I came to love you late, O Beauty so ancient and so new; I

came to love you late. You were within me and I was outside,

where I rushed about wildly searching for you like some

monster loose in your beautiful world. You were with me but I

was not with you. You called me, you shouted to me, you broke

past my deafness. You bathed me in your light, you wrapped me

in your splendour, you sent my blindness reeling. You gave out

such a delightful fragrance, and I drew it in and came and

came breathing hard after you. I tasted, and it made me hunger

and thirst; you touched me, and I burned to know your peace.

Sherwood E Wirt, The Confessions of Augustine in Modern

English

Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1977, p.125.

~~~

It was not by accident, I suspect, that the first of the

Ninety-five Theses Martin Luther nailed to the Wittenberg

church door read, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said

`repent,’ He willed that the entire life of believers be one

of repentance.”

Charles Colson, Against the Night

London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1990, p.140.

~~~

G K Chesterton observed that the doctrine of original sin is

the one philosophy empirically validated by 3,500 years of

human history. Certainly the Middle East, South Africa,

Central America, Northern Ireland, and the streets of America

testify to that fact. Yet we are not sinners because we sin;

we sin because we are sinners. Unless the church recognizes

this and preaches it, there is no way it can be a strong model

of an alternative community of character to a culture corroded

by sin.

Charles Colson, Against the Night

London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1990, p.147.

~~~

Thanks to you, my Lord Jesus Christ,

for all the gifts you have won for me,

for all the pains and insults you have borne for me.

O merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,

may I know you more clearly,

love you more dearly,

and follow you more nearly,

for ever and ever.

St Richard, cited in Praying with the Saints

Dublin, Veritas Publications, 1989, p.59.

~~~

Lord, help your people to seek you with all their hearts

and to deserve what you promise.

Grant this through Christ our Lord.

Daily Mass Book, Brisbane, The Liturgical Commission,

1990, p.38

~~~

My soul, let us love God, for he created all of us, and he is

not far away. He did not create the souls of men in order to

go away and leave them, for they are of him and in him. Tell

me, where does truth taste sweet? In the inner heart; but

unfortunately the heart has wandered away from him. Go back to

your heart, you double-dealing cheat, and hang onto him who

made you. Stand with him and you will stand fast. Rest in him

and you will find peace. What are you doing wandering about in

the rough terrain? Where do you think you’re going? All the

good things you love come from God, but they are pleasant and

good only as they relate to him. Once your love deserts him,

things rightly turn sour, because anything from God is

improperly loved it if causes men to desert him…

That is why our Life came down here to earth and took away our

death. He killed death with the sheer abundance of his own

life, while calling us back to himself with thunder in his

voice. He came from the Virgin’s womb where our humanity was

joined in him so that our mortal flesh might not be forever

mortal. He came out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,

exulting like a strong man to run a race. He wasted no time

but sped on his way, shouting to us by words, acts, death,

life, descent, ascent – in all these ways calling us to return

to him. He disappeared before our eyes that we might turn to

our hearts and find him there. He left us eyes that we might

turn to our hearts and find him there. He left us and behold

he is here. He would not stay with us and yet he never parted

from us. He returned to the place he had not moved from, since

`the world was made by him’; but he was in the world, and he

came into the world, to save sinners.

Sherwood E Wirt, The Confessions of Augustine in Modern

English

Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1977, p.61-62.

~~~

Still I was not humble enough to take the humble Jesus as my

God; nor did I know what his taking our weak nature was

supposed to teach us. Your word, the eternal truth, overtops

the highest peaks of your creation; and he lifts up those of

low degree to himself. Yet he stooped to this human clay of

ours and built himself a humble habitation that he might win

to himself all who are willing to surrender their own selves.

He would heal men of the tumours of their pride. He would

nurture their love so they would not become overconfident of

their strength, but would recognise their own weakness when

they saw before their eyes Divinity himself in his weakness.

He shared our coats of skin, so that we would wearily throw

ourselves upon his humanity, and so find ourselves lifted up

by his resurrection.

Sherwood E Wirt, The Confessions of Augustine in Modern

English

Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1977, p.99-100.

~~~

In some way, I’m not just sure how, I threw myself down under

a fig tree and let the tears gush freely. These were the

streams that proved a sacrifice acceptable to you, my Lord.

Not in the exact words of Scripture but in some similar vein I

talked with you for a long time. I asked, `And thou, Lord, how

long wilt thou be roused to such fury? Do not remember the

sins of former times’ – for I felt they were still holding me.

I ended on a dismal note: `How long, how long? Tomorrow and

tomorrow? Why not now? Why not put an end to my sin right this

hour?’

I was going on like this, weeping in bitter dejection of

spirit, when I heard a voice coming from the house next door.

Whether it was a boy’s or a girl’s I don’t know, but it was

singing over and over in a kind of chant, `Take up and read,

take up and read’. Immediately my demeanour changed…

So I returned quickly to the bench where Alypius was sitting.

When I had moved from there I’d left the copy of the letters

of the Apostle. Now I grabbed up the book, opened it, and read

silently the first portion of Scripture on which my eyes

lighted: `Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery

and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put

on

the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to

gratify its desires’. I had no need or wish to read further,

for when I came to the end of the sentence, instantly, it

seemed, a light of certainty turned on in my heart and all the

fog of doubt disappeared.

Sherwood E Wirt, The Confessions of Augustine in Modern

English

Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1977, p.117-118.

