“Father,” it says, “I have sinned against heaven, and before you.” This is the first confession before the Creator of nature, the Patron of mercy, and the Judge of guilt. Although God knows all things, he awaits the words of your confession.
We were all naturally much elated at the very encouraging reception we had met with in such high places. But in order that we might not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, an overruling Providence, higher than the princes of this world, saw fit to “visit us with trouble and to bring distress upon us.”
The pastor should be discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech; lest he either utter what ought to be suppressed or suppress what he ought to utter. For, as incautious speaking leads into error, so indiscreet silence leaves in error those who might have been instructed. The pastor ought also to understand how commonly vices pass themselves off as virtues. For often niggardliness excuses itself under the name of frugality,
The evil from which we pray to be delivered is not that which is most oppressive in life, such as poverty, worries, hardship, burdens, sacrifices, pain, injustice, tyranny and so on; it is the chain of circumstance that leads us into temptation, disturbing the balance, pushing life off-center, distorting the perspective.
The forty penitential weekdays and six Sundays that follow Mardi Gras and precede Easter are the days of greatest calm in the church’s year. Since by long centuries of custom the date of Easter is annually determined from the first Sunday after the full moon on or after March 21, the intertwining of physical and spiritual seasons is virtually inevitable. The resulting union of deep winter and holy preparation makes reflection, even penitence, a natural activity
One mark of the true Godhead is indicated by the words of Holy Scripture, which Moses learnt by the voice from heaven, when he heard him who said, “I am He that is.” We think it right, then, to believe that to be alone truly Divine which is represented as eternal and infinite in respect of being;
If He could speak, that victim torn and bleeding,
Caught in His pain and nailed upon the Cross,
Has He to give the comfort souls are needing?
Could He destroy the bitterness of loss?
When we wait, we live simultaneously in the “not yet” and in the present. There are no short-cuts. Sometimes I think of this psalm [Psalm 62] when I choose the wrong line at the supermarket: what promised to be a speedy passage turns out to be slow and tedious as the customers ahead of me fumble for the right change and dispute sales items with the checker, who is usually new on the job and struggling with a malfunctioning scanner. My own small plan for my own small life demands rapid and purposeful movement with no wasted time and energy.
Far too often we have seen Christian healing and the healing provided by the medical community as separate and distinct. In recent decades, though, we increasingly hear people affirm that healing is “both/and”: it is found in both the medical community and the church, it involves both the individual with faith and the medical personnel who see their expert care as part of the resurrection of the forgotten touch
When we come to prayer we bring with us, although perhaps unknowingly, all the disquiet that we have imposed on ourselves during the preceding hours or days. If we have not beforehand tried to keep our heart or our body in a state of order, truth and beauty, we cannot expect them to be suddenly transformed, just because we shut our eyes and want to be in the presence of God.