For as long as I enjoy the life which you have given me by your Spirit, O Holy Father, Almighty God, I shall proclaim you as the eternal God and also as the eternal Father. Nor shall I ever show such folly and impiety as to make myself judge of your omnipotence and mysteries, and put the feeble understanding of my weakness above a true understanding of your infinity and faith in your eternity.
About 1142, Bernard of Clairvaux asked Aelred to write his Mirror of Charity. Bernard encouraged his son in the faith to write this treatise as an apologetic for the new monastic way of living in the Cistercian order. In this work, it would be made clear that human relations were not just “natural,”
William Laud conducted a famous controversy with a Jesuit theologian, John Fisher, subsequently published as A Relation of the Conference between William Laud and Mr. Fisher the Jesuit (1639). Against the proposition advanced by Fisher that all points defined in the Church are fundamental,
The Lord was baptized. The heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit came down upon him. A voice from the heavens thundered and said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am pleased.” We should say that heaven was opened at the baptism of Jesus and for the plan of forgiving sins. There are not the sins of him “who had committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.”
This closing year has been rich with promise of what shall one day come. There was an Interchurch Movement which would gather into one common coffer the missionary treasures of “Protestants” of every name; there was the Lambeth Conference where the bishops of the Anglican Communion for the first time invited bishops of the Eastern Church to counsel with them in their committee meetings;
Determined to become a missionary, Bedell gave up her job to train as an Episcopal deaconess in New York City. . . .She threw herself into her work and gradually gained the love and trust of her people. She was adopted into the tribe and given the name of Vicsehia, which means Bird Woman, because she sang, hummed, and whistled constantly while she worked. Harriet devoted herself to the Cheyenne until she contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Colorado to recover.
Epiphany—the shining forth of Christ to the Gentiles, to the wider world beyond the chosen people of the Old Testament, the Old Covenant. . . .The Gentiles who find the great light are those who come a long way from where they started and are not afraid of making fools of themselves and, finally, are ready to return to their homes by another way, a way that runs clean counter to the plans of King Herod and the rest of the powers that be.
May the blessed Kings pray for you in the Mystical Body of our Lord, may they impart to you something of the faith that sent them on their mysterious journey, and of the joy which they found when they knelt before the Lord of Heaven made Man. It seems to me that no one has ever adequately portrayed in words the beauty of this season.
That Epiphany Eve in 1985, it was cold. The frost on my side of the door had become a layer of ice by the time I sat down to work at eight-thirty. I was amazed, looking toward the copse, to see Buckwheat standing in the open field rather than with the herd down by the sheltering trees. Heavy with calf, she was gargantuan in the hard light of the January morning.
He who perseveres to the end shall be saved. Piety must be habitual, not by fits. It must be persevering, because temptations continue all our life, and perseverance alone obtains the crown. Its means are: the presence of God, good reading, prayer, the sacraments, good resolutions often renewed,