Sebastian Castellio

This is certain that the better a man knows the truth, the less is he inclined to condemn, as appears in the case of Christ and the apostles. But he who lightly condemns others shows thereby that he knows nothing precisely, because he cannot bear others, for to know is to know how to put into practice. He who does not know how to act mercifully and kindly does not know the nature of mercy and kindness, just as he who cannot blush does not know the nature of shame.

* This excerpt is from “Concerning Heretics” by Sebastian Castellio

St. Ignatius of Loyola

Dearest Lord,
teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give, and not to count the cost;
to fight, and not to heed the wounds;
to labor, and not to seek to rest;
to give of myself and not to ask for reward,
except the reward of knowing that I am doing your will.
Amen.

* This excerpt is from “Catholic Prayer Book” compiled by Jacquelyn Lindsey

St. Augustine of Hippo teaching in Rome

It is good nevertheless that you also know how to support what we believe by defending it; for the Apostle Peter commanded us to be always ready to give satisfaction to anyone asking us for the reason for our faith and hope…  We should always explain the just grounds of our faith and hope to questioners, whether they ask honestly or dishonestly.

* This excerpt is from “Sic et Non” by Monk Peter Abelard

Fr. Bede Griffiths, O.S.B. Cam.

The virgin birth of Jesus is a sign of the emergence of the new man, a further stage in the evolution of humanity. It marks the transcendence of sexuality, the achievement of human perfection. The new man is not born by sexual generation – ‘not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.’ This is achieved because a woman is found who can make the total surrender of herself in love. What human love strives imperfectly to achieve through sex and marriage is here accomplished by divine Love. The mystery of love which is at work in the whole creation, in the stars and atoms, plants and animals and men, here achieved its consummation.

In Mary man is married to God; the male and the female unite in one person in an interior marriage and the new man is born. This is the mystery which has to be accomplished in us. Every man and woman has to undergo this virgin birth, to be married to God; in other words, beyond our physical and psychic being we have to discover our spiritual being, our eternal ground, and there the mystery of love is fulfilled.

* This excerpt is from “Return to the Centre” by Fr. Bede Griffiths

Fr. Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O.

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing … an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end … it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

* This excerpt is from “Living with Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton” by Jim Forest

Br. David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B.

People who have faith in life are like swimmers who entrust themselves to a rushing river. They neither abandon themselves to its current nor try to resist it. Rather, they adjust their every movement to the watercourse, use it with purpose and skill, and enjoy the adventure.

* This excerpt is from “Deeper Than Words: Living the Apostles’ Creed” by Br. David Steindl-Rast

The Nativity of the Lord Jesus Christ

Our Saviour, dearly-beloved, was born today: let us be glad. For there is no proper place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity. No one is kept from sharing in this happiness. There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord the destroyer of sin and death finds none free from charge, so is He come to free us all. Let the saint exult in that he draws near to victory. Let the sinner be glad in that he is invited to pardon. Let the gentile take courage in that he is called to life. For the Son of God in the fullness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through that (nature) which he had conquered. And in this conflict undertaken for us, the fight was fought on great and wondrous principles of fairness; for the Almighty Lord enters the lists with His savage foe not in His own majesty but in our humility, opposing him with the same form and the same nature, which shares indeed our mortality, though it is free from all sin. Truly foreign to this nativity is that which we read of all others, “no one is clean from stain, not even the infant who has lived but one day upon earth” [Job 19:4]. Nothing therefore of the lust of the flesh has passed into that peerless nativity, nothing of the law of sin has entered. A royal Virgin of the stem of David is chosen, to be impregnated with the sacred seed and to conceive the Divinely-human offspring in mind first and then in body. And lest in ignorance of the heavenly counsel she should tremble at so strange a result, she learns from converse with the angel that what is to be wrought in her is of the Holy Ghost. Nor does she believe it loss of honour that she is soon to be the Mother of God. For why should she be in despair over the novelty of such conception, to whom the power of the most High has promised to effect it. Her implicit faith is confirmed also by the attestation of a precursory miracle, and Elizabeth receives unexpected fertility: in order that there might be no doubt that He who had given conception to the barren, would give it even to a virgin.

Therefore the Word of God, Himself God, the Son of God who “in the beginning was with God,” through whom “all things were made” and “without” whom “was nothing made” [John 1:1-3], with the purpose of delivering man from eternal death, became man: so bending Himself to take on Him our humility without decrease in His own majesty, that remaining what He was and assuming what He was not, He might unite the true form of a slave to that form in which He is equal to God the Father, and join both natures together by such a compact that the lower should not be swallowed up in its exaltation nor the higher impaired by its new associate. Without detriment therefore to the properties of either substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality: and for the paying off of the debt, belonging to our condition, inviolable nature was united with possible nature, and true God and true man were combined to form one Lord, so that, as suited the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other.

Rightly therefore did the birth of our Salvation impart no corruption to the Virgin’s purity, because the bearing of the Truth was the keeping of honour. Such then beloved was the nativity which became the Power of God and the Wisdom of God even Christ, whereby He might be one with us in manhood and surpass us in Godhead. For unless He were true God, He would not bring us a remedy, unless He were true Man, He would not give us an example. Therefore the exulting angel’s song when the Lord was born is this, “Glory to God in the Highest,” and their message, “peace on earth to men of good will” [Luke 2:14]. For they see that the heavenly Jerusalem is being built up out of all the nations of the world: and over that indescribable work of the Divine love how ought the humbleness of men to rejoice, when the joy of the lofty angels is so great?

Let us then, dearly beloved, give thanks to God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Spirit, Who “for His great mercy, wherewith He has loved us,” has had pity on us: and “when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together in Christ” [Ephesians 2:4-5], that we might be in Him a new creation and a new production. Let us put off then the old man with his deeds: and having obtained a share in the birth of Christ let us renounce the works of the flesh. Christian, acknowledge thy dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct. Remember the Head and the Body of which thou art a member. Recollect that thou wert rescued from the power of darkness and brought out into God’s light and kingdom. By the mystery of Baptism thou wert made the temple of the Holy Ghost: do not put such a denizen to flight from thee by base acts, and subject thyself once more to the devil’s thraldom: because thy purchase money is the blood of Christ, because He shall judge thee in truth Who ransomed thee in mercy, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

* This excerpt is from “Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series Volume XII- Leo the Great, Gregory the Great” edited by Philip Schaff and Rev. Henry Wallace

Sergius Iosifovich Fudel

There is no worse distortion of Christianity than a cold and self-satisfied concentration on one’s own salvation, renouncing all struggle and suffering for the pains of the world, an un-loving and thus un-Christian withdrawal from concern for the world.

* This excerpt is from “Light in the Darkness” by Sergius Fudel

Blessed Charles de Foucauld

We must stand up for the rights of our neighbour who is suffering from injustice; we must defend them all the more vigorously because we see Jesus present in them. Surely this is our duty because of our love for others for his sake. We have no right to be ‘sleeping watchmen’ or dumb watch-dogs. Whenever we see evil we must sound the alarm.

* Jesus Caritas