Category: Speaking to the Soul

We receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, then, that we may know. Faculties of the human body, if denied their exercise, will lie dormant. The eye without light, natural or artificial, cannot fulfill its office; the ear will be ignorant of its function unless some voice or sound be heard; the nostrils unconscious of their purpose unless some scent be breathed. Not that the faculty will be absent, because it is never called into use, but that there will be no experience of its existence.

How did the early Christians begin to make sense of the Trinity? They saw that this new encounter with God was not the same as meeting God in three different roles or activities, just as I can be the celebrant of the eucharist, the coffee hour host, and an exasperated parent all on the same Sunday morning.

That collect is what Christian spirituality is all about. To withstand this scrutiny and to live in the presence of this God to whom all hearts are open, we must ground our self-understanding and our growing self-knowledge in humility, the neglected virtue that simply means knowing who we are in the sight of God, knowing our place in the order of things.

We will turn for a time to the general manner of the saint’s daily contemplation and the long continued abstemiousness of his frugality: that, mounting higher and higher, we may more readily relate concisely and briefly his lofty works, and follow to the end the study of his venerable life, and explore it more precisely; and that by a just moderation of the balance Boniface may become an example for us of eternity and a manifest pattern of apostolic learning.

There are suggestions that Cranmer was engaged in drafting services in the late 1530s, but nothing was published. As early as 1536 Hugh Latimer, in a sermon to Convocation, had called for the services of baptism and matrimony to be conducted in English. In 1538 it was stipulated that a Bible should be placed in every church, that the creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Ten Commandments should be recited in English, and that no one should be admitted to communion without having learnt them.

As we meet other cultures, we understand that the gospel challenges our own culture, and we strive to live and offer an authentic gospel undistorted by that background. Missioners also realize, however, that Christ may be expressed authentically through their own cultural personality as well.

Many other martyrs suffered in various parts of the empire under the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Among the most famous of these are the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, in the south of France (or Gaul, as it was then called), where a company of missionaries from Asia Minor had settled with a bishop named Pothinus at their head.

Children have the fathomless ability to believe anything; it is one of their most beautiful traits. They haven’t made up their minds yet about what is and what is not possible. Children have few fixed preconceptions about reality. If someone tells a child that under a particular bush is a magic place, they will search for it when no one is looking.

In his study of mysticism, The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto describes both a sense of awe and a sense of dread when encountering the numinous. Like wind and fire in nature provoking situations of danger or comfort, wind and fire in scripture symbolize Divine Presence evoking awe and terror, fascination and comfort.

We must now speak with respect to those who think meanly of the flesh, and say that it is not worthy of the resurrection nor of the heavenly economy, because, first, its substance is earth; and besides, because it is full of all wickedness, so that it forces the soul to sin along with it.