T.S. Eliot on a difficult faith
You will never attract the young by making Christianity easy; but a good many can be attracted by finding it difficult: difficult both to the disorderly mind and to the unruly passions.
— T.S. Eliot
This quote showed up in my today, courtesy of The Plough daily dig email. Immediately I was struck by how . . .
"the man who cries out against evil men..."
The man who cries out against evil men but does not pray for them will never know the grace of God.
--St. Silouan the Athonite
on a radically simple Christmas
Jesus observed, “Without me you can do nothing.” Yet we act, for the most part, as though without us God can do nothing.…“Oh, but nothing will get done,” you say. “If I don’t do it, Christmas won’t happen.” And we crowd out Christ with our fretful fears.
God asks us to give away everything of ourselves. The gift of greatest efficacy . . .
despise the sins...not the brother who commits them
The Devil cunningly induces us – instead of irritating us against himself – to notice our neighbors’ sins, to make us spiteful and angry with others, and to awaken our contempt towards them, thus keeping us in enmity with our neighbors, and with the Lord God Himself. Therefore, we must despise the sins, the faults themselves, and not our . . .
