The New Christian Year

Selected by Charles Williams

Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886–1945), the editor of the following selections, is today probably the third most famous of the famous Inklings literary group of Oxford, England, which existed in the middle of the 20th century, and which included among its ranks the better-known and longer-lived Oxford Dons J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. First published in 1941, this series of profound quotations, encompassing all walks of life, follows the sequence of the themes and Bible readings anciently appointed for contemplation throughout the church's year. It is hoped that the readings reproduced here will prove beneficial for any who read them, whatever their place in life's journey. — Matthew Carver

7th Wednesday after Trinity

IT is the sign of a reasoning soul when a man sinks his mind within himself and has dealings in his heart.

St Seraphim of Sarov.

THE enthusiasm for goodness which shows that it is not the habit of the mind.

Patmore: The Rod, the Root, and the Flower.

7th Thursday after Trinity

ABSOLUTE poverty is thine when thou canst not remember whether anybody has ever owed thee or been indebted to thee for anything; just as all things will be forgotten by thee in the last journey of death.

Tauler: Sermons.

7th Friday after Trinity

I AM no companion for myself, I must not be alone with myself, for I am as apt to take as to give infection; I am a reciprocal plague; passively and actively contagious; I breathe corruption, and breathe it upon myself; and I am the Babylon that I must go out of, or I perish.

Donne: Sermons

7th Saturday after Trinity

LORD, I perceive my soul deeply guilty of envy . . . I had rather thy work were undone than done better by another than by myself! . . . Dispossess me, Lord, of this bad spirit, and turn my envy into holy emulation; . . . yea, make other men's gifts to be mine, by making me thankful to thee for them.

Thomas Fuller: Good Thoughts in Bad Times

TO thee, O God, we turn for peace . . . but grant us too the blessed assurance that nothing shall deprive us of that peace, neither ourselves, nor our foolish, earthly desires, nor my wild longings, nor the anxious cravings of my heart.

Kierkegaard: Journals

WHAT did He, in loving us, love, but God in us? not who was in us, but so that He might be? Wherefore let each of us love the other, as that by this working of love, we make each other the habitations of God.

St Augustine, quoted in Aquinas: Catena Aurea.

Seventh Sunday after Trinity

IF you have no will but to all goodness, everything you meet, be it what it will, must be forced to be assistant to you. For the wrath of an enemy, the treachery of a friend, and every other evil, only helps the Spirit of Love to be more triumphant to live its own life and find all its own blessings in an higher degree. Whether therefore you consider perfection or happiness, it is all included in the Spirit of Love and must be so, for this reason, because the infinitely perfect and happy God is mere love, an unchangeable will to all goodness; and therefore every creature must be corrupt and unhappy so far as it is led by any other will than the one will to all goodness.

William Law: The Spirit of Love

8th Monday after Trinity

LOVE and the good life are needful to right belief.

Wycliffe: Quicunque Vult

THOU hast not commanded us continency alone, that is, from what things we should refrain our love: but justice also, that is, which way we should bestow that love: and, that it is not thy will to have us love thee only, but our neighbor also.

St Augustine: Confessions

The Feast of St James

HERE we may see the great virtue of true belief in that the faith and the belief of one man helpeth and saveth another: as the faith of the bearers of this paralysed man saved him. And also in the next chapter before the faith of the centurion gave healing to his servant. And also hereafter the faith of the woman saved her daughter. And so it falleth now that children baptised, and after dead before the years of discretion, be saved in the faith of their godfathers through the merit of Christ.

Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, (trs. by Nicholas Love).

8th Tuesday after Trinity

BEG our Lord to grant you perfect love for your neighbour, and leave the rest to Him. He will give you more than you know how to desire if you constrain yourselves and strive with all your power to gain it, forcing your will as far as possible to comply in all things with your sisters' wishes, although you may sometimes forfeit your own rights by so doing. Forget your self-interests for theirs, however much nature may rebel; when opportunity occurs take some burden upon yourself to ease your neighbour of it.

St Teresa: The Interior Castle

8th Wednesday after Trinity

TO love one another as oneself is only the halfway house to Heaven, though it seems as far as it was prudent to bid man go. The "greater love than this" of which our Lord speaks, though He does not command it, is to give oneself for one's friends. And when one does this, or is ready to do this, prayer even for "us" seems too selfish—and it is unnecessary, for we then possess all that God Himself can give us. The easy renunciation of self for the Beloved being the very breath of Heaven.

Patmore: Life

8th Thursday after Trinity

AN old man said, "One man is thought to be silent, and yet his heart judgeth and condemneth others, and the man who acteth thus speaketh continually; another man speaketh from morning till evening; and yet keepeth silence, that is to say, he speaketh nothing which is not helpful."

The Paradise of the Fathers.

WE love ourselves, because we are members of Jesus Christ. We love Jesus Christ, because He is the body of which we are members. All is one, one is in the other, like Three Persons.

Pascal: Pensées.

8th Friday

after Trinity

TO the Christian love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is really an unChristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life.

Kierkegaard: Journals

8th Saturday after Trinity

WHAT time we call to Jesus in our need bodily or ghostly, though we find it not anon but rather hardness and contrariety we shall not leave therefore to call upon him by good hope. Till through his mercy and grace the unsavoury water and cold of adversity and penance be turned into wine and comfort and ghostly liking.

Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, (trs. by Nicholas Love).

SCARCELY any one is contented with that measure of the spirit which God gives; they are very disconsolate and querulous because they do not find the comfort they desire in spiritual things.

St John of the Cross: Dark Night of the Soul GOD will be all in all; that is, since God is love, love will bring it to pass that what each has will be common to all. That which one loves in another is one's own, though one have it not. There will be no envy at superior grace, because of the unity of love.

St Augustine, quoted in Aquinas: Catena Aurea

Eighth Sunday after Trinity

STOP, therefore, all self-activity, listen not to the suggestions of thy own reason, run not on in thy own will, but be retired, silent, passive, and humbly attentive to this new risen light within thee. Open thy heart, thy eyes, and ears to all its impressions. Let it enlighten, teach, frighten, torment, judge, and condemn thee as it pleases, turn not away from it, hear all it says, seek for no relief out of it, consult not with flesh and blood, but with a heart full of faith and resignation to God pray only this prayer, that God's Kingdom may come and His will be done in thy soul.

William Law: The Spirit of Prayer

9th Monday after Trinity

I CANNOT pray in the name of Jesus to have my own will; the name of Jesus is not a signature of no importance, but the decisive factor; the fact that the name of Jesus comes at the beginning is not prayer in the name of Jesus; but it means to pray in such a manner that I dare not name Jesus in it, that is to say think of him, think his holy will together with whatever I am praying for . . . So too with prayer in the name of Jesus, Jesus assumes the responsibility and all the consequences, he steps forward for us, steps into the place of the person praying.

Kierkegaard: Journals

9th Tuesday after Trinity

IF thou desirest to have this intent lapped and folden in one word, so that thou mayest have better hold thereupon, take thee but a little word of one syllable, for so it is better than of two; for the shorter the word, the better it accordeth with the work of the spirit. And such a word is this word GOD or this word LOVE. Choose whichever thou wilt, or another: whatever word thou likest best of one syllable. And fasten this word to thine heart, so that it may never go thence for anything that befalleth.

The Cloud of Unknowing

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