I first met Charlie Andrews when he was a member of the Cambridge Mission in Delhi, on the staff of St. Stephen’s College. He was keen on Indian leadership and went with me to see his own bishop of the Punjab, Dr. Lefroy, about recognizing the newly organized National Missionary Society of India so that they could open an Anglican mission in the Punjab.
In the twilight of the morning,
When the shadows steal away,
And we wake from balmy slumber
To behold another day,
In prayer, we have first to experience the dissatisfaction of our own desire, confess our own lack, and recognize in faith the absent presence of God. This should lead us to desire the desire of God himself, that is, to desire what God desires and to let God desire in us. At this point, prayer appears as the mystery of God in us and an event of the Spirit,
Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education. Remember too every day, and whenever you can, repeat to yourself: “Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee today.”
Small, inconspicuous signs of love are important in all those places where people live in close proximity with each other and depend on each other. Huerre calls [the 32nd chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict, on the tools of the monastery] a “chapter of good mood” because concrete elements such as order, cleanliness, and attentiveness contribute much to a cheerful atmosphere.
That you may understand that the Lord was speaking of spiritual fishing, however, Peter says, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” It is as if he were saying, “Through the whole night our fishing has brought us nothing, and we have been laboring in vain.
The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age.
Cast out by men who themselves had been outcasts in their native England, Hutchinson is a classic rebel’s rebel, revealing how quickly outsiders can become authoritarians. The members of the Massachusetts Court removed Anne because her moral certitude was too much like their own. Her views were a mirror for their rigidity.
We ought not to pass over in silence the fact that the Northalbingians on one occasion committed a great crime and one of a terrible nature. When some unhappy captives, who had been taken from Christian lands and carried away to the barbarians, were ill treated by these strangers, they fled thence in the hope of escaping
Now and then you hear wild and frightening talk about a “holy war” which will some day overtake and destroy America. The four chaplains of three faiths on the troopship Dorchester had the answer for that, and their answer is perhaps the epic experience of World War II. . . .