"Return, my soul, return to your source.  Sigh for God, the living fount, constantly recalling the words, 'When shall I come and appear before the face of my God?' 

Let your inward tears 'be your bread by day and by night' and 'lest you be swallowed up by a more surpassing grief', take comfort sometimes and say:  'Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you afflict me?  Hope in God, for I will confess Him my comforter and my God.'"

- From Guigo II's Twelve Meditations

"In that day the remnant of Israel,
   the survivors of Jacob,

will no longer rely on him
   who struck them down

but will truly rely on the LORD,
   the Holy One of Israel.

A remnant will return, a remnant of Jacob
   will return to the Mighty God."

- Isaiah 10:21-22

"And though you feel him in devotion or in knowing or by any other gift or grace, do not rest there, as though you had fully found Jesus; but forget that which you have found, and always be desiring after Jesus more and more, to find him better, as though you had right nought found in him.  For you know well what you feel of him, be it ever so much- yes, though you were ravished with St. Paul into the third heaven- yet you have not found Jesus as he is in the joy; however much you feel of him, he is still above it.  And therefore if you will fully find him as he is in his joy, never cease from spiritual desiring and loving of him while you live."

- From Walter Hilton's The Scale of Perfection

"In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs."

- Hebrews 1:1-4

"Our spiritual nature, which had become dead through wickedness, is raised once more by Christ through contemplation of all the ages of creation.  And through the spiritual knowledge that He gives of Himself, the Father raises the soul which has died the death of Christ.  And this is the meaning of Paul's statement: 'If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.'"

- written by Evagrios the Solitary in The Philokalia, Volume 1

To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy — to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

- Jude 1:24-25

"Jesus Christ has life in Himself (John 5:26), and He must give life to every living thing. 

This principle-the principle of utter dependence upon the Spirit and complete denial of the activity of the soul-can be seen in the church.

Look at the church.  The Spirit of the church is a moving, life-giving Spirit.  Is the church idle and barren and unfruitful?  No!  The church is full of activity.  But her activity is this:  complete dependence on God's Spirit.  The Spirit moves her.  That Spirit gives her life."

- From Jeanne Guyon's Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ

Then Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in front of the whole assembly of Israel, spread out his hands toward heaven and said:

"As we turn to the will's active detachment from the world and night in order to form it and make it perfect in this virtue of God's charity, I find no more fitting authority than what is written in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, where Moses says:  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These words contain all that the spiritual person ought to do and all that I have to teach him, so that he may truly reach God, by union of the will, through charity."

- From Ascent of Mount Carmel by John of the Cross

"Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’

"Understand the words of Holy Scripture by putting them into practice, and do not fill yourself with conceit by expatiating on theoretical ideas."

- From St. Mark the Ascetic in The Philokalia Volume 1

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, 
but with humility comes wisdom.

- Proverbs 11:2

"When the contingency experience strikes, we feel shaken, cast back upon ourselves.  We try to deny the experience, to carry on as if nothing has happened.  To succeed is really to lose out on the opportunities for rebirth a transcendence crisis offers.  The more shattering our experience the greater the opportunity.  For resurrection to happen we must acknowledge the finitude this experience points to.  This is a first aspect of the mid-life formation task.  The second aspect is to grow to reconciliation with the contigency of life.  Such reconciliation makes us realistic, resolute, and decisive."

- From Adrian Van Kaam's The Transcendent Self

"Lord, you understand;
    remember me and care for me.
    Avenge me on my persecutors.
You are long-suffering —do not take me away;
    think of how I suffer reproach for your sake.
When your words came, I ate them;
    they were my joy and my heart’s delight,
for I bear your name,
    Lord God Almighty.
I never sat in the company of revelers,
    never made merry with them;
I sat alone because your hand was on me
    and you had filled me with indignation.
Why is my pain unending
    and my wound grievous and incurable?
You are to me like a deceptive brook,
    like a spring that fails."

Therefore this is what the Lord says:

“If you repent, I will restore you
    that you may serve me;
if you utter worthy, not worthless, words,
    you will be my spokesman.
Let this people turn to you,
    but you must not turn to them.
I will make you a wall to this people,
    a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you
    but will not overcome you,
for I am with you
    to rescue and save you,” declares the Lord.
“I will save you from the hands of the wicked
    and deliver you from the grasp of the cruel.”

- Jeremiah 15:15-21

"Now, nothing is so comfortable and pleasant to nature, as a free, careless way of life, therefore she clingeth to that, and taketh enjoyment in herself and her own powers, and looketh only to her own peace and comfort and the like.  And this happeneth most of all, where there are high natural gifts of reason, for that soareth upwards in its own light, and by its own power, till at last it cometh to think itself the True Eternal Light, and giveth itself out as such, and is thus deceived in itself, and deceiveth other people along with it, who know no better, and also are thereunto inclined."

- From Theologia Germanica

"Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
    whatever they do prospers.
Not so the wicked!
    They are like chaff that the wind blows away."

- Psalm 1-1:4

"This love is made firm through abstaining from material things, and through stillness of thoughts."

- From St. Mark the Ascetic in The Philokalia, Volume 1

Trust in him at all times, O people;

  pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.

"The biggest paradox about the Church is that she is at the same time essentially traditional and essentially revolutionary.  But that is not as much of a paradox as it seems, because Christian tradition, unlike all others, is a living and perpetual revolution.

Human traditions all tend toward stagnation and decay.  They try to perpetuate things that cannot be perpetuated.  They cling to objects and values which time destroys without mercy.  They are bound up with a contingent and material order of things-customs, fashions, styles, and attitudes-which inevitably change and give way to something else.

The presence of a strong element of human conservatism in the Church should not obscure the fact that Christian tradition, supernatural in its source, is something absolutely opposed to human traditionalism."

- From Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation

"He told them this parable: 'No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.  And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.  No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.  And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.'"

- Luke 5:36-39

"The Life of Peace

Go on amid the shadows in the simplicity spoken of in the Gospels, not stopping short either in feelings, or tastes, or the light of reason, or any extraordinary gifts.  Be content to believe, to obey, to die to self, according to the state of life in which God has placed you.

You must not be discouraged by your involuntary distractions.  It is enough if you do not encourage such distractions in times of prayer by yeilding too easily to a voluntary disintegration and scattering of your thoughts all through the day.

People pour themselves out too much.  They perform even good works with too much eagerness and excitement.  They indulge their tastes and fancies, and then God punishes all this in their times of prayer.  You must learn to act calmly and in continual dependence on the Spirit of grace, mortifying all the hidden works of self-love.

Habitual intention, which is a reaching forth of the inmost soul to God, will suffice.  This is to live in the presence of God.  Be still, and do not forfeit what you have at home by turning to seek elsewhere what you will not find.  Try to make your intentions more definite, but meanwhile your undefined, undeveloped intentions are good.

A peaceful heart is a good sign, provided that you heartily and lovingly obey God, and are watchful against self-love.

Make use of your imperfections to learn detachment from yourself, and adhere firmly to God alone.  Try to grow in all goodness, not that you may find a dangerous self-satisfaction in doing so, but that you may do the will of your Beloved.

Try to be single-minded.  Avoid looking backward anxiously, a fault self-love encourages under various pretexts.  This will only disturb you and prove a snare.  Those who lead a recollected and morified life through real desire to love God will be quickly warned by that love whenever they sin against it.  As soon as you feel such warnings, pause.  I repeat my injunction:  be at rest."

- From The Complete Fenelon (a compilation of the writings of Francois Fenelon)

"When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?"

