FOURTH
Sunday after
Trinity
What is Christ's joy in us, but that He deigns to rejoice on our
account? And what is our joy, which He says shall be full, but to have
fellowship with him? He had perfect joy on our account, when He rejoiced
in foreknowing, and predestinating us; but that joy was not in us, because then
we did not exist: it began to be in us, when He called us. And this joy we
rightly call our own, this joy wherewith we shall be blessed; which is begun in
the faith of them who are born again, and shall be fulfilled in the reward of
them who rise again.
St. Augustine, quoted in Aquinas: Catena Aurea
MONDAY
Though he were innocence itself, and knew no sin, yet there was
no sin that he knew not, for, all our sins were his. He was not only made
man, and by taking (by admitting, though not by committing) our sins, as well as
our nature, sinful man; but he was made sin for our sakes.
Donne: Sermons
Thy conversion is My affair; fear not, and pray with confidence
as for Me.
Pascal: Pensées
TUESDAY
Consider that Jesus suffered in His heart with all the knowledge
of a God, and that in His heart there was every human heart and every form of
suffering from Adam until the consummation of the world.
Ah yes, to suffer for others can be a great joy if one has a
generous soul, but to suffer in others is really to suffer!
Leon Bloy: Letters to his Fiancée
The Jews, in testing if he were God, have shown that he was man.
Pascal: Pensées
WEDNESDAY
There is a moving absurdity about all human categories when they
are applied to Christ; for if one could talk absolutely humanly about Christ one
would have to say that the worlds: "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me"
are impatient and untrue. They can only be true if God says them, and
consequently also when the God-Man says them. And indeed--since it is
true, it is the very limit of suffering.
Kierkegaard: Journals
No single teardrop lieth hid from thee, my God, my Maker, my
Deliverer, no, nor any part thereof.
The Orthodox Liturgy: Prayers of St. Simeon
THURSDAY
The greatest exercise at once of the Divine goodness, and wisdom,
and power, is to bring good out of evil.
St. Clement: Stromata
Man must be lenient with his soul in her weaknesses and
imperfections and suffer her failings as he suffers those of others, but he must
not become idle, and must encourage himself to better things.
St. Seraphim of Sarov
FRIDAY
The only remedy for having given up a habit of recollection is to
recommence it, otherwise the soul will continue to lose it more and more every
day, and God grant it may realize its danger.
St. Theresa: The Interior Castle
We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is
not God, but his image and idol which we must neither love nor adore, and still
less must we love and adore its opposite--namely, falsehood.
Pascal: Pensées
SATURDAY
Three kinds of men see God. The first see him in faith;
they know no more of him than what they can make out through a partition.
The second behold God in the light of grace but only as the answer to their
longings, as giving them sweetness, devotion, inwardness and other such-like
things which are issuing from his gift. The third kind see him in the
divine light.
Eckhart: Sermons and Collections
