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—but he was arguably the most precocious and well-read of this eminent and intellectually fertile group. He was also known to have influenced Dorothy Sayers, T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden. Lacking a proper degree unlike his fellow Inklings, this genius Cockney-speaking author, editor, critic, and playwright was eminently well-versed in both philosophical and theological writings of the remote past as of the present day (the mid-20th century) and used this familiarity to good effect in his poetry, supernatural fiction and his lesser-known devotional selections designed for the spiritual benefit of the faithful in the Church of England. 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, beginning with Advent (i.e., December) and ending in November, and reaches far beyond the pale of the philosophical and theological discussions of his day. It was under his hand, for instance, that some of the first translations of Kierkegaard were made available to the wider public. 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

11th Wednesday after Trinity

I CAN find no simile more appropriate than water by which to explain spiritual things, as I am very ignorant and have poor wits to help me. Besides I love this element so much that I have studied it more attentively than other things. God, Who is so great, so wise, has doubtless hidden secrets in all things He created, which we should greatly benefit by knowing, as those say who understand such matters.

St Teresa: The Interior Castle

11th Thursday after Trinity

LIGHT is all things, and no thing. It is no thing because it is supernatural; it is all things because every good power and perfection of everything is from it. No joy or rejoicing in any creature but from the power and joy of light. No meekness, benevolence, or goodness, in angel, man, or any creature, but where light is the lord of its life. Life itself begins no sooner, rises no higher, has no other glory than as the light begins it and leads it on. Sounds have no softness, flowers and gums have no sweetness, plants and fruits have no growth but as the mystery of light opens itself in them. Whatever is delightful and ravishing, sublime and glorious, in spirits, minds, or bodies, either in heaven or on earth, is from the power of the supernatural light opening its endless wonders in them.

William Law: The Spirit of Love.

11th Friday after Trinity

READING is good, hearing is good, conversation and meditation are good; but then, they are only good at times and occasions, in a certain degree, and must be used and governed with such caution as we eat and drink and refresh ourselves, or they will bring forth in us the fruits of intemperance. But the spirit of prayer is for all times and all occasions, it is a lamp that is to be always burning, a light to be ever shining; everything calls for it, everything is to be done in it and governed by it, because it is and means and wills noting else but the whole totality of the soul, not doing this or that, but wholly incessantly given up to God to be where and what and how He pleases.

William Law: Letters

11th Saturday after Trinity

FOR all other creatures and their works—yea, and the works of God himself—may a man through grace have fullness of knowing, and well can he think of them; but of God himself can no man think. And therefore I would leave all that thing that I can think, and choose to my love that thing I cannot think. For why, he may well be loved but not thought. By love may he be gotten and holden; but by thought never.

The Cloud of Unknowing.

ALTHOUGH it be good to think upon the kindness of God, and to love him and praise him for it: yet it is far better to think upon the naked being of him, and to love him and praise him for himself.

The Cloud of Unknowing.

Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

EVERY thing that works in nature and creature, except sin, is the working of God in nature and creature. The creature has nothing else in its power but the free use of its will; and its free will has no other power but that of concurring with or resisting the working of God in nature. The creature with its free will can bring nothing into being nor make any alteration in the working of nature, it can only change its own state or place in the working of nature, and so feel and find something in its state that it did not feel or find before.

William Law: The Spirit of Love

12th Monday after Trinity

VIRTUE is nought else but an ordered and a measured affection, plainly directed unto God for himself. For why, he in himself is the clean cause of all virtues: insomuch, that if any man be stirred to any virtue by any other cause mingled with him—yea, though he be the chief—yet that virtue is then imperfect. As thus for example, may be seen in one virtue or two instead of all the other; and well may these two virtues be meekness and charity. For whoso might get these two clearly, he needeth no more: for why, he hath all. The Cloud of Unknowing.

12th Tuesday after Trinity

EVEN one unruly desire, though not a mortal sin, sullies and deforms the soul, and indisposes it for the perfect union with God, until it be cast away.