"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."

Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."

Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"

He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."

Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."

The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."

Jesus said, "Feed my sheep.  I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."  Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, "Follow me!"

Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, "Lord, who is going to betray you?")  When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"

Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."

- John 21:15-22

"Here, in thine own appointed way,
I wait to learn thy will;
Silent I stand before thy face,
And hear thee say, 'Be still!
Be still! and know that I am God:'
'Tis all I wish to know,
To feel the virtue of thy blood,
And spread its praise below."

- From Phoebe Palmer's The Way of Holiness

"Praise the LORD, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits -
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

- Psalm 103:1-5

"One cause therefore of the dulness of many Christians in prayer, is, their slight acquaintance with the sacred volume.  They hear it periodically, they read it occasionally, they are contented to know it historically, to consider it superficially, but they do not endeavor to get their minds imbued with its spirit.  If they store their memory with its facts, they do not impress their hearts with its truths.  They do not regard it as the nutriment on which their spiritual life and growth depend.  They do not pray over it, they do not consider all its doctrines as of practical application; they do not cultivate that spiritual discernment which alone can enable them judiciously to appropriate its promises and its denunciations to their own actual case.  They do not apply it as an unerring line to ascertain their own rectitude or obliquity."

- From Hannah More's Practical Piety

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.   Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

- James 1:22-25

"Truly blessed is the man who seeks virtue and pursues it and inquires diligently into its nature, since it is through virtue he approaches God and enters into spiritual communion with Him.  For it is above all by moral judgment, courage, wisdom, true knowledge and inalienable wealth that we are led through the practice of the virtues to spiritual contemplation."

- From St. John of Damaskos in The Philokalia Vol. 2

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

"We are often indifferent to our brethren who are distressed or upset, on the grounds that they are in this state through no fault of ours.  The Doctor of souls, however, wishing to root out the soul's excuses from the heart, tells us to leave our gift and be reconciled not only if we happen to be upset by our brother, but also if he is upset by us, whether justly or unjustly; only when we have healed the breach through our apology should we offer our gift."

- From St. John Cassian in The Philokalia, Volume 1

 Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

- Matthew 23:25-26

"Thy heart will also be likely to betray thee by trifling, when it should be effectually meditating.  Perhaps, when thou hast an hour for meditation, the time will be spent before thy heart will be serious.  This doing of duty as if we did it not, ruins as many as the omission of it.  Here let thine eye be always upon thy heart.  Look not so much to the time it spends in the duty, as to the quantity and quality of the work that is done.  You can tell by this work, whether a servant has been diligent."

- From Richard Baxter's Saints Everlasting Rest

"Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.  So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?  Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags.  For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.  And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'"

- Matthew 25:24-30

"Whether beginners or ones more advanced, all must learn to abide attentively and wait lovingly on God in a state of quiet, and to devote no attention either to imagination or to its working.  For here the faculties are at rest, and are working-not actively, but passively-by receiving what God works in them."

- From John of the Cross' Ascent of Mount Carmel

"The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul."

- Psalm 23:1-3

"O sweetest Love, I am unclean before You.  Break my impurity by your death.  Lead my soul's hunger and thirst through Your death into Your resurrection, into Your triumph.  Strike down my 'I' in Your death.  Take it captive and lead my hunger into Your hunger."

- From Jacob Boehme's The Way to Christ

"I will sing of your love and justice

     to you, LORD, I will sing praise.

I will be careful to lead a blameless life -

     when will you come to me?

I will conduct the affairs of my house

     with a blameless heart.

I will not look with approval

     on anything that is vile.

I hate what faithless people do;

     I will have no part in it."

- Psalm 101:1-3

"I should like to bring the routine of my daily life before you, O Lord, to discuss the long days and tedious hours that are filled with everything else but you.

Look at this routine, O God of Mildness.  Look upon us men, who are practically nothing else but routine.  In Your loving mercy, look at my soul, a road crowded by a dense and endless column of bedraggled refugees, a bomb-pocked highway on which countless trivialities, much empty talk and pointless activity, idle curiousity and ludicrous pretensions of importance all roll forward in a never-ending stream."

- From Karl Rahner's Encounters With Silence

"Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

"Mysteries can neither be seen nor felt, they are objects of faith.  Faith judges of their virtue and truth only by their origin, for they are so obscure in themselves that all that show only serves to hide them and to blind those who judge only by reason.

Teach me, divine Spirit, to read in this book of life.  I desire to become Your disciple and, like a little child, to believe what I cannot understand, and cannot see.  Sufficient for me that it is my Master who speaks.  He says that!  He pronounces this!  He arranges the letters in such a fashion!  He makes Himself heard in such a manner!  That is enough.  I decide that all is exactly as He says, I do not see the reason, but He is the infallible truth, therefore all that He says, all that He does is true."

- From Jean-Pierre de Caussade's Abandonment to Divine Providence

"At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.  All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.  For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."

- Luke 10:21-24

"Those who seek the elevated status of extraordinary favors are very subject to illusions, deceptions and deceit.  Some people who imagine themselves to be saintly may not even be good men.  Sometimes there is more sublimity in their words and expressions than there is in their thoughts and deeds.

We must neither rashly despise nor censure anything.  While blessing God for the super-eminence of others, let us keep to our lower but safer way.  It may be less excellent, but it is better suited to our lack and littleness.  If we conduct ourselves with humility and good faith in this, God will raise us up to the heights that are truly great."

From Francis De Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life

"Thus says St. John:  'Let us love God now, for he loved us first' (1 John 4:19).  He loved us much when he made us after his likeness, but he loved us more when he bought us with his precious Blood, by voluntary undertaking of death in his humanity from the power of the enemy and the pains of Hell; but he loves us most when he gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit - that is, love - by which we know him and love him and are made secure that we are his sons, chosen to salvation.  For this love, we are more bound to him that for any other love that he ever showed to us, either in our making or redeeming."

- From Walter Hilton's The Scale of Perfection

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

- Romans 8:37-39

"I put mental prayer (or prayer of the heart) in first place, particularly when it is centered on the life and passion of Our Lord.  By meditating on him frequently, your whole soul will be filled with him.  Learn his ways and form your actions after his patterns.  Since he is 'the light of the world' (John 8:12), we must be instructed and enlightened by him.  Just as children learn speech from their parents, so by keeping close to Our Savior in meditation and observing his words, deeds, and affections we learn by his grace and example to speak, act and will as he does."

- From Francis De Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life

"What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead."

- Philippians 3:8-10

"The doctrines of Scripture are the same now as when David called them, 'a law converting the soul, and giving light to the eyes.'  This is perhaps the most accurate and comprehensive definition of the change for which we are contending, for it includes both the illumination of the understanding, and the alteration in the disposition."

- From Hannah More's Practical Piety

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

- Matthew 6:22-23

"At that moment, as anyone else will find who cares to make this same interior experiment, I felt the distress characteristic to a particle adrift in the universe, the distress which makes human wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and of stars.  And if something saved me, it was hearing the voice of the Gospel, guaranteed by divine successes, speaking to me from the depth of the night:  ego sum, noli timere (It is I, be not afraid).

Yes, O God, I believe it:  and I believe it all the more willingly because it is not only a question of my being consoled, but of my being completed:  it is you who are at the origin of the impulse, and at the end of that continuing pull which all my life long I can do no other than follow, or favour the first impulse and its developments.  And it is you who vivify, for me, with your omnipresence (even more than my spirit animates the matter which it animates), the myriad influences of which I am the constant object.  In this life which wells up within me and in the matter which sustains me, I find much more than your gifts.  It is you yourself whom I find, you who makes me participate in your being, you who moulds me."

