movements,

The Creator is clad with everything which is made,

Both great and small.

Alone with none but Thee, my God,

I journey on my way;

What need I fear, when Thou art near,

O king of night and day?

More safe I am within Thy hand,

than if a host did round me stand.

If a traveler returns from visiting our Indian or Chinese Christians the first thing that he tells us is that he was delighted to find himself worshipping in a church where the language indeed was strange and the worshippers of another colour, but that in every other respect he felt quite at home. He found the same sort of ornaments, the same service, the same Prayer Book, the same hymns with which he was familiar.

This Mission was begun in 1889 by two young American priests, sent out by the American Church Missionary Society (since merged in the “Board of Missions”). They buried themselves in the interior of Southern Brazil and set themselves to acquire a thorough mastery of the language, and of the modes of thought and life of the people.

The dead man was being buried, and many friends were conducting him to his tomb. Christ, the life and resurrection, meets him there. He is the Destroyer of death and of corruption. He is the One in whom we live and move and are.

In comparing the eighth-century Ordo XI with the earlier Gelasian Sacramentary that reflects sixth-century liturgical practice, a conflicting tendency is apparent. On the one hand, the eighth-century liturgical revisers show their reluctance to discard venerable rituals and prayers, which terminates in ritual conflation and elaboration.

Cardinal Roncalli, a former Vatican diplomat enjoying the honourable semi-retirement of the Patriarchate of Venice, was elected John XXIII in 1958 largely because he had few enemies, and because no one involved in the election thought that he could do much harm; he was seventy-six and it was (rightly) thought that he would not enjoy a long period in office. After the last exhausted years of Pius XII, it was sensible to look for a man of peace who would give the Church a chance to find a decisive leader to set an appropriate direction for the future