St John of the Cross: Ascent of Mount Carmel

OUR souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's if we are always criticising trivial actions which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through ignorance of their motives.

St Teresa: The Interior Castle

12th Wednesday after Trinity

ABBA Agathon used to say to himself, whensoever he saw any act or anything which his thought wished to judge or condemn, "Do not commit the thing thyself," and in this manner he quieted his mind, and held his peace.

The Paradise of the Fathers

VEX not yourselves with trivialities; ye were not made for things, and the glory of the world is but a travesty of truth, only a heresy of happiness.

Eckhart: Sayings.

The Feast of St Bartholomew

NATURAL religion, if you understand it rightly, is a most excellent thing, it is a right sentiment of heart, it is so much goodness in the heart, it is its sensibility both of its separation from its relation to God; and therefore it shows itself in nothing but in a penitential sentiment of the weight of its sins, and in an humble recourse by faith to the mercy of God. Call but this the religion of nature and then the more you esteem it, the better; for you cannot wish well to it without bringing it to the Gospel state of perfection.

For the religion of the Gospel is this religion of penitence and faith in the mercy of God, brought forth into its full perfection. For the Gospel calls you to nothing but to know and understand and practise a full and real penitence, and to know by faith such heights and depths of the divine mercy towards you, as the religion of nature had only some little uncertain glimmerings of.

William Law: A Demonstration

12th Thursday after Trinity

WE repeat the Scriptures with our mouth, and we go though the Psalms of David in our service, but that which God requireth, and which is necessary, we have not, that is to say, a good word for each other.

The Paradise of the Fathers

DO not despise or think lightly of him that standeth before thee, for thou knowest not whether the Spirit of God is in thee or in him, though thou callest him who standeth before thee him that ministereth unto thee.

The Paradise of the Fathers

12th Friday after Trinity

WHILE thou still wishest better to thine own person than to that man whom thou hast never seen thou art beside the mark, nor hast thou even for an instant seen into this simple ground.

Eckhart: Sermons and Collations

A HOLY man once bethought himself how painful it must have been to God to have been seen by his enemies when he was taken prisoner. Our Lord answered him: "My enemies appeared unto Me in my presence as friends, who wished to help me in carrying out the sweetest and most desirable work that I ever worked in my life."

Tauler: Sermons.

12th Saturday after Trinity

WE pray God that his, "will be done on earth," in us, "as it is in heaven," in God himself. A man of this sort is so one, so one-willed with God that he wills exactly what God wills and in the way God wills it.

Eckhart: The Book of Benedictus

NO knowledge, therefore, and no conceptions in this mortal life can serve as proximate means of this high union of the love of God. All that the understanding can comprehend; all that the will may be satisfied with; and all that the imagination may conceive, is most unlike unto God, and most disproportionate to Him.

St John of the Cross:

Ascent of Mount Carmel

Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

LOVE is a grace that loves God for Himself, and our neighbors for God. The consideration of God's goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from Him, may be and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we loved the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanksgiving to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory.

Jeremy Taylor: Holy Living

13th Monday after Trinity

I LIVE in Meshech which they say signifies Prolonging, in Kedar which signifies Blackness; yet the Lord forsaketh me not. Though he do prolong, yet he will, I trust, bring me to his tabernacle, his resting-place. My soul is with the congregation of the first-born, my body rests in hope, and if here I may honour my God, either by doing or suffering, I shall be most glad.

Oliver Cromwell: Letters

WE naturalize ourselves, to the employment of eternity.

Benjamin Whichcote: Aphorisms

13th Tuesday after Trinity

DIDST thou ever decry a glorious eternity in a winged moment of Time? Didst thou ever see a bright Infinite in the narrow point of an Object? Then thou knowest what Spirit means—that spire-top whither all things ascend harmoniously, where they meet and sit connected in an unfathomed Depth of Life.

Peter Sterry: Rise, Race, and Royalty of the Kingdom of God

GOD giveth a man the opportunity to repent as long as he wisheth to do, and in proportion as he wisheth.

The Paradise of the Fathers