- From Teilhard de Chardin's The Divine Milieu 

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

- Luke 2:8-20

"We see how emphatically Paul states the case when he refers to the future event of resurrection not as the resurrection of the dead, but the resurrection of life in which Christians already participate - which life is hidden with Christ in God:  'When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory' (Col. 3:4).  Paul's common phrases 'in Christ' and 'with Christ' which describe the new person almost merge.  The new life with Christ which is received by faith and acted out in baptism is demonstrated in conduct as we live in Christ.

The Christian is a new person united with Christ.  The two overwhelming events through which Jesus passed into the power of an endless life were death and resurrection.  Those who are united with him must reproduce in their personal spiritual histories these two events.  To be in and with Christ is to be identified with him in death and resurrection.  What does this mean?  Again, we must rehearse the gospel, for the core of the gospel is the death and resurrection of Jesus.  These two events in Jesus' personal history are riveted together in meaning, though we may talk about them separately.

How we look at the cross - at Christ on the cross - is a huge factor, perhaps the biggest factor in determining how we live."

- From Maxine Dunnam's Alive in Christ

"Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life.  Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.  Do you believe this?"

- John 11:25

"Now the unspeakable is like the murmuring of a brook.  If you go buried in your own thoughts, if you are busy, then you do not notice it at all in passing.  You are not aware that this murmuring exists.  But if you stand still, then you discover it.  And if you have discovered it, then you must stand still.  And when you stand still, then it persuades you.  And when it has persuaded you, then you must stoop to listen to it, then it captures you.  And when it has captured you, then you cannot break away from it, then you are overpowered.  Infatuated, you must sink down at its side.  At each moment it is as if in the next moment it must offer an explanation.  But the brook goes on murmuring, and the wanderer at its side grows older.

It is otherwise with one who confesses.  The stillness also impresses him, yet not in the melancholy mood of misunderstanding, but rather with the seriousness of eternity.  He is not, like the wanderer, uncertain about how he came upon the still places.  Nor is he like the poet who wishes to seek out loneliness and its mood.  No, to confess is a holy act, for which purpose, the mind is collected in preparation.  That which environs you knows well enough what the stillness means and that it calls for earnestness.  It knows that it is its wish to be understood."

- From Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing by Soren Kierkegaard.

Be still and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth. 

Psalm 46:10

"This is the beginning of God's speaking.  And this word, which is addressed to all those who are converted in heart, seems to have run on ahead; it is a word that not only calls them back but leads them back and brings them face-to-face with themselves.  For it is not so much a voice of power as a ray of light, telling men about their sins and at the same time revealing the things hidden in darkness.  There is no difference between this inner voice and light, for they are one and the same Son of God and Word of the Father and brightness of glory."

- From Bernard of Clairvaux's On Conversion

Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father.  In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf.  No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.  I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.

- John 16:25-28

"Love is infinitely delightful to its object, and the more violent the more glorious.  It is infinitely high, nothing can hurt it.  And infinitely great in all extremes of beauty and excellency.  Excess is its true moderation: Activity its rest: and burning fervency its only refreshment."

- From Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditations

Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot wash it away.
If one were to give
all the wealth of his house for love,
it would be utterly scorned.

- Song of Solomon 8:7

"In meditation, on the other hand, there is a fresh emphasis on prayer as one way of meeting and relating to the One to whom one prays.  Meeting God and learning what God wants of us become far more important than what we want of God.  Yet the amazing thing is that when we pray in this way, we often receive better than we would have dared to ask on our own.  This is also the way Jesus taught His followers to pray."

- Morton Kelsey's The Other Side of Silence

- Matthew 6:7-8

"But he who continues working upon such grace as he has and humbly begs by prayer perseveringly for more, and after feels his heart stirred to follow after the grace which he desired - he may securely run if he keeps himself humble.  Therefore, desire of God as much as you will or can, without measure or moderation at all concerning anything that belongs to his love or Heaven's bliss, for he who can desire most of God shall feel and receive most; but work as you may and cry to God for mercy, for that you cannot do."

- From Walter HIlton's The Scale of Perfection

"So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

- Matthew 10:26-31

"When, as promised, on the day of Pentecost the Paraclete made Himself present and the power of the Holy Spirit came to dwell in the souls of the apostles, the veil of sinfulness was once and for all removed for them, their passions were annulled and the eyes of their heart were opened.  Henceforth they were filled with wisdom and made perfect by the Spirit: through Him they knew how to carry out God's will, and through Him they were initiated into all truth, for He directed and reigned in their souls.  Thus, when we are brought to tears on hearing God's word, let us entreat Christ with unwavering faith and in the expectation that the Spirit, who truly hears and prays according to God's will and purpose, will indeed come to us."

- From St. Makarios of Egypt in The Philokalia Volume 3

"So we say with confidence, 'The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.  What can man do to me?'  Remember your leaders, who spoke the Word of God to you.  Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."

- Hebrews 13:6-8

"Moreover, friendships among the poor are generally more secure than those among the rich, since poverty takes away the hope of gain in such a way as not to decrease the love of friendship but rather to increase it.  And so towards the wealthy one acts flatteringly, but towards the poor no one pretends to be other than he is.  Whatever is given to a poor man is a true gift, for the friendship of the poor is devoid of envy."

- From Aelred of Rievaulx's Spiritual Friendship

"There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land."

- Deuteronomy 15:11

"The best way for any one to know how much he ought to aspire after holiness, is to consider, not how much will make his present life easy, but to ask himself, how much he thinks will make him easy at the hour of death.

Now any man that dares be so serious, as to put this question to himself, will be forced to answer, that at death, every one will wish he had been perfect as human nature can be.

Is not this therefore sufficient to put us not only upon wishing, but laboring after all that perfection, that we shall then lament the want of?  Is it not excessive folly to be content with such a course of piety as we already know cannot content us, at a time when we shall so want it, as to have nothing else to comfort us?  How can we carry a severer condemnation against ourselves, than to believe, that, at the hour of death, we shall want the virtues of the saints, and wish we had been among the first servants of God, and yet take no methods of arriving at their height of piety, while we are alive?"

- From William Law's A Serious Call to a Holy and Devout Life

"My son, preserve sound judgment and discernment,
do not let them out of your sight;
they will be life for you,
an ornament to grace your neck.

"And let us remember this:  God does not offer himself to our finite beings as a thing all complete and ready to be embraced.  For us he is eternal discovery and eternal growth.  The more we think we understand him, the more he reveals himself as otherwise."

- From Teilhard de Chardin's The Divine Milieu

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

"I'm tired, but relatively happy

It's fearful to see the world as good,

Or even partially so, for then the limb

May crash from out the oaks, crash

And break our feeble hopes and smash

Our fragile bodies, and leave us weeping

At the ocean's shore as the tide comes in

And washes away our castles built with so much effort

and love and fear ...

And yet, is it not better to look for good,

For light, for green, for God who breaks

Through in whirlwind or in fire,

Than just to mope and fear as men

Who bury their one talent and growl

That life is a hard and bitter lord."

- From Morton Kelsey's Sandcastles in The Other Side of Silence

At least there is hope for a tree; if it is cut down, it will sprout again, and new shoots will not fail.

Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil,

yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant,

But man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more.