~~~

Faith is `the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of

things not seen’, says the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:1).

Faith is laughter at the promise of a child called laughter.

If someone had come up to Jesus when he was on the cross and

asked him if it hurt, he might have answered, like the man in

the old joke, `Only when I laugh’. But he wouldn’t have been

joking. Faith dies, as it lives, laughing.

Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a

process rather than as a possession. It is on-again-off-again

rather than once-and-for-all. Faith is not being sure where

you’re going but going anyway. A journey without maps. Tillich

said that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element

of faith.

I have faith that my friend is my friend. It is possible that

all his motives are ulterior. It is possible that what he is

secretly drawn to is not me but my wife or my money. But

there’s something about the way I feel when he’s around, about

the way he looks me in the eye, about the way we can talk to

each other without pretence and be silent together without

embarrassment, that makes me willing to put my life in his

hands as I do each time I call him friend.

I can’t prove the friendship of my friend. When I experience

it I don’t need to prove it. When I don’t experience it, no

proof will do. If I tried to put his friendship to the test

somehow, the test itself would queer the friendship I was

testing. So it is with the Godness of God.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

London, Collins, 1973, p.24-25.

GM3.6

Grace is something you can never get but only be given.

There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any

more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream

or

earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

A good sleep is grace and so are bad dreams. Most tears are

grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is

grace…

The grace of God means something like: here is your life. You

might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t

have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful

and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with

you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the

universe. I love you.

There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace

can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

London, Collins, 1973, p.33-34.

~~~

Faith is the father of love and of hope, as well as of trust

and confidence. Faith sees God’s face in every human face.

Faith, as it slowly grows, and as we pray for it and beseech

God for it, identifies us with Christ.

Faith allows us to enter peacefully into the dark night which

faces every one of us at one time or another. Faith is at

peace, and full of light. Faith celebrates the very warp and

woof of one’s existence. Faith considers that its

precariousness and its finiteness are but the womb in which it

abides, moving toward th plenitude and fullness of the

eternity which it desires and believes in and which revelation

opens to it.

Faith walks simply, childlike, between the darkness of human

life and the hope of what is to come.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Poustinia, Christian Spirituality

of the East for Western Man

Indiana, Ave Maria Press, 1979, p. 150.

~~~

The realities of success and failure with one’s peers have

become in our day what salvation and damnation were in the

Middle Ages. Back then, the thing a person feared most was

displeasing God and `falling into the hands of an angry

Deity.’ But today all of that is changed. We really do not

give much thought to the ultimate dimension of our existence.

Our hopes and fears are more immediate; they centre on the

opinions of our contemporaries. To most of us here, the most

hideous of all possibilities would be to fail in the eyes of

our friends and coworkers. To have job ant then lose it, or to

own a fine house and be forced to sell it, or to have a child

go a route that deviates from the accepted path of advancement

– these are the terrors that haunt the souls of us modern

folk. To have and go and do and be just like the `people of

distinction’ is our substitute for heaven and salvation.

John Claypool, The Light Within You

Texas, Word, 1983, p.46.

~~~

Who is your audience? We all have an audience to whom we play

our lives and by whom we are tremendously affected. Who, then,

will it be – our peers, who can offer us only bondage and

stifling limitation, or the Father, who will lead us more and

more to be all we were meant to be? Inevitably, we will take

on the image of our audience. Whose image will it be – our

peers on earth, or our Father in heaven?

John Claypool, The Light Within You

Texas, Word, 1983, p.49-50.

What does scripture say people must do if they accept as true

God’s revelation to them? First, they must believe in all that

God has done, and in Christ. Then they must be sorry that they

have thrown this goodness back in God’s face in ingratitude;

they must be sorry for the part they have played in destroying

the world and other people. They must believe the unexpected

good news that though they have taken part in this

destruction, there is no reason to despair, there is no reason

for anyone, or any people, to remain a failure forever.

Because of Jesus Christ, all this can be undone, can be

forgiven, and they can begin again anew. They must signify

this belief and sorrow of theirs outwardly through a sign that

all can see, that is, they must be baptised. They must not

keep all this to themselves. They must go forth in the Spirit

and witness to this good news and to Jesus, letting others see

the meaning of it all, by their words and by their lives,

until the time that Jesus comes again. And this is the final

obligation: they must believe that Jesus will come again in

consummation, and they must work in expectation of that

parousia.

Vincent J Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered

London, SCM, 1985, p.82.

Now I would like to tell you something very important about

the way to make God’s presence visible in our life.

A pity I discovered it too late!

I have behaved like the man who travels over mountains and

seas to look for a treasure, then returns home exhausted and

discovers to his surprise that the treasure is in his house.

There you are: God is in your house.

Carlo Carretto, The Desert in the City

London, Fount Paperbacks, 1983, p.95.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed,

knowing from whom you learned it. 2 Timothy 3:14;