Category: Speaking to the Soul

Life must be something more than dilettante speculation. And religion (ought to be if it isn’t) a great deal more than mere gratification of the instinct for worship linked with the straight-teaching of irreproachable credos. Religion must be life made true; and life is action, growth, development—begun now and ending never. And a life made true cannot confine itself—it must reach out and twine around every pulsing interest within reach of its uplifting tendrils.

What doth this noise of thoughts within my heart

As if they had a part?

What do these loud complaints and pulling fears,

As if there were no rule or ears?

For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.

God bless this city

and move our hearts with pity

lest we grow hard.

Come, true light.

Come, life eternal.

Come, hidden mystery.

Come, treasure without name.

Come, reality beyond all words.

Let us then persevere unceasingly in our hope, and in the pledge of our righteousness, that is in Christ Jesus, “who bare our sins in his own body on the tree, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,” but for our sakes, that we might live in him, he endured all things. Let us then be imitators of his endurance, and if we suffer for his name’s sake let us glorify him. For this is the example which he gave us in himself, and this is what we have believed.

If anyone asks what the Lord’s garments, which became white as snow, represent typologically, we can properly understand them as pointing to the church of his saints [who] . . . at the time of the resurrection will be purified from every blemish of iniquity and at the same time from all the darkness of mortality.

Almighty God, dwelling in the beauty of holiness, from whom all skills of mind, hand and tongue do come; may those who give their lives to the creation of beauty be surprised by the joy of discovering your presence in your world,

Your way of acting should be different form the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else. You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge. Rid your heart of all deceit. Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love. Bind yourself to no oath lest it prove false, but speak the truth with heart and tongue. —The Rule of St. Benedict

The original audience for Luther’s defense of his writings may have been the university context of Wittenberg or Leipzig, or the Imperial Parliament or Diet at Worms in 1521, where the Holy Roman emperor was flanked by the nobility, the clerical hierarchy, and the wealthy burgesses from the towns.