- Job 14:7-10

"Humility is born of many virtues, and in turn gives birth to things more perfect still.  It is the same with spiritual knowledge, thankgiving, prayer and love, since these virtues are always capable of increase.  For example, a person becomes humble and grieves because he is a sinner.  In consequence of this he begins to practice self-control and patient endurance in the face of afflictions sought and unsought.  What comes from the demons he endures through ascetic discipline, and what comes from men he endures as a test of his faith.  In this way it becomes clear whether he puts his trust in God, or in man, or in his own strength and judgment.  And when his worthiness has been proved by his patient endurance and by his entrusting all things to God, he receives that great faith to which Christ referred when He said, 'When the Son of man comes, will He find find faith on the earth?' (Luke 18:8).  Through such faith he gains victory over his enemies; and when he has achieved this, then through the power of God and through the wisdom granted him he becomes aware of his own weakness and ignorance."

- From St. Peter of Damaskos in The Philokalia Volume 3

"Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.  As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.  But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy'.

- 1 Peter 1:13-16

"Solidity, indeed, becomes the pen
Of him that writeth things divine to men;
But must I needs want solidness, because
By metaphors I speak? Were not God's laws,
His gospel laws, in olden time held forth
By types, shadows, and metaphors? Yet loth
Will any sober man be to find fault
With them, lest he be found for to assault
The highest wisdom! No, he rather stoops,
And seeks to find out what by pins and loops,
By calves and sheep, by heifers and by rams,
By birds and herbs, and by the blood of lambs,
God speaketh to him; and happy is he
That finds the light and grace that in them be.
 

- From "The Author's Apology" in The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."

- Matthew 13:10-17

"The Lord dwells in the souls of the humble; but shameful passions fill the hearts of the proud.  Nothing so strengthens these passions against us as arrogant thoughts, and nothing uproots the evil herbs of the soul so effectively as blessed humility.  Hence humility is rightly called the executioner of the passions."

- From St. Theodoros the Great in The Philokalia Volume 2

Young men, in the same way, be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

- 1 Peter 5:5

"I will make of my life a High Priest of Truth.

I will make of my talents, whatever they are, a High Priest of Truth.  This I do when I use them to enrich life, to render life more human, to make life more gracious and personal than it would be otherwise.  I recognize that my talents may be special endowments or they may be the result of the advantageous path along which my life has come from the beginning.

I will make of my remembering a High Priest of Truth.  I purpose in my heart that I shall not use my memory to store up those things which fester, poison and destroy my living, my life, or the living and the life of others.  I shall make it my study to preserve my soul in balance and liberty.  I will use my memory to store up the excellent things of my experience.  In this way I shall lay up treasures in heaven. 

I will make of myself a High Priest of Truth.  I will recognize the supremacy of the Ideal of Godlikeness to which more and more, by His help, I will give myself.  Despite the number of times I fail, despite all the limitations and inadequacies which beset me, by God's strength I will make of myself a High Priest of Truth.

I will make of my life a High Priest of Truth."

- From Howard Thurman's Meditations of the Heart

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify  them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

- John 17:15-19

"For all the world, all that we are, and all that we have, our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many sins and our seldom virtues, are as so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the deep valleys of humility."

- From Jeremy Taylor's The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living

Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.

- Psalm 25:8-9

"A Prayer for Sincerity

O God, save us from offering unto Thee any prayer which we are not prepared that Thou shouldest answer.  Save us from praying to know Thy will unless we are prepared to do it.  Save us from praying to see Thy face unless we are prepared that the vision should burn all the self out of us and make us let go our hateful little sins.  Save us from asking for world vision, till we are ready to face world responsibilities.  Save us from asking that we may follow Christ, without counting His lonely way, His utter sacrifice, His broken heart.

Take us very quietly each one and shut us in with Thyself.  It may be Thou art going to ask a harder thing; that we should see all the need of the world and long to serve it in far-off lands, and yet stay here just where we are.  Only show us Thy will, and make us want to do it more than anything else in the world, and in that doing, find life.  We ask it for the honour of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen."

From Leslie Weatherhead's A Private House of Prayer

As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies.  Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith.  The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.  Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk.  They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

- 1 Timothy 1:3-7

"When the north wind blows over creation, the air around us remains pure because of this wind's subtle and clarifying nature; but when the south wind blows, the air becomes hazy because it is this wind's nature to produce mist and, by virtue of its affinity with clouds, to bring them from its own regions to cover the earth.  Likewise, when the soul is energized by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it is freed completely from the demonic mist; but when the wind of error blows fiercely upon it, it is completely filled with the clouds of sin.  With all our strength, therefore, we should try always to face towards the life-creating and purifying wind of the Holy Spirit."

- From St. Diadochus of Photiki in The Philokalia, Volume 1

He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time? Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?”

- Luke 12:54-57

"Therefore all speculation and study concerning God's will without change of heart is nothing.  When the mind is trapped in its own desires of the earthly life, it cannot grasp God's will.  It walks only in self from one way to another and yet finds no rest.  For self-desire always leads to restlessness."

- From Jacob Boehme's The Way to Christ

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?  But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.  You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness."

- Romans 6:16-18

"Therefore I may affirm that he who does not have humility, nor uses his industry and labor, cannot come to this reforming in feeling.  And he has not full humility, who does not understand and perceive himself truly as he is.  As thus: he who does all the good deeds that he can, such as fasting, watching, wearing hair-cloth, and all other sufferings of bodily penance, or does outward works of mercy to his neighbor, or else internal works, such as praying, weeping, sighing, meditating; if he always rests in them, leans so much on them, and so greatly regards them in his own sight and esteem that he presumes on his own deserts, and thinks himself ever rich and good, holy and virtuous - truly, as long as he feels himself thus, he is not humble enough.  No; though he says or thinks all that he does is of God's gift and not of himself, he is not yet humble enough; for he does not as yet make himself naked of all his good deeds, nor truly poor in spirit, nor feels himself to be nothing, as indeed he is.  And truly, till a soul through grace is come sensibly to annihilate herself and strip herself of all good deeds that she does, through the sight and beholding of the truth of Jesus, she is not perfectly humble; for what is humility but truth?  Truly, nothing else."

- From Walter Hilton's The Scale of Perfection

"But what can I say?

"God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

- From Dag Hammarskjold's Markings

"This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."

- 1 John 1:5-7

"Now Christ's kingdom is not of this world, but in heaven.  Therefore you must be in continual ascension if you wish to imitate Christ properly, even though your body must be among the creatures and must attend to them.

The narrow way of such continual ascension and imitation of Christ is this: You must despair of all of your own capabilities and possibilities for by your own power you cannot reach the gateway of God.  You must clearly decide to give yourself up to the mercy of God and firmly form in yourself the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.  With all your reason and senses you must sink yourself down into Him, persevere in Him, and desire to die therein to your creatures."

- From Jacob Boehme's The Way to Christ

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?  If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.  Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it.  How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!  They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.  No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

- Hebrews 12:7-11

"Let no riches make me ever forget myself, no poverty ever make me to forget Thee:  let no hope or fear, no pleasure or pain, no accident without, no weakness within, hinder or discompose my duty, or turn me from the ways of Thy commandments.  Oh, let Thy Spirit dwell with me for ever, and make my soul just and charitable, full of honesty, full of religion, resolute and constant in holy purposes, but inflexible to evil."

- From Jeremy Taylor's The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living

The wealth of the rich is their fortified city,

but poverty is the ruin of the poor.

The wages of the righteous bring them life,

but the income of the wicked brings them punishment.

"What I mean is that it is so important that we should try to think clearly before disaster falls upon us.  If we do, then in spite of all out grief we have a philosophy of life that steadies a ship.  If we do not, the storm is so furious that little can be done until it has abated."

- From Leslie Weatherhead's The Will of God

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

- Matthew 7:24-27

"The wrath of God is the suspension of gifts of grace - a most salutary experience for every self-inflated intellect that boasts of the blessings bestowed by God as if they were its own achievements."

- From St. Maximos the Confessor in The Philokalia (Volume 2)

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

- Matthew 6:22-23

"To opt for autonomy of formation is to choose a schizoid life, cut off from reality.  On the one extreme, we may become 'pious plodders', who compulsively act without attention to the flow of real life; on the other extreme, we may become 'holy floaters', who have lost touch with everydayness.  We may begin to perceive all law and authority as a threat to self-formation.  Self-surrender in love becomes difficult when we fear any ties with others that might limit our freedom of formation.

To avoid this ultimate alienation, I must die not only to lifeless convention but also to the dream of autonomous formation.  I must submit to the authority of the limited situation in which my ongoing formation has to incarnate itself."

- From Adrian Van Kaam's The Transcendent Self

"Are you the first man ever born?

  Were you brought forth before the hills?

Do you listen in on God's council?

  Do you have a monopoly on wisdom?

What do you know that we do not know?

  What insights do you have that we do not have?"

- Job 15:7-9

"Fight always with your thoughts and call them back when they wander away.  God does not demand of those under obedience that their thoughts be totally undistracted when they pray.  And do not lose heart when your thoughts are stolen away.  Just remain calm, and constantly call your mind back."

- From John Climacus' The Ladder of Divine Ascent

"Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare."

- Proverbs 20:13

"To have a flourishing estate and a mind in disorder; to keep exact accounts with a steward and no reckoning with our Maker; to have an accurate knowledge of loss or gain in our business, and to remain utterly ignorant whether our spiritual concerns are improving or declining; to be cautious in ascertaining at the end of every year, how much we have increased or diminished our fortune, and to be careless whether we have incurred profit or loss in faith and holiness, is a wretched miscalculation of the comparative value of things.  To bestow our attention on objects in an inverse proportion to their importance, is surely no proof that our learning has improved our judgment."

- From Hannah More's Practical Piety

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;

and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.

- Isaiah 55:1-2

"The hardest thing of all - to die rightly - An exam nobody is spared - and how many pass it?  And you?  You pray for strength to meet the test  - but also for leniency on the part of the Examiner."

- From Dag Hammarskjold's Markings

"’If you can?’ said Jesus. ‘Everything is possible for one who believes.’

Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’"

- Mark 9:23-24

"What we call our righteousness is filthy rags.  You are a fool, John, and I am going.  I am going up into the rocks till I find where the wind is coldest and the ground hardest and the life of man farthest away.  My notice to quit has not yet come, and I must be stained a while longer with the dye of our country.  I shall still be part of that dark cloud which offends the white light; but I shall make that part of the cloud which is called Me as thin, as nearly not a cloud, as I can.  Body and mind shall pay for the crime of their existence.  If there is any fasting, or watching, any mutilation or self-torture more harsh to nature than another, I shall find it out."

- From C.S. Lewis' The Pilgrim's Regress

Keep silent and let me speak

  then let come to me what may.

Why do I put myself in jeopardy,

  and take my life in my hands?

Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him;

  I will surely defend my ways to his face.

- Job 13:13-15

"So long as the contest continues, a man is full of fear and trembling, wondering whether he will win today or be defeated, whether he will win tomorrow or be defeated:  the struggle and stress constrict his heart.  But when he has attained dispassion, the contest comes to an end; he receives the prize of victory and has no further anxiety about the three that were divided, for now through God they have made peace with one another.  These three are the soul, the body, and the spirit.  When they becomes one through the energy of the Holy Spirit, they cannot be separated again."

- from St. Isaiah the solitary in The Philokalia, Volume 1

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

- Romans 7:21-25

"If therefore any man shall teach or practice such a Religion what satisfies all our natural desires in the days of desires and passion, lust and appetites, and only turns to God when his appetites are gone, and his desires cease; this man has overthrown the very being of virtues, and the essential constitution of Religion:  Religion is no Religion, and virtue is no act of choice, and reward comes by chance and without condition, if we only are religious when we cannot choose."

From Jeremy Taylor's The Rule & Exercises of Holy Dying

The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt.  In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.  The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt!  There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."

- Exodus 16:1-3 

"It is God who has promised the blessings held in store; and the self-disciplined person who has faith in God longs for what is held in store as though it were present."

- From St. Thalassios in The Philokalia Volume 2

Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.  Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

- Luke 12:32-34

"Twenty-five years ago a friend of mine who had two children was killed during the liberation of Paris.  His children always hated me because they were jealous that their father had a friend, but when the father died they turned to me because I had been their father's friend.  One of the children was a girl of fifteen who came to see me one day in my surgery (I was a doctor before I became a priest), and she saw that, apart from my medical paraphernalia, I had a book of the Gospels on my desk.  So with all certainty of youth she said, 'I can't understand how a man who is supposed to be educated can believe in such stupid things.'  I said, 'Have you read it?'  She said, 'No'.  Then I said, 'Remember it is only the most stupid people who pass judgements on things they do not know.'  After that she read the Gospels and she was so interested that her whole life changed, because she started to pray and God gave her an experience of His presence and she lived by it for a while.  Then she fell ill with an incurable disease and she wrote me a letter when I had already become a priest and was in England, and said, 'Since my body has begun to grow weak and to die out, my spirit has become livelier than ever and I perceive the divine presence so easily and so joyfully.'  I wrote to her again: 'Don't expect it will last.  When you have lost a little bit more of your strength, you will no longer be able to turn and cast yourself Godwards and then you will feel that you have no access to God.'  After a while she wrote again and said, 'Yes, I have become so weak now that I can't make the effort of moving Godwards or even longing actively and God has gone', but I said 'Now do something else.  Try to learn humility in the real, deep sense of the word.'

The word 'humility' comes from the Latin word humus which means fertile ground.  To me, humility is not what we often make of it:  the sheepish way of trying to imagine that we are the worst of all and trying to convince others that our artificial ways of behaving show that we are aware of that.  Humility is the situation of the earth.  The earth is always there, always taken for granted, never remembered, always trodden on by everyone, somewhere we cast and pour out all the refuse, all we don't need.  It's there, silent and accepting everything and in a miraculous way making out of all the refuse new richness in spite of corruption, transforming corruption itself into a power of life and a new possibility of creativeness, open to the sunshine, open to the rain, ready to receive any seed we sow and capable of bringing thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold out of every seed.  I said to this woman, 'Learn to be like this before God; abandoned, surrendered, ready to receive anything from people and anything from God.'  Indeed she got a great deal from people; within six months her husband got tired of having a dying wife and abandoned her, so refuse was poured generously, but God also shone His light and gave His rain, because after a little while she wrote to me and said, 'I am completely finished.  I can't move Godwards, but it is God who steps down to me.'

- From Anthony Bloom's Beginning to Pray

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews.  Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.  Here a great number of disabled people used to lie - the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.  One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.  When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, 'Do you want to get well?'

'Sir,' the man replied, 'I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.  While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.'

Then Jesus said to him, 'Get up!  Pick up your mat and walk.'  At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. 

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, 'It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.'

But he replied, 'The man who made me well said to me, "Pick up your mat and walk."

- John 5:1-11

"Are there any titles which I needn't give You?  And when I have listed them all, what have I said?  If I should take my stand on the shore of your Endlessness and shout into the trackless reaches of Your Being all the words I have ever learned in the poor prison of my little existence, what should I have said?  I should never have spoken the last word about You."

- From Karl Rahner's Encounters with Silence

"Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father."

- Philippians 2:8-10

"Since money is what it is, I do not deny that you may be worthy of all praise if you light your cigarettes with it.  That would show you had a deep, pure sense of the ontological value of the dollar.  Nevertheless, if that is all you can think of doing with money you will not long enjoy the advantages that it can still obtain.

It may be true that a rich man can better afford to throw money out the window than a poor man: but neither the spending nor the waste of money is what makes a man rich.  He is rich by virtue of what he has, and his riches are valuable to him for what he can do with them.

As for freedom, according to this analogy, it grows no greater by being wasted, or spent, but it is given to us as a talent to be traded with until the coming of Christ.  In this trading we part with what is ours only to recover it with interest.  We do not destroy it or throw it away.  We dedicate it to some purpose, and this dedication makes us freer, we are happier.  We not only have more than we had but we become more than we were.  This having and being come to us in a deepening of our union with the will of God." 

- From Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island

"This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God. They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart."

- Ecclesiastes 5:18-20

"Those who seek the Lord should not look for Him outside themselves; on the contrary, they must seek Him within themselves through faith made manifest in action.  For He is near you:  'The word is ... in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith' (Rom. 10:8) - Christ being Himself the word that is sought."

- From St. Maximos the Confessor in The Philokalia Volume 2

Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.  When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”  But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.  And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

- Luke 2:47-52

"A man truly humble within himself will never find his tongue betraying him.  What is not in the treasury cannot be brought out through the door.

A solitary horse can often imagine itself to be at full gallop, but when it finds itself in a herd it then discovers how slow it actually is."

- From John Climacus' The Ladder of Divine Ascent

"Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him."

- John 13:3-5

"The fact is that we are alienated from ourselves and have little desire really to know ourselves; we run in order to avoid meeting ourselves and we exchange truth for trinkets while we say, 'I would like to have time for prayer and the spiritual life but the cares and difficulties of this life demand all my time and energies.'  And what is more important and necessary, the eternal life of the soul or the temporary life of the body about which man worries so much?  It is the choice which man makes that either leads him to wisdom or keeps him in ignorance."

- From The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.  She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.  But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.  She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things,but few things are needed—or indeed only one.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

- Luke 10:38-42

"If the impulse to worship God and to adore Him in truth by the goodness and order of our own lives is nothing more than a transitory and emotional thing, that is our own fault.  It is so only because we make it so, and because we take what is substantially a deep and powerful and lasting moral impetus, supernatural in its origin and in its direction, and reduce it to the level of our own weak and unstable and futile fancies and desires."

- From Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain

"You are not to do as we do here today, everyone doing as they see fit, since you have not yet reached the resting place and the inheritance the Lord your God is giving you.  But you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety.  Then to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name —there you are to bring everything I command you: your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, and all the choice possessions you have vowed to the Lord."

- Deuteronomy 12:8-11

"We must, of course, focus our mind on God's will for that day as far as we can discern it.  We must not substitute for this, setting matters right according to our own idea of what our lives should be like.

'How can we thank God,' asks John Casteel, 'for the joys and benefits we receive if basically we are fearful and resentful towards having to live at all, or if we insist on using our capacities, resources, and opportunities to inflate and gratify our own self-centered will rather than as means by which we might realise God's will for us? ... How can we seek the help and mercy of God for ourselves and others if we still harbour hostility to Him for having created us, or towards other people whom we hold accountable for our predicament?'

And let us realise that 'accepting the will of God' means contented acceptance, not just resigning ourselves to personal disappointment."

- From Leslie D. Weatherhead's A Private House of Prayer

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.  And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.  For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

- Hebrews 12:1-3

"Ask your own conscience, if you solemnly took your heart to task, as in the sight of God, and examined it by Scripture, whether it be renewed or not; whether it be holy or not; whether it be set most on God or the creatures, on heaven or earth?  And when did you follow on this examination till you had discovered your condition, and pass sentence on yourself accordingly?"

- from Richard Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.  Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is —his good, pleasing and perfect will."

- Romans 12:1-2

"Though we must not look so far off, and pry abroad, yet we must be busy near at hand:  we must with all arts of the spirit seize upon the present, because it passes from us while we speak, and because in it all our certainty does consist.  We must take our waters as out of a torrent and sudden shower, which will quickly cease running in our channels here below:  This instant will never return again, and yet it may be this instant will declare or secure the fortune of a whole eternity.  The old Greeks and Romans taught us the prudence of this rule:  but Christianity teaches us the Religion of it."

- From Jeremy Taylor's The Rule And Exercises Of Holy Dying

And why do you worry about clothes?  See how the flowers of the field grow.  They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?  So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.   But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.   Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

- Matthew 6:28-34

"But what, in conclusion, of Joy?  for that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about.  To tell the truth, the subject has lost nearly all interest for me since I became a Christian.  I cannot, indeed, complain, like Wordsworth, that the visionary gleam has passed away.  I believe (if the thing were at all worth recording) that the old stab, the old bitter-sweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion as at any time of my life whatever.  But I now know that the experience, considered as a state of my own mind, had never had the kind of importance I once gave it.  It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer.  While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts.  When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter.  He who first sees it cries, 'Look!'  The whole party gathers round and stares.  But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare.  They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up.  But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though the pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold.  'We would be at Jerusalem.'

Not, of course, that I don't often catch myself stopping to stare at roadside objects of even less importance."

- From C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

"Then King Darius wrote to all the nations and peoples of every language in all the earth:

For he is the living God
    and he endures forever;
his kingdom will not be destroyed,
    his dominion will never end.
He rescues and he saves;
    he performs signs and wonders
    in the heavens and on the earth.
He has rescued Daniel
    from the power of the lions.”

- Daniel 6:25-27

"Certain it is, that God cannot, will not, never did reject a charitable man in his greatest needs and in his most passionate prayers; for God Himself is love, and every degree of Charity that dwells in us is the participation of the Divine nature."

- From Jeremy Taylor's The Rule & Exercises of Holy Dying

Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

So they took away the stone.  Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.  I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

- John 11:40-42

"For my own part, I see no reason for discouragement.  Bramachari was simply saying something that has long since been familiar to readers of the Gospels.  Unless the grain of wheat, falling in the ground, die, itself remaineth alone:  but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.  The Hindus are not looking for us to send them men who will build schools and hospitals, although those things are good and useful in themselves-and perhaps badly needed in India:  they want to know if we have any saints to send them."

- From Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain

"After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee.  When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’

 Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see:  The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.  Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.’"

- Matthew 11:1-6

"Genuine religion demands not merely an external profession of our allegiance to God, but an inward devotedness of ourselves to his service.  It is not a recognition, but a dedication.  It puts the Christian into a new state of things, a new condition of being.  It raises him above the world while he lives in it.  It disperses the illusion of sense, by opening the eyes to realities in the place of those shadows which he has been pursuing."

- From Hannah More's Practical Piety

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:  to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

- James 1:22-27

"She began to understand quite clearly that truth cannot be understood from books alone or by any written words, but only by personal growth and development in understanding, and that things written even in the Book of Books can be astonishingly misunderstood while one still lives on the low levels of spiritual experience and on the wrong side of the grave on the mountains.

She perceived that no one who finds herself up on the slopes of the Kingdom of Love can possibly dogmatize about what is seen there, because it is only then that she comprehends how small a part of the glorious whole she sees.  All she can do is to grasp with wonder, awe, and thanksgiving, and to long with all her heart to go higher and to see and understand more."

- From Hannah Hurnard's Hinds Feet on High Places

"And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life."

- John 5:37-40

"There it is, in its splendor and perfection, 'shining to saints in a perpetual bright clearness', as Thomas à Kempis said.  Not only the subjet matter of religion, but also the cause and goal of everything in human life that points beyond the world-great action, great music, great poetry, great art.  Our attention to it, or our neglect of it, makes no difference to that world; but it makes every difference to us.  For our lives are not real, not complete, until they are based on a certain conscious correspondence with it:  until they become that which they are meant to be-tools and channels of the Will of God-and are included in the Kingdom of Spirits which live in, to and for Him alone."

- From Evelyn Underhill's The Spiritual Life

Listen to me, my people;
    hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
    my justice will become a light to the nations.
My righteousness draws near speedily,
    my salvation is on the way,
    and my arm will bring justice to the nations.
The islands will look to me
    and wait in hope for my arm.
Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
    look at the earth beneath;
the heavens will vanish like smoke,
    the earth will wear out like a garment
    and its inhabitants die like flies.
But my salvation will last forever,
    my righteousness will never fail.

- Isaiah 51:4-6

"Those who are inconstant or uninstructed should not argue with intelligent men.  An intelligent man is one who conforms to God and mostly keeps silent; when he speaks he says very little, and only what is necessary and acceptable to God."

- from St. Anthony in The Philokalia, Volume 1

But now, Lord, what do I look for?

"Some child of God who is hungering for just such a life as I have been describing is reading this book.  You long unspeakably to get rid of your weary burdens.  You would be delighted to hand over the management of your unmanageable self into the hands of one who is able to manage you.  Do you recollect the delicious sense of rest with which you have sometimes gone to bed at night after a day of great exertion and weariness?  How delightful was the sensation of relaxing every muscle and letting your body go in a perfect abandonment of ease and comfort!  You no longer had to hold up an aching head or a weary back.  You trusted yourself to the bed in absolute confidence, and it held you up, without effort or strain or even thought on your part.  You rested!

Suppose you had doubted the strength or the stability of your bed and had dreaded each moment to find it giving way beneath you and landing you on the floor.  Could you have rested then?  Would not every muscle have been strained in a fruitless effort to hold yourself up, and would not the weariness have been greater than if you had not gone to bed at all?

Let this analogy teach you what it means to rest in the Lord.  Let your souls lie down upon the couch of His sweet will, as your bodies lie down in their beds at night.  Relax every strain, and lay off every burden.  Let yourself go in a perfect abandonment of ease and comfort, sure that, since He holds you up, you are perfectly safe.  Your part is simply to rest.  His part is to sustain you, and He cannot fail."

- from Hannah Whitall Smith's The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life

"Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him.  Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat.  But Jesus was sleeping.  The disciples went and woke him, saying, 'Lord, save us!  We are going to drown!'

He replied, 'You of little faith, why are you so afraid?'  Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. 

The men were amazed and asked, 'What kind of man is this?  Even the winds and the waves obey him!'"

- Matthew 8:23-27

"I learned from experience that joy does not reside in the things about us, but in the very depths of the soul, that one can have it in the gloom of a dungeon as well as in the palace of a king."

- From Therese of Lisieux's The Story of a Soul

"When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake.  Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, 'Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.'

Jesus replied, 'Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'

Another disciple said to him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.'

But Jesus told him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.'"

- Matthew 8:18-22

"A heavenly mind is also fortified against temptation, because the affections are thoroughly prepossessed with the high delights of another world.  He that loves most, and not he that only knows most, will most easily resist the motions of sin.  The will doth as sweetly relish goodness as the understanding doth truth; and here lies much of a Christian's strength."

- from Richard Baxter's Saints Everlasting Rest

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

- James 1:19-25

"That I love you passionately comes from my nature, for I am love itself.  That I love you often comes from my desire, for I desire to be loved passionately.  That I love you long comes from my being eternal, for I am without an end and without a beginning."

- From Mechthild of Magdeburg's The Flowing Light of the Godhead

"And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment:  in this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love."

- 1 John 4:16-18

"The memory will not be idle, or useless, in this blessed work.  From that height the saint can look behind him and before him.  And to compare past with present things must raise in the blessed soul an inconceivable esteem and sense of its condition.  To stand on that mount, whence we can see the Wilderness and Canaan both at once; to stand in heaven and look back on earth, and weigh them together in the balance of a comparing sense and judgement, how must it needs transport the soul, and make it cry out ..."

- From Richard Baxter's Saints Everlasting Rest

"I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;

therefore I will wait for him.”

- Lamentations 3:19-24

"When will mortals have an acquaintance with worshiping in spirit and truth?  For me, Mary is the model of that kind of worship.  Mortals look for worship where it cannot be found, in grandiose schemes, in conduct full of stern ascetic practices.  All of these things have their time, and God calls us to them when it is his will.  But true worship, pure love, does not depend on all these things; it consists in loving in silence, desiring God alone, clinging to nothing in this world-not even to our own gifts in order to take credit for them out of self-satisfaction.  It consists in bearing everything in a spirit of love.  It consists in bearing up under life with all the wrongs, all the disorders, all the evil that life is full of, through handing over control of our lives to God and withdrawing inwardly, just as Mary lived in that bitter separation from being with her Son."

- From Francois Fenelon in The Complete Fenelon

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."

- Romans 12:1-2

"In the very beginning, then, settle down on this one thing, that Jesus came to save you, now, in this life, from the power and dominion of sin and to make you more than conquerors through His power.  If you doubt this, search your Bible, and collect together every announcement or declaration concerning the purposes and object of His death on the cross.  His work is to deliver us from our sins, from our bondage, from our defilement; and not a hint is given anywhere that this deliverance was limited and partial, one with which Christians so continually try to be satisfied."

- from Hannah Whitall Smith's The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life

"It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining.  And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.  Jesus called out with a loud voice, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.'  When he had said this, he breathed his last.

The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, 'Surely this was a righteous man.'

- Luke 23:44-47

"You should love nothingness.

You should flee somethingness.

You should stand alone

And should go to no one.

You should not be excessively busy

And be free of all things.

You should release captives

And subdue the free.

You should restore the sick

And yet should have nothing yourself.

You should drink the water of suffering

And ignite the fire of love with the kindling of virtue:

Then you are living in the true desert."

- From Mechthild of Magdeburg's The Flowing Light of the Godhead

"A haughty person is not aware of his faults, or a humble person of his good qualities.  An evil ignorance blinds the first, an ignorance pleasing to God blinds the second."

- From Ilias the Presbyter in The Philokalia, Volume 3

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother 'Let me take the speck out of your eye', when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

- Matthew 7:3-5

"If God does visit us with the true joy of prayer and meditation, we should be most grateful.  If he seems to ignore us, we still continue to stand before him.  He will be pleased with our diligence and perseverance and it will unfailingly be noticed by him.  Be content and realize what an honor it is just to stand in his sight."

- From Francis de Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life

I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me.

"The first service one owes to others in the community involves listening to them.  Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them.  God's love for us is shown by the fact that God not only gives us God's Word, but also lends us God's ear."

- From Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together

On the third day, Joseph said to them, “Do this and you will live, for I fear God: If you are honest men, let one of your brothers stay here in prison, while the rest of you go and take grain back for your starving households. But you must bring your youngest brother to me, so that your words may be verified and that you may not die.” This they proceeded to do.

"But in the holy teacher, the Holy Spirit teaches and in the holy hearer Christ's Spirit hears through the soul and the divine home of the divine sound.  The saint has his church in himself where he hears and teaches internally.  Babel has the stone-heap into which it goes hypocrisy and flattery, permitting itself be seen with beautiful clothes, pretending to be devout and pious.  The stone church is its god in which it puts its trust.

The saint however has his church with him and in him at all places.  He goes and stands, he lies down and he sits, in his church.  He is in the true Christian church in the temple of Christ.  The Holy Spirit peaches to him out of each creature; in everything that he sees, he sees God's preacher."

- From Jacob Boehme's The Way to Christ

"Therefore say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.’

'They will return to it and remove all its vile images and detestable idols.  I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.  Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.  But as for those whose hearts are devoted to their vile images and detestable idols, I will bring down on their own heads what they have done', declares the Sovereign Lord.”

- Ezekiel 11:17-21

"The intellect of a man who enjoys the love of God does not fight against things or against conceptual images of them.  It battles against the passions which are linked with these images.  It does not, for example, fight against a woman, or against a man who has offended it, or even against the images it forms of them; but it fights against the passions which are linked with the images."

- From St. Maximus the Confessor in The Philokalia Volume 2

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

- Ephesians 6:12

"In the beginning of the year 1738, as I was returning from thence, the cry of my heart was:

Oh, grant that nothing in my soul
May dwell, but thy pure Love alone!
Oh, may thy Love possess me whole,
My joy, my treasure, and my crown!
Strange fires far from my heart remove:
My every act, word, thought, be Love!

I never heard that anyone objected to this.  And, indeed, who can object?  Is not this the language not only of every believer, but of everyone that is truly awakened?  But what have I written, to this day, which is either stronger or plainer?"

- From John Wesley's A Plain Account of Christian Perfection

Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray.  The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.  The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.  No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 

This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are:  anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

- 1 John 3:7-10

"When it comes to the matter of petitionary prayer, of bringing our personal desires and needs before God, Jesus seems to be on the side of the children, both in his personal practice of asking for specific things and of encouraging his companions to do the same.

The saints and the whole Christian community have always used petition freely.  The privilege of petition is part of the bounty given to those of the kingdom of God.  God does not seek to direct our attention away from this life, from this his creation, but leaves us involved in it to the hilt.  He would not have us retreat into some stoical condition of resignation and invulnerability as far as this world is concerned.  As P. T. Forsyth puts it, 'If you may not come to God with the occasions of your private life and affairs, then there is some unreality in the relation between you and Him.'"

- From Douglas V. Steere's Dimensions of Prayer 

"Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor.  Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

- Luke 12:32-34

"And do not think that to enter the mystery of Christ is to escape from the world.  Again I say that the mystery of Christ is centered on his cross.  This means that it is the mystery of the poor, the sick, the afflicted, the deranged, the imprisoned, the dying, and all those suffering people with whom Jesus identifies.  It is the mystery of the exploited, the manipulated, the terrorized, the oppressed.  It is the mystery of nuclear war, of hunger, of injustice, of human anguish.  It is the mystery of you and me when we suffer and when we sin.  Christian mystical experience, far from flying from the suffering and sinful world, is an entrance into its very heart."

- From William Johnston's Christian Mysticism Today

"Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

"God is not loved without reward, even though he should be loved without thought of reward.  True charity cannot be empty, but it does not seek profit, 'for it does not seek its own benefit' (1 Cor. 13:5).  It is an affection, not a contract.  It is not given or received by agreement.  It is freely given; it makes us spontaneous.  True love is content.  It has its reward in what it loves.  For if you seem to love something, but really love it for the sake of something else, you actually love what you are pursuing as your real end, not what is a means to it.  Paul did not preach in order to eat; he ate in order to preach.  He loved not the food, but the Gospel."

- From Bernard of Clairvaux's On Loving God

He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him with the fruit of the fields.

He nourished him with honey from the rock, and with oil from the flinty crag,

with curds and milk from the herd and flock and with the fattened lambs and goats,

with choice rams of Bashan and the finest kernels of wheat.

You drank the foaming blood of the grape.

Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; filled with food, he became heavy and sleak.

He abandoned God who made him and rejected the Rock his Savior.

They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols.

They sacrificed to demons, which are not God - gods they had not known,

gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear.

You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.

- Deuteronomy 32:13-18

"Here she saw an error which, during the whole of the former pilgrimage in the heavenly way, had been detrimental to her progress.  She now perceived that she had been much more solicitous about feeling than faith- requiring feeling, the fruit of faith, previous to having exercised faith."

From Phoebe Palmer's The Way of Holiness

Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city.  There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade, and waited to see what would happen to the city.  Then the LORD God provided a gourd and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the gourd.  But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the gourd so that it withered.  When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint.  He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."

But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the gourd?"

"It is," he said.  "And I'm so angry I wish I were dead."

But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this gourd, though you did not tend it or make it grow.  It sprang up overnight and died overnight.  And should I not have concern for the great city Ninevah, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left- and also many animals?"

- Jonah 4:5-11

"God does not say, 'I will excuse you from the waters; I will show you a short cut by which you may escape the rivers.'  If He did, what an insurance religion would be, and how men would rush to pay the premium of a spurious piety!

God does say, 'In all the experiences through which you have to pass, I shall be there too.'

Thus shall even the experiences which cannot be called anything but evil, the experiences I have hated and from which I have shrunk, be woven into a pattern of good and made to serve the purpose of a holy, loving, wise, omnipotent God."

- From Leslie Weatherhead's A Private House of Prayer

But now, this is what the LORD says—

he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel:

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze.”

- Isaiah 43:1-2

"It is no great thing to associate with the good and gentle, for such association is naturally pleasing.  Everyone enjoys a peaceful life and prefers persons of congenial habits.  But to be able to live at peace with harsh and perverse men, or with the undisciplined and those who irritate us, is a great grace, a praiseworthy and manly thing.

Some people live at peace with themselves and with their fellow men, but others are never at peace with themselves nor do they bring it to anyone else.  These latter are a burden to everyone, but they are more of a burden to themselves.  A few, finally, live at peace with themselves and try to restore it to others.

Now, all our peace in this miserable life is found in humbly enduring suffering rather than in being free from it.  He who knows best how to suffer will enjoy the greater peace, because he is the conqueror of himself, the master of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of heaven."

- from Thomas a' Kempis' The Imitation of Christ

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.  Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

- James 3:17-18

"It is certain from the Holy Scriptures that the Spirit of God dwells within us.  There he acts, there he prays without ceasing with sighs too deep for words, there he desires and asks for us what we do not know how to ask for ourselves.  The Spirit urges us on, animates us, speaks to us when we are silent, suggests to us all truth, and so unites us to him that we become one spirit.  This is the teaching of faith, and even those teachers farthest removed from the interior life cannot avoid acknowledging it to be so.  To be sure, there are some who strive to maintain that in practice we are illuminated by the external law or by the light of learning and reason, and that as a result our understanding acts of itself from that instruction.  They do not rely sufficiently upon the interior Teacher, the Holy Spirit, who does everything within us.  We could not form a thought or desire without him.  What a pity this is!  What blindness is ours!  We suppose ourselves to be alone in the inner sanctuary, when God is more intimately present there than we are ourselves.

- From Francois Fenelon's "The Interior Voice of the Spirit" in The Complete Fenelon

And the word of the LORD came to him: ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’

He replied, ‘I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty.  The